A Context-Source Abstraction Layer for Context-aware Middleware

Context-aware applications demand for a distributed middleware that can collect, aggregate and deliver contextual data for applications. This paper presents one of the main components, Context-Sources Abstraction (CSA), in a middleware for building context-aware applications. The CSA component includes a set of query interfaces and an event notification mechanism to applications. In this way, the access to the hardware are encapsulated by the middleware and virtualized to the end-point applications. The architecture of the CSA and the common functions of CSA are discussed.