Dissertation Creation - The UK's original provider of custom dissertations, free dissertations and dissertation help...
(qt. Olsson 2003).
g. Privacy
One of the most important concerns about ubiquitous and context-aware computing is that it invades privacy and security. Information pertaining to the individual is communicated to the network for delivery, which makes the user vulnerable to the environment in which the user/device is operating. If the user is a corporate entity, the liability of such exposure is even higher as individual, team and organizational security is at risk (Grudin 2001). Exposure and vulnerabilities include behavioural effects, classified information, strategies and individual information and so on. Users feel they lack control of personal and organizational information, as they need to expose information to a certain degree to be able to effectively and efficiently use context-aware mobile applications (qt. Olsson 2003).
f. Timeliness
Context-aware mobile applications require timeliness and operation in real time. However, achieving this means consuming more resources and having wireless ad-hoc networks to facilitate real time applicability. For this purpose, architectural levels need to be programmed to support context-aware applications. This is only possible in the presence of a middleware level asynchronous communication applications. Despite the inclusion of the architecture, experts are also of the view that (Boulkenafed et al 2005) middleware applications need interpreters and use context information based on event and real time, together. This type of middleware is still under experiment.
g. Context data
Context-aware applications largely depend on the data from multi-modal sensors that identify the sources of context-data for application purposes. This is used for developing low-level code for interacting with sensor hardware and device protocols. The process is time consuming as it involves trial-and-error development.
Furthermore, there is no way the developer can, for sure, identify that the context-data is certain and complete to be reliable and used in the development of the applications. Data extracted from sensors are also subject to misinterpretation and misrepresentation that would hinder programming inferences (Barkhuus 2003).
h. Synchrony and scalability
Context-aware applications require a pervasive computing infrastructure to ensure smooth communication to synchronize with communication commands inherent in mobile devices. However, these elements are limited by the non-dynamic distributed communication infrastructure, as well as resource constraints (Barkhuus 2003).
i. Network
Context-aware mobile applications largely depend on wireless networks for mobility. Most mobile networks are ad-hoc wireless networks that provide dynamism to mobility needs. However, transmission to these ad-hoc networks is limited in range as well as dependent on routers and nodes for out of range communication and connectivity.