The main research activity concerns the combining of functions of Smartphones, which can be considered versatile devices and offer a wide range of possible uses, through advanced signal processing techniques. The technological evolution of Smartphones, combined with their increasing diffusion, gives mobile network providers the opportunity to come up with more advanced and innovative services. Among these are the so-called Context-Aware services, highly customizable services tailored to the user's preferences and needs and relying on the real-time knowledge of the user's surroundings, without requiring complex configuration on the user's part. Examples of Context-Aware services are user profile changes as a result of context changes, user proximity-based advertising or media content tagging, etc.
In practice, the research developed by the Digital Signal Processing Laboratory deals with Context-Aware Smartphone applications that answer the following questions about the device's surroundings: What, Who, Where, When, Why and How. As a consequence, in order to provide Context-Aware services, a description of the Smartphone's environment must be obtained by acquiring and combining context signals and data from different sources, both external (e.g. cell IDs, GPS coordinates, nearby Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices) and internal (e.g. idle/active status, battery power, accelerometer measurements). Starting from the sources and sensors available to Smartphone terminals, and the possible information they can provide, it is possible to develop a set of possible Context-Aware services such as Audio Environment Recognition, Speaker Count, Indoor and Outdoor Positioning, Place Recognition, User Activity Recognition. These Context-Aware services, for Smartphone terminals, are designed and realized in the framework of several national and international cooperation in the fields of Surveillance and Forensics application, e-health applications, social networking.