Ubiquitous Services

Research Priorities and Topics:

The advent of low cost short range wireless has in principle opened the way for ubiquitous services – services delivered to the user wherever he may be, delivered, perhaps in different presentation formats, over co-operating heterogeneous networks. In practice however significant barriers are delaying commercialisation – the advent of low cost wireless in itself is insufficient. Yet such services are essential to create new revenue streams as broadband and voice become commodities.

This research therefore targets innovations in three key areas:

• User Aspects – Personalisation and Automation Techniques to hide complexity and improve usability

• Network – An efficient Network Support Sublayer concept, that can support cost-effective network & service upgrade

• Service - Adaptation management across Infrastructures

Approach:

Much prior research has addressed pervasive computing; however, delivery of commercial ubiquitous services requires a coming together of such technology with the telecom world. This research area seeks solutions that accommodate real-world constraints.

The technical approaches embodied are focussed as follows:

• User Aspects – Ease-of-use is essential to the take up of new services. For this reason key concepts of on-device Personal Assistant Agents and Personal Content Management are being pursued that will allow complexity to be hidden from the user

• Network – A holistic approach is adopted to support integrated Mobility Mgt, QoS and Security over heterogeneous networks, through the design of a Network Support Sublayer concept. Traditional approaches have explored Mobility, QoS and Security over heterogeneous networks as discrete problems; when such separately developed solutions have been integrated overall performance has been disappointing. An innovative approach has been conceived that holds potential as a highly cost-effective means of network and service evolution.

• Service – A service/content adaptation management strategy is pursued, based on automated requirements capture driving a service adaptation engine, enabling adaptation to the user’s context, access and device capabilities, enabling the service provider to easily and quickly introduce new services as new context information becomes available over time.

Publications:

Publications resulting from this research programme are listed here, with links to abstracts.