COMITY - Conflict avoidance in pervasive computing environments

Pervasive Computing leads to novel challenges of application coordination. Applications may interfere with each other since they affect and share the same physical environment. A user that executes a navigation application utilizing a loudspeaker as output may annoy a user listening to music. To ensure a conflict-free execution of multiple applications, approaches are needed to avoid conflicts at runtime. In this paper we identify typical conflicts arising in Pervasive Computing. We propose how to detect potential conflicts by requiring applications to communicate their effects on the physical environment. After the detection, a suitable strategy is applied resolving the potential conflict. As a practical validation, we discuss how to model and avoid conflicts using our component-based software system PCOM.