Context-aware systems: Technologies and challenges in internet of everything environments

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE) paradigms have emerged in the last years, thus generating new challenges in the pervasive computing area. IoT is a computing paradigm that has been recognized for allowing the connection of the physical and virtual worlds by giving processing power to the daily “things”. IoE goes beyond the IoT by breaking the barrier of just “things”. In IoE, the people, data and processes also make part of the connected world. Context awareness has becoming an important feature in IoT and IoE scenarios. Automatic decision making, sensitivity to context, automatic notification to the user, just to name a few, are some examples of situations where a context-aware system is needed in these environments where the characteristics of the data sources are undergoing constant change. In this chapter we present the context-aware definitions and architecture in IoE and it evolution from IoT. Moreover, we present the context-aware life-cycle phases, which is the process done in order to have context information. In addition, we also analyze the current context-aware approaches of IoT/IoE systems, and present some challenges related to context-aware IoE systems.