Open framework for distributed context management in ubiquitous environments

Most previous research into ubiquitous computing has focused on small and ad hoc environments with proprietary infrastructures and protocols. Consequently, context-aware services are usually developed without considering interoperability among different systems, devices and services. This work presents an open framework for ubiquitous environments, with a distributed context management architecture and a communication model based on standard protocols. With this framework, a smart device can search for context-aware services and a service can be easily deployed via standard protocols and distributed context managers. A prototype of the framework has been implemented to demonstrate its feasibility.