An efficient broadcast data clustering method for multipoint queries in wireless information systems

Abstract

Mobile computing has become a reality with the convergence of two technologies: powerful portable computers and wireless networks. The restrictions of wireless networks, such as bandwidth and energy limitations make data broadcasting an attractive data communication method. This paper addresses the clustering of wireless broadcast data for multipoint queries. By effective clustering of broadcast data, the mobile client can access the data on the air in short latency. In the paper, we define two affinity measures: data affinity and segment affinity. The data affinity is the degree that two data objects are accessed by queries, and the segment affinity is the degree that two sets of data (i.e., segments) are accessed by queries. Our method clusters data objects based on data and segment affinity measures. We show that the performance of our method is scarcely influenced by the growth of the number of queries. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.