Grid computing lets devices connected to the Internet, overlay peer-to-peer networks, and the nascent wired computational grid dynamically share network connected resources in 4G kind of scenario. The wireless grid extends this sharing potential to mobile, nomadic, or fixed-location devices temporarily connected via ad hoc wireless networks. As fig. 1 shows, users and devices can come and go in a dynamic wireless grid, interacting with a changing landscape of information resources. Following Metcalfe's law, grid-based resources become more valuable as the number of devices and users increases. The wireless grid makes it easier to extend grid computing to large numbers of devices that would otherwise be unable to participate and share resources. While grid computing attracts much research, resource sharing across small, ad hoc, mobile, and nomadic grids draws much less
Wireless grids, a new type of resource-sharing network, connect sensors, mobile phones, and other edge devices with each other and with wired grids (Figure 1). Ad hoc distributed resource sharing allows these devices to offer new resources and locations of use for grid computing. In some ways, wireless grids resemble networks already found in connection with agricultural, military, transportation, air-quality, environmental, health, emergency, and security systems.
A range of institutions, from the largest governments to very small enterprises, will own and at least partially control wireless grids. To make things still more complex for researchers and business strategists, users and producers could sometimes be one and the same. Devices on the wireless grid will be not only mobile but nomadic—shifting across institutional boundaries. Just as real-world nomads cross institutional boundaries and frequently move from one location to another, so do wireless devices. The following classification offers one way to classify wireless grid applications.
- Class 1: Applications aggregating information from the range of input/output interfaces found in nomadic devices.
- Class 2: Applications leveraging the locations and contexts in which the devices exist.
- Class 3: Applications leveraging the mesh network capabilities of groups of nomadic devices.
The three classes of wireless grid applications conceptualized here are not mutually exclusive. Understanding more about the shareable resources, the places of use, and ownership and control patterns within which wireless grids will operate might assist us in visualizing these future patterns of wireless grid use.
The Grid, is a promising emerging technology that enables the simple "connect and share" approach analogously to the internet search engines that apply the "connect and acquire information" concept. Thus, mobile/wireless grids are an ideal solution for large scale applications which are the pith of 4G mobile communication systems. Besides, this grid-based-approach will potentially increase the performance of the involved applications and utilization rate of resources by employing efficient mechanisms for resource management in the majority of its resources, that is, by allowing the seamless integration of resources, data, services and ontologies. Figure 2 places wireless grids in context, illustrating how they span the technical approaches and issues of Web services, grid computing, P2P systems, mobile commerce, ad hoc networking, and spectrum management. How sensor and mesh networks will ultimately interact with software radio and other technologies to solve wireless grid problems requires a great deal of further research.
