A comparison of alternative client/server architectures for ubiquitous mobile sensor-based applications

Mobile devices such as smart phones, tablet computers, and music players are ubiquitous. These devices typically contain many sensors, such as vision sensors (cameras), audio sensors (microphones), acceleration sensors (accelerometers) and location sensors (e.g., GPS), and also have some capability to send and receive data wirelessly. Sensor arrays on these mobile devices make innovative applications possible, especially when data mining is applied to the sensor data. But a key design decision is how best to distribute the responsibilities between the client (e.g., smartphone) and any servers. In this paper we investigate alternative architectures, ranging from a "dumb" client, where virtually all processing takes place on the server, to a "smart" client, where no server is needed. We describe the advantages and disadvantages of these alternative architectures and describe under what circumstances each is most appropriate. We use our own WISDM (WIreless Sensor Data Mining) architecture to provide concrete examples of the various alternatives.