Providing relevant information in an ambient services using service requester's "logical area"

Abstract

Ambient service is a kind of context-aware services which is related to the surrounding environment of the users. In other words, geographic area around the users is considered as contextual data to provide services. This geographical area around the user is called logical area which would be equivalent for "here" from an ordinary user's point of view. Most of the time users are looking for resources around themselves or "here". When "here" area of a user is overlapped or contained by a service area; which called "service domain" in ambient services; then user can get the service. So it is very important to know where is "here". "Here" is a fuzzy spatial concept which is being frequently used in daily speaking. So it may be stated in requests of users e.g., finding cheapest restaurant "here" or around of somebody. The main step in a spatial context-aware application is determination of relevant information. Hence "here" concept, as a fundamental spatial concept, helps to provide relevant information to users so features located "here" or around of users, in which the best answer is located, should be found. As result, the area of "here" is very important to provide service in such cases. This issue becomes more complicated and important if the service requester is a mobile user, because the area of "here" changes over the time. In that case additional concepts and computations are needed to find "here" of that user. This paper is focused on modeling of "here" in an ambient service framework based on fuzzy set theory. © 2012 The Author(s).