Proceedings of the Second International conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC 2018)

IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP18OZV-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1442-6

Context Aware Computing Systems: A survey

1
Ms. Pooja S. Gandodhar, Research Scholar, SKNCOE, SPPU, Pune

2
Dr. S.M. Chaware , PhD Guide, SPPU, Pune

 person, place or object that is considered relevant to the

Abstract— The term context has been studies in different interaction between a user and an application, including the
areas of Computer Science. Context-aware systems have user and applications themselves.” The context is useful and
high demand in areas like Intelligent Environments, people have worked on it, focusing on location mostly,
Pervasive & Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient although the situation of an entity might consist time, location,
Intelligence. Such systems gather data and adapting activity and the surrounding factors that might affect the
system behavior accordingly using context information activity of an entity[6].
like physical context, computational context, and user The term context has been classified into two categories
context/tasks. Developing such context-aware applications (physical and logical). Physical context can be determined by
is inherently complex and hence should be supported by hardware sensors and logical context is either given by the
adequate context information modeling and reasoning
user’s input or by capturing her interactions with the services
techniques. In this paper the concept of context awareness
available [1][2]. For example through observing or analyzing
is discussed along with requirements for context
identification and formulation, procedure for converting the user’s profile, activities, working routines, typing activity
context modeling to intelligent actions and context etc. Most research in this area makes use of physical sensors
recognition techniques & algorithms are discussed. The for light, movement, sound, temperature, touch, and of course
applications of context aware are reviewed. location. The logical sensors however provide related
information by reading user’s information from opened web
Index Terms—Context, Context Awareness, Context modeling, pages and other documents and also analyses user’s data
Context Aware Computing, Pervasive Computing (interactions) and based on those interactions targets
advertising.

I. INTRODUCTION II. LITERATURE REVIEW

One of the areas of pervasive (ubiquitous) computing is Following section includes discussion on concepts of context,
context-aware computing. Mobility of devices and use of context awareness, and context aware systems.
services make context-aware systems a popular research field.
In real physical context means to use the data gathered from Context The term Context is been studied by many
sensors to the context-aware computing platform, which researchers. The most popular definition is information that
includes: what to sense, how to acquire the information and can be used to relate or characterize an entity [2]. Using
various definitions and interpretations “Context is any
reasoning to that information to infer the context of a user. It is
information that can be used to characterize the situation of an
highly needed that programs and services should respond
entity. A person, place, or object can become entity which is
according to the user’s situation and behave the way she wants
considered applicable to the interaction between a user and an
these to be, i.e. services and systems should be more dynamic. application, including the user and applications
To identify the context the information which we require can themselves.”[3][6]
be captured in a number of ways, for example from user
profile information, network (to sense location, time, nearby Context Awareness was introduced Schilit and Theimer as
objects etc.), sensors (for activity) and other sources. sentient [7]. “A system is context-aware if it uses context to
Many researchers have defined context as per their provide relevant information and/or services to the user, where
understanding in an effort to consider a more general concept relevancy depends on the user’s task.[4] [9]”
of context. Schilit and Theimer [6] used the term context- Context-aware systems are able to adapt their activities based
aware in 1994 and described as identities, location, objects and on current context. This also increases effectiveness by taking
nearby people [6]. In 1996 Brown defined context as the environmental context into account. Context aware systems
elements that surround a user which a computer can identify watch the environment all the time and propose suitable
[5]. An often cited and quite generic definition of context is suggestions to users so they can take necessary actions. For
that by Dey and Abowd: “Context is any information that can example publishing a user's location to appropriate members
be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity is a of a social network, and allowing retailers to publish special
offers to potential customers who are near to the retailers.

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 Proceedings of the Second International conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC 2018)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP18OZV-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1442-6

Context aware systems used variety of contexts like location, Fig. 1. The data collected from input sensors are preprocessed
environment, and device. A user’s current location to a device and forwarded to knowledge acquisition module. Next the data
was considered as context [10]. Ambient environmental generated in previous steps are submitted to rule based
context includes the profile of an environment [11]. Systems classifier. Then data mining algorithms are applied over
modeling device context includes adjusting screen brightness training datasets to generate classifiers. These classifiers will
based on the available battery power [12]. User context make context aware decisions
includes her physical activity, her mode of transport and user
activity logs, usage styles for commute and shopping The following set of steps enlists procedure for converting
references etc. contextual information into intelligent actions.
In context aware systems, context can be, raw data and also
meaningful information used to draw decisions. Data can 1. Create computational models for context acquisition with
come from various sources. For defining context data need to respect to tasks
be preprocessed. When the data is diverse, it has to be 2. Generalization of contextual characteristics based on the
normalized and aggregated[13]. tasks
For assisting users in decision making from the context 3. Aggregation of gathered information to generate an
inferences gathered data analytics techniques are of great help abstraction of context
[8]. 4. Make choice of the algorithm or a set of algorithms to use.
The features extracted here are sent to machine learning 5. Perform context recognition and derive inferences
algorithms-supervised and unsupervised to generate training 6. Derive conclusions and assist the user with most suitable
data sets and construct a classification model. decision acoordingly.

III. CONTEXT AWARE SYSTEM LAYERED IV. TECHNIQUES & ALGORITHMS

ARCHITECTURE The Context Modeling Schemes are discussed here.
A proposed basic multilayered architecture of context
information processing is shown in figure 1.
Sr. Type of Scope Limitations
No scheme
Input data .
{Sensor data,
activity logs, 1 Key- Simplest Different
historical data} Value Model context context types.
Modelin information to text Dependencies
Pre-processing g files & binary files. timeliness.
{Data
2 Mark-up Data modeling by Not able to
summarization,
Scheme using tags-XML reason,
feature selection,
Modelin Used for profile interoperabili
normalization}
g modeling ty and
Knowledge reusability
Acquisition
{Context 3 Graphic Model context with Interoperabili
correlations, al reasoning for large ty is difficult
association rules, Modelin datasets of
thresholds} g databases
Post Processing
{Rule based
classifications,
converted data } 4 Object Model context Suitable for
Based using hierarchical internal
Modelin class interfaces context
Data Mining
{Supervised/Unsuperv g modeling
ised learning, based on
performance code
evaluation} 5 Logic Context is Lack of
Context Aware
Based modeled using standardizatio
Decisions
Modelin rules suitable for n leads to less
{Classifiers, decisions,
g reasoning reusability
notifications}
Fig.1 A basic multilayer architecture of a context processing
system
The different modules of the proposed system are shown in

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 Proceedings of the Second International conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC 2018)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP18OZV-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1442-6

6 Ontolog Context is Large of rules

y Based formulated from datasets
Modelin common entity increases the
g knowledge computationa
Ontologies are lly and time 5 Ontology It is based on It is not good
mostly chosen for consumption Based description logic, in finding
modeling context Reasoning which is a family missing
Method of logic-based values or
knowledge ambiguous
representations information
Table 1. Comparison of Context Modeling Schemes comparing

Table 1 listed various context modeling schemes out of which 6 Probabil Collect data from Need to
ontology based modeling seems to be well suited for defining istic different sources. explore with
context. However it as data size increases the retrieval of Logic It is commonly combining
context from this would be time consuming [14] [16]. used for activity multiple
recognition of contexts
context-aware
Sr. Type of Scope Limitation applications such
No scheme s as situation
1 Supervis Training examples Training recognition in a
ed are collected and process will smart home
Learnin labelled according define Table 2. Comparison of Context Reasoning Schemes
g to the expected efficiency
targets or results. Table 2 listed various context reasoning schemes for assisting
Generalization users based on context inferences [16]. The most appropriate
function scheme is supervised learning as training data sets are labeled
Widely used in according to expected targets. Also probabilistic logic scheme
mobile phone is suitable for context activity recognition and resolving
sensing and conflicts between different sources of data.
activity
recognition V. CONTEXT AWARE APPLICATIONS
The context aware applications can be found in many different
2 Unsuper It is not provided Learning application domains as below which are gaining intensive
vised with the expected time attentions worldwide.
Learnin results during the increases
g training process. with 1. Location based services
Due to no training hierarchical Physical services (multiplexes, gardens ...)
data, there is no learning Electronic services (scanners, routers ...)
error or reward 2. Using location to improve (network) services
signal to evaluate a Rerouting of incoming or outgoing communications
potential solution. 3. Using location to provide information
City tours
3 Rule Rules are usually generalizatio Nearby business advertisements
based structured in an IF- n and 4. Making others aware of user location
scheme THEN-ELSE numbers of Presence (individual)
format for rules Popularity, movement (group)
generating of high- 5. Security
level context User access grants based on location
information from 6. Location Recommendations in Location based social
low-level context. networks
Recommend locations using a user’s location histories
4 Fuzzy Usage of language Complicated and community opinions
Logic variables and the systems may Location bridges gap between physical world & social
ability to deal with require networks
vague systems several 7. Existing Solutions
iterations to Based on item/user collaborative filtering
find a set Similar users give the similar ratings to similar items

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 Proceedings of the Second International conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC 2018)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP18OZV-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1442-6

[14] Xin Li, Martina Eckert, José-Fernán Martinez and

Gregorio Rubio, “Context Aware Middleware
VI. CONCLUSION Architectures:Survey and Challenges” Sensors 2015
This survey has analyzed the concept of context and context [15] C. Perera, A. Zaslavsky, P. Christen and D.
awareness. An analysis of context modeling and reasoning Georgakopoulos, "Context Aware Computing for The Internet
techniques is done. This paper also enlisted popular context of Things: A Survey," in IEEE Communications Surveys &
aware systems applications. Tutorials, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 414-454, First Quarter 2014.
The future trend of context-aware applications will be based [16] Punnarumol Temdee, Ramjee Prasad, Book: “Context
on social context. Social context should not only focus on the Aware Communication & Computing: Applications for Smart
interactions among people but also among machines and even Enviornment”, Springer Series in Wireless Technology 2018
between the people and the machine (IoT & IoE). The
significant outcome of context aware application is not only
acquisition of data but also derive inferences from those data.

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