The Case for Context-Aware Resources Management in Mobile Operating Systems

Abstract

Efficient management of mobile resources from an energy perspective in modern smart-phones is paramount nowadays. Today’s mobile phones are equipped with a wide range of sensing, computational, storage and communication resources. The diverse range of sensors such as microphones, cameras, accelerometers, gyroscopes, GPS, digital compass and proximity sensors allow mobile apps to be context-aware whereas the ability to have connectivity almost everywhere has bootstrapped the birth of rich and interactive mobile applications and the integration of cloud services. However, the intense use of those resources can easily be translated into power-hungry applications. The way users interact with their mobile handsets and the availability of mobile resources is context dependent. Consequently, understanding how users interact with their applications and integrating context-aware resources management techniques in the core features of a mobile operating system can provide benefits such as energy savings and usability. This chapter describes how context drives the way users interact with their handsets and how it determines the availability and state of hardware resources in order to explain different context-aware resources management systems and the different attempts to incorporate this feature in mobile operating systems.