Engineering Policy-Based Ubiquitous Systems

The advent of miniaturized sensors that can be carried on the body or embedded in the environment, together with ubiquitous 'smartphones' with various sensors means that ubiquitous computing systems already pervade our lives. However, for them to 'disappear' in the background, they need to be adaptive, autonomous and self-managing. We present an architectural model based on policy-based self-managed cells for engineering ubiquitous computing systems, and discuss issues of security and fault management. We indicate the need for learning adaptive behaviour from users and the importance of formal methods within the engineering design process.