Multilayer context cloud framework for mobile Web 2.0: a proposed infrastructure

Existing context-aware systems focus only on characterizing the situation of an entity to exhibit the advantage of contextual information association, but they have no mechanism to facilitate the interoperation and reuse of contextual information. Cloud computing offers an adaptable and flexible solution for existing context-aware applications, integrating Mobile Web 2.0 technologies. This work presents a multilayer context cloud framework (MCCF) that integrates Web 2.0 technologies into a mobile context-aware system for use in a cloud computing environment. The proposed MCCF includes a context sensor layer, a context information layer, a context service layer, a context representation layer, a cloud computing layer, and a mobile Web 2.0 context-aware Software as a Service layer. To demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, a Mobile Web 2.0-based context-aware Software as a Service platform, which is a cloud computing application based on MCCF, is implemented to provide continuous and context-aware monitoring of a specific application. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.