Rule-based Approach for Context Inconsistency Management Scheme in Ubiquitous Computing

Context data are updated frequently due to the dynamic changes of the various sensor values and the situations of application entities. Without a proper management, the stored contexts will become different from those of the real-world. Those invalid contexts will cause context inconsistency problems and thus should be eliminated at the right time and in an appropriate manner. In this paper, we propose a context inconsistency management scheme based on context elimination rules that describe the semantics of context invalidity to solve context inconsistency problems. The proposed rule-based scheme will enable users to easily specify elimination conditions for inconsistent contexts. Our performance evaluation shows that the rule processing overhead is compensated for by virtue of the well-maintained repository of the stored contexts.