When Ambient Intelligence Meets Internet Protocol Stack: User Layer Design

Recently there has been increasing interest in building networks with Ambient Intelligence (AmI), which incorporates the user-centricity and context awareness. However, both the Internet TCP/IP protocol stack and the seven-layer OSI reference model are not suitable for AmI networks, because they do not specifically take the end-user requirements into consideration in their architecture design. Under the client-server architecture, we propose to explicitly take the end-user into account by defining a new layer called User Layer above the traditional application layer. The User Layer empowers the end-users to influence network performance based on their interaction activities with the networks. We adopt the Model Human Processor (MHP) approach for building the User Model. After that we present an exemplary User Layer implementation to illustrate how the User Layer interacts with the underlying protocol stack and improves end-user´s satisfaction with network performance.