Enabling Context Awareness in Ambient Environments using Cloud Infrastructures

Abstract: This thesis was prepared in collaboration with Acreo (Research and Development Company) and OpenCare (IT Company). Its purpose was to design and develop a research testbed to enable context awareness in pervasive environments by modifying the MediaSense framework (EU Funded project) of Mid Sweden University. In ubiquitous environments, the proliferation of devices such as sensors, active badges, mobile phones, RFID and NfC tags enables the development of intelligent services towards new forms of pervasive applications. These intelligent services seamlessly gather context information and the benefits offered are in the provision of better services. The inspiration given by these intelligent services has meant that the focus of thesis has been on using these services in a healthcare application. The challenge is that the proposed testbed should address the intelligent delivery of health information to any host, anywhere, based on the user’s context. Further, context reasoning requires substantial computing power and smart devices have limited resources in terms of processing and memory, so, the testbed should enable smart communication to take place between these devices. The proposed solution satisfies the stated requirements by using a cloud infrastructure and a Distributed Context eXchange Protocol (DCXP). Any device on the internet that is DCXP capable may register with the architecture and share context information in an efficient way. In order to view context information, TV, smartphones, internet tablets and web interfaces have been provided for both the user and the health centre. By successfully addressing the requirements of the testbed, this thesis has enabled the creation of a pervasive healthcare application. Hence, this thesis concludes with the observation that the proposed approach for context awareness in a healthcare system has the ability to deal with the stated challenges.