Abstract
This chapter is consecrated to provide background information that encompass the basic concepts of context-aware pervasive computing systems. The major challenges that researchers need to consider when conducting research in context-aware pervasive computing systems and the most interesting approaches that can be used in order to deal with these challenges are reviewed. This chapter describes also the basic design principles of context-aware pervasive systems and depicts different models for representing and reasoning upon contextual information and an overview of the most known development frameworks of context-aware systems and application adaptation is presented too. Moreover, this chapter describes the usefulness of using context-awareness in ubiquitous healthcare domain and the major challenges in using context-awareness in this domain. The well-known works that have been proposed in the field of Ubiquitous healthcare are discussed too.