Coordinating context-aware service resources using Internet Indirection Infrastructure

A context-aware service is a user-centric and flexible network service based on a user context. To realize such a context-aware service, we must coordinate various resources such as Web applications, sensor networks, information appliances, context information and actuators. However, it is difficult to coordinate resources described in different protocols. Toward constructing a framework for any resource, we have developed a research named CASTANET[1] based on REST[2]. REST is based on an easily available web technology and has stateless server-client communications using URIs to identify all the resources. However, the original CASTANET framework cannot support the following requirements necessary for context-aware services. admitting multiple producers and multiple consumers, renewing resource URIs, service compositions, and controlling URI security beyond user’s permissible limits. In this paper, taking note of the relationship among resources, we show every primitive service can be expressed as a triplet : producer ⟹ filter ⟹ consumer. Then, we show a middleware suitable for fulfilling these requirements and propose a resource coordination infrastructure using a rendezvous-based communication method based on “Internet Indirection Infrastructure (i3)”[3J. finally, we illustrate that the proposed infrastructure is useful for creating context-aware services.