An offset algorithm for conflict resolution in context-aware computing

Abstract

In context-aware system, applications should adjust their execution policies in the light of context information of equipment, such as equipment's position, electric power, network bandwidth, and so on. In various context-aware systems, an important solution is to isolate executable codes in different context into a number of program segments and to select different execution policies according to the context in the process of operation, thus increasing the programming flexibility. Since not all possible contexts can be taken into consideration in the definition of policies, several policies might meet the current context simultaneously in some given environments, thus resulting in policy conflict. This paper proposes a kind of conflict solution algorithm, which, through defining the context center of each execution policy, computes the offset between the current context and the center and selects the one closest to the current context as the execution policy in the case of conflict. Experiments testify that the algorithm can effectively eliminate conflicts of policy selection and well manifest the intention of policy definition, making policy selection more reasonable. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.