Context-aware systems: A literature review and classification

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Abstract

Nowadays, numerous journals and conferences have published articles related to context-aware systems, indicating many researchers’ interest. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to review the works that were published in journals, suggest a new classification framework of context-aware systems, and explore each feature of classification framework. This paper is based on a literature review of context-aware systems from 2000 to 2007 using a keyword index and article title search. The classification framework is developed based on the architecture of context-aware systems, which consists of the following five layers: concept and research layer, network layer, middleware layer, application layer and user infrastructure layer. The articles are categorized based on the classification framework. This paper allows researchers to extract several lessons learned that are important for the implementation of context-aware systems.

Introduction

Emerging ubiquitous or pervasive computing technologies offer ‘anytime, anywhere, anyone’ computing by decoupling users from devices (Dey, 2001, Hill et al., 2004, Kwon et al., 2005, Kwon et al., 2005, Schilit et al., 1994). To provide adequate service for the users, applications and services should be aware of their contexts and automatically adapt to their changing contexts-known as context-awareness (Bolchini et al., 2007, Dey, 2001, Zhu et al., 2005). Context is very important, since it provides information about the present status of people, places, things and devices in the environment (Korpipää, Mäntyjärvi, Kela, Keränen, & Malm, 2003; Kwon, 2004). Context is any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity is a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including location, time, activities, and the preferences of each entity (Dey, 2001). Context-awareness means that one is able to use context information. A system is context-aware if it can extract, interpret and use context information and adapt its functionality to the current context of use (Byun & Cheverst, 2004). The term context-aware computing is commonly understood by those working in context-aware, where it is felt that context is a key in their efforts to disperse and transparently weave computer technology into our lives. One goal of context-aware systems is to acquire and utilize information on the context of a device in order to provide services that are appropriate to the particular people, place, time, event, etc. These systems aim to provide context-aware access to information, communication and computation.

In late 1980s, there was a period of beginning activity on context-aware computing. A few of context-aware computing has met the interest. However, the activity seems to be increasing dramatically. Nowadays, to overcome new challenges and requirements found in context-aware systems, many researchers have made efforts to design and implement network, user infrastructure and middleware which effectively provide users with context-aware services. Numerous articles of journals and conferences have published research related to context-aware systems. In other words, many people are interested in context-aware systems. Therefore, we feel that this is a good time for a review analysis, since it has been over a year since many papers were published. Currently, it is difficult to compare articles, because the available research is published in quite different journals. Accordingly, the main objectives of this review are:

  • To classify and summarize research relevant for context-aware systems.

  • To provide a conceptual framework for the integration and classification of articles.

  • To derive suggestions for context-aware systems researchers based on the literature review.

Chen and Kotz (2000) surveyed the literature related with context-aware computing in mobile computing. They defined the terms context and context awareness, listed the context-aware applications that have been built, discussed approaches to sense and model the context, and looked into supporting infrastructures, security and privacy issues. However, in 2000, articles published in journal were not enough to analyze context-aware systems. Furthermore, a classification standard does not involve all fields of context-aware systems. Therefore, a new survey research on context-aware systems is needed. Baldauf, Dustdar, and Rosenberg (2007) suggested the abstract layer architecture for context-aware systems and introduced various existent middleware and server-based approaches to ease the development of context-aware applications, where each layer is explained based on various research. However, suggestions for further study, literature review related with each layer, introducing framework of many research and presenting current research issues are not broad.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, a methodology to extract the literature is illustrated. Section 3 presents general characteristics of the literature research. Section 4 illustrates the proposed classification framework. Section 5 describes each feature of classification framework (concept and research, network, user infrastructure, middleware, application and service). Section 6 contains discussions and suggestions. Finally, Section 7 concludes the paper with brief concluding remarks.

Section snippets

Procedures

A total of 237 articles from 2000 to 2007 were obtained and reviewed. Articles were found via computerized search of the topic areas. The search was narrowed using the terms context-aware. A detail illustration of methodology for extracting articles is followed.

Classification of articles by publication year

The number of articles by publication year is depicted in Fig. 2. Numerous context-aware articles have grown considerably since 2000. The number of articles in 2007 have becomes 7 times more than the number of articles in 2000. The number of articles from 2001 to 2004 had been increased continuously, and the number of articles from 2004 to 2006 has been almost the same. It is absolute that the concern about context-aware systems was increased and will be continued.

Classification of articles by online database

The article by online database

Abstract architecture of context-aware systems

The abstract architecture of context-aware systems is drawn based on the literature that explores the context-aware prototype, systems, and application to offer classification criteria for dividing the literature appropriately. To make the abstract architecture, SOCAM, ACAI, NAMA, PeCAN, X-CAF, CyberDesk, WebPADS, CAPIAs, Hycon service framework, Culliver’s Genie, Intelligent Agent framework, context-aware agent architecture, reference framework for multi-target user interfaces, etc. are

Result of article classification

The articles by subjects are categorized in Table 4, Table 5, Table 6, Table 7, Table 8, Table 9. Table 4 shows the number of articles, percentage of subject, and percentage of all subjects, while Table 5, Table 6, Table 7, Table 8, Table 9 represent all references of the context-aware systems articles.

The context-aware concept and research has the highest percentage of context-aware articles (87 articles, 37%). In context-aware concept and research, the category can be divided into 7 subjects.

Discussions and suggestions

Context-aware systems are still developing in order to improve. Many researchers have been concerned about context-aware systems and context-awareness, and as shown in Fig. 2, the concern has increased from 2000 to 2007. Moreover, reports or white paper of many project have been published increasingly. However, context-aware systems are not fully implemented in real life. As shown in Table 4, much research has focused on the concept and research layer. The scope of applications or services in

Conclusions

The review was organized according to the framework developed with the purpose of providing a comprehensive overview of research on context-aware systems. The review introduced the context-aware systems concept, network infrastructure, middleware, application, user infrastructure and presented an exhaustive list of each layer of context-aware systems. In this paper, we reviewed the literatures for the concept and applications, and examined them using dimensions related to ongoing and emerging

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