Context Grouping Mechanism for Context Distribution in Ubiquitous Environments

Context distribution is a key aspect for successful applications within mobile and ubiquitous computing environments. In such environments, context information is acquired by several and multiple context sensors distributed over the environment. Applications collect and react to these data, according to predefined adaptation mechanisms. The success of these mechanisms depends on the availability of context information, which is disseminated over the network. However, in practice, only a fraction of the observable context information is required by the adaptation mechanisms. Moreover, for privacy reasons, it is important to delimitate a scope for context dissemination. In this work we address these issues by proposing a context grouping mechanism which allows the definition of groups based on the context characteristics. Each group is defined by these characteristics and delimitate a given context information set that can be distributed among group members. This approach of context grouping acts as a two-fold mechanism. On the one hand, it controls and organizes context distribution over a peer-to-peer network. On the other hand, it proposes a primary and low-level privacy mechanism for context distribution, which is an important aspect influencing context distribution.