A distributed architecture for dynamic contexts composition in Ubicomp

Ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) environments are characterized by high distribution, heterogeneity and dynamism. In these environments, applications must be aware of their contexts and adapt to changes in them. A major research challenge in the area of Ubicomp is related to context awareness. Considering the characteristics of ubiquitous environments, this paper presents an architecture for context awareness, called DynamiCC (Dynamic Context Composition), that includes elements to support: context modeling, contextual data collection, actuation on the environment, and composition and interpretation of contextual information. We consider that the main contributions of this work are the employ of a hybrid approach for context modeling, and the proposal of an architecture that supports the interpretation and the composition of dynamic contexts, which enables the construction of complex contexts, in runtime of applications. To assess the functionality of the DynamiCC, we did a discussion of usage scenarios, highlighting the prototypes and tests performed.