Erlang-based Software Update Platform for Mobile Devices

Abstract

Growing computational power of mobile devices modifies existing approachesto data processing in large-scale sensor networks. Since sensors are no lon-ger limited to simple data acquisition tasks, such networks can be consideredcomplex geo-distributed data processing systems. Features and requirements ofsuch systems justify use of Erlang language and technology for programmingmobile devices. The technology provides several crucial features, including fault-tolerance, message-passing concurrency or hot-code loading. In this paper theproblem of software management in Erlang-based distributed systems is di-scussed. A mechanism for installing and upgrading Erlang applications usingoperating system package manager is described. A platform for updating so-ftware in large scale systems is presented.