Collaborative context management framework for mobile ad hoc network environments

Abstract

Managing context in Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) environments is challenging due to environmental characteristics and limitations. Different aspects of context management such as location management, context acquisition, context quality management, context discovery and other related tasks need to be dealt with to provide reliable context management support. In this paper, we propose a new approach to context management in the MANET environments. We model contexts and situations based on Context Spaces (CS) theory and the Dempster-Shafer (DS) theory of evidences. A heuristic approach to computing the relevancy value of context information to the defined situation of context-aware applications is also proposed and developed. The relevancy value is then incorporated in the fusion mechanism based on the discount rule. We have developed a hybrid location model and integrated the approach to the model. The prototype of the framework is built based on the On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP) as the underlying messaging protocol among the collaborative hosts. Finally, the implementation and experimentation issues of the prototype are discussed.