International Journal of Engineering and Technical Research (IJETR)

ISSN: 2321-0869, Volume-3, Issue-1, January 2015

Campus Push, Location, Context, Policy Driven Push

Notification Application for Mobile Devices
Roopkala Ravindran, Nitika Qazi, Vinita Atre,Jayesh Rohira, Sagar Narkar

Abstract This paper aims to capture the need for Context II. LITERATURE SURVEY
aware services and policy driven methods in a College campus.
With an attempt to replace the traditional methods being A. Service Provisioning Architecture:
followed for attendance, notifications etc., this paper gives a The three basic components of the architecture are:
view of the application that would facilitate attendance tracking, a) Services
update about library books status, automatic download of lab It includes the various services that the system is capable to
plans, timetable, results through push notifications based on provide.It further handles the availability and segmentation of
user location and time. Thus, we propose a mobile application the services that it provides.
for College Campus smart space named as Campus Push. b) User
It stores user related information including its personal
Index Terms service provisioning,smart phones, tablets,
details, priorities and preferences for the services it needs.
ubiquitous computing, context aware, policy driven
architecture, push notifications. The personal details of the user help to categorise the user and
provide the services or suggestions accordingly. The
I. INTRODUCTION preferences that a user gives may include time when the
service is needed or the location where it is needed.
With the widespread use of mobile computing devices on c) Service Management
educational campus, we intend to provide a location based It makes use of the context aware system. It receives the
and context based information exchange system to improve, context sensitive information from the users device and
organize and automate the otherwise tedious task of provides the services depending on the policy being followed
information delivery management in an educational as a part of the policy driven mechanism and the preferences
organization. that the user had provided [2].
Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) also known as Pervasive
computing is a concept in software engineering and computer
science where computing is made to appear everywhere and
anywhere. Ubiquitous computing includes many concepts like
distributed computing, mobile computing, location
computing, mobile networking, context-aware computing,
sensor networks, human-computer interaction, and artificial
intelligence.
It can occur using any device like a laptop, tablet, computer or
a terminal in household devices like microwave, refrigerator
etc. Figure 1: Generic View of the Framework Components
Contemporary human-computer interaction models, whether Source: [2]H. Harroud, A. Berrado, M. Boulmalf and A. Karmouch
command-line, menu-driven, or GUI-based, are inappropriate
and inadequate to the ubiquitous case. Partially we are in B. Context aware Architecture:
aubicomp world but a lot is yet to emerge that supports
ubiquitous computing and makes it more secure and robust in
itself.
One of the fields of ubiquitous computing is context-aware
systems that capture the context sensitive information from
the immediate environment and provide services following a
policy driven architecture. This project uses the same for
sending push notifications to all those people registered with
the application. The notifications differ for different types of
users, this data being obtained from the user via his/her
personal information. Using the service provisioning system, Figure 2: Context aware Middleware Architecture
this application supports its users by providing the services it Source: John Keeney, Vinny Cahill
has chosen using the appropriate presentation mechanisms [1].
Context awareness is a property of mobile systems that is
defined complementarily to location awareness.
Manuscript received January 19, 2015. Context-aware computing is a style of computing related to a
Roopkala Ravindran, Nitika Qazi, Vinita Atre,Jayesh Rohira, Sagar general class of mobile systems that can sense their physical
Narkar, Vivekanand Education Societys Inst. Of Technology, Mumbai
University, India environment, and adapt their behaviour accordingly.

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 Campus Push, Location, Context, Policy Driven Push Notification Application for Mobile Devices

Context-aware systems are a component of a ubiquitous Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM) is a free service
computing or pervasive computing environment. In that helps developers send data from servers to their Android
context-aware computing, we use the term context to refer to applications on Android devices, and upstream messages
the circumstances in which a specific computational program from the user's device back to the cloud.[6] This could be a
is being executed (such as the current occupation of the user) lightweight message telling the Android application that there
or the current state of the environment. Context implies the is new data to be fetched from the server (for instance, a "new
following: where you are; who you are with; and what email" notification informing the application that it is out of
resources are nearby. sync with the back end), or it could be a message containing
Context aware systems have to remember past events and up to 4kb of payload data (so apps like instant messaging can
generate reminders for future events. Context-aware is used consume the message directly). The GCM service handles all
more generally to include nearby people, devices, lighting, aspects of queuing of messages and delivery to the target
noise level, network availability, and even the social situation, Android application running on the target device.
e.g. whether you are with your family or a friend from school Characteristics of Google Cloud Messaging (GCM):
[3]
. a. It allows 3rd-party application servers to send messages to
Attributes of a context aware system: their Android applications.
1. Context type: The context type refers to the category of
context such temperature, time, speed, etc. This type of b. Using the GCM Cloud connection, you can receive
information may be used as a parameter for a context query or upstream messages from the user's device.
a subscription. c. An Android application on an Android device doesn't need
2. Context value: Context value means the raw data gathered to be running to receive messages. The system will wake up
by a sensor. The unit depends on the context type and the the Android application via Intent broadcast when the
applied sensor, e.g. degrees Celsius, miles per hour, etc. message arrives, as long as the application is set up with the
proper broadcast receiver and permissions.
C. Policy Driven architecture:
A policy rule is defined as a rule governing the choices in d. It does not provide any built-in user interface or other
behaviour of a managed system. Management action policies handling for message data. GCM simply passes raw message
are defined as persistent, positive or negative, imperatives or data received straight to the Android application, which has
authorities for a set of policy subjects to achieve goals or full control of how to handle it. For example, the application
actions on a set of target objects[3].A policy can be seen as a might post a notification, display a custom user interface, or
conditional statement. Enabling conditions result in the silently sync data.
enforcement of actions, which dynamically adapt the
behaviour of corresponding services.
The policy driven architecture facilitates end-users services
context awareness by dynamically creating new context
policies and by triggering actions of predefined policies in
response to satisfied context sensitive conditions [4]. By
enforcing policies on services the behaviour of the system is
automatically adapted to context changes when the condition
of the policy is satisfied.
The policy driven approach facilitates development of context
Figure 4: architectural overview
aware services, enhances their context effectiveness and Source: developer.android.com
reduces the development costs. Furthermore, each service has E. Comparison With other applications:
the ability to limit context usage to its specific needs by
enabling a context negotiation for establishing a context level Applications using location based, context aware architecture
agreement (CLA). CLAs guide the interaction and are scarce in the educational field. The time constraint on the
information dissemination among different services as they broadcast messages is used to notify the users at the most
receive the agreed context either in the form of context values appropriate time of the day [7].
or context policies and make decisions accordingly on users
behalf.

Figure 3.Policy Driven architecture

Source [5]: Yong Lu, 2009.Towards an open ubiquitous computing
D. Google Cloud Messenger
Figure 5:Comparison with other applications

144 www.erpublication.org
 International Journal of Engineering and Technical Research (IJETR)
ISSN: 2321-0869, Volume-3, Issue-1, January 2015

III. SURVEY AND APPLICATION i. Community based Disaster Management, including last
3.1 Survey of Smart Spaces mile integration of the policy, plans and execution.
While many ingenuous applications related to smart spaces ii. Capacity development in all spheres.
are discussed in the paper titled Automatic Service Provision iii. Consolidation of past initiatives and best practices.
in Network Smart Space [8], some other areas where service iv. Cooperation with agencies at national and international
facilitation has proven helpful are mobile health care, disaster levels.
management, shopping malls and lastly travel and tourism. v. Multi-sectorial synergy.
Furthermore, smart spaces can be created in educational 3. Shopping Malls
campuses to provide interactive real time services as Malls in todays lifestyle have huge number of products on
mentioned in the motivation. display, various offers, and promotional advertisement to
1. Mobile Health Care acquire customer interest. But, does every customer gets or
On the go health care services are provided using Personal knows about this information. The customer interested in the
Health Records (PHRs) which created a remarkable upsurge particular product needs to be notified with the provisional
in the field of Medical Science. They contain global patient updates. This could be done by automatic content-provision
information from trusted sources. Thus this information is services. This can be done by location detection, performed
readily and easily available to patients and practitioners at real by network. The system uses users' smart phones to display
time. The Emergency Medical System are one of the most advertising content based on the users preferences already
crucial system because they are involved in a variety of stored in the mobile application. The context in the nearby
activities which are performed from the time of a call to an where the customer moves around in the mall checks the
ambulance service till the time of patients discharge from the context provided by the users profile and provide appropriate
emergency department of a hospital. The Emergency Medical notification about products to the customer requirements. [11]
System is closely knit so that collaboration and coordination [12]
becomes a crucial issue for patients and for emergency health 4. Travel and Tourism
care services' performance. Cloud computing, Ubiquitous Application integrated with context sensitive services helps to
technology, Middleware services integrated with PHRs create user preferences and profiles. Thus their location
would transform the entire process on a small mobile device information with the current time can be used for formulation
[9] .e
of suggestions on the users mobile device with nearby area of
The main services provided by the Healthcare applications interests like ATMs, hotels, restaurants, parks, malls, etc.
are [2]
.The study of these applications has led to the utilization of
i. A mobile user (patient) being registered with the three main technologies, which creates the smart space. The
system. PHR stores the medical record of the user. first is context-aware technology that is able to adapt its
ii. Updates provided to the user to handle critical operations to the current context without explicit user
situations. intervention and thus aim at increasing usability and
iii. On-click integrated collaboration to help in critical effectiveness by taking environmental context into account.
situations like call ambulance or family or personal The second is middleware technology, provides an
doctor. infrastructure platform to build your own ubiquitous
Added benefits include dealing with scenarios in which if the applications. The third is sensing and wireless network
practitioner is physically not present to provide help but being technologies provide various protocols for perceiving and
connected through the mobile device. A patient health record transporting environment context information.
could be moved around on various machines and a healthcare 3.2 College Campus Smart Space Survey
practitioner would be able to collaborate with colleagues from Following is a survey done in Vivekanand Education
other locations and make informed decisions anytime by Societys Institute of Technologys Department of
sharing resources. The vital signals that are measured and Information Technology. The students targeted were from
transmitted to a software broker could be transmitted in real final and pre-final year under graduation. Valuable inputs
time and adequately analysed using the discovered grid were also gathered from the faculty.
resources. Thus, enabling remote management of patient The three mentioned technologies are available in any college
conditions and quick detection of health anomalies. campus. College campus can be considered as a smart space,
2. Disaster Management where students can use the network technologies on their
Disasters are generally unpredictable and provide a short mobile devices and be connected to the college environment
window of opportunity to mitigate its dire consequences. to receive information about the recent news, events and
Thus Disaster Management, the process of being ready to ongoing activities in their campus. This leads us to the
tackle any unnatural and manmade disaster, involves being development of CampusPush application
aversion, prepared, quick response and fool proof recovery CampusPush Survey: To understand the basic service
mechanisms, probably leading to mitigate the impact of requirement in a ubiquitous college environment, we
disasters. A variety of events are covered by disaster conducted a survey with the pre-final year, final year students
management which utilize context aware services at real time and staff.
[10]
. A holistic and integrated approach will be evolved Conclusions based on Survey: The bar graph compares the
towards disaster management with emphasis on building users who have given information about their usage of smart
strategic partnerships at various levels. The themes phones, whether they use Internet throughout the day,
underpinning the policy are: awareness of location based service detail is gathered.

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 Campus Push, Location, Context, Policy Driven Push Notification Application for Mobile Devices

The architecture explains the working between the Client

Application, GCM and the Application Server. The
application consists of the attendance manager, Push
notification manager, GPS locator and the library manager
that handle the attendance, sending of push notifications,
gathering the location related information and information
from the library database respectively. The application server
is responsible for identifyingthe policy corresponding to a
particular location and performing the necessary action. This
information along with the device id of the target device goes
to the GCM Server that sends push notifications to the client
application on the users phone.
Thus, when a student enters the lab, the lab plan gets
automatically downloaded on his/her smart phone based on
the location. It also helps the faculty with taking the
attendance of students in a lab by automatically notifying the
Figure 6: Smart Space Survey teacher about the presence of a person in the lab. Apart from
this, it notifies the user if he comes near the library or the
The results of the survey can be summarised as: seminar hall. The end users in this smart space are people
i. Firstly, almost 80% users have a smart phone. present in the college campus such as students, faculty, and
ii. Secondly members around 85% have used mobile technical/ non-technical staff equipped with smart phones.
Internet, whether possess a smart phone.
iii. Also almost 50 55% members use the Wi-Fi facility
provided in the college premises.
iv. Furthermore there are 75% members who have at least
once used or are frequent users of Location based
services that could range from Emergency/ Safety/
Healthcare, Information.
v. Finally, the highlight, 99% of members feel that
college campus should have services, Navigation/
Routing, Transaction & Billing, Entertainment,
proximity or any other service [13].

Figure 6: Software selection

The survey also captures technical details about the

underlying software platform which should be used to
develop the mobile application. Android was the trending
mobile development platform. Also found that the tendency
of mobile users have changed as survey found that 40% are
ready to even use the application if it would be charged.
The study reveals that users are interested in an application,
which would have a very fast response time, provide security,
Figure 8:Architecture of proposed system
should be fault tolerant with the availability of
personalization.
V. CONCLUSION
IV. PROPOSED SYSTEM Campus Push is a user friendly mobile android application
which facilitates intelligent location based and time based
Campus Push is an application that can be used in a College
notification system in the educational campus using a policy
by the faculty as well as the students.
driven and context aware architecture.

146 www.erpublication.org
 International Journal of Engineering and Technical Research (IJETR)
ISSN: 2321-0869, Volume-3, Issue-1, January 2015

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