Efficient Context Management in Context-Aware Environments

Environments in which multimedia applications are used become more complex and gain importance. Users expect applications to be customized to their needs and tailored to their usage environment. Therefore, on the one hand, context environment information needs to be managed in an efficient manner to optimize usage of this valuable information. On the other hand, to improve the collection of this pervasive context information, information required for services in the environment needs to be accounted for. Different technologies exist to describe the usage environment and the interaction with this description environment. In order to optimize management of all this information, our developed efficient context management service links context providers to context consumers and takes into account prior knowledge about these providers and consumers to make decisions. Efficiency of other multimedia services such as context collection and content adaptation services can be enhanced when the discussed methodology is applied.