Mobile Context Awareness

Abstract

Due the unstoppable growth of the wireless technology in the previous years, the number of people using mobile devices is bigger day by day. Laptops, tablet PCs, PDAs and mobile devices are only one example of devices able to use the wireless technology and be mobile. But this is only one small part of what the situation can become. Applying Moore’s law, the power of microprocessors doubles every two years, and it seems inevitable that more and more computer power will be available to mobile device manufacturers. Intel is maybe still PC-centered, but the fact that the mobile devices are starting to get similar power processor as PCs makes that other options appears, like ARM microprocessors, used in many of the actual mobile devices, or Symbian OS, and or Windows OS.

New mobile devices are potentially mobile, like mp3 players, and the different wireless technologies, like RF-ID or Bluetooth make wider the options for mobile devices. On the top of this, common non-mobile devices can play an important role by interfacing with the mobile devices; DVDs players, game consoles, digital boxes and TVs, and everything able to be handle by a chip can be in the integrated to the concept of digital mind. Here is where the “context” enters into playing the game. Normally, in a fix device, context doesn’t change that much, and it can be set up by the user just once. With mobile devices, their possibilities grow according how we know to take advantage of their mobility and connectivity.

Context awareness can be useful in many aspects, it relates the services the device can provide to time and location, and user’s interests and need; providing a better and more effective use of resources by the user and also providing information of the environment. There are is a huge number of possibilities and the number will just grow and grow with the wireless technology and the new vision of ubiquitous and pervasive technology using intelligent agents.

In this work we will go through the technology available at this moment and what can be done to improve it and to make context a powerful tool for everyone in their everyday life.