Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) consists in achieving to make co-existing virtual and real worlds in real time. Mobility is made easier by the use of new devices such as smartphones and wearable computers or smart objects (ex. Glasses) involving sensors (inertial, visual...). These devices have lower computation capabilities that can be critical to some Augmented Reality applications. One of the solutions is to use distribution mechanisms to distribute processing on several and heterogeneous machines. The goal of this thesis is to design a software architecture dedicated to distributed Augmented Reality and more precisely to distributed applications that can run on ad-hoc networks including heterogeneous terminals deployed in a network. The second part of the thesis is to prove the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed architecture on real AR applications and explore different original uses of distribution for AR applications. Focusing on the added value in terms of features and possible opérations compared to non-distributed AR applications and compared to existing frameworks offering distributed AR components.
