Challenges in modeling and disseminating context information in Ambient Networks

The concept of Ambient Networks (AN) aims at enabling the cooperation between heterogeneous networks on demand, in order to provide ubiquitous connectivity to end-users. This could be achieved by seamlessly incorporating context-awareness which plays a vital role in supporting autonomic decision making in ANs, while giving rise to new types of applications and services. Modeling and disseminating contextual information in a rapidly changing time-constrained heterogeneous environment, transparently to the potential users, is a challenge. This paper discusses these complications with an evaluation of the existing context modeling and dissemination approaches, with respect to ambient networking requirements.