Elements of Context Awareness

Abstract

This chapter describes some essential elements of context-aware applications including context acquisition, context modeling, context reasoning, context distribution, and context adaptation. Context acquisition involves gathering context from the users and the environment. It has to engage with various kinds of sensors. Context modeling which is also called context representation is needed because of the necessary to have the common understanding between the system and its components. It also has to deal with the relationships and dependencies of different types of contexts. Context reasoning involves creating new knowledge and deducing better understanding based on the available context. Context distribution is to deliver the appropriate information or the services to the users. It plays the leading roles, especially for the large-scale network system. Finally, context adaptation involves the adjustment of application's behavior so that the appropriate response can be obtained.