Context-aware Middleware Research Articles

GLCB: an energy aware context broker

ContextWorldwide mobile device sales will reach 821 Million units in 2012 and will rise to 1.2 Billion in 2013 [1]. Inevitably the paradigm for access information and Internet services is increasingly migrating to mobile. Context-aware services can help to improve the user experience because they can adapt themselves to the users’ context but, despite the improvements in terms of hardware, the the main obstacle towards a widespread adoption of such services is the limited battery life. A context-aware service requires the installation of a Context-Broker Application, which generates a continuous flow of data from the smartphone and a constant usage of its equipped sensors: as a consequence the considerable increase of energy consumption becomes a problem. AimThe aim of this work is to propose gLCB an Energy Efficient Context-Aware middleware for Android OS, which is able to collect Context Information and to send it to a remote platform in an energy-efficient way. The gLCB application proposes a new energy-aware data collection based on user profiles. MethodsWe define policies based on battery consumption profiles, which are selected depending on modifications of the context information. Moreover, we have implemented an automatic consumption testing mechanism and a statistical treatment of results to provide a reliable validation of gLCB in terms of energy efficiency. ResultsExperimental results show that our middleware got the best trade-off between number of server uploads and battery lifetime with the policies computed automatically by the device. This means that the way in which software is written can impact the energy consumption of a mobile device and service adaptation can be based on the actual value of the battery charge.

Design of context-aware middleware for mobile healthcare services

We design and develop a context-aware middleware for various mobile healthcare services, specifically those for preventive medicine. The middleware provides medical status information in a context form and then links such information with medical records. Information is collected by the middleware through the recognition of diverse environmental data that affect patients’ health. Information-to-information-related values are obtained as a measure for effectively categorizing and managing medical-related context information. High-frequency context values are determined using the Bayesian probability formula to manage frequently occurring risk situations. The middleware also allows for real-time analysis of information, as well as the calculation of risk frequency via a real-time sensor and recognition of radio frequency identification tag information. It is designed to transmit calculated and preventive care-related information to mobile devices. Using the unique target application program of the ubiquitous healthcare system, the general environment and preventive medicine environment are set as the primary paradigms for generating and managing practical medical context information. This research presents methods for providing automated preventive medical services under a ubiquitous healthcare system. The proposed middleware is expected to present new interactive concepts for preventive medicine-related environments, consequently satisfying the demands of user-oriented ubiquitous healthcare.

상황인식 미들웨어의 설계와 적용에 관한 연구

본 논문에서는 상황인식 시스템 개발에 필수적인 미들웨어의 설계와 적용에 관하여 논한다. 다양한 상황 데이터들을 처리할 수 있도록 트랜스듀서 인터페이스 프로토콜을 정의하고, 미들웨어 모듈 간 일관성 있는 데이터 처리를 위하여 메시지 기반의 미들웨어를 설계하고 구현하였다. 상황인식 미들웨어는 서비스 기반 구조로 설계되어서 모듈간 기능이 독립적이고 확장성이 뛰어나다. 또한 모듈 간 통신은 메시지를 이용하기 때문에 응용 프로그램 개발이 용이해진다. 본 논문의 상황인식 미들웨어는 교량의 구조물 건전성 감시 시스템에 적용하여 실험하였고, 미들웨어의 효용성을 확인하였다. This paper describes a design and application of middleware that is essential to the context-aware system. We define a transducer interface protocol in order to deal with a variety of context data. For the purpose of systematic process of data between middleware modules, a message oriented middleware is designed and implemented. Memory improves the performance of high-performance computing system compared to previous strategies. Context aware middleware adopts service oriented architecture so that functions in modules may be independent and scalability can be remarkable. Using messages across modules decreases the complexity of the application development. In order to justify the usefulness of the proposed context aware middleware, we carried out our experiments in bridge health monitoring system and verified the efficacy.

상황인식 미들웨어를 위한 트랜스듀서 인터페이스 프로토콜 설계

사용자가 필요로 하는 서비스를 제공하기 위해서는, 일상생활 곳곳에 편재된 센서가 수집한 각종 환경 정보를 효율적으로 상호 공유하여 주변 상황을 인식하는 기술이 필요하다. 그러나 이를 위한 센서의 종류는 다양하고 각각의 센서는 고유의 특성과 서로 다른 방식으로 통신을 하기 때문에 센서의 활용에 제한이 있다. 이에 센서와 네트워크 계층과의 통신 프로토콜 표준화를 위한 IEEE 1451이 발표되었다. 그러나 IEEE 1451은 트랜스듀서(Transducer)의 표준화를 위한 프로토콜이므로 미들웨어에 접속되지 않는다. 본 논문에서는 XML을 이용하여 주변상황 정보를 얻기 위한 프로토콜을 정의함으로써 상황인식 미들웨어에 연결되는 트랜스듀서 인터페이스 및 응용 인터페이스 프로토콜을 제안한다. 그리고 서로 다른 센서와 응용 프로그램을 이용한 교량 건전성 감시 시스템과 철로 감시 시스템을 구현하고 제안한 인터페이스 프로토콜의 효용성을 확인하였다. Context awareness technologies are based on efficient sharing of environment information of ubiquitous sensors in everyday life, and users require this awareness technologies to get quality of services. However, the application has been restricted due to its varieties of sensors and many different methods of communications. Therefore, IEEE 1451 standard has been published to interface between sensors and network layer. But it does not connect to a middleware because IEEE 1451 is for transducer standards. This paper presents a transducer and application interface protocol which connect to the context-aware middleware by defining a protocol to obtain context information using XML. We have implemented a bridge health monitoring system and railroad monitoring system in which different sensors and users' application are used to prove the efficacy of proposed interface protocols.

Study on the Context-Aware Middleware for Ubiquitous Greenhouses Using Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology is one of the important technologies to implement the ubiquitous society, and it could increase productivity of agricultural and livestock products, and secure transparency of distribution channels if such a WSN technology were successfully applied to the agricultural sector. Middleware, which can connect WSN hardware, applications, and enterprise systems, is required to construct ubiquitous agriculture environment combining WSN technology with agricultural sector applications, but there have been insufficient studies in the field of WSN middleware in the agricultural environment, compared to other industries. This paper proposes a context-aware middleware to efficiently process data collected from ubiquitous greenhouses by applying WSN technology and used to implement combined services through organic connectivity of data. The proposed middleware abstracts heterogeneous sensor nodes to integrate different forms of data, and provides intelligent context-aware, event service, and filtering functions to maximize operability and scalability of the middleware. To evaluate the performance of the middleware, an integrated management system for ubiquitous greenhouses was implemented by applying the proposed middleware to an existing greenhouse, and it was tested by measuring the level of load through CPU usage and the response time for users’ requests when the system is working.

Toward a Platform for Pervasive Display Applications in Retail Environments

The article discusses two prototypes - an interactive display wall and a targeted advertisement scenario - demonstrates the use of a context-aware middleware and provide insights into important requirements for display platforms for retail environments.

An Aspect-Oriented Framework for Weaving Domain-Specific Concerns into Component-Based Systems

Software components are used in various application domains, and many component models and frameworks have been proposed to fulfill domain-specific requirements. The general trend followed by these approaches is to provide ad-hoc models and tools for capturing these requirements and for implementing their support within dedicated runtime platforms, limited to features of the targeted domain. The challenge is then to propose more flexible solutions, where components reuse is domain agnostic. In this article, we present a framework supporting compositional construction and development of applications that must meet various extra-functional/domain-specific requirements. The key points of our contribution are: i) We target development of component-oriented applications where extra-functional requirements are expressed as annotations on the units of composition in the application's architecture. ii) These annotations are implemented as open and extensible component-based containers, achieving full separation of functional and extra-functional concerns. iii) Finally, the full machinery is implemented using the Aspect-Oriented Programming paradigm. We validate our approach with two case studies: the first is related to real-time and embedded applications, while the second refers to the distributed context-aware middleware domain.

Context gateway for physical spaces

Context-aware computing applications dynamically change their behaviors based on the context data and services provided by multiple physical spaces in the real world, such as persons, shops, homes and offices. In this paper, we propose a generic context gateway framework to manage these heterogeneous physical spaces of context sources. The framework forms a key enabling component of a scalable context-aware middleware that enables the effective access of context data and services from physical spaces. We have designed and implemented a number of gateway functions in our framework to facilitate the context data acquisition, processing and communication. These include diversified services with plug-in management, a query processing engine plus context reasoning capability, as well as the global and local connection between multiple gateways. The functionality and technical feasibility of the gateway have been demonstrated in our system prototype.

OSGi-Based Intelligent Context-Aware Middleware for Smart Home Appliances

Context-aware system is important to smart home appliances. Through web device built in the environment, context-aware system transmits the collected data to server. After further processing and analyzing, personalized services are provided to users via networks. This study proposed an OSGi-based intelligent context-aware middleware, consisting of three parts: modulated system core, reasoning module that collects and analyzes data and scenario analysis interface.

Theme issue on context-aware middleware and applications

Context-aware computing is a central theme of ubiquitous computing. In order to facilitate the development and proliferation of context-aware applications in ubiquitous environment, a context-aware middleware is indispensable. Although many middleware systems have been presented in recent years, context-aware applications are still not very widely deployed in our real-life settings. Several key issues are not properly addressed, such as low cost (light-weight), QoS, spontaneous access, prototype verification and testing, balancing autonomy and user control, safety and privacy, scalability, etc. Context-aware middleware and applications require further scientific research for extending the current capabilities to be more effective and applicable in the real world. Submissions to this special issue come from an open call for papers as well as from selected papers presented at the 6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC-09) held at Brisbane, Australia, 7–9 July 2009. We received a total of 22 submissions of which six papers were accepted after three rounds of rigorous reviews. A large number of reviewers assisted us in the review process. In order to ensure high reviewing standards, three to four reviewers evaluated each paper. The six selected papers just fall into the two main topics equally, three are about context-aware middleware, and the other three are about context-aware applications. In the opening paper of this special issue, ‘‘Towards a cooperative programming framework for context-aware applications’’, Bin Guo, Daqing Zhang, and Michita Imai propose an ontology-based programming framework for rapid prototyping, sharing, and personalization of contextaware applications, called OPEN. The framework provides different programming support for users with diverse technical skills. According to the programming requirements of different users, several cooperation patterns are identified, and the mechanisms to facilitate resource sharing and reuse are built into the framework. Three corresponding programming modes are elaborated by showing how a context-aware game is developed step-by-step with the support of the OPEN framework. The second paper, ‘‘Mobility management in ubiquitous environments’’, authored by Chiung-Ying Wang, HsiaoYun Huang, and Ren-Hung Hwang, addresses the problem of managing mobility in context-aware services. It first introduces an open framework, namely Ubiquitous Gate (U-gate) that includes a distributed context management architecture and a communication model based on standard protocols. A context-aware path planning mechanism (UbiPaPaGo), and a context-aware handoff mechanism (UbiHandoff), is proposed to achieve complete mobility management. Based on the path planning results of UbiPaPaGo, UbiHandoff derives a minimum Access Point Z. Yu (&) School of Computer Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China e-mail: zhiwenyu@nwpu.edu.cn

Context-Aware Middleware and Intelligent Agents for Smart Environments

The present article issues the latest research and development in context-aware middleware and intelligent agents for smart environments. Smart environments-smart homes, smart offices, smart schools, and so on-represent advanced communication and computing environments featuring continually evolving everyday objects for nonexpert users. Smart environments have rapidly emerged as an exciting new paradigm that tends to include different research fields such as ubiquitous, pervasive, and grid computing. Such environments aim to provide computing and communication services in a far more convenient, seamless, and enjoyable way. Users will be able to easily, conveniently, and remotely access and control all information and appliances in their environment, using various services resulting from the integrated cooperation of possibly heterogeneous communication-enabled objects. However, realizing the services' advantages will require appropriate middleware support to facilitate context-dependent intelligent agents, thus leveraging cost-effective design and implementation of smart-environment applications.

Context-Aware Middleware for Multimedia Services in Heterogeneous Networks

This context-aware middleware system facilitates diverse multimedia services in heterogeneous network environments by combining an adaptive service provisioning middleware framework with a context-aware multimedia middleware framework.

Design and implementation of power-aware LED light enabler with location-aware adaptive middleware and context-aware user pattern

Recent advances in ubiquitous technologies facilitate location-aware and power-aware systems that can provide predefined services. Recent research efforts are based on control mechanisms for standby power reduction. Conventional systems are only designed for power reduction of the consumer electronics. However, due to their architectural limitations, the recent systems are not flexible with respect to LED light control for power reduction. We need to consider efficient autonomous power control based on intelligent devices and the power-aware service prediction in networked environments. In this paper, we propose a power-aware LED light enabler with light sensors, motion sensors and network interfaces. The LED light enabler also communicates with context-aware middleware using an intelligent power gateway that adaptively determines the optimal power control by analyzing user living patterns using sensing data obtained by devices. Our power-aware LED light enabler with adaptive middleware dynamically reconfigures the power-aware services. The proposed adaptive middleware facilitates the learning mechanism which analyzes the illumination and the user activity, and controls the LED lights only when users exist around the devices. Our enabler reduces power consumption up to 58% in comparison to a basic lighting system at the real office testbed.

Towards Adaptive and Scalable Context Aware Middleware

The diffusion of portable client devices is promoting the spreading of novel mobile services, both traditional such as email and printing, and new such as social computing applications, capable of opportunistically exploiting any computing resource and any wireless connectivity encountered by roaming users. The new requirements call for novel context-aware middlewares to support and simplify the retrieval and the usage of context data. However, existing context data dissemination infrastructures still present several limitations: they are unable to adaptively exploit impromptu any wireless communication opportunity; they are unable to scale, especially in wide/densely populated environments; and they are prone to connection/device flaws. The article proposes a novel context-aware middleware that achieves adaptability, scalability, and dependability in context data dissemination through three main core guidelines: by using a distributed hierarchical architecture, by employing lightweight and adaptive context data dissemination solutions, and by adopting statistical context data/query replication techniques. The performance results, obtained by extensively testing the proposed solution in our wireless university campus testbed, have validated our design choices.

A context-aware middleware for real-time semantic enrichment of distributed multimedia metadata

This paper investigates the problem of the real-time integration and processing of multimedia metadata collected by a distributed sensor network. The discussed practical problem is the efficiency of the technologies used in creating a Knowledge Base in real-time. Specifically, an approach is proposed for the real-time, rule-based semantic enrichment of lower level context features with higher-level semantics. The distinguishing characteristic is the provision of an intelligent middleware-based architecture on which low level components such as sensors, feature extraction algorithms, data sources, and high level components such as application-specific ontologies can be plugged. Throughout the paper, Priamos, a middleware architecture based on Semantic Web technologies is presented, together with a stress-test of the system's operation under two test case scenarios: A smart security surveillance application and a smart meeting room application. Performance measurements are conducted and corresponding results are exposed.

Context-aware middleware for pervasive elderly homecare

The growing aging population faces a number of challenges, including rising medical cost, inadequate number of medical doctors and healthcare professionals, as well as higher incidence of misdiagnosis. There is an increasing demand for a better healthcare support for the elderly and one promising solution is the development of a context-aware middleware infrastructure for pervasive health/wellness-care. This allows the accurate and timely delivery of health/medical information among the patients, doctors and healthcare workers through a widespread deployment of wireless sensor networks and mobile devices. In this paper, we present our design and implementation of such a context-aware middleware for pervasive homecare (CAMPH). The middleware offers several key-enabling system services that consist of P2P-based context query processing, context reasoning for activity recognition and context-aware service management. It can be used to support the development and deployment of various homecare services for the elderly such as patient monitoring, location-based emergency response, anomalous daily activity detection, pervasive access to medical data and social networking. We have developed a prototype of the middleware and demonstrated the concept of providing a continuing-care to an elderly with the collaborative interactions spanning multiple physical spaces: person, home, office and clinic. The results of the prototype show that our middleware approach achieves good efficiency of context query processing and good accuracy of activity recognition.

MIMOSA: context-aware adaptation for ubiquitous web access

The ubiquitous computing scenario is characterized by heterogeneity of devices used to access services, and by frequent changes in the user's context. Hence, adaptation according to the user's context and the used devices is necessary to allow mobile users to efficiently exploit Internet-based services. In this paper, we present a distributed framework, named MIMOSA, that couples a middleware for context-awareness with an intermediary-based architecture for content adaptation. MIMOSA provides an effective and efficient solution for the adaptation of Internet services on the basis of a comprehensive notion of context, by means of techniques for aggregating context data from distributed sources, deriving complex contextual situations from raw sensor data, evaluating adaptation policies, and solving possible conflicts. The middleware allows programmers to modularly build complex adaptive services starting from simple ones, and includes tools for assisting the user in declaring her preferences, as well as mechanisms for detecting incorrect system behaviors due to a wrong choice of adaptation policies. The effectiveness and efficiency of MIMOSA are shown through the development of a prototype adaptive service, and by extensive experimental evaluations.

Hybrid reasoning in the CARE middleware for context awareness

The Context Aggregation and REasoning (CARE) middleware aims at supporting context-aware adaptation of internet services in a mobile computing environment. Context awareness requires the acquisition, representation and processing of information that goes beyond raw context data – like device features, network status and user location – to include semantically rich data such as the current activity and interests of users. Representing and reasoning with the latter class of data require the use of ontologies and ontological reasoning. It is well known that reasoning with ontologies poses significant performance issues. The CARE hybrid reasoning mechanism is based on a loose interaction between ontological reasoning and efficient reasoning in a restricted logic programming language. In this paper we illustrate the hybrid reasoning approach adopted by CARE and report the extensive experimental results on ontology-based context reasoning that support our approach.

OSGi-Based Context-Aware Middleware for Building Intelligent Services in a Smart Home Environment

Abstract Context awareness technology is a key technology of digital home that brings a more convenient life. Context awareness technology is a system that catches the information from the sensor network, which is built in environment, the network could get the environment data immediately, and through this data information that network provides, the system could do the exactly the right thing that help people’s like getting better. These information data could be location, temperature or humidity. However, these data are used by context awareness system to analysis and process, so as to realize different person in different environment using every kind of devices and through any different existing network system, and still could enjoy the personality applications and services in any time they want. This thesis proposed Intelligent Context-Aware Middleware is including system core modeling, context provider, context analysis model, reasoning system, scenario analysis model and some other APIs to achieve the context awareness system that a digital home needs. Besides, this middleware collaborates with OSGi framework in paralleled. In other words, this Intelligent Context-Aware Middleware is totally associated to each other, which means every new devices could be compatible to either OSGi framework or Intelligent Context-Aware Middleware this thesis proposed immediately

The PoSIM middleware for translucent and context-aware integrated management of heterogeneous positioning systems

The widespread availability of devices with multiple wireless interfaces and of heterogeneous positioning techniques open new market potentials for Location Based Services (LBSs), even if complicating their development. The paper claims the need for novel middlewares to manage dynamically retrieved client-side positioning systems in a synergic way and depending on context, i.e., LBS requirements, user preferences, device characteristics, and overall system state. To that purpose, we have designed and implemented PoSIM, a context-aware middleware for the synergic exploitation and control of heterogeneous positioning systems that facilitates the development and portability of LBSs. PoSIM is translucent, i.e., can provide LBS developers with differentiated visibility of data characteristics and control possibilities, thus dynamically adapting to application-specific deployment requirements and enabling cross-layer management decisions. The paper describes the translucent PoSIM architecture, some primary implementation insights, and how to practically use it to simplify LBS development via events, filters, and policies.