Context aware environments

Introduction & Definition

Context awareness is a term from ubiquitous computing or as so-called pervasive computing which sought to deal with linking changes in the environment with computer systems, which are otherwise static. 

This term is usually applied to the business theory in relation with the business process management.

Basically context is the rules of inter-relationship of features in processing any entities. Context is supposed to be the combination of the four entities which are

• Location
• Identity
• Activity
• Time

Context aware devices are the devices which can both sense, and react based on their environment. Devices may have information about the circumstances under which they are able to operate and based on rules, or an intelligent stimulus, react accordingly. These devices try to make assumptions about the user's current situation. 

Context aware systems can

•          Perceive a situation i.e. acquisition of context.
•          Understand the context. i.e. matching sensory stimulus to a context.
•          Trigger actions i.e. behaviour based on the recognized context.

User’s activity and location are very crucial factors in context awareness. 

Applications of context aware devices 

•   Adapt interfaces
•   Tailor application-relevant data
•   Discover services
•   Make the user interaction implicit
•   Build smart environments.

Categories of context aware environments

• 1.      Human factors related context –
•       User information – user’s habits, emotional state etc.
•       User’s social environment - co-location of others, social interaction
•       User’s tasks - Spontaneous activity, engaged tasks.
• 2.      Physical environment context –
•       Location (absolute position, relative position, co-location,...),
•       Infrastructure (surrounding resources for computation, communication, task performance...),
•       Physical conditions (noise, light, pressure,...).

Educational gaming

                 Educational games are the innovative softwares built to teach the people concepts, subjects, events, culture as they play. There have been numerous educational games on various popular subjects which are very helpful in understanding a subject very quickly without much effort. Educational games have been most helpful in schools providing a fun medium of teaching.

There are various types of educational games

•          Board games
•          Card games
•          Video games

Board games

These types of games are played with the pieces that are placed on premarked board and they can be moved across or removed from it. The board games have the board marked according to need.

The usual theme of game is map of an area. And the pieces can be moved across the area with the roll of dice.

Example – Monopoly, chess.

Card games

These types of games are played using cards which are regular deck of 52 cards or according to the game. These games help in chain expanding, set matching, etc.

There are flash card games also which help in improving the memory by teaching the maths or other concepts.

Video games 

Video games have historically received more criticism than other forms of recreational learning because they are often perceived as or associated with issues such as mindless entertainment, enhanced social recluse, sexism and consumerism.

            Educational video games are considered a type of serious game, as these games have a strong purpose other than pure entertainment.

            Video games can aid the development of proficiency by allowing users to interact with objects and manipulate variables.

            An educational computer game can be defined as an electronic medium with all the characteristics of a gaming environment that have intended educational outcomes targeted at specific groups of learners.

Educational games also aid in educating students and adults about the finer details of different political systems.

            Children growing up today can benefit from educational video games because they are already exposed to a society that is increasingly dependent on digital technology.

            The medium of educational games provides an opportunity for teachers to introduce educational and playful elements into the learning environment.

            Computer games could become part of the school curriculum after researchers found they had significant educational value.

            Many games such as Sim City and Roller Coaster, Tycoon, where players create societies or build theme parks, developed children's strategic thinking and planning skills.

             Adult education games are aimed at higher levels of education being targeted at young-adults and up. Like children's games, they can be in the form of mini-games, adventure games, role-playing games and so on.

Children's games

•          Genomics Digital Lab
•          Gizmos & Gadgets
•          History of Biology game
•          Reader Rabbit
•          Urban Jungle
•          WolfQuest

Adult educational computer games

•          Democracy
•          Food Force
•          Global Conflict: Palestine
•          Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing
•          Miniconomy

Ubiquitous Computing

Introduction & Definition

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives.

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences. 

In Ubiquitous computing human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone "using" ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so.

History of research

            Mark Weiser introduced the phrase ‘ubiquitous computing’ in 1988 during his tenure as chief technologist of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He wrote some early papers on the subject to define and give more information on the subject with the inportant concerns regarding the subject.

            Some more contribution to the field was also given by MIT at media labs in form of consortium by Hiroshi Ishii. Also Georgia Tech's College of Computing, NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, UC Irvine's Department of Informatics, Microsoft Research, Intel Research and Equator, Ajou University UCRi & CUS were some of the contributions.

Concept of ubiquitous computing

Ubiquitous computing presents challenges across computer science: in systems design and engineering, in systems modeling, and in user interface design. Contemporary human-computer interaction models, whether command-line, menu-driven, or GUI-based, are inappropriate for the ubiquitous case, natural interaction paradigm will be needed for interaction.

Three forms of ubiquitous system devices are

1.      Dust

2.      Skin

3.      Clay

1. Dust – Dust are tiny devices without visual display. They are autonomous sensing and communication devices in cubic millimetre.

E.g.- Sensors for temperature, humidity, light, motion, in product monitoring, car monitoring, etc.

2. Skin – Skin are the fabrics made of light emitting and conductive polymers. They can be grouped to form flexible display surfaces like on cloths.

E.g.- OLED displays.

3. Clay – Ensembles of “Dust” systems formed into arbitrary 3D shapes resembling many physical objects. 

Advantages

• Facilitating human-computer interaction
• Advancement from the desktop paradigm
• Small, inexpensive, robust networked processing devices
• Integrated into everyday objects and activities
• Context awareness.

Applications

1. Natalie Jeremijenko's "Live Wire" - For indication of traffic.
2. Ambient Devices' orb - For receiving data from a wireless network and report current events, such as stock prices and the weather 

Location based services

Location based services definition

Today in the age of telecommunication the mobile network operators innovate ways to create differentiation. One such innovation is delivering services which are highly personalized. The services are mostly location based. These are also called as Location based services.

So the Location based services are the services which are of entertainment and information nature which can be accessible with the mobile devices through the mobile network using the geographical position of mobile device.

Location is a strategic asset of wireless carriers. Leveraging this information enables the user to experience value-added services and the mobile network operator to offer differentiation and incremental profitability

Technology used

Location based services use the following technologies

•           Global positioning systems. (GPS) – this is used for positioning the user globally with the help of satellites.

•          Network based positioning systems – for triangulation of the signal from cell sites serving a mobile phone.

•          Geographic Information Systems (GIS) – It  provide the tools to provision and administer base map data such as manmade structures (streets, buildings) and terrain (mountains, rivers). GIS is also used to manage point-of-interest data such as location of gas stations, restaurants etc. Finally, GIS information also includes information about the radio frequency characteristics of the mobile network. This allows the system to determine the serving cell site of the user.

•          Location Management Function - The location management function acts as a gateway and mediator between positioning equipment and LBS infrastructure. location management function processes positioning and GIS data on behalf of LBS applications.

Mobile locating methods

There are following locating methods

•          Control plane locating – here the control plane service provider gets location based on radio signal delay of the closest cell phone tower. But this method is time consuming as it uses voice controlled channel.

•          GSM localization – here the mobile is located in relation with the cell site. This method rely on various means of multilateration of the signal from cell sites serving the mobile phone.

Location based services applications

·     Requesting the business service like ATM

·         Navigation of drivers

·         Advertising

·         Receiving alerts

·         Tracking.

Privacy issues – 

With the network so wide spread and the messaging ability combined with the locating power the privacy issues are of high concern. IT acts is enforced in many countries like US and Europe which prohibits the spammers also other people using the network for their own benefit.

 

Ubiquitous Healthcare Systems

Healthcare activities based on Information and Communication Technologies - is one the most prominent of these e-business services that can have a major visible impact on the development of the society, as endorsed in the World Health Assembly in May 2005. 

Ubiquitous Healthcare (u-Health) focuses on e-Health applications that can provide health care to people anywhere at any time using broadband and wireless mobile technologies.
 

Components of ubiquitous healthcare system

A ubiquitous healthcare system consists of

• Physiological signal devices
• A mobile system
• A device provider system
• A healthcare service provider system
• A physician system 
• A healthcare personal system.

In this system, wireless body area network (WBAN) such as ZigBee is used to communicate between physiological signal devices and the mobile system. 

WBAN device needs a specific function for ubiquitous healthcare application. A scanning algorithm, dynamic discovery and installation, reliable data transmission, device access control, and a healthcare profile is needed for ubiquitous healthcare system.

There are a lot of small devices in ubiquitous healthcare system. There is much difficulty in using a new small device if it is not discovered automatically. The small devices should be discovered and installed automatically to implement ubiquitous healthcare system.

Types of Wearable Physiological Devices -

• Wrist watch type.
• Chest belt type.
• Shoulder type.
• Necklace type.

Benefits of ubiquitous healthcare system

• More efficient utilization of physicians,
• Shortened hospital stays,
• Reducing the skill level and frequency of visits of home-care professionals
• Reducing hospital readmission rates, and
• Promoting health education can all contribute to reduced healthcare costs.
• The ubiquitous healthcare system enables medical professionals to remotely perform real-time monitoring, early diagnosis, and treatment for potential risky disease. 
• Furthermore, the medical diagnosis and patient consultations can be delivered via wire/wireless communication channels.
• The ubiquitous healthcare system can provide a cheaper and smarter way to manage and care for patients suffering from age-related chronic diseases, such as heart disease , because chronic diseases require continuous, long-term monitoring rather than episodic assessments.
• A continuous health monitoring system should be

§  Wearable and easy to use.

§  Plug-and-play system using Bluetooth as the wireless communication protocol.

§  Integrate current personal digital assistant (PDA) technology and wireless local area network (WLAN) technology. 

 

Opportunistic systems

One of the basic foundations of ubiquitous computing is self awareness. If we consider the huge amount and the fast growing number of embedded or mobile devices the traditional design-time-defined sensing approaches are incompatible. Ubiquitous computing system designs have to shift their approach from time defined sensing to the one that opportunistically collects the data from various sources like physical sensors, internet etc. prominent examples being positioning systems implemented in the current generations of smart phones opportunistically making the use of GPS, GSM.

Opportunistic sensing is the foundation for self aware ubiquitous computer systems including very large numbers of entities in open ended environments. Opportunistic sensing system is not limited to specific application domain.

Until today the sensing networks consisted of homogeneous cluster of small sensing nodes communicating wirelessly. They executed a fixed set of applications. The data is streamed over and there exist a simultaneous end to end path from source to destination. In the mobile networks there is no fix infrastructure. Nodes move around and change environment constantly. The mobile phones carry the data from cluster to cluster and there is no simultaneous end to end communication path. Sensor data is collected and distributed opportunistically. 

Many times the case is that mobile phones use human centric approach not the device centric approach. Mobile phone user not only becomes collector of data but he also filters and disseminates the data.

Context awareness is one of the foundations of ubiquitous computing. It can be achieved through various techniques like signal processing, pattern recognition & reasoning. Opportunistic sensing revisits these techniques to deal with opportunistic nature of the substrate.
 

There can be many new areas for the opportunistic sensing

• Mobile crowd sensing
• Urban sensing
• Smart appliances
• Traffic & transportation

1. Mobile crowd sensing – The widespread use of mobile phones calls for the decentralized use of sensor data to infer the crowd behavior. Information spread and processing are some of the main domains for the technology.
2. Urban sensing – mobile, vehicle mounted sensors combined with publicly available information enable user to sense, share, record their personal environment.
3. Smart appliances – devices which are able to adapt the changing service requirements are one of the service domains of opportunistic sensing.
4. Traffic & transportation – Collective vehicular settings, acting and requesting services while transit is also one of the domains of opportunistic sensing. 

Pervasive wireless networks

Introduction

Wireless networks have been used for communication for decades now. Wireless networks  not only provide us with location independence but also ease of access. Wireless communication has evolved to a very large extent in past few decades. In today’s world we see many forms of wireless communication networks viz. Cellular networks, WiFi networks, and personal area networks. Today the need for high speed, low cost data connectivity is growing day by day.

Wireless networks generations 

Wireless communication devices have been evolved in many generations

• First generation (1G) – Transmission of only voice
• Second generation (2G) – Voice as well as data transmission. The 2.5G as well as 2.5G+ are enhancements which could support higher data transmission rates.
• Third generation (3G) – More transmission rates including transmission of voice, data and multimedia streams.

Communication standards

Long range communication –

Wireless communication devices such as mobile phones use the following standards for communication

• GSM
• CDMA

GSM – GSM (Global system for mobile communication) was developed in 1982 in Europe. GSM support the data rate of about 14.4 kbps. Many standards have been derived based on GSM which are explained below.

GSM 900	Found in 1982. Uses FDMA and TDMA for user access of channel. Operate at 890-915 MHz for uplink and 935-960 MHz for downlink. Data rates are 14.4 kbps.
EGSM (Enhanced GSM)	Operate at 880-915MHz for uplink and 925-960 MHz for downlink
GPRS (General packet radio service)	Is a packet oriented service. Uses unused channels in TDMA mode in a GSM network
EDGE (Enhanced data rates for GSM evolution)	Higher data rates upto 48 kbps. The rates can be enhanced upto 384 kbps by coding techniques.

CDMA – CDMA (Code division multiplexing access) is one more mobile standard which started in  1991. CDMA support high speed data rates and is considered 3G. CDMA can transfer voice, data as well as multimedia.

CDMA based standards are explained as follows.

CDMA one	Founded in 1991. Operates at 824-849 MHz. Can transmit along signals from multiple sources and users.
3GPP (Wide CDMA)	Support asynchronous operations. Support 3.84 Mbps chipping rate.
3GPP2	Founded in 2001 Used for voice, multimedia, real time multimedia, circuit and packet switching communication.
UMTS (Universal mobile communication system)	Support both 3GPP, 3GPP2 Data rate of 100 kbps to 2 Mbps. Chipping rate of 3.84 Mbps.

Short range communication –

Although wireless devices use mobile network standards for long range communication the short range communication is facilitated by WPAN & WLAN.

WPAN (Wireless personal area network) – WPAN assist the communication of mobile devices with home computers at short distances.

WPAN use following standards for communication.

1. Bluetooth – Bluetooth IEEE 802.15.1 is one of the standard used by WPAN which operate at the frequency of 2.4 GHz. It is identical to IEEE 802.11b WLAN standard. It provides short distance mobile communication with a data rate of 1 Mbps. Examples of such transmission are mobile phone headset, hands free etc. 
2. ZigBee – IEEE 802.15.4 standard used by WPAN is called as ZigBee. ZigBee is used in lower transmitting power systems. It has lower network joining latency as compared to Bluetooth. It provides automation and remote controls up to range of 70 m. The data rates supported by ZigBee are 250kbps, 40kbps & 20kbps with a spectra 2.4 GHz, 902 to 928 MHz & 868 to 870 MHz.

WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) & Internet access – WLAN facilitates the communication between mobile and internet. WLAN is WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) based service. WLAN uses the following set of standards for communication.

IEEE 802.11a	It support infrastructure based architecture as well as mobile ad hoc network. It uses OFDM modulation. The data rates supports are from 54 kbps to few Mbps.
IEEE 802.11b	It operates at 54 Mbps and 2.4 GHz. Modulation is DSSS/FHSS. It also support distance wireless networking using Bluetooth It provides protected WiFi access Data rates are 1 Mbps (Bluetooth), 2 Mbps, 5.5 Mbps, 11 Mbps and 54 Mbps(HIPERLAN 2).
IEEE 802.11g	Operates at 54 Mbps and 2.4 GHz. Support many new Bluetooth applications and compatible with 802.11b. Uses DSSS modulation in place of OFDMA.
IEEE 802.11i	Provides AES (Advance encryption standard) & DES (Data encryption standard) security standards.

Security – Security is one of the main areas of concern in the wireless network communication. Some of the main security issues are

• Security of the data transmitted from one point to other.
• Non repudiation of the data
• Authentication

Authentication – Authentication has been an important issue in security. For authentication in wireless networks use secrecy code which is calculated using the 128 bit random number given by the base station. Then authentication code is calculated. This is sent back to base station which is compared with number in the database if the number matches the device is authenticated.

Security of data – For security of data the wireless devices uses the cryptography algorithms which encrypt the data in some other unreadable format. There are two categories of algorithms Symmetric and Asymmetric.