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Similarly, Location-based Services Are Perhaps The Most Frequently Used ...


Similarly, location-based services are perhaps the most frequently used mobile applications that facilitate environment and user interaction depending on the context determined by the user. GPS system for detecting positioning information such as angle of arrival, time of arrival and enhanced observed time difference etc., are some of the location information technologies used by mobile devices like PDAs (Heer, Peddemors and Lankhorst 2004).
Interconnectivity technologies, that allow users to identify other users and communicate/transfer information, include Bluetooth, which is a low-power wireless technology for short-range links. Bluetooth interface allows users to transfer data to other devices at a reasonable speed and within certain location dimension. However, this is limited by the platform upon which it is operationable. Bluetooth technology, therefore, can only interact with other Bluetooth device applications (Heer, Peddemors and Lankhorst 2004).
Following the increase in awareness of context-aware mobile applications, advances in sensor technologies have increased its potential manifolds, which include piezo-materials, VLSI video, optical gyros, and MEMS. These technologies have also reduced in size but increased in their potential through integration features for extracting information from hardware, software and mobile devices. With this, the cost of sensors has also decreased enabling developers to purchase easily. Today's location sensing is no longer dependent on static sensors but sensors integrated in mobile devices themselves (Gellersen, Beigl and Krull 1999).
Visual and auditory contexts are becoming a reality. Visual context capabilities have been researched earlier in the experiment of StartleCam but today it has actually been captured and integrated in mobile devices to enhance artificial intelligence and human capabilities. The camera modules cost lesser and technology have become so common that they have also reduced size to augment visual context applications in mobile devices. Attached with this development is the inclusion of microphone to facilitate auditory interchange between users and devices to provide user information for context-aware processing (Clarkson et al 1998).
f. Context-aware environment
While many researches have been focussed on mobile devices as being the personal consoles for processing user context-aware information only a few have seen the potential of the adaptation of the environment to the context-aware media applications. Huebscher and McCann (2004) have demonstrated in their research the potential of a context-aware environment that users can adapt devices/sensors according to circumstances or situations for computing tasks.


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