Cooperative Caching on Location Aware Query Proxy

Abstract

The advances in mobile devices and wireless networking technologies enable users to access information from anywhere and at anytime. In a mobile computing environment, mobile users often search for information with certain location restrictions; such searches are referred to as Location Aware Queries (LAQs). Typically, the query is submitted to a proxy server, which may or may not have the desired result. If the proxy cannot resolve the query, the LAQ will then be forwarded to the database servers for resolution, thereby increasing the servers' workload along the communication cost, and response time. We propose a novel cooperative semantic based proxy caching (CoPC) scheme that compares the cost and benefit of resolving queries by neighboring proxies or remote database (DB) servers, and dynamically chooses the best forwarding destination. The simulation results show that, compared to some existing cooperative caching schemes, CoPC balances the workload on DB servers and LAQ proxies, reduces access latency, and increases proxy hit rate.