Multicast support in mobile commerce applications

Mobile commerce is an emerging discipline that involves mobile devices, applications, middleware, and wireless networks. Although most e-commerce applications can be modified to run in a wireless environment, m-commerce includes a wide range of new services ranging from locational advertising to mobile offices that are only possible with a wireless infrastructure. Among the many challenges m-commerce presents to network designers, service providers, vendors, and applications developers is providing support for multicast communications. Unlike broadcasting, in which everyone is sent a message, or replicated unicasting, in which messages are sent one by one to individual clients, multicasting involves sending messages to only a select group of mobile users. It thus avoids sending messages to too many users or using too many resources to send messages. The article presents five classes of m-commerce applications that require or can benefit from multicast support in wireless networks. Even among those requiring such support, specific requirements vary considerably. Reliability is an important requirement for many m-commerce applications, while real-time applications need low latency or a certain quality of service. Security is also a major concern in some instances     

Group-oriented mobile services: Requirements and solutions

Emerging mobile services, including m-commerce, have received considerable interest among researchers, developers, service providers, and users. Some of these mobile services will be group-oriented and thus require the support for group communications among mobile users. In this paper, several group-oriented mobile services and their specific requirements are presented and discussed. Several wireless solutions are also presented to meet the diverse and complex requirements of group-oriented mobile services.     

Mobility management for m-commerce requests in wireless cellular networks

Increasing number of sophisticated services provided by the current wireless communication systems have caused a significant transition from E-commerce to M-commerce. Enterprises have provided considerable new opportunities to promote their businesses accessible from small mobile devices such as personal digital assistant (PDA) or mobiles phones. These facilities are envisioned as the most convenient way of using M-commerce. Using such services from mobile phones or PDAs equipped with GSM/GPRS involve effective mobility management mechanisms in cellular networks—a popular architecture for wireless networks. Success of such systems will largely depend on the reliable connection for the roaming users. Consequently, Quality of Service (QoS) provision is one of the most challenging issues in the heterogeneous wireless network-based m-commerce systems. Such m-commerce systems enable users to roam between different wireless networks operators and geographical areas while providing interactive broadband services and seamless connectivity. This paper presents an analytical framework to model scarce channels in any cell for maximizing channel utilization and efficient handling of handover requests. Typical numerical experiments are presented to validate the analytical solution against simulation to study the effect of bursty traffic upon the performance of the cell in any cellular networks.     

The emergence of m-commerce

Driven by a widespread understanding of the Internet's capabilities, the power of electronic commerce, and advances in wireless technologies and devices, mobile commerce (m-commerce) is rapidly approaching the business forefront. According to independent research findings, m-commerce, the conducting of business and services over portable, wireless devices, will soon be a dominant force in business and society. The viability of these projections depends on the power of the underlying technology drivers and the attractiveness of m-commerce applications. To compete in a marketplace dominated by wireless devices, businesses must devise effective m-commerce strategies. Building successful strategies begins by recognizing the forces driving m-commerce's emergence.     

The conceptualization and measurement of m-commerce user satisfaction

Many of the instruments for measuring user-perceived system quality and user information satisfaction were developed in the context of mainframe, PC and wire-based technologies of a bygone era. With the proliferation of wireless technologies, users are increasingly interfacing and interacting with mobile commerce (m-commerce) systems. It is therefore important to develop new instruments and scales, which are directly targeted for these new interfaces and applications. User satisfaction is commonly acknowledged as one of the useful proxy measures of system success. This study addresses the concern for an effective m-commerce system design by means of the conceptualization and measurement of an m-commerce user satisfaction (MCUS) construct. In this article, we introduce and define this construct of MCUS, provide empirical validation of the construct and its underlying dimensionality, develop a standardized instrument with desirable psychometric properties for measuring MCUS, and explore the measure’s theoretical and practical application. This empirically validated instrument will be useful to researchers in developing and testing m-commerce systems theories, as well as to organizations in designing better-accepted m-commerce systems.     

A two-staged SEM-neural network approach for understanding and predicting the determinants of m-commerce adoption

The advancement in wireless and mobile technologies has presented tremendous business opportunity for mobile-commerce (m-commerce). This research aims to examine the factors that influence consumers’ m-commerce adoption intention. Variables such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, trust, cost, network influence, and variety of services were used to examine the adoption intentions of consumers. Data was collected from 376 m-commerce users. A multi-analytic approach was proposed whereby the research model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM), and the results from SEM were used as inputs for a neural network model to predict m-commerce adoption. The result showed that perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, trust, cost, network influence, and trust have significant influence on consumers’ m-commerce adoption intentions. However, the neural network model developed in this research showed that the best predictors of m-commerce adoption are network influence, trust, perceived usefulness, variety of service, and perceived enjoyment. This research proposed an innovative new approach to understand m-commerce adoption, and the result for this study will be useful for telecommunication and m-commerce companies in formulating strategies to attract more consumers.     

Service and P2P based secure media sharing in mobile commerce environments

Service technology is slowly evolving to be a promising technology for developing applications in open, loosely coupled and distributed computing environments, e.g., in mobile commerce (m-commerce). Services technology can shield the heterogeneous platforms and is suitable for m-commerce applications. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology becomes more and more popular for mobile commerce applications. For secure media distribution in m-commerce applications, the security and P2P rights management become more and more urgent. New schemas and architectures for secure P2P based m-commerce applications, which are expected to function automatically or semi-automatically, are expected. In this paper, a secure media service system is presented, which can trace illegal distributors in m-commerce applications. In this scheme, the decryption operation and fingerprint embedding operation are combined together, which avoids the leakage of clear media content in mobile transfer. Additionally, these operations are implemented by the peer, which makes the scheme compliant with existing Peer-to-Peer Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems and very proper for secure media distribution in m-commerce applications. The architectures and modes of secure media distribution in m-commerce environment are presented and discussed.     

Context management for m-commerce applications: determinants, methodology and the role of marketing

Studying consumer behaviour and usage of environmental determinants in the mobile services domain contributes to the identification of context information which is critical for the effective operation of mobile commerce applications. Exploiting this information towards providing enhanced and innovative mobile services offers a competitive advantage within the highly demanding domain of m-commerce applications. However, in order to effectively exploit such context information, there is a need to design the necessary methods, software tools and information systems that will be employed for collecting, processing and disseminating this information. In this paper we develop a theoretical framework which defines the context information necessary for m-commerce applications, taking into account relevant marketing dimensions as well as privacy protection perspectives. Then, this framework is operationalized through the design of an appropriate software architecture which enables the standardization and management of context information.     

The status and future of 802.11-based WLANs

The main attraction of WLANs is their flexibility. They can extend access to local area networks, such as corporate intranets, as well as support broadband access to the Internet - particularly at "hot spots," public venues where people tend to gather. WLANs can provide quick, easy wireless connectivity to computers, machinery, or systems in a local environment where a fixed communications infrastructure does not exist or where such access is not permitted. These hosts can be stationary, handheld, or even mounted on a moving vehicle. Bandwidth considerations have thus far been secondary in WLAN design and implementation: the original 802.11 standard allowed a maximum channel bit rate of only 2 megabits per second, while the current 802.11 b standard supports an 11 Mbps maximum rate. However, the widespread deployment of 802.11a and 802.11g standards, which allow a bit rate of up to 54 Mbps, will pave the way for new types of mobile applications, including m-commerce transactions and location-based services.     

Automating negotiation for m-services

Mobile electronic commerce (m-commerce) is an emerging manifestation of Internet electronic commerce that bridges the domains of Internet, mobile computing and wireless telecommunications in order to provide an array of sophisticated services (m-services) to mobile users. To date, much of the research in the area has concentrated on the problem of service discovery. However, once a service has been discovered, it needs to be provisioned according to the goals and constraints of the service provider and the service consumer. Since, in general, these will be different stakeholders (with different aims), the de facto provisioning method will be some form of negotiation. To this end, this paper develops automated negotiation protocols and strategies that are applicable in m-commerce environments. Specifically, we develop and evaluate time-constrained bilateral negotiation algorithms, that allow software agents to adapt to the quality of the network and/or their experience of similar interactions.     

User acceptance of mobile commerce: an empirical study in Macau

This study aims to examine the positive and negative factors that can significantly explain user acceptance of mobile commerce (m-commerce) in Macau. A technology acceptance model for m-commerce with five factors is constructed. The proposed model is tested using data collected from 219 respondents. Confirmatory factor analysis is performed to examine the reliability and validity of the model, and structural equation modelling is performed to access the relationship between behaviour intention and each factor. The acceptance of m-commerce is influenced by factors including performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions and privacy concern; while effort expectancy is insignificant in this case. The results of the study are useful for m-commerce service providers to adjust their strategies for promoting m-commerce services. This study contributes to the practice by providing a user technology acceptance model for m-commerce that can be used as a foundation for future research.     

Determinants of users’ intention to adopt m-commerce: an empirical analysis

The fast-growing penetration of mobile devices and recent advances in mobile technologies have led to the development of increasingly sophisticated services such as m-shopping for goods or services and m-payment. However, although the number of mobile subscribers is increasing, levels of actual m-commerce activities in many cases remain low. Determining what influences users’ intention to use m-commerce is therefore of growing importance. The purpose of this study was to investigate possible factors. To this aim, we developed a conceptual user adoption model based on technology acceptance model variables and on specific factors such as social influence, personal innovativeness, customization, and individual mobility. The empirical results show that social influence and customization significantly affect perceived usefulness; mobility, customization, and personal innovativeness significantly affect perceived ease of use; and perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a direct positive effect on behavioral intention.     

Determining the mobile commerce user requirements using an analytic approach

Independent studies have shown that mobile commerce (m-commerce) can have an important influence on business and society in the future. Hence, network designers, service providers, vendors and application developers must carefully take the needs and considerations of various users into account to provide better services and attract them to m-commerce. Consequently, identifying the m-commerce user requirements and their significance becomes an essential and crucial process for the standardization and improvement of associated systems. On this line, the objective of this paper is to propose an analytic framework to provide practitioners a more effective and efficient model for prioritizing m-commerce requirements.     

无线Java在移动设备上的安全应用

介绍了J2ME技术在移动没备上的应用以及J2ME的安全体系结构，说明了如何用数据加密和SSL协议等方式来实现移动设备在无线网络中端到端安全地交换数据。     

移动电子商务认证方案

移动设备的普遍应用将电子商务扩展到了无线网络世界。移动电子商务和传统电子商务一样,也有其相应的真实性、完整性和机密性等信息安全需求。根据移动电子商务自身的特点,提出一种基于信任的认证方案,旨在使该认证方案足够简单而适用于处理能力较弱的移动设备,用信任令牌替代了传统的公钥证书,并对该方案进行了分析。     

Programmable mobile networks

Existing mobile systems (e.g., mobile IP, mobile ATM and third generation cellular systems) lack the intrinsic architectural flexibility to deal with the complexity of supporting adaptive mobile applications in wireless and mobile environments. We believe that there is a need to develop alternative network architectures from the existing ones to deal with the demands placed on underlying mobile signalling, adaptation management and wireless transport systems in support of new mobile services, e.g. interactive multimedia and web access. In this paper we present the design, implementation and evaluation of mobiware, a middleware technology that enables the introduction of new services in mobile networks. Mobiware provides a toolkit that service providers can utilize to build services that can dynamically exploit the intrinsic scalable properties of mobile multimedia applications in response to time-varying mobile network conditions. Based on an open programmable networking paradigm, mobiware runs on mobile devices, wireless access points and mobile-capable switch/routers providing a set of open programmable interfaces and distributed objects for adaptive mobile networking. Mobiware is software-intensive and is built on CORBA and Java distributed object technologies. The source code for mobiware v1.0 is freely available (comet.columbia.edu/mobiware) for experimentation.     

Get wireless: a mobile technology spectrum

Mobile computing applications allow anytime, anywhere access to the Internet and corporate intranets. For several reasons, the market for wireless data services has grown at a much slower rate than wireless voice. Until recently, portable data devices were bulky, required heavy batteries, and didn't have integrated networking. Wireless services have also had to contend with narrow bandwidths, high access latency, and frequent disconnection. Added to this were inadequate coverage, expensive services, and perceived security problems. Finally, few applications were specifically designed with mobility in mind. New mobile technologies address these problems, making wireless data transmission an attractive alternative for individuals and enterprises. The next few years will see wireless data networks come into their own. Next year (year 2000), the market for wireless data networks is predicted to grow to six to eight million users with seven percent of the total wireless revenues. In fact, wireless data service is projected to be a multibillion-dollar market within five years. The combination of portable gadgets and wireless data services provides exciting opportunities for mobile computing applications