Pervasive Context-Aware Computing
Survey of Context-aware ubiquitious middleware systems
Author 1
Mr. Anil R. Surve
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Walchand College of Engineering
Sangli, India
anil.surve@walchandsangli.ac.in
Author 2
Prof. Dr. Vijay R. Ghorpade
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
D.Y. Patil College of Engineering & Technology
Kolhapur, India
vijayghorpade@hotmail.com
Abstract
Pervasive computing is promising emerging endeavor which
focuses on the capability for users to perform daily computer
activities unobtrusively. Pervasive computing solutions are
broad to encompass variety of technologies and real life
applications. It provides an environment for people to interact
with embedded computers. Networked devices are aware of
their surrounding objects, peers and are aimed to use or
provide services from peers in an effective manner. Pervasive
applications leverages the existing blend of computing
elements that already surrounds us. It can enrich our lives by
enabling automation of mundane activities through ubiquitous
applicability. It facilitates users to move seamlessly and
provides services regardless of location, time or platform
collaboratively and proactively. To realize this notion, various
frameworks and middleware technologies of context-aware
systems are needed to be explored. This paper is an attempt to
explore those especially for potential social domains.
Keywords:Pervasive Computing; Ubiquitous Computing;
Context Awareness, Mobile Computing ; Middleware ;
Internet of Things.
Introduction
Mark Weiser, researcher at Xerox PARC who is known as
father of pervasive computing envisioned that the 21
st
century
will witness technological revolution which will be part of the
everyday, the small and the invisible entities around us. The
traditional computing profound technologies will almost
disappear. There will be wearable computing elements which
will weave themselves into the robes of everyday life as if
they will be indistinguishable computing entities separately
[1]. Till then as of now many research attempts are emerging
as contribution in realizing his dream vision. Pervasive
computing is integration of ubiquitous computing, context-
awareness, ambient intelligence and wearable computing [2].
Context awareness has become thrust research area in
computer science. The focus on context-aware computing
evolved from applications of desktop, web, distributed,
mobile to the Internet of Things (IoT) over the last decade [3].
In the zest of research contribution noteworthy prototypes,
systems, and solutions using context-aware computing
techniques are successfully enrolled. Among them most of the
prosperous solutions aimed to gather data from a variety of
physical (hardware) and virtual (software) sensors. Further
processing and analyzing sensor data from all the sources is
possible. The advancement in sensor technology is offering
sensors which are more powerful, cheaper and compact for
use. As a result, a large number of sensors are being deployed
and it ispredicted that the numbers will grow swiftly over the
next decade. Context-aware computing aims to store context
information associated to sensor data for its significant
interpretation as per business logic. While scaling of sensors
with generating voluminous data, the conventional application
based approach becomes infeasible. In order to address this
inefficiency, significant middleware solutions are introduced
by researchers. The notion of middleware solution also
supports different essential arenas, such as device
management, interoperability, heterogeneity, platform
portability, context-awareness, security and privacy. This
paper is a survey with the zeal of potential focus on
identifying the context-aware computing concepts, features
and functionalities. Also middleware techniques that are
utilized for potential social domain are deemed.
Concept of Pervasive Context
Context by definition means any information which will help
us to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity may be a
person, place, or object which is pertinent to the interaction
between a user and an application [3].
The pervasive context can also be termed as circumstance,
situation, phase, position, posture, attitude, place, point, terms,
regime, footing, standing, status, occasion, surroundings,
environment, location, dependence etc.
To categorize as raw sensor data which is unprocessed and
retrieved straight from the data source, such as sensors.
Context information is generated by processing raw sensor
data. Further, it is checked for consistency and meta data is
International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology. ISSN 0974-3154 Volume 10, Number 1 (2017)
© International Research Publication House http://www.irphouse.com
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