Multi-Agent Based Social Simulation Applied To Validation Of Location Services

The main concern of this book chapter is about the software engineering process of developing ubiquitous computing services. The kind of services addressed are those that must operate in complex software environments and in complex scenarios involving many users and different situations in a proactive, intelligent and non-intrusive way. More specifically, this chapter focuses on indoor location services and how to start building them in the lab, as a first phase to a real deployment. The procedure shown is based on agent based social simulation of the environment in which the service works. Simulations are used to test the service, its reliability and its accuracy in a prior phase to work in a real set up. The specific location service used is based on a Bluetooth wireless infrastructure. The proposed location service was tested in a simulated environment showing that this procedure is able to test the service before a final deployment avoiding expensive and annoying tests.