SOCOM: Multi-sensor Oriented Context Model Based on Ontologies

Sensor plays an important role in context-aware computing. While sensor modeling is usually isolated from former researches on context modeling and sensor type is always restricted to physical ones, this paper aims to provide a more comprehensive insight into the relationships between sensor and context. Based on a more generic definition of sensor and a corresponding sensor category in context-aware computing, main characteristics of sensor and the relations between sensor and context are analyzed in details. In particular, a multi-sensor oriented context model based on ontology approach is proposed. The model which has been applied to a middleware supporting for rapid context-aware applications development is proved to be effective.