Autonomic management of context data based on application requirements

Pervasive computing allows users to benefit from information and services provided by advanced applications using smart and interconnected devices. Given the inherent complexity of this software environment, platforms become a typical means of easing the development and execution of pervasive applications. These platforms are usually in charge of managing the application context, ensuring that data are reliable and available to applications. Most platforms provide this feature, making real-time information available, even when applications do not need such information in real-time. This occurs, for example, when sensors continuously provide measurements to in-house temperature controllers and these measurements have limited time variance. Therefore, controllers can be updated only occasionally, reducing application overload without compromising effectiveness. To address this issue, in this paper, we present a pervasive platform, iCasa, extended with an autonomic manager of service-oriented context module. Our solution consists of tracking application needs and context information to achieve the best caching configuration, regarding a multi-application pervasive environment. This caching configuration can decrease the power consumption of devices due to the reduced unnecessary network communications between platform and devices.