Contains classes implementing the Media Abstraction Layer in the PalCom communication stack.

Package Specification

At the lowest level of the communication architecture, the Media Abstraction Layer (MAL) has the purpose to bridge between the PalCom communication model and the actual network used. This layer thus effectively hides all the implementation details of the used network from the rest of PalCom. This is essential in order to make it easy to add support for new network technologies in the future, and also to make it transparent to dynamically switch between available network technologies. Currently there are three implementations of this layer, for IP, Bluetooth and IR communication technologies, respectively.


Packages shown according to their position in the communication stack.

The central class in the package is {@link ist.palcom.mal.AbstractMediaManager}. AbstractMediaManager implements the interface {@link ist.palcom.mal.MediaManager}, which is used by upper layers. For handling the network technology specifics, there are concrete AbstractMediaManager subclasses in {@link ist.palcom.mal.udp}, {@link ist.palcom.mal.bt}, etc.

For handling actual commication over sockets or similar, concrete MediaManagers create proper subclasses of {@link ist.palcom.mal.CommunicationThread}.