Mathematical model for performance analysis of a context-aware device with composite service

Recent advances in the development of smart devices and wireless network infrastructures have made it possible to provide a variety of rich services to diverse user groups. In order to make the best use of these technological benefits, the services provided by the device need to be developed and supplied with consideration for the user context that contains information about the environments with which the device and the user interact. The user context is mostly inferred based on the data that are dispersed in the user's environment and can trigger a service when enough data are gathered to infer a certain degree of user context. A service provided by the device usually consists of one or more smaller services taking the form of a composite service. In this regard, we investigate a context-aware composite service provision process and present an analytical tool for assessing the performance of the process by means of a mathematical model. The results from extensive experimental simulations indicate that a performance assessment based on the proposed mean value analysis model effectively confirms the characteristics of the composite service systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.