Context-aware networking and communications: Part 1 [Guest Editorial]

Context refers to information characterizing the situation of an entity or a group of entities, and it provides information about the present status of the entities. The term context may be understood differently in different scenarios and for different involved users. The involved entities can be either concrete entities or virtual entities. Involved concrete entities could be either a single entity, such as a person, a machine device, an object, or a location, or a group of entities. An involved virtual entity could be a software function, a software application, a service, an activity, and so on. Conventionally, much of the functionality of communications and networking is context-irrelevant. With the rapid development of modern communications and networking technologies in recent years, especially the increasing functionalities and complexities of the Internet, context-aware communications and networking (CACN) systems and applications have been developed in some limited areas and aspects. In the foreseeable future, context-aware functionalities would be much more extensively applied in information and communication technologies. CACN could be performed at all layers of communications and networking, from the physical and networking layers to transport and application layers. Context awareness may be considered as a response mechanism to the context information obtained from the involved concrete or virtual entities. Context information may have many different meanings, such as activities, geospatial information, network states, battery levels, situations of social networks, energy consumptions, environmental parameters, and signal-to-noise ratios. Context awareness allows for customization or creation of applications to match the preferences of the involved entities.