An Adaptable Context Management Framework for Pervasive Computing

Abstract

Pervasive computing presents an exciting realm where intelligent devices interact within the background of our environments to create a more intuitive experience for their human users. Context-awareness is a key requirement in a pervasive environment because it enables an application to adapt to the current situation. Context-awareness is best facilitated by a context management system that supports the automatic discovery, retrieval and exchange of context information by devices. Such a system must perform its functions in a pervasive computing environment that involves heterogeneous mobile devices which may experience intermittent connectivity and resource and power constraints. The objective of the chapter is to describe a robust and adaptable context management system. We achieve an adaptable context management system by adopting the autonomic computing paradigm, which supports systems that are aware of their surroundings and that can automatically react to changes in them. A robust context management system is achieved with an implementation based on widely accepted standards, specifically Web services and the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) standard.