Ontology-based Policy Rule Specification and Integration

A formal transformation between knowledge contained in Operations Support Systems (OSS) views is required to automate the deployment of OSS. This paper details progress towards the integration of policy languages at the business view of the TeleManagement Forum (TMF) Next Generation Operations Support System (NGOSS), with the specification of a formal language for the TMF’s Shared Information and Data Policy Aggregated Business Entities

Next Generation Context Aware Adaptive Services

Situational information can enrich the interactions between a user and the services they wish to utilize. Such information encompasses details about the user, the physical environment and the computing resources. There are at least three key aspects in addressing this issue. Firstly, it is important to accurately capture or infer the requirements of the users in a timely fashion. Without precise information on what the users are hoping to achieve it is difficult to identify suitable services or sub-services that may fulfill (in part or fully) their information needs. Secondly, the nature of the available services determines the modes in which they may be adapted to the users’ needs. Rigid, inflexible services may be difficult to tune to the information requirements of the users. Adaptive services, on the other hand, are well suited to dynamically modifying their behavior, within defined constraints. The third issue to be addressed is the on-the-fly combination of services to meet the users’ requirements. This paper argues that current modeling (both of users and services) techniques, adaptive axes and personalization techniques used in current personalized information services, such as Adaptive Hypermedia Systems, may supply the basis for next generation adaptive collaborative services

Investigating the Applicability of Mobile IP and Cellular IP for Roaming in Smart Environments

Increased research and development in the field of ubiquitous computing, and in particular smart spaces, has heightened the need for a comprehensive mobility solution. Existing mobility protocols are often categorised as either macro or micro mobility but few, if any, bridge the divide between the two. Mobile IP is at present the IETF proposed standard for delivery of IP packets to mobile devices. However, as a macro mobility protocol, it does not adequately support data delivery to mobile devices that regularly roam within local networks. Cellular IP, a more recent development in mobility, falls under the banner of micro mobility and as such delivers a number of benefits that a macro mobility protocol alone could not. This paper describes a complete mobility architecture accomplished by integrating Mobile IP with Cellular IP and continues by addressing the suitability of this integration for supporting roaming in smart environments

On the use of Policy Based Management for Pervasive m-Government Services

This paper discusses service discovery, composition and adaptation, illustrating their usefulness in pervasive mobile environments in which a multitude of services are available to users. It addresses how service discovery and composition, incorporating personalisation and context awareness, can provide focused sets of services tailored to a user's individual needs, shielding users from the potentially bewildering range of offered services. It is argued that because users' needs will be constantly evolving, these service sets must also continually adapt to changing requirements. The Pervasive Services Platform developed by the EU FP6 integrated project Daidalos is described and a usage scenario for it that demonstrates how service discovery, composition and adaptation can be successfully integrated is outline

An architecture for User-centric Management of Intelligent Environments

Ubiquitous computing environments are intelligent environments that have a wide array of embedded sensors and other artefacts that provide information regarding the current state of the physical environment. Utilisation of such information, known as context information has the potential to alter the natural surroundings of users in order to adapt the environment to suit the user's needs and assist in their tasks. These alterations in the environment should occur both transparently and seamlessly in order to minimise the impact on user's attention in such a way that the user's focus is not shifted from the task at hand. Satisfying user requirements in this manner, particularly in an environment that is so complex and dynamic raises a multitude of challenges. It is our belief that these challenges can be attributed to three distinct domains, namely management of personal information and management of context information combined with policy based management system. In the proposed paper we describe a management architecture for these intelligent environments that, through coordinated invocation of system and user policies triggered through the analysis of context information, taking into account business goals, can achieve a balance between user's desires and intentions while upholding system constraints

THE DYNAMIC ADAPTATION OF POLICIES IN UBIQUITOUS ENVIRONMENTS, WITH CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION AS THE CATALYST

This report proposes a policy refinement process design specifically to assist in the management of ubiquitous environments. The principal intent of these environments is to provide user-centric services, devices, interfaces and information. This objective together with other characteristics of ubiquitous environments, namely volatility, invisibility, heterogeneity and accessibility, introduces new and redirects existing management challenges. The flexibility of policy-based management makes it an attractive approach on which to develop an architecture that supports the management of ubiquitous computing environments. The proposed policy refinement architecture uses system requirements along with applicable context information to respond, in an adequate and timely manner, to changes in the underlying infrastructure, user requirements and system requirements

BIO-INSPIRED POLICY BASED MANAGEMENT FOR AUTONOMIC COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

The tremendous development of Internet infrastructures as well as services that support heterogeneous devices and communication technologies has led to an increase in network management complexity. Autonomic control is one way to manage complexity. Policy Based Management System (PBMS)s provide a consistent model for decision making using a set of abstractions (e.g., to manage the system in a manner that is independent from the complexities of low level network technologies). In this paper, we develop a hierarchical PBMS that is based on bioinspired mechanisms for organism regulation. The inspiration from biological systems supports mechanisms for selforganisation and self-management at different levels of the hierarchy. We employ this hierarchy towards the policy based management system for autonomic communications systems