MoCoA: Customisable Middleware for Context-Aware Mobile Applications

Abstract

Abstract. Many programming models have been proposed to facilitate the development of context-aware applications. However, previous work does not offer support for building customised systems and has largely been targeted at a single application domain. In this paper, we describe MoCoA, a flexible middleware framework that permits the rapid development of context-aware applications and supports deployment scenarios ranging from augmented artefacts to city-wide smart-space applications. Crucially, MoCoA supports a small set of programming abstractions that are suitable for building a wide range of context-aware applications for deployment in a fixed or (ad hoc) mobile environment. For each of these abstractions, MoCoA provides a set of implementations via a library of components. We present three applications of the MoCoA framework that demonstrate both the use of the programming abstractions and the flexibility of the framework.

A Framework for Quality of Context Management

“…MoCoA provides an environment for building context-aware applications for ad hoc networks based on sentient objects [14]. The low-level inference treatments are organised as data merging pipes.…”

Scalable Processing of Context Information with COSMOS

“…MoCoA provides an environment for building context-aware applications for ad hoc networks based on sentient objects [16]. Sentients objects have most of the characteristics of components.…”

Addressing Dynamic Contextual Adaptation with a Domain-Specific Language

“…The various behaviours of a pro-active application can be modelled as a context graph [16]. A context graph encapsulates application behaviour into a set of distinct context states and therefore provides a useful and modular abstraction to structure complex, context-aware applications [3].…”

“…As a starting point, we envisage to use MoCoA [16], a middleware platform, as our execution platform.…”