Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey

As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling, reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning. Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Journal, 201

Video Shot Boundary Detection Using Generalized Eigenvalue Decomposition and Gaussian Transition Detection

Shot boundary detection is the first step of the video analysis, summarization and retrieval. In this paper, we propose a novel shot boundary detection algorithm using Generalized Eigenvalue Decomposition (GED) and modeling of gradual transitions by Gaussian functions. Especially, we focus on the challenges of detecting the gradual shots and extracting appropriate spatio-temporal features, which have effects on the ability of algorithm to detect shot boundaries efficiently. We derive a theorem that discuss about some new features of GED which could be used in the video processing algorithms. Our innovative explanation utilizes this theorem in the defining of new distance metric in Eigen space for comparing video frames. The distance function has abrupt changes in hard cut transitions and semi-Gaussian behavior in gradual transitions. The algorithm detects the transitions by analyzing this distance function. Finally we report the experimental results using large-scale test sets provided by the TRECVID 2006 which has evaluations for hard cut and gradual shot boundary detection