A context-sensitive middleware for managing embedded pervasive environments

Abstract

The concept of pervasive computing is becoming more concrete and grounded with every passing day. This is owed to the explosive growth of wireless technologies and hand-held devices. However, supporting middlewares embedded in these technologies are not coping with this astonishing growth due to lack of effective profiling and management of system information. We present the semantic profiling and the context-sensitive management module as two new promising concepts in the domain of networked embedded computing (NEC) in general and pervasive computing in specific. Profiling is based on ontology engineering that will provide the shared terminologies for information used in NEC and reliability needed in supporting middlewares. The context-sensitive management module is a small footprint knowledge base system that is used to manipulate and access these profiles according to the environment situation. The paper presents the OntoMail Application as a proof of concept for the proposed middleware. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.