Generic adaptation mechanism for the support of context-aware service provision in 3G networks

The forthcoming era of 3/sup rd/ generation (3G) mobile communications is heralded to change the wireless telecommunication experience dramatically. User expectations are raised to a significantly higher level, towards the demand for terminal-, network- and location-aware provision of ubiquitous, personalized multimedia services. Under this perspective, the need for adaptability of services and systems to largely diverse contexts is clearly identified. Generic, dynamically extensible adaptation mechanisms that are independent of the subject and criteria of adaptation can be a significant step in this direction. We introduce a mechanism aiming to fulfill these requirements. The proposed adaptation system has been designed, implemented and successfully integrated and tested in a distributed software platform for provision of value added services to 3G mobile users.