A method of constructing personal network for ubiquitous personal services

Abstract

In a ubiquitous environment, the connections of a variety of devices, including electronic tags such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags to the network, together with an advance in Web services, are expected to give rise to a wide range of services, stimulating research into smart space services, which incorporate a sensing environment. With a view to building a convenient personal environment in such an environment, in this paper we propose a method of building a personal network (PN), which is a wide-area personal space and consists of a visited personal area network (PAN), in which the user can use devices available in a temporarily visited network for information input/output, and a home network built at home or in the office. In particular, we study a Touch&Select method, which allows the user to select an appropriate device in a visited PAN intuitively, and a monitoring protocol, which is designed to ensure connectivity of the PN. Evaluations through prototyping and simulation have verified the effectiveness of these proposals. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.