Supporting mobile context-aware applications on a global scale

Existing context services mostly support context-aware applications inside a closed, tightly-scoped environment. In order to provide a user with real pervasive computing experiences, a context service must be able to support roaming applications across different environments. We propose a global context infrastructure to address this issue. We discuss the general architecture of the context infrastructure and the design of the context service in one local environment, which is based on a context flow language and the corresponding run-time environment.