The Open Location Based Services Application Platform aims to provide location/contextaware services on a mobile phone without relying on constant online access. Most stateof- the-art mobile phones are equipped with a camera that can be used for 2D barcode and pattern recognition using existing libraries. Within this project, that same technology should be used to provide context-aware services in a limited geographic area, indoor or outdoor, without the need to be always online.
A survey on various areas on the subject of context-awareness was conducted, regarding models, architectures and applications. It was concluded a simple architecture would suffice, as the most complex fit on a more complicated set of context-aware systems, most of them distributed.
A comparison between various types of 2D bar-codes was also performed, leading to a choice that balances various factors such as openess of the format, data capacity, readability and popularity. Conclusions were drawn and the QR Code was the 2D barcode choosen.
Research on the platform where this project will be developed, the Android OS, was also performed.