Personal service areas for location-based wireless applications
Wireless location-based services enable mobile users to access Web-based information services in their immediate vicinity. In this presentation we identify mobility elements of context that affect the specification of the geographical area that is relevant to the mobile user. A tourism scenario is presented to provide the motivation for using dynamic context in the formation of a personal service area. We describe the architecture of an experimental context-aware tourist information system that leverages XML technologies and Web services, and includes a context manager element for processing user context. The context manager adapts Web-based information that is delivered to tourists based on their personal service area and user preferences. We review location area concepts and describe a novel context-sensitive approach for delineating a personal service area. We end by relating our experience with Web services performance and possible ways for scaling the system to large numbers of users.