PACMAN: A Policy-Based Architecture for Context Management in Ambient Networks
Nancy Samaan, Hamid Harroud, Ahmed Karmouch · 2007
This paper describes PACMAN, a policy-based architecture for context management in ambient networks. The proposed architecture is a middleware that interacts with entities responsible for discovering and gathering various context in the execution environment and provides a unified mechanism for the delivery of appropriate contextual information to services and applications. PACMAN utilizes a novel context model based on policy structures to provide a coherent methodology for the representation, dissemination of both simple and complex context. A set of control policies is utilized to realize core management functionalities such as context processing (e.g., aggregation and filtering), storage, access and dissemination. Through the dynamic generation of policies, PACMAN evolves to accommodate new context types as well as emerging applications requirements.