Status and trends of mobile-health applications for iOS devices: A developer's perspective

The Internet of Things presents the user with a novel means of communicating with the Web world through ubiquitous object-enabled networks. Cloud Computing enables a convenient, on demand and scalable network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. This paper mainly focuses on a common approach to integrate the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud Computing under the name of CloudThings architecture. We review the state of the art for integrating Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things. We examine an IoT-enabled smart home scenario to analyze the IoT application requirements. We also propose the CloudThings architecture, a Cloud-based Internet of Things platform which accommodates CloudThings IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS for accelerating IoT application, development, and management. Moreover, we present our progress in developing the CloudThings architecture, followed by a conclusion.

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CloudThings: A common architecture for integrating the Internet of Things with Cloud Computing

The evolution of smartphones together with increasing computational power has empowered developers to create innovative context-aware applications for recognizing user-related social and cognitive activities in any situation and at any location. The existence and awareness of the context provide the capability of being conscious of physical environments or situations around mobile device users. This allows network services to respond proactively and intelligently based on such awareness. The key idea behind context-aware applications is to encourage users to collect, analyze, and share local sensory knowledge in the purpose for a large-scale community use by creating a smart network. The desired network is capable of making autonomous logical decisions to actuate environmental objects and also assist individuals. However, many open challenges remain, which are mostly arisen because the middleware services provided in mobile devices have limited resources in terms of power, memory, and bandwidth. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the drawbacks can be elaborated and resolved and, at the same time, better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the context-awareness. To this end, this paper surveys the literature over the period of 1991–2014 from the emerging concepts to applications of context-awareness in mobile platforms by providing up-to-date research and future research directions. Moreover, it points out the challenges faced in this regard and enlightens them by proposing possible solutions.

/pdf/context-awareness-for-mobile-sensing-a-survey-and-future-3unf1otm62.pdf

Context-Awareness for Mobile Sensing: A Survey and Future Directions

Our life is characterized by the presence of a multitude of interactive devices and smart objects exploited for disparate goals in different contexts of use. Thus, it is impossible for application developers to predict at design time the devices and objects users will exploit, how they will be arranged, and in which situations and for which objectives they will be used. For such reasons, it is important to make end users able to easily and autonomously personalize the behaviour of their Internet of Things applications, so that they can better comply with their specific expectations. In this paper, we present a method and a set of tools that allow end users without programming experience to customize the context-dependent behaviour of their Web applications through the specification of trigger-action rules. The environment is able to support end-user specification of more flexible behaviour than what can be done with existing commercial tools, and it also includes an underlying infrastructure able to detect the possible contextual changes in order to achieve the desired behaviour. The resulting set of tools is able to support the dynamic creation and execution of personalized application versions more suitable for users’ needs in specific contexts of use. Thus, it represents a contribution to obtaining low threshold/high ceiling environments. We also report on an example application in the home automation domain, and a user study that has provided useful positive feedback.

Personalization of Context-Dependent Applications Through Trigger-Action Rules

Developments in mobile devices and wireless networking provide the technical platform for video streaming over mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) However, efforts to realize video streaming over MANETs have met many challenges, which are addressed by several different techniques Examples include cross-layer optimization, caching and replication, and packet prioritization Cross-layer optimization typically leverages multiple description video coding and multipath routing to provide the receiver(s) sufficient video quality Caching and replication add tolerance to disruptions and partitioning In this paper, we identify the challenges of realizing video streaming over MANETs, and analyze and classify the proposed techniques Since 65 % of the identified involve cross-layering design, we study the distribution of joint optimization and parameter exchanges Due to the importance and complexity of evaluating the techniques, we analyze the common methods, indicating that the research domain suffers from a problem of comparability

Challenges and techniques for video streaming over mobile ad hoc networks

We present a context-aware middleware for mobile multimedia applications. The middleware offers functionality for service discovery, asynchronous messaging, publish/subscribe event management, storing and management of context information, building the user interface, and handling the local and network resources. It supports a wide range of context information including location, time, and user's preferences. Further, it allows controlling the connectivity of the device; the middleware is capable of switching traffic from one network connection to another. It can locate the services and software components as well. It facilitates development of multimedia applications by handling such functions as capture and rendering, storing, retrieving and adapting of media content to various mobile devices. The middleware offers facilities for media alerts, which are multimedia messages that are generated when predefined context is recognized. With these capabilities, it enables development of complex context-aware multimedia applications for mobile devices.

Context-aware middleware for mobile multimedia applications

Activity-oriented computing (AOC) is a paradigm promoting the run-time realization of applications by composing ubiquitous services in the user's surroundings according to abstract specifications of user activities. The paradigm is particularly well-suited for enacting ubiquitous applications. However, there is still a need for end-users to create and control the ubiquitous applications because they are better aware of their own needs and activities than any existing context-aware system could ever be. In this chapter, we give an overview of state of the art ubiquitous application composition, present the architecture of the MEDUSA middleware and demonstrate its realization, which is based on existing open-source solutions. On the basis of our discussion on state of the art ubiquitous application composition, we argue that current implementations of the AOC paradigm are lacking in end-user support. Our solution, the MEDUSA middleware, allows end-users to explicitly compose applications from networked services, while building on an activity-oriented computing infrastructure to dynamically realize the composition.

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MEDUSA: Middleware for End-User Composition of Ubiquitous Applications

Recently, we have been witnessing how various social applications and networking services are being integrated more deeply into our daily lives. Until now, social interaction has been attributed exclusively to humans, while resources and the smart space have supported interaction as passive mediators only. However, the involvement of smart spaces as an active actor in the interaction process facilitates more flexible and user-centered applications for users. This article explores how knowledge-based technologies enable smart spaces to actively take part in the interaction. We argue that smart spaces should be able not only to adapt their behaviour according to the actions of humans and other participants, but also initiate interaction when it is necessary. In order to support this statement, we categorise the types of interaction from the participants' perspective, and review and evaluate the technologies enabling interaction in smart spaces. Furthermore, we present our constructive research on interaction in smart spaces: proof-of-concept prototype applications realizing different architectures and supporting various types of interaction in smart spaces.

/pdf/towards-interactive-smart-spaces-3mdy3khxi2.pdf

Towards interactive smart spaces

Pervasive computing environments enable the composition of applications from components allocated across different devices. The applications have to be composed at run-time, to cope with changes in context and resource availability in the environment. In addition, this functionality has to be automated in order to minimize user involvement in application management. We propose two new algorithms which are capable of dynamic allocation of application components to multiple networking devices. These algorithms optimize the selection of the networking devices and the structure of composite applications according to a given criteria, such as minimizing hardware requirements, maximizing the application QoS or other criteria specified by the user. The algorithms are based on generic models. This allows the approach to be used in multiple application domains. We analyze the performance of these algorithms in a simulated environment and suggest a system that utilizes our algorithms for pervasive application composition.

https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00372212/document

Algorithms for Composing Pervasive Applications

We present an architecture that offers a set of gen eric services for building context-aware mobile app lications. We present two realized prototypes that recognize user 's context, learn his routines, use context informa tion to constrain service discovery as well as to find relevant infor mation, and manage connectivity on the basis of the given policy. Further, the user interfaces and applications are s eparated using a script language, and video message delivery is controlled based on presence information. We are no t aware of any other prototypes offering equally wi de context-aware functionality. According to the visions presented in the recent ye ars by Weiser (1991) and many others, the future of technology and its users seems bright. A user can a ccess any service at any place and at any time. The services adapt to the user's situation, her profile , and the resources provided by the local environme nt. Context-awareness is an essential ingredient in suc h services and hence an important research topic. In this paper, we present an architecture offering a set of generic services for building context-awar e mobile applications for mobile users. The Capnet (C ontext-Aware and Pervasive Networks) architecture divides functionality into components from differen t domains. Components can be searched, downloaded, and started as required at run time. This allows the application structure to be adapted to the situati on at hand. Furthermore, components are location-transparent an d hence always communicate in the same fashion, regardless of whether they are located in the same address space or in devices far away from each othe r. The architecture specifies a service for obtaining cont ext information, both synchronously and asynchronously as context events. Its other advanced features include data storage that associates documents with the co ntext, dynamic and transparent connectivity adaptation, co ntext-sensitive service discovery, asynchronous messaging between the applications. The main contributions of this work are the wide set of services collected into a single architecture, the wide usag e of context, the ability of the services to adopt to the changes in the environment. We present the prototyp e that implements the architecture and demonstrates its features and abilities. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The ne xt section describes the architecture. The third sec tion presents two prototypes and the experiments performed. The first prototype has the capacity of learnin g the user's behavior pattern according to context histor y. The second one offers various context-aware serv ices for mobile users. Related work is discussed in the fourth section. The last section presents the discus sion.

Oleg Davidyuk

Papers

Context-aware middleware for mobile multimedia applications

MEDUSA: Middleware for End-User Composition of Ubiquitous Applications

Towards interactive smart spaces

Algorithms for Composing Pervasive Applications

Enabling context-aware services for mobile users