Semantic-based Approach to Context Management in Ubiquitous Environment

Context-aware applications need to react and adapt to changes in their computing environment, which is in general ubiquitous and inherently distributed. Therefore, the context communication faces the problem of context representations heterogeneity, the limitation of devices capacity and network bandwidth. In order to overcome this challenging issue, a particular management of the context is required either for its collection, update, and exchange. In this paper, we propose an approach to manage the context in ubiquitous environments based on the semantic representation of the context and its update using standard languages such as RDF and RDF(s). Our proposed approach provides the simplicity and flexibility that allow the developer to express the context without the need for a unified context model. The results of the experimentation carried out using a prototype implementation of a middleware supports the proposed approach, are in favour of using our approach in the case of resource-constrained devices and network. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.