UBIQUITOUS AND PERVASIVE

COMPUTING

Year 4
Academic Year : 2022/2023
Computer and Software Engineering
School of ICT
College of Science and Technology
University of Rwanda

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Two main Keywords
• Ubiquitous Computing
• Pervasive Computing

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

Ubiquitous Computing
Introduction

What is Ubiquitous Computing?

Also known as Ubicomp

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Two computing paradigm
• Two terms:
• Prevalent Computing

• Ubiquitous computing

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Prevalent Computing
• Prevalent Computing paradigm:
• personal information management,
• including personal computers (PCs) such desktops and
laptops
• with fixed configurations of mouse, keyboard, and monitor
wired local area network;
• dedicated network services with fixed network addresses
and locations

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 What is Ubiquitous Computing?
• creating a completely new paradigm of computing environment in
almost
• -a heterogeneous set of devices,
• including invisible computers embedded in everyday objects such as
cars and furniture,
• including mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs)
and smart phones,
• Including personal devices such as laptops, and very large devices
such as wall-sized displays and computers situated in the
environments and buildings we inhabit
• Have different operating systems, networking interfaces, input
capabilities, and displays
 Three Waves of Computing
● Mainframe computing era
– massive computers to execute big data processing applications
– very few computers in the world

● Desktop computing era

– one computer at every desk to help in business related activities
– computers connected in intranets to a massive global network
(internet), all wired

● Ubiquitous computing era

– tens/hundreds of computing devices in every room/person,
becoming “invisible” and part of the environment
By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Ubiquitous Computing Eras
Size Number
One computer for
many people

One computer
for each person

Many computers
for each person
 Ubiquitous Computing cont..
• Ubiquitous, Invisible Computing : Computers
disappear into the background.
• Computers embedded in walls in every day objects
• A person might interact with hundreds of computers at
a time, each invisibly embedded in the environment
and wirelessly communicating with each other
 Ubicomp Interaction mode

Interaction mode goes beyond the one to-one model

prevalent for PCs, to a many-to-many model where
• the same person uses multiple devices, and several
persons may use the same device
• Interaction may be implicit, invisible, or through
sensing natural interactions such as speech,
gesture, or presence: a wide range of sensors is
required
 What makes it possible…

1GB in Flashcard format

• Processing
– cheaper, faster, smaller, more energy efficient
• Storage
– Big, fast and small in size.
• Networking
– global, local, ad-hoc, low-power, high bandwidth, low latencies
• Sensors
• -Different sensor to provide information about the environment
• Displays
– projection, flexible materials, power consumption
 Requirements for ubiquitous
computing
• Things must be smart …
– small, cheap, mobile processors, with sensors, actuators, and networking
– in almost all everyday objects including on our body
(“wearable computing”)
– Real world objects are enriched with information processing and
communication capabilities
 Requirements (cont.)
• Things are connected …
– wireless, most probably to the Internet to form a
smart space/environment and is linked to the
cyberspace
 FOUNDING CONTRIBUTIONS
• Xerox PARC: was coined by Mark Weiser inn1988 at
Xerox PARC( Computer Science Laboratory),
• “The most profound technologies are those that disappear.
They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until
they are indistinguishable from it” by Mark Weiser
• mobile and embedded processors can communicate with
each other and the surrounding infrastructure

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Ubicomp Challenges
• Involve scenarios where devices, network, and software
components change frequently
• Building new computing technology that is deployed and
runs in completely new types of physical and computational
environments.
• Security arise because trust is lowered in volatile systems;
• spontaneous interaction between devices often imply that
they have little, if any, prior knowledge of each other, and
may not have a trusted third party in common

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 UbiComp environment
characteristics
• Resource-Constrained Devices
• Volatile Execution Environments
• Heterogeneous Execution Environments
• Fluctuating Usage Environments
• Invisible Computing
• Security and Privacy issue

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Resource-Constrained Devices
• involve devices with limited resources
• With ubicomp, a wide range of new devices are built and
introduced which are much more resource-constrained.
• PDAs, mobile phones, and music players have limited
CPU, memory, and network connectivity compared to a
standard PC, and embedded platforms such as sensor
networks and smart cards are very limited compared to a
PC or even a smart phone.

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Resource-aware computing
• Notification about the consumption of vital resources (
power,) can help the application (or the user) to take a
decision based on available resources now and in the
future
• The most limiting factor of most ubicomp devices is
energy.
• A device that is portable or embedded into the physical
world typically runs on batteries, and the smaller and
lighter the device needs to be, the lower its battery
capacity. By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Energy consumption

• Computation, accessing memory and input/output

consume energy
• Wireless communication consume energy
• Processing consumes much less power than
communication

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Volatile Execution Environments

• Service discovery: technologies and standards that

enable devices to discover each other, set up
communication links, and start using each others’
services.
• For example, when a portable device enters a smart
room, it may want to discover and use nearby resources
such as public displays and printers
• Several service discovery technologies: Jini, UPnP,
Bonjour/multicast DNS (mDNS), and the Bluetooth
discovery protocol.By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Heterogeneous Execution Environments
• Heterogeneous environment: involve a wide range of
hardware, network technology, operating systems,
input/output capabilities, resources, sensors, etc.
• the Smart Room example: an application that relies on
several devices, services, communication links, software
components, and end user application, which needs to
work in complete concert to fulfill the overall functionality
of a smart room
• Handling heterogeneity is the ability to compile, build, and
deploy an application on different target platforms(Windows,
Mac OS, and Linux) By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Fluctuating Usage
Environments
• Users have several personal devices, such as laptops,
mobile phones, watches, etc.
• The same device may be used by several users, such as
the public display in the smart room or a smart blood
pressure monitor in the patient ward of a hospital.
• Research challenge to ubicomp is to create systems,
technologies, and platforms allowing the creation of
applications that are able to handle such fluctuating usage
environments.
By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Three types of fluctuation in usage
environment

• (1) changing location of users,

• (2) changing context of the computer, and
• (3) multiple activities (or tasks) of the users

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Context Aware Computing
• aims at adapting the application or the computer in
accordance with its changing context
• Context of the application” includes information about who is
using the computer; who else is nearby; ambient information
about the room, including light, sound, and temperature; and
other devices in a room
• The context of a computer/device may change for two
reasons: either the device moved to a new context (mobile
device) or the physical context of an embedded computer
changed because, for example, new people and devices
entered a room By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Activity Based Computing(ABC)
• Aims at handling fluctuations based on users’ need for handling
many concurrent and collaborative activities or tasks
• In a hospital each clinician (doctor or nurse) is engaged in the
treatment and care of several patients, each of whom may have
a significant amount of clinical data associated
• ABC approach helps users manage the complexity of
performing multiple activities in a complex, volatile,
heterogeneous ubicomp systems setup involving numerous
devices in different locations

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Invisible Computing
• Embedded sensor technology that monitors human behavior at
home and provides intelligent control of heating, ventilation, air
conditioning, and cooling (HVAC),
• pervasive computing systems in hospitals that automatically ensure
that patient monitoring equipment is matched with correct patient
ID, and that sensor data are routed to the correct medical record.
• First , the computers are embedded into buildings, furniture,
medical devices, etc., and are as such physically invisible to the
human eye.
• Second, the computers operate in the periphery of the users’
attention and are hence mentally invisible (imperceptible).
By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Security and Privacy

• With ubicomp, the security and privacy challenges are increased

due to the volatile, spontaneous, heterogeneous, and invisible
nature of ubicomp systems (particularly imperceptible
monitoring).
• For example, a new device that enters a hospital cannot be
trusted to be used for displaying or storing sensitive medical
data, and making the necessary configuration may be an
administrative overhead that would prevent any sort of
spontaneous use.
• Hence, using the patient’smobile phone may be difficult to set
up By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Ubiquitous Computing
characteristics
1. Immerses Computers in a real environment.
2. Sensors support interact with and control the
environment.
3. Limited power supply, storage memory and bandwidth.
4. Operate unattended ( without human intervention)
5. Device are mobile/wireless.
6. May reside on a person (wearable computing)
 Features of Ubiquitous Computing

• Invisibility
− Invisible Intelligent Devices
− Wearable Computing Devices
− Sensors, Smart Card, and Tiny Smart Device
• ContextAwareness and Adaptation
− Autonomous Sensing, Environment Adaptation,
Cooperation
− RealTime and Proactive
− Adapting to Device Type, Time, Location, Temperature,
Weather, etc
 Some constraints of ubiquitous
computing
1. Device itself is mobile
Constraints: physical ones limiting resources (e.g., battery power,
network bandwidth, etc.), variability in availability of resources.

2. Application that follows the user

Constraints: dynamic adaptation of applications to changing
hardware capabilities and variability in software services

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

Applications of ubiquitous
computing
Many applications of ubiquitous computing are possible
in the business, public and private fields

1. Retail
2. Industrial production and material management
3. Transport logistics
4. Personal identification and authentication
5. Health care
6. Mobility and transport
By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Retail

• Applications in retailing are currently based on the use of cheap

RFID transponders, which (as a supplement or replacement for
barcodes) are attached to product packaging or larger containers.
• In this way, it becomes possible to identify goods at any time and
at any point along the supply chain.
• Among the multiple possibilities for utilizing RFID in retail are
the automatic registration and identification of goods
deliveries, a more efficient inventory management and the
automatic recording of the inventory as well as of goods in
the customer’s shopping basket for identifying and localizing
objects from a distance

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Industrial production and material
management
• The main tasks are the monitoring of raw materials,
goods and intermediates as well as the utilization of
intelligent transport containers.
• The starting point is the information automatically
collected during manufacturing, which replaces a great
number of manual counting, scanning, data collection and
control operations and which can be used to control the
production process.

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Transport logistics

• In logistics, it is important to know where the goods are at any

time.
• In the long term, ubiquitous computing furthers this goal, in
that transported objects are equipped with communication and
computing capabilities.
• For a more efficient flow of goods and information from
suppliers to enterprises, containers, pallets and products will
be universally equipped in the mid term with RFID
transponders, which will improve traceability and transparency
in the supply chain.

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Personal identification and
authentication

• The proof of a person’s identity is an important feature of

many applications of ubiquitous computing.
• This plays a role primarily in applications for access control or
payment procedures.
• For example German passports, for instance, have been
equipped since November 2007 with an RFID chip on which
the digitized prints of both index fingers are stored along with
the usual personal data.

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Health care

• In assisting elderly and/or chronically ill people in their home

environment, information technology is regarded as an
essential resource that can be deployed to improve the quality
of life and enrich everyday life in old age.
• The goal is to improve the quality of life for elderly and ill
persons at home
• For this purpose, the vital parameters and motion data of the
patients are recorded; the home environment is also monitored.
• The necessary sensors can be integrated in clothing and the
collected data is sent, for example, to a microcomputer
embedded in a belt
By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Mobility and transport

• In the field of individual transport, one can expect diverse UbiComp

applications such as :
(1) services to increase safety during travel (state of vehicle, accident prevention),
(2) services to optimize traffic flows (navigation, optimization of fuel
consumption) and
(3) services for more comfort for the passengers (location-dependant information,
entertainment,Internet access).
• For public transport, the primary goal is better networking with other transport
sectors and assistance for travelers when
booking and setting off on the journey or information about the itinerary and
possible connections.

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Task 1
• What are the applications of Ubiquitous
computing that are operating/available in
Rwanda,
• Provide the details of their operations and
which components are using

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

Pervasive Computing

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 What is Pervasive Computing
Technology View
• Computers everywhere – embedded into fridges, washing
machines, door locks, cars, furniture, people
Intelligent environment
• Mobile portable computing devices
• Wireless communication
User View
• Invisible – implicit interaction with your environment
• Augmenting human abilities in context of tasks
 Pervasive Computing
• Pervasive computing is the growing trend of
embedding computational capability
(generally in the form of microprocessors)
into everyday objects to make them
effectively communicate and perform useful
tasks in a way that minimizes the end user's
need to interact with computers
 Pervasive Computing Characteristics

• Pervasive computing is:

– An environment in which people interact with
embedded (and mostly invisible) computers and
in which networked devices are aware of their
surroundings and peers and are able to provide
services or use services from peers effectively
– The creation of environments saturated with
computing and wireless communication, yet
gracefully integrated with human users
 Working Environment
• Before: a virtual environment where you
log in, execute applications and then log out

• – Now: a physical environment where you

are always connected to execute tasks

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Before: Room full with a computer

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) in 1946

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
Now: Room with several visible devices

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

Now: Everyday life full of invisible appliances

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Now

• – Every object is smart (Embedded

processors + memory)
• – Wireless connection (802.11*, Bluetooth,
etc. + Internet New Generation, IPv6)

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Pervasive Computing Characteristics

• A pervasive (ubiquitous) system is

characterized by:
– Physical integration: integration between
computing nodes and the physical world, e.g., a
whiteboard that records what’s on
– Instantaneous Interoperation: devices
interoperate spontaneously in changing
environments, e.g., a device changes its partners
as it moves or as the context changes
 Pervasive Environments
• New way of thinking about computers in the world, one that
takes into account the natural human environment and allows
the computers themselves to vanish in the background.
• The most profound technologies are those that disappear.
They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until
they are indistinguishable from it.
• One saturated with computing and communication capability,
yet so gracefully integrated with users that it becomes ‘a
technology that disappears

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Pervasive Environments cont..
• A computing environment that seamlessly and ubiquitously supports
users in accomplishing their tasks and that renders the actual
computing devices and technology largely invisible

• Environments created when computing power and network

connectivity are embedded in virtually every device humans use.
Anytime/anywhere, any device, any network, any data

• Computation is freely available everywhere, like batteries and power

sockets. Anonymous devices, either handheld or embedded in the
environment, will bring computation to us, no matter where we are or
in what circumstances. These devices will personalize themselves in
our presence by finding whatever information and software we need .

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Four major aspects of pervasive
computing

• - Computing is spread throughout the environment.

- Users are mobile.
- Information appliances are becoming increasingly
available.
- Communication is made easier -- between
individuals, between individuals and things, and
between things

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Mobile & Pervasive Computing Vs
Ubiquitous Computing
Mobile Computing
Increasing Our Capability to Physically Move Computer Services with us
Issue: seamless and flexible context information
obtainment and adjustment by devices
Pervasive Computing
Obtaining Information from Our Environment and Utilizing It to
Dynamically Built Models

Issue: unlimited scope and small effort to teach a computer about

its environment
By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Mobile & Pervasive Computing Vs
Ubiquitous Computing
• Ubiquitous Computing
– Integrating Large scale Mobility with Pervasive
Computing Functionality

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

Ubiquitous vs Cloud Computing
 Pervasive and ubiquitous computing
architectures
• Environment populated by sensors, actuators, and appliances.
• People control and monitor their environments by taking
advantage of freely-available computation throughout that
environment.
• Environment provides mobile devices with computational
power, because they are not limited neither by size nor by
power source.
 Mobile Computing Architecture

Server

MU
(mobile unit) Fixed network
MSS
(mobile support station)

Wireless radio
cell (19.2Kbps) WLAN 57
 Infrastructures
• Global computing infrastructure, which spans different
organizations and smaller networks
- Autonomous administration.
• Self-managing, ad-hoc, proximity network of people
(mobile devices) and things (environment).
- Bluetooth, USB, IEEE 1394
• Location discovery
- Location embedded in the walls
- GPS for outdoors

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Ubiquitous/ Pervasive
Computing Architectures
• An example of Ubiquitous/
Pervasive Computing (U/PC) Architecture for
Physical Services Environments created in
public locations such as shopping/
conference/ business centers, airports,
governmental agencies and even whole cities
U/PC Architecture for Public
Locations (Generalized)
Need for U/PC Architecture

• With the rapid deployment of wireless LAN connectivity

in the private and public sectors, opportunities for
businesses to offer services to users moving within
their physical premises with portable computers
(including PDAs and smart phones) are increasing.
• At the same time, emerging sensing and semantic
interpretation technologies enable the implementation
of presence, identity and localization services
• Also, a variety of low cost sensors can easily be embedded
in the environment and in users’ devices
Need for U/PC Architecture cont..

• A Physical Environment seamlessly integrates the

services provided by the computing devices it contains.
• These are likely to include sensors, embedded systems and
portable devices owned by mobile users as well as more
traditional application servers running in a separate
computer room, or remotely on a “grid”

• Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of

computer resources from multiple administrative domains to
reach a common goal
 Need for U/PC Architecture
cont..
• Service users operating in physical service environments may
include members of the organizations owning or sharing the
environment, as well as visitors from outside
• The major classes of services that a physical service environment
can deliver include:
• Information provisioning
• Physical environment awareness and control
• Remote work support
• Collaborative work support
• Sharing or leasing of networked devices and
appliances
•
 The major classes of services
- Information provisioning: delivery of personalized,
context-dependent content
- -Physical environment awareness and control:
access to information collected from sensors (e.g.
video from cameras, events from presence sensors,
smoke detectors) and control of the physical
environment (e.g. open/close doors)
 The major classes of services
• Remote work support: access to personal data stores and
services for users visiting the environment

• Collaborative work support: sharing information

among users and service components present in the
environment

• Sharing or leasing of networked devices and

appliances, e.g. printers, fax machines, etc.
 Need for U/PC Architecture
Cont..
• The physical world interacts with the digital/ virtual world of
services and applications by collecting the data from
heterogeneous sensors in the environment, and bringing this data
together in an ‘intelligent’ way.
• To implement this goal, it is necessary to develop an U/PC
architecture, supporting the development and delivery of
services.
• Mobile users interact with the environment around them, and the
environment reacts intelligently to the needs and expectations of
users
 Computer Architecture -
Definition
• Computer Architecture is the conceptual
design and fundamental operational
structure of a computer system.
 Computer Architecture
Components
Processor(s) - Does computation
Memory - Stores values
Peripherals - I/O and data communication
- Human Readable Output (Displays. Speakers)
- Input Devices (Sensors)
- Persistent Storage
- Networking (ad hoc wireless)
Power (needed for mobility)
Software Interface
Conceptual Model of the Physical
Service Environment
§ The conceptual model is the highest level of abstraction where the
developers do not care about what is hidden behind concepts and
outline problems without providing solutions for them.
§ The computing architecture seeks to provide technical solutions
and thus needs to know what exactly devices and technologies are
to be employed.
§ Often conceptual models are created using UML (different types
of models) or represent relationships between entities (“entity
relationship”, ER models)
 Unified Modeling Language (UML)

• Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a

standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of
object-oriented software engineering.
• The Unified Modeling Language includes a set of graphic notation
techniques to create visual models of object-oriented software
intensive systems.
 Entity – Relationship model
• ER
Entity – Relationship model (ER model) in
software engineering is an abstract way to
describe a database
Conceptual Model of the Physical
Service Environment

• The conceptual model of the Physical Service

Environment includes the following entities:
1. People
2. Places/ Locations
3. Objects
4. Sensors
5. Situations
6. Service Provisioning
 People

Information about people includes

- static information about users and visitors (for example, identity
and user profiles for access control or service personalization), and

- dynamic information describing people being currently in the

environment.
People

• A mobile user visiting an environment may carry one or

more personal devices.
• Mobile users share information about themselves,
including their position and movements, preferences,
profiles, the history of past interactions with the services
present in the environment, plans and schedules, and skill
descriptions.
• The local service environment exploits this information to
deliver adaptive services.
 Static personal Dynamic information

• Static personal information

typically includes identity, characteristics
(physical, languages spoken, personal disabilities, etc.),
capabilities, universal or context-specific preferences, and
resources (such as owned devices).
Dynamic information
• Dynamic information for mobile users is
acquired through location and other sensors, in the
user device or in the environment
 Places/ Locations

• Locations are typically arranged in containment hierarchies

(e.g. cities, streets, buildings,rooms, corridors).
• These may be based on physical decomposition criteria
(i.e. criteria reflecting the geometric properties of the
space) or on logical criteria (i.e. any other criteria which
may be significant for a specific application).
Locations carry context information of their own.
• This may include data on temperature, humidity,
brightness, sound levels, acquired by sensors in the
environment
 Objects

• These are “digital” objects which provide some kind of service to

other components.
• Such objects may be mobile devices carried by users or devices
installed in the environment (including PCs, printers, or smart
objects, i.e. physical objects with some embedded
computing capability).
 Sensors

• Sensors: Dynamic information is collected by sensors. Sensors

generate information about users, devices, applications, and the
environment.
• Sensors can be standalone devices or they may be attached to
wireless user devices (e.g. PDAs with GPS, motion sensors,
cameras, microphones etc.).
• Alternatively they can be ambient devices.
• Sensors produce ‘dynamic’ context in the form of observations and
events
 Situations

• Situations are produced by fusion agents which correlate input

from sensors, applications, and user input to produce high level
information.
• Situations bind sensor data, people, and objects to a spatial
model of locations.
• Simple situations describe which people and objects are present
in a given physical space.
• More complex situations might include descriptions of events
involving multiple entities (e.g. “Participants of the conference
on Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing are having a morning
session in room 321”).
 Fusion Agents

• These agents (normally a specific kind of software)

‘fuse’ (consolidate and analyze) observations from
sensors, transforming low level sensor data into
semantically meaningful information (‘situations’).

These are also called Intelligent Agents.

 Fusion Agents
• For example, cameras show that there are many
people in Room 321, each wearing a badge with
“Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing” written
on it.
• Referring to the Event Schedule, a fusion agent draws a
conclusion that the conference on Ubiquitous and Pervasive
Computing takes place there.
• If the meeting is not scheduled, the fusion agent informs the
management
 Service Provisioning
• Devices (connected to other wireless devices) and
application servers on connected networks provide
services to users.
• Service Provisioning entities include:
- application servers,
- embedded ambient devices (such as sensors
or smart objects and appliances), and
- personal user devices.
 Service Provisioning

• - Computing is spread throughout the environment.

- Users are mobile.
- Information appliances are becoming increasingly
available.
- Communication is made easier -- between
individuals, between individuals and things, and
between things
 Service Provisioning

• Technically, a service can be anything ranging from a Web

Service, a Web (or client-server) application, or a functionality
of a networked appliance (such as a projector) accessed through
a peer-to-peer protocol.
• A service typically implies an access control
• The user preferences and choices should be available to
a service (e.g. using voice instead of text – for blind/ illiterate
users; navigation history).
 U/PC Architecture

• Over the next few years, mobile computing, sensing

technologies, embedded computing systems and distributed
middleware will combine to create a new generation of the
adaptive, context-aware services based upon U/PC.
• These services will be deployed in Physical Service
Environments.
• These infrastructures will use the data generated by sensors to
serve the needs of people and businesses in a best possible
way.
 U/PC Architecture

• This kind of U/PC requires adaptive access technologies,

ad-hoc networking and architectures to achieve seamless
interoperability among wireless technologies.
• Innovative architectures for U/PC will enable mobile
clients, sensors and application servers to interact in the
Physical Service Environment.
 Main Components of U/PC
Architecture
qPersonal Devices
qNetwork Architecture
q Service Provisioning
q Sensing Architecture
q Modes of Interaction between the User and
the Services
 Personal Devices

• The user is equipped with a portable

personal device (e.g. PDA, smartphone,
wearable computer).
• The device or devices adapt dynamically to
different radio protocols
 Network Architecture
• The user moves within a space where heterogeneous
wireless communication stations are located.
• User devices are interconnected using ad hoc or
infrastructure-based wireless networks.
• They may also connect to devices, sensors and
services present in the environment
 Service Provisioning
• The users move through ‘environments’ within which
they can use local services provided by the
environment and by wireless connectivity resources.
• These services are delivered by devices embedded
within the environment and by application servers
accessible over a network infrastructure.
 Service Provisioning
• Another group of potential service providers are other mobile
users with whom the user comes into contact in the
environment via networks.
• Applications and services may belong to a ‘personal’ zone
(e.g. sharing of data on one’s own PDA – but then users must
agree on doing this).
• More often they are environmental (e.g. local information
services delivered by an environment).
• These services may include both paid services and services
that are available free of charge
 Sensing Architecture:
• To support the delivery of these services, environments
are equipped with heterogeneous sensors.
• These allow the extraction of context information making
interaction with the user and service delivery more
efficient.
• The sensors capture information continuously, taking into
account users’ activities.
• They then communicate the information to an intelligent
processing module which processes data and distributes it
to applications
 Sensing Architecture
• Sensors may include both traditional sensing devices
(e.g. temperature, pressure, light and humidity
sensors, smoke detectors), and more complex devices
such as cameras connected to a wired network.
• Since users’ personal devices are often able to capture
data from the physical world (e.g. through GPS and
other position sensors, digital cameras embedded into
or connected to personal computing devices), they too
can be considered as sensors.
• Thus the sensing infrastructure should be capable of
using information sensed by users’ devices.
 Modes of Interaction between a
user and the services
• The user interacts with services through a multimodal
user interface, which uses the personal device’s
resources to communicate with the user.
• Alternatively the interface may use I/O devices
embedded within the environment.
• Communication between the user and services (or other
users) may be mediated by a ‘Personal Agent’ belonging
to the user.
• The task of the Personal Agent is to filter information
and provide intelligent support for the management of
interpersonal communications
 Multimodal

• Multimodal interaction provides the user

with multiple modes of interfacing with a
system
 Managing Diversity

• Main challenge in building U/PC architectures is how

to overcome technological diversity.
• Technological diversity means that both users can
have a variety of devices and environment can
comprise many diverse devices and technologies.
• When the user moves from one zone with one
network technology to another zone with the different
network technology, the environment has to provide
seamless communication
Networking and Communication

• They need to communicate easily on the move, even

in environments with no network infrastructure, has
led to the idea of ad-hoc networking.
• Ad hoc networks allow the establishment of
temporary, self-configuring communications
• If ad-hoc networks do not have preexisting
infrastructures, it does not mean that they do not
have any structure at all.
 Networking and Communication
• In classic network architectures, protocols and network
responsibilities are organized in a rigid layered structure (OSI
architecture).
• This type of organization can be applied also to ad hoc
networking leading to creation of Mobile Ad hoc NETworks
(MANETS)
• Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self configuring
infrastructureless network of mobile devices connected by
wireless links.