Hui Lei

Context-aware computing [Guest Editors' Intro.]

When teh Guest Editors originally proposed this special issue topic to the IEEE, it was targeted for the Personal Communications magazine. Since that original proposal, IEEE Pervasive Computing came into existence and Personal Communications was renamed IEEE Wireless Communications. The editorial boards decided to spread the special issue across both magazines. We received a total of 24 submissions, and 12 were accepted (seven in IEEE Pervasive Computing and five in the Oct. 2002 IEEE Wireless Communications). The Guest Editors provide a brief summary of the articles included in tis Special Issue.

Enabling location-based applications

We identify a number of factors that may hinder the commercial success of location-based applications: the concern of privacy, the need to consider context beyond location, the presence of voluminous resources, and the constrained interfaces available on mobile devices. We describe an end-to-end system architecture with integrated support to address these issues. In particular, the architecture includes a Secure Context Service that provides broad context information to applications and allows people to flexibly control the release of their private information, an Intelligent Service Discovery Service that allows for personalized selection of physical and virtual services, and a multi-modal interaction mechanism that enables users to exploit multiple synchronized access channels to interact with an application and to switch among channels at any time. Our goals are to improve user experience, to reduce user distraction and to facilitate awareness of the physical world.