Context-Aware Advertising in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

There has been much recent research into the area of pervasive computing and the development of collaborative applications. Increased levels of mobility in computing devices combined with the ability to dynamically create mobile ad-hoc networks offers great potential for the development of ’smart’ applications. Application nodes can spontaneously interact and communicate with each other without a reliance on any infrastructure. In this type of environment an application node’s contextual information is likely to be similarly dynamic and subject to frequent change. This type of environment is therefore ideally suited to creating highly adaptive applications which can react and tailor their behaviour to their current context. One application domain which could benefit from this type of application is that of mobile advertising. There is an increasing popularity of information services that provide various types of content delivery in mobile environments. As consumer usage has shifted more and more from traditional media towards mobile and wireless devices, advertisers have inevitably begun to shift their focus towards these new forms of media. However, the intimate and personal nature of mobile devices means that users expect more personalised and intimate content on these devices. In order for mobile advertising to be successful and to gain widespread consumer acceptance, advertising content delivered to users must be highly personalised and relevant. This dissertation investigates the potential for creating a context-aware advertising application deployable in a mobile ad-hoc environment. The dissertation builds on existing research to develop mobile event-based middleware and applies it to the domain of advertising. The research includes the design and implementation of an advertising system using this existing middleware. The system enables consumers moving into an