Interpreting Contextual Information through User-centric Network Discovery

At a time when wireless network access nodes are being massively deployed all around the world, it is possible to take advantage of the information they naturally emit, in order to draw relevant and contextual indicators of a user's situation. In this work, we propose to use discovery data passively sent by wireless network nodes not as a pure means of establishing a communication link, but as a means of interpreting rich and targeted information about a user's situation. This approach, already used in various forms for several years, opens the door to several user-centric services. The purpose of this poster is to conceptualize the User-centric Network Discovery (UND) paradigm, in addition to opening the discussion about possible applications.