Data-centric middleware for context-aware pervasive computing

The complexity of developing and deploying context-aware pervasive-computing applications calls for distributed software infrastructures that assist applications to collect, aggregate, and disseminate contextual data. In this paper, we motivate a data-centric design for such an infrastructure to support context-aware applications. Our middleware system, Solar, treats contextual data sources as stream publishers and the core of Solar is a scalable and self-organizing peer-to-peer overlay to support data-driven services . We present how different services could be systematically integrated on top of the Solar overlay. We also discuss our experience and lessons learned when using Solar to support several implemented scenarios. We conclude that a data-centric infrastructure is necessary to facilitate both development and deployment of pervasive-computing applications.