A location service for pervasive Grids

Grid computing environments are being extended in order to present some features that are typically found in pervasive computing environments. In particular, Grid environments have to allow mobile users to get access to their services and resources, as well as they have to adapt services depending on mobile user location and context. This paper presents a 2-layers location service that locates mobile users both in intra-Grid and extra-Grid architectures. The lower layer of the location service locates mobile users within a single intra-Grid environment, i.e. mobile users can move among different areas of the physical environment and the Grid can provide its services accordingly to the user position. The upper layer locates mobile users in an extra-Grid, which is composed by a distributed federation of intra-Grids, by collecting location information coming from basis layers. The location service has been developed at the top of the standard OGSA architecture. © 2006 Springer.