Dynamic Ontology-Based Redefinition of Events Intended to Support the Communication of Complex Information in Ubiquitous Computing

Abstract

Ubiquitous systems should properly support the connection/disconnection of entities at run-time. Accordingly, the communication of information in this type of systems should be able to adapt themselves to changes in their structure and participant entities without any need of user intervention. In this regard and due to the dynamic nature of these systems, asynchronous communication is more useful than synchronous one. Particularly, the publish/subscribe paradigm is used as it supports, not only asynchronous communications, but also the loose coupling between system entities, which is an important requirement that has to be satisfied in order to deal with the changes in the configuration of the communications between the involved entities.

In this paper, we propose a model of dynamically redefinable events in order to support dynamic reconfiguration of communications in ubiquitous systems. We also introduce associated techniques for publishing, subscribing and combining those events. The structure of the events and their intended semantics will be formally specified in an ontology, which enables automated reasoning based on Description Logics.

Furthermore, the proposal is described by means of an example and implemented as part of a coordination middleware intended to support the development of ubiquitous systems.