Title: Lightweight coordination model for mobile collaborative mapping

Authors: Moulay Driss Mechaoui; Abdessamad Imine

Addresses: Exact Sciences and Computer Science Faculty, Abdelhamid Ibn Badis University of Mostaganem, Chemin des crêtes ex INES, 27000 Mostaganem, Algeria ' Lorraine University and LORIA-CNRS-INRIA, 54506 Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, France

Abstract: The rapid development of mobile devices features offers new opportunities for mobile peer-to-peer computing that can be used for providing location-based services and social/collaborative platforms using short-range networks. We are interested in collaborative mappings which provide computer support for nomadic users to manipulate at will and simultaneously a shared map on mobile devices. However, maintaining data consistency in mobile environment remains a challenging issue due to the arbitrary order of updates reception and the battery-life management. We propose a low-cost and flexible mobile collaborative mapping using simple primitive updates and easily customisable for rich features-based maps. No central coordination is necessary for preserving the shared map consistency. Indeed, we design a concurrency control protocol based on operational transformation (OT) approach to synchronise collaborative works in fully decentralised way. With a straightforward deployment on P2P networks, our application supports dynamic groups where mobile users can participate in and quit freely.

Keywords: collaborative mapping; mobile collaboration; concurrency control protocol; data consistency; operational transformation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2021.114449

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2021 Vol.26 No.3, pp.334 - 366

Received: 24 Mar 2020
Accepted: 08 Jun 2020
Published online: 22 Apr 2021 *

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