Supporting the Development of Mobile Context-Aware Systems Export

@phdthesis{citeulike:1365917, abstract = {The recent convergence of mobile and context-aware systems has seen a considerable rise in interest in applications that exploit aspects of the operating environment to offer services, tailor application behaviour or trigger adaptation. However, as a result of the lack of generic mechanisms for supporting user mobility and context awareness within dynamic environments, context-aware applications remain very difficult to build and developers must deal with a wide range of issues which may be incidental to the development of new applications. As a result of these issues, few mobile context-aware applications exist outside the boundaries of the research laboratory and even fewer have been realistically deployed and evaluated in real world settings. In addition, traditional context-aware applications are poorly suited to highly mobile or distributed environments and often unable to tolerate a rapidly changing execution environment, or take advantage of the availability of new services. Moreover, existing approaches to the development of context-aware applications are, in general, highly reliant upon the underlying infrastructure. Consequently application developers must build their applications with specific environments (indoor or outdoor) or services in mind. As a consequence, this makes applications less flexible, that is, portable across different end-systems and operating environments, difficult to extend or evolve their functionality, and crucially, unable to tolerate use in a fluctuating service environment. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a context-service based architecture to support the development of mobile context-aware applications designed for use in distributed environments, addressing the salient challenges that this involves. The approach is validated using a real world mobile context-aware application, the Lancaster GUIDE system. The GUIDE system is used as a vehicle for research into the area of mobile context-awareness and, through a retrospective analysis and evaluation of the GUIDE approach, the ideas presented in this thesis have been established. This thesis demonstrates how a re-engineered version of the GUIDE prototype benefits from the service based approach in terms of its flexibility. More specifically, the re-engineered version of GUIDE is better able to operate in a rapidly changing execution environment. The overall results provide a valuable insight into the effectiveness and applicability of the service based approach to the mobile domain in general, and suggests that context-services provide a useful model for the development and experimentation of a wide range of context-aware systems.}, author = {Mitchell, Keith}, citeulike-article-id = {1365917}, keywords = {computing, context, development, pervasive, sensors, ubicomp}, month = {January}, posted-at = {2007-06-05 18:43:13}, priority = {4}, school = {Lancaster University}, title = {Supporting the Development of Mobile Context-Aware Systems}, year = {2002} }

TY - THES ID - citeulike:1365917 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1365917 N2 - The recent convergence of mobile and context-aware systems has seen a considerable rise in interest in applications that exploit aspects of the operating environment to offer services, tailor application behaviour or trigger adaptation. However, as a result of the lack of generic mechanisms for supporting user mobility and context awareness within dynamic environments, context-aware applications remain very difficult to build and developers must deal with a wide range of issues which may be incidental to the development of new applications. As a result of these issues, few mobile context-aware applications exist outside the boundaries of the research laboratory and even fewer have been realistically deployed and evaluated in real world settings. In addition, traditional context-aware applications are poorly suited to highly mobile or distributed environments and often unable to tolerate a rapidly changing execution environment, or take advantage of the availability of new services. Moreover, existing approaches to the development of context-aware applications are, in general, highly reliant upon the underlying infrastructure. Consequently application developers must build their applications with specific environments (indoor or outdoor) or services in mind. As a consequence, this makes applications less flexible, that is, portable across different end-systems and operating environments, difficult to extend or evolve their functionality, and crucially, unable to tolerate use in a fluctuating service environment. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a context-service based architecture to support the development of mobile context-aware applications designed for use in distributed environments, addressing the salient challenges that this involves. The approach is validated using a real world mobile context-aware application, the Lancaster GUIDE system. The GUIDE system is used as a vehicle for research into the area of mobile context-awareness and, through a retrospective analysis and evaluation of the GUIDE approach, the ideas presented in this thesis have been established. This thesis demonstrates how a re-engineered version of the GUIDE prototype benefits from the service based approach in terms of its flexibility. More specifically, the re-engineered version of GUIDE is better able to operate in a rapidly changing execution environment. The overall results provide a valuable insight into the effectiveness and applicability of the service based approach to the mobile domain in general, and suggests that context-services provide a useful model for the development and experimentation of a wide range of context-aware systems. TI - Supporting the Development of Mobile Context-Aware Systems PB - Lancaster University KW - computing KW - context KW - development KW - pervasive KW - sensors KW - ubicomp AU - Mitchell, Keith PY - 2002/01// ER -