Modular and Extendible Context Provisioning for Evolving Mobile Applications and Services

Abstract: The provision of ambient intelligence in pervasive computing environments and smart spaces requires the evolution of context-aware systems. This paper contributes to a context provisioning framework for general purpose context-aware mobile communication systems. The presented framework allows for extendibility and modularity, hence supporting emerging and evolving services and applications. The incorporation of efficient, robust and scalable context inference is envisaged by extending context management models and in particular context distribution mechanisms. Reasoning and interpretation are crucial tasks for deriving high-level contextual information from lower level context or raw data (e.g. databases or sensor output). Context inference typically comprises several processing stages which are reflected in the elaborated framework. A subject-based provider-consumer context management model is applied. Context Providers support plug-and-play like registration functionalities and can be added or removed during runtime