A survey of adaptive applications in mobile computing

Mobile computing is gaining wide acceptance due to the rapid enhancement in wireless communications technologies. This has led to an increase in the demand for mobile information access. However, most mobile computing environments are very limited in resources, hence introducing new requirements and challenges for the software developer and engineer. To address these challenges applications have to be adaptive. We describe mobile computing and its constraints. We describe adaptation spaces as a common framework for understanding the state-of-the-art in adaptive applications. A number of projects are reviewed and discussed. Then, a new rising paradigm in building adaptive applications is introduced based on a component-based architecture. We believe this new approach will provide a more flexible environment for building mobile applications.