Alejandro Cadenas

Framework for intelligent service adaptation to user's context in next generation networks

Context-aware applications aim at providing personalized services to end users. Sensors and context sources are able to provide enormous amounts of valuable information about individuals that can be used to drive the behavior of services and applications, and adapt them to the specific conditions and preferences of each user. Thanks to advances in mobility, convergence and integration, increasingly larger amounts of these data are available in the Internet. However, this context information is usually fragmented, and traditionally applications have had to take care of context management themselves. This work presents a solution for a converged context management framework and how it can be employed in a future Internet to integrate data from all context sources and serve it to client applications in a seamless and transparent manner. This framework takes advantage of the intelligent and convergent features of next-generation networks, allowing seamless integration, monitoring, and control of heterogeneous sensors and devices under a single context-aware service layer. This layer is centered on a context intelligence module, capable of combining clustering algorithms and semantics to learn from user usage history and take advantage of that information to infer missing or high-level context data.

Context management in mobile environments: a semantic approach

This paper presents a first draft of a context management model and architecture in the scope of mobile end-user services, paying special attention to mobile scenarios and specific mobility environments. The paper describes our notion of context and presents the process followed for developing the ontologies for representing context, providing an overview of the first version of these ontologies. Besides, we propose an architecture for managing context in mobile environments, including high-level descriptions of the components that compose it, as well as some low level details regarding the contextual interfaces involved. To show the way all these components interoperate and the advantages of the defined architecture and semantic model, we describe a use case with specific implementation details.

Learning semantically-annotated routes for context-aware recommendations on map navigation systems

Modern technology has brought many changes to our everyday lives. Our need to be in constant touch with others has been met with the cellphone, which has become our companion and the convergence point of many technological advances. The combination of capabilities such as browsing the Internet and GPS reception has multiplied the services and applications based on the current location of the user. However, providing the user with these services has certain drawbacks. Although map navigation systems are the most meaningful way of displaying this information, the user still has to manually set up the filter in order to obtain a non-bloated visualization of the map and the available services. To tackle this problem, we present here a semantic multicriteria ant colony algorithm capable of learning the users routes, including associated context information, and then predicting the most likely route a user is following, given his current location and context data. This knowledge could then be used as the basis for offering services related to his current (or most likely future) context data close to the path he is following. Our experimental results show that our algorithm is capable of obtaining consistent solutions sets even when multiple objective ontological terms are included in the process.

Management of service sessions in an NGN-SOA execution environment [Next-Generation Telco IT Architectures]

Collective intelligence is the key asset behind Web 2.0. Nowadays, users can share contents and information, but they are also able to compose services thanks to new user-oriented service platforms. In this article a distributed orchestration service execution environment for converged service platforms running over next-generation networks is presented, together with its main support function, the Dispatcher, an element which carries out load balancing and policy enforcement. Taking advantage of the intelligence and support operations offered by NGNs, this kind of SEE is specifically useful for telecommunication operators entering the value added service market, because it simplifies the implementation of their service-specific security and billing policies, and additionally allows easy service execution management for non-expert end users by offering service start and stop functionalities at the push of a button.

Location-Aware Computing, Virtual Networks

This issue includes four works in process on issues and applications in location-aware computing: letting users set and control privacy policies when they use location-aware applications, cold-starting recommender systems for mobile location-aware services, aggregating contextual information for location-based applications, and applying location-based services to public transportation environments. The department also includes a report on lightweight virtualization of low-power wireless personal area networks.

User-oriented environment for management of convergent services

In the Internet of Services, users are surrounded by lots of connected devices and remote services with the potential for real-time interaction. While users could manually command their operation, it will be extremely convenient to have an environment where interaction workflows could easily be defined so that services could operate autonomously following those patterns. This article presents a system to allow individuals with no specific programming skills to define and execute those interaction workflows using graphical abstractions. The system has been validated inside a smart home scenario, as a good representative of the future Internet of Services environment due to the presence of multiple heterogeneous devices and services from different domains.

Deployment of contextual corporate telco services based on protocol adaptation in the NGN environment

Deployment of contextual services is usually constrained to specific areas where contextual behavior can be obtained, mainly due to coverage limitations of context acquisition devices. Although end customers highly appreciate contextual services, those limitations make such services difficult to commercialize. In this article we present a practical deployment of a contextual service offered by a convergent telecommunications operator, whose functionality is to provide intelligent context-based call routing and rerouting, orchestrated from the operators service layer. It is based on IMS control layer capabilities to properly capture the situation of the end user in a ubiquitous coverage area. The users context is stored in a network-centric element in order to leverage that information across different services, optimizing the system by increasing the quality of the information captured and processed. This implementation proves that value-added contextual services may be built efficiently today using available products and protocols. Since contextual services will likely be a valuable part of a service providers portfolio, this implementation can help creators of new contextual services to meet cost and time-to-market objectives.

Context-Aware Processing of Mobile Device Sensor Information: Car Accident Detection Hosted Service

Context-Aware applications can be made globally deployed through Hosted applications that can process contextual information captured by the sensors available at the personal devices surrounding the user. In the first part of this paper the architectural principles to deploy contextual applications from the operator network are presented, focusing on the current state-of-the-art technological options for convergence. In order to demonstrate the principles introduced, a prototype is developed of a contextual service to detect pervasively the driving emergencies of the user and trigger the appropriate actions from the network, including an emulator of the device terminal capabilities, convergent control layer and context-aware application server. The description and specific details of such prototype are provided in the second part of the paper.

Intelligent context retrieval and management for services in the Internet of Things

Information processing about a users situation or users context is one of the most significant paradigms in nowadays end user services development, supporting ambient intelligence, or applications that are able to react smartly to the condition of users and their surroundings. In the Internet of Things, where a plethora of connected devices produces and consumes information, there are many actors who will play the roles of context providers and context consumers. However, in a global environment, acquisition, processing and consumption of users context information would be much easier if performed in a controlled and ordered fashion within an information exchange framework. In this paper, a proposal for a Convergent Context Enabler CCE is described and specific details are provided about the users context processing and the interfaces designed to support the architecture. Finally, a use case of context-aware services in the Internet of Things is presented and analysed in detail.