A mobile device oriented framework for context information management

Recent developments of information technologies are leading the advent of mobile device oriented context-aware applications, which means using context to realize some novel applications on mobile devices. The context-aware application needs a framework for context information management. In this paper, we propose a mobile device oriented framework for context information management to solve the problems on context shortage and communication inefficiency. It consists of four main functional components: data collector, context processor, context manager and local context consumer. By using the framework, data collector collects data from internal and external sensors, then the context processor and manager extract and manage context, finally the local context consumer develops context-aware applications and provides appropriate services to the mobile users. The propose framework realizes real time application with quick data access, power efficiency, personal privacy protection, data fusion of internal and external sensors and simplicity in usage. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed system, an example scenario is given, which is applied to a context-diary system.