A Generalized Context-aware Architecture in Heterogeneous Mobile Computing Environments

Abstract

The rapid development in the mobile computing domain has significantly expedited the utilization of context-aware systems. Present approaches utilizing awareness of context specialize on their unique domain of employment. Although similarities between those approaches exist, the correspondent concepts and systems are vastly heterogeneous. Another aspect of the rapid evolution of mobile computing is the emergence of a highly heterogeneous spectrum of technologies. This issue complicates the demand for interoperability, which is inherent in mobile computing environments. However, as with context-aware research, most of present approaches addressing heterogeneity are specializing on solving the problem domain-specifically. In this paper, we present a conceptualization on generalizing both context-awareness and heterogeneity-handling in mobile computing environments. Concluding, we derive a general architecture, which overcomes the heterogeneity issues present in both context-awareness and interoperability domains.