Policy-based approach for dynamic architectural adaptation: A case study on location-based system

Current research efforts are being directed to commit with the long-term view of self-management properties for wireless telecommunications. Technology has transformed the cell phone from being a mere phone to becoming an indispensable medium for contact, information and entertainment. The new paradigm in mobile services lies in providing a location-based user experience and here lies the tremendous scope for expansion of location-based services (LBS). One of the key approaches that have been recognized as an enabler of such a view is policy-based management, which has been mostly acknowledged as a methodology that provides adaptability and support to automatically assign network resources, control Quality of Service and security, by considering administratively specified rules. The hype of policy-based management was to commit with these features in run-time as a result of changeable network conditions resulting from the interactions of users, applications and existing resources. This paper proposes an adaptive architectural framework which deals with the critical nature of addressing the policy conflict problem. In this framework, policies are used as a mechanism to direct and adapt the behavior of self-adaptive systems. This policy-based framework consists of a set of processes, the self-coordinator process represents as the main process; which coordinates all the framework activities. Furthermore, the paper provides a guideline to avoid static and dynamic policy conflicts of different applications.