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. We demonstrate enabling context-awareness through our creation of a standardized context-management framework. Our framework moves towards device intelligence by supporting context-awareness. Context-awareness is what gives devices the ability to understand and exchange information about each other. Context information is used to determine device purpose, capabilities, location, current state, and other properties. Several elements are required in order to achieve context-awareness, including a suitable ontology, a context model, and a middleware platform upon which to implement the context model. In this work, a complete context-management framework is presented and evaluated. We propose our own ontology specification and context model, and implement a middleware using the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) interoperability standard.