A Hybrid Model of Context-aware Service Provisioning Implemented on Smart Phones

Mobile users of future ubiquitous environments require novel means for locating relevant services available in their daily surroundings, where relevance has a user-specific definition. In this paper, we propose the hybrid service provisioning model which complements the traditional model of interaction service provider to consumer with peer-to-peer functionalities. In addition to being notified proactively and in a context-aware manner about services available in the surroundings, users can generate several types of contextual messages, attach them to services or to the environment, and share them with other peers. We have designed and implemented a platform that supports this hybrid service provisioning model. The current application prototype runs on commercial smart phones. To demonstrate the feasibility and technical deployability of our approach, we conducted field trials in which the research subject was a community of recreational boaters