A Generic Context Management Framework for Personal Networking Environments

In this paper we introduce a high level architecture for a context management system for personal networks (PN). The main objective of the context management framework (CMF) described in this paper is to support the interactions between context information sources and context aware components, services and applications in a generic manner, independently of their nature and operation area. To this end, we propose a structure consisting of a context management interface, context access manager module, processing and storage module, and a data source abstraction layer. Nodes provide a certain set of these modules depending on their computational capabilities and their role within the system. We differentiate between basic context nodes (BCN), enhanced context nodes (ECN) and context management nodes (CMN) within the CMF. CMNs operate on two levels, i.e., local/cluster level and PN level. In the paper we also describe how these entities will interact with each other and how different context information will be exchanged within the personal network. Finally, we provide an outlook of the work and issues that need to be addressed in order to complete the described framework.