A Ptolemy II Based Modeling Approach for Context-Aware Computing

Context-aware computing is a mobile computing paradigm in which applications can discover and take advantage of contextual information. In general, context-aware is a distributed, large scale, sophisticated and hybrid system. In this paper, we first propose a conceptual model for it, and then we present a Ptolemy II based modeling approach. In this approach, we combine a hierarchical modeling methodology with the finite state machine (FSM), and limit the state number of the FSM, then extend state to be capable to execute predefined scripts and modeled by other components. This approach is very useful and has many benefits in context-aware computing development. One of them is capable of reducing the complexity of context-aware system modeling and support rapid prototype development.