An Ontology for Mobile Device Sensor-Based Context Awareness

In mobile computing, the efficient utilisation of the information gained from the sensors embedded in the devices is difficult. Instead of using raw measurement data application specifically, as currently is customary, higher abstraction level semantic descriptions of the situation, context, can be used to develop mobile applications that are more usable. This article introduces an ontology of context constituents, which are derived from a set of sensors embedded in a mobile device. In other words, a semantic interface to the sensor data is provided. The ontology promotes the rapid development of mobile applications, more efficient use of resources, as well as reuse and sharing of information between communicating entities. A few mobile applications are presented to illustrate the possibilities of using the ontology.