Addressing the Challenges in the Design of High-Performance FOTA Diff Engines.

Jinsheng Gu, technical lead at InnoPath, writes: "Firmware over-the-air, abbreviated as FOTA, is the technology to enable wireless device manufacturers and network operators to remotely update the mobile device software, mainly firmware, already deployed in the market. At the center stage of FOTA is the diff engine, which intelligently computes, arranges the order of, encodes and compresses the differences between two given versions of mobile phone software, i.e., the existing version running on the device and the new version. The limited wireless network bandwidth, the lack of resources on the mobile device, and zero-tolerance of failures are challenges that any commercial diff engine developer has to face. This article briefly addresses the design of high performance FOTA diff engines to conquer these challenges."