Software infrastructure for context-aware mobile computing

(To appear in Enabling Technologies for Wireless E-Business, Springer)

C.L. Wang1, X.L. Zhang, N. Belaramani, P.L. Siu, Y. Chow, and F.C.M. Lau

ABSTRACT

It is thrilling to imagine the future of computing, when a plethora of various devices would saturate our environments and reshape our lives with ubiquitous services. This vision implies an extended form of mobile computing, i.e. context-aware mobile computing, wherein the concern centers supporting user mobility and computation needs to understand and adapt to the changing situations. This chapter investigates software infrastructure support for realizing context-aware mobile computing. It begins with the discussion of the new features implied by this computing paradigm and the requirements imposed upon software infrastructure support. It then reviews three representative projects, namely Aura, Gaia, and One.world. The Sparkle project, designed and implemented by the Systems Research Group in HKU, is introduced as a detailed case study. The chapter concludes with the experiences on building software infrastructure for context-aware mobile computing and suggestions for future research.