Data-centric middleware for context-aware pervasive computing

The complexity of developing and deploying context-aware pervasive-computing applications calls for distributed software infrastructures that assist applications to collect, aggregate, and disseminate contextual data. In this paper, we motivate a data-centric design for such an infrastructure to support context-aware applications. Our middleware system, Solar, treats contextual data sources as stream publishers. The core of Solar is a scalable and self-organizing peer-to-peer overlay to support data-driven services. We describe how different services can be systematically integrated on top of the Solar overlay and evaluate the resource-discovery and data-dissemination services. We also discuss our experience and lessons learned when using Solar to support several implemented scenarios. We conclude that a data-centric infrastructure is necessary to facilitate both development and deployment of context-aware pervasive-computing applications.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: PERCOM
• Authors: Guanling Chen, Ming Li, David Kotz
• Keywords: Context-aware Applications, Context-aware Pervasive-computing Applications, PERCOM 2008, Self-organizing Peer-to-peer Overlay, Wireless Networks