Context-Awareness via Ubiquitous User Profiling: An Implementation Paradigm

The diversity of service access contexts and the co-existence of different technologies that characterizes the forthcoming 4G systems lead to the heterogeneity of the networks and systems that support end-user applications’ provision. This creates the requirement for applications to be optimally delivered and executed over a large diversity of infrastructures and configurations, as well as for dynamic adaptability of services to changing conditions and contexts. The present paper focuses on context-awareness in service provisioning over PLMN and proposes a flexible and innovative model for user profiling. The innovation is based on the enrichment of common user profiling architectures to include location and other contextual attributes, so that enhanced adaptability and personalization is achieved. Moreover, an intelligent distributed middleware framework that capitalizes the enhanced user profiles and deals with context information is introduced. The framework compiles context information and user profiles and can enhance with contextual characteristics even context unaware services.