Wireless grids: Recent advances in resource and job management

Wireless grids extend the capability of Grid Computing by including a collection of wireless devices of diverse characteristics, such as sensors, mobile phones, laptops and special instruments. These new resources increase the power and accessibility of grids. Wireless devices can be grid resource consumers or grid resource providers. This chapter focuses in the use of mobile devices as resource providers. Some characteristics of these resources, such as limited CPU power, small screen, short battery life, and intermittent disconnection, are genuine challenges for the development of job management strategies. Our goal is to depict recent proposals in resource discovering, monitoring and job scheduling. The main contributions of the last five years will be described along the chapter. The highlights of the review includes: the use of agent technology; solutions oriented to applications composed of independent tasks and the lack of studies using either real platforms or real data in simulation models.