In this paper, we present a policy-based architecture to be used in identifying the location of users within a pervasive system environment. Mobile users can define their own policies governing the granularity of their location identification. Such granularity is governed by a combination of policy predicates and premise topology information. Privacy can vary in a spectrum of levels from total obstruction to total transparency of location information. Sensors and agents coupled with such sensors continuously forward user locations and policies to a policy and state repository. The policy and state repository can be queried for user location information. Location information is filtered to comply with user defined policies at the agents closest to the source of the query. Historical information is eventually archived at the policy repository, and can also be used to query for possible predictions of futuristic location of users. Keywords Pervasive Systems, Location Identification, Poli...
Sherif G. Aly