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Article
Publication date: 22 June 2012

Jason B. Forsyth and Thomas L. Martin

To be successful, pervasive computing requires a balance of computing, design, and business requirements to be considered throughout the design process. Achieving this synthesis…

Abstract

Purpose

To be successful, pervasive computing requires a balance of computing, design, and business requirements to be considered throughout the design process. Achieving this synthesis requires a level of interdisciplinary design that is not present in current pervasive design tools. To understand the state of the art and provide insight to future tool designers, the purpose of this paper is to present a survey of design tools for pervasive computing and consider their ability to be used in interdisciplinary design.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors have performed a survey of tools covering many areas within pervasive computing and have evaluated the abilities of each tool with established metrics for pervasive design tools.

Findings

While the paper has found many design tools are available for constructive pervasive applications, few are suitable through all phases of the design cycle or useful across all the intended application domains of pervasive computing.

Originality/value

This survey provides an understanding of the state of pervasive design tools, with regards to interdisciplinary design, which has not previously been performed. Additionally, the authors provide evaluations of the pervasive tools when used in an interdisciplinary setting. These evaluations provide insight to key metrics and allow tool designers to understand the needs of their intended audience.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 8 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 November 2010

Hen‐I Yang, Chao Chen, Bessam Abdulrazak and Sumi Helal

A decade and a half after the debut of pervasive computing, a large number of prototypes, applications, and interaction interfaces have emerged. However, there is a lack of…

Abstract

Purpose

A decade and a half after the debut of pervasive computing, a large number of prototypes, applications, and interaction interfaces have emerged. However, there is a lack of consensus about the best approaches to create such systems or how to evaluate them. To address these issues, this paper aims to develop a performance evaluation framework for pervasive computing systems.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the authors' experience in the Gator Tech Smart House – an assistive environment for the elderly, they established a reference scenario that was used to guide the analysis of the large number of systems they studied. An extensive survey of the literature was conducted, and through a thorough analysis, the authors derived and arrived at a broad taxonomy that could form a basic framework for evaluating existing and future pervasive computing systems.

Findings

A taxonomy of pervasive systems is instrumental to their successful evaluation and assessment. The process of creating such taxonomy is cumbersome, and as pervasive systems evolve with new technological advances, such taxonomy is bound to change by way of refinement or extension. This paper found that a taxonomy for something so broad as pervasive systems is very complex. It overcomes the complexity by focusing the classifications on key aspects of pervasive systems, decided purely empirically and based on the authors own experience in a real‐life, large‐scale pervasive system project.

Originality/value

There are currently no methods or frameworks for comparing, classifying, or evaluating pervasive systems. The paper establishes a taxonomy – a first step toward a larger evaluation methodology. It also provides a wealth of information, derived from a survey of a broad collection of pervasive systems.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 6 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 December 2006

Maria Strimpakou, Ioanna Roussaki, Carsten Pils and Miltiades Anagnostou

Context awareness is one of the key aspects of pervasive computing systems. In such systems, a plethora of dynamic context information needs to be constantly retrieved, soundly…

Abstract

Context awareness is one of the key aspects of pervasive computing systems. In such systems, a plethora of dynamic context information needs to be constantly retrieved, soundly interpreted, rapidly processed, maintained in various repositories, and securely disseminated. Thus, a flexible, scalable and interoperable context representation scheme needs to be established and solid context management mechanisms need to be adopted, which will perform well in large‐scale distributed pervasive systems. This paper elaborates on the COMPACT context middleware that has been designed to cope with the issues above and saturate pervasive computing environments with context awareness functionality.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 2 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 December 2006

Akio Sashima, Noriaki Izumi and Koichi Kurumatani

In the vision of pervasive computing, numerous heterogeneous devices, various information services, and users performing daily activities are physically co‐located in a…

Abstract

In the vision of pervasive computing, numerous heterogeneous devices, various information services, and users performing daily activities are physically co‐located in a environment. How can we coordinate the services and devices to assist a particular user in receiving a particular service so as to maximize the user’s satisfaction? To solve this human‐centered coordination issue, we propose an agent‐based service coordination framework for pervasive computing. It is called location‐aware middle agent framework. The middle agent takes account of the user location in cognitive way (based on location‐ontology), and determines best‐matched services for the user. Based on this coordination framework, we have developed a multi‐agent architecture for pervasive computing, called CONSORTS (Coordination System of Real‐world Transaction Services). In this paper, we first outline some requirements of the human‐centered service coordination in pervasive computing. Secondly, we describe location‐aware middle agent framework to fill the requirements. Lastly, we outline CONSORTS, an prototype of location‐aware middle agent framework, and two applications of CONSORTS, location‐aware information assistance services in a museum and wireless‐LAN based location systems on FIPA agent Networks.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 2 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 December 2006

Tony O’Donnell, David Lewis and Vincent Wade

As Pervasive Computing environments become more richly populated with sensors and computing power it may be possible for the environment to observe and interpret user actions and…

Abstract

As Pervasive Computing environments become more richly populated with sensors and computing power it may be possible for the environment to observe and interpret user actions and pre‐emptively provide accurate support for those actions. This requires accurate inference of user intent. Though individual user acts may be inferable from environmental context sensing, the inference of intent for which appropriate support might be offered is more challenging. Numerous researchers have used probabilistic techniques such as Bayesian Analysis techniques to attempt such inference. Unlike a desktop environment, however, pervasive computing environments are extremely heterogeneous, so any heuristics used must be tailored to the physical environment and the users in question. Thus these techniques are only likely to be accurate if configured with accurate knowledge of routine user behavior. Many existing approaches attempt to learn such knowledge from operational data, but this often requires user involvement in training and expert configuration of probabilistic processing structure. In this paper we examine a complimentary approach where users are presented with an intuitive interface to support the direct configuration of probabilistic structure by users with appropriate knowledge. By treating an intent inference system for a particular pervasive computng environment as an autonomic system, we approach the problem as the design of an intuitive governance interface for this system. We then present the design and usability evaluation of this governance interface.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 2 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 April 2010

Evi Syukur and Seng Wai Loke

Pervasive computing environments such as a pervasive campus domain, shopping, etc. will become commonplaces in the near future. The key to enhance these system environments with…

Abstract

Purpose

Pervasive computing environments such as a pervasive campus domain, shopping, etc. will become commonplaces in the near future. The key to enhance these system environments with services relies on the ability to effectively model and represent contextual information, as well as spontaneity in downloading and executing the service interface on a mobile device. The system needs to provide an infrastructure that handles the interaction between a client device that requests a service and a server which responds to the client's request via Web service calls. The system should relieve end‐users from low‐level tasks of matching services with locations or other context information. The mobile users do not need to know or have any knowledge of where the service resides, how to call a service, what the service API detail is and how to execute a service once downloaded. All these low‐level tasks can be handled implicitly by a system. The aim of this paper is to investigate the notion of context‐aware regulated services, and how they should be designed, and implemented.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper presents a detailed design, and prototype implementation of the system, called mobile hanging services (MHS), that provides the ability to execute mobile code (service application) on demand and control entities' behaviours in accessing services in pervasive computing environments. Extensive evaluation of this prototype is also provided.

Findings

The framework presented in this paper enables a novel contextual services infrastructure that allows services to be described at a high level of abstraction and to be regulated by contextual policies. This contextual policy governs the visibility and execution of contextual services in the environment. In addition, a range of contextual services is developed to illustrate different types of services used in the framework.

Originality/value

The main contribution of this paper is a high‐level model of a system for context‐aware regulated services, which consists of environments (domains and spaces), contextual software components, entities and computing devices.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 6 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 December 2007

Ricky Robinson, Jadwiga Indulska and Ted McFadden

The purpose of this paper is to characterise a number of current and future computing environments and summarises their resource discovery requirements. It then seeks to analyse…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to characterise a number of current and future computing environments and summarises their resource discovery requirements. It then seeks to analyse, with respect to the requirements of each environment, several established service discovery protocols and some newer protocols that are still in the research domain. In addition, the key features of a new resource discovery protocol that has been developed to operate with heterogeneous computing environments are described.

Design/methodology/approach

A comprehensive literature survey was undertaken, highlighting the shortcomings of existing resource discovery protocols with respect to large pervasive computing environments. Given the identified gaps in existing protocols, an alternative protocol is suggested.

Findings

The main findings of this paper relate to the identified shortcomings of existing resource discovery protocols. It was also found that a hybrid resource discovery protocol capable of spanning dynamic, mobile computing environments and more stable ones was able to overcome many of the challenges presented by large‐scale pervasive computing environments.

Originality/value

This paper presents comprehensive literature survey of the state‐of‐the‐art in resource discovery protocols, pointing out some of the problems that are not solved. The paper describes the design of an alternative protocol, and presents an evaluation of it. The pervasive computing research community can draw upon the survey and evaluation to guide the design of future resource discovery protocols for the increasingly dynamic world in which we live.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 3 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 August 2021

Gnaneshwari G.R., M.S. Hema and S.C. Lingareddy

Pervasive computing environment allows the users to access the services anywhere and anytime. Due to the dynamicity, mobility, security, heterogeneity, and openness have become a…

Abstract

Purpose

Pervasive computing environment allows the users to access the services anywhere and anytime. Due to the dynamicity, mobility, security, heterogeneity, and openness have become a major challenging task in the Pervasive computing environment. To solve the security issues and to increase the communication reliability, an authentication-based access control approach is developed in this research to ensure the level of security in the Pervasive computing environment.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper aims to propose authentication-based access control approach performs the authentication mechanism using the hashing, encryption, and decryption function. The proposed approach effectively achieves the conditional traceability of user credentials to enhance security. Moreover, the performance of the proposed authentication-based access control approach is estimated using the experimental analysis, and performance improvement is proved using the evaluation metrics. It inherent the tradeoff between authentication and access control in the Pervasive computing environment. Here, the service provider requires authorization and authentication for the provision of service, whereas the end-users require unlinkability and untraceability for data transactions.

Findings

The proposed authentication-based access control obtained 0.76, 22.836 GB, and 3.35 sec for detection rate, memory, and time by considering password attack, and 22.772GB and 4.51 sec for memory and time by considering without attack scenario.

Originality/value

The communication between the user and the service provider is progressed using the user public key in such a way that the private key of the user can be generated through the encryption function.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 19 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2015

Mehdia Ajana El Khaddar, Mhammed Chraibi, Hamid Harroud, Mohammed Boulmalf, Mohammed Elkoutbi and Abdelilah Maach

This paper aims to demonstrate that a policy-based middleware solution which facilitates the development of context-aware applications and the integration of the heterogeneous…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to demonstrate that a policy-based middleware solution which facilitates the development of context-aware applications and the integration of the heterogeneous devices should be provided for ubiquitous computing environments. Ubiquitous computing targets the provision of seamless services and applications by providing an environment that involves a variety of devices having different capabilities. These applications help transforming the physical spaces into computationally active and smart environments. The design of applications in these environments needs to consider the heterogeneous devices, applications preferences and rapidly changing contexts. The applications, therefore, need to be context-aware so that they can adapt to different situations in real-time.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, we argue that a policy-based middleware solution that facilitates the development of context-aware applications and the integration of the heterogeneous devices should be provided for ubiquitous computing environments. The middleware allows applications to track items and acquire contextual information about them easily, reason about this information captured using different logics and then adapt to changing contexts. A key issue in these environments is to allow heterogeneous applications to express their business rules once, and get the preferred data once they are captured by the middleware without any intervention from the application side.

Findings

Our middleware tackles this problem by using policies to define the different applications’ rules and preferences. These policies can specify rules about the middleware services to be used, type of data captured, devices used, user roles, context information and any other type of conditions.

Originality/value

In this paper, we propose the design of a flexible and performant ubiquitous computing, and context-aware middleware called FlexRFID along with its evaluation results.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 11 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 December 2006

Daniel Pakkala and Juhani Latvakoski

A novel distributed middleware service platform, called MidGate platform, is presented in this paper. The central contribution is description of the developed MidGate platform and…

Abstract

A novel distributed middleware service platform, called MidGate platform, is presented in this paper. The central contribution is description of the developed MidGate platform and its architecture focusing especially on the adaptation, context‐awareness, and personalization of mobile and pervasive services. The research problem addressed is how to facilitate the development of interoperable applications and services into heterogeneous and distributed service gateway based environments. A requirement analysis of future mobile and pervasive services and key technologies has been carried out to establish a solid base and requirements for the development of the MidGate platform. The key mechanisms supporting adaptation, context‐awareness, and personalization of applications and services are presented. The novel middleware architecture solution of the MidGate platform utilizing these key mechanisms is also described. The MidGate architecture utilizes the emerging Generic Service Elements (GSE) approach, where generic and collectively utilizable services are provided to applications as middleware services that are part of a service platform. The main contribution of this research is the definition of a set of GSEs, the related MidGate platform architecture and its evaluation. The evaluation of the MidGate platform has been carried out in series of laboratory prototypes. The evaluation indicates that the MidGate platform solution is well applicable in various service gateway‐based distributed systems and extends well into resource‐constrained mobile environments.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 2 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

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