Application of connectivity information for context interpretation and derivation

Ubiquitous computing is the emerging new computing paradigm, of which context awareness is a key feature. In this paradigm connectivity is more than transport resource, but an important context source that can be utilized in many ways. This paper studies connectivity from the viewpoint of context awareness. Architecture for connectivity context management is proposed. Raw connectivity context including device, network, and end-end context is thoroughly defined. Methods for the derivation of high-level connectivity context are presented. The derivation is through the intelligent interpretation of raw connectivity context with the combination of other contextual information, in which knowledge-based rules are adopted. Connectivity context can also be used in the generation of other context information, in which connectivity context is employed in forms of one input factor. This paper studies three typical cases of connectivity based context derivation: location, application, and user related context.