Linda in space-time: an adaptive coordination model for mobile ad-hoc environments

We present a vision of distributed system coordination as a set of activities affecting the space-time fabric of interaction events. In the tuple space setting that we consider, coordination amounts to control of the spatial and temporal configuration of tuples spread across the network, which in turn drives the behaviour of situated agents. We therefore draw on prior work in spatial computing and distributed systems coordination, to define a new coordination language that adds to the basic Linda primitives a small set of space-time constructs for linking coordination processes with their environment. We show how this framework supports the global-level emergence of adaptive coordination policies, applying it to two example cases: crowd steering in a pervasive computing scenario and a gradient-based implementation of Linda primitives for mobile ad-hoc networks.