Skip to main content
Log in

Design and implementation of a smart system for personalization and accurate selection of mobile services

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Requirements Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Wireless mobile services are computing applications that run on handheld wireless devices. Such applications must work within the daunting constraints of the devices, which include memory, processing power, input capabilities, and size of display. It is therefore important that mobile services take into account the user’s context, optimize resource usage, and minimize input effort imposed on the user. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a smart agent-enabled system for personalizing wireless mobile services and advertisements for Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) or Java ME, and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) enabled devices. We use software agents for context filtering because such autonomous software entities have characteristics that can benefit mobile devices and the wireless environment, and the Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP) standard for defining profiles for user preferences and device capabilities. The system incorporates the use of artificial neural networks to adaptively and iteratively learn to select the best available service based on contextual information. The system is evaluated using practical operating scenarios, as well as empirical data and results show an 87% success rate in the selection of the best available service.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Sun Microsystems J2ME: java.sun.com/j2me

  2. W3C CC/PP Information Page, http://www.w3.org/Mobile/CCPP

  3. Varshney U, Vetter R (2002) Mobile commerce: framework, applications and networking support. Mobile Netw Appl 7(3):185–198

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Siau K, Sheng H, Nah F (2004) The value of mobile commerce to customers. The Third Annual Workshop on HCI Research in MIS, Washington, DC, USA, pp 65–69

  5. Nah F, Siau K, Sheng H (2005) The value of mobile applications: a utility study. Commun ACM 48(2):86–90

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Schilit B, Theimer M (1994) Disseminating active map information to mobile hosts. IEEE Netw 8(5):22–32

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Dey AK, Abowd GD (2000) Towards a better understanding of context and context-awareness. In the workshop on the what, who, where, when, and how of context-awareness, as part of the 2000 conference on human factors in computing systems, The Hague, The Netherlands, pp 304–307

  8. Lee WP, Lu CC (2003) Customising WAP-based information services on mobile networks. Pers Ubiquit Comput 7(5):321–330

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Samaras G, Panayiotou C (2002) Personalized portals for wireless user based on mobile agents. WMC’02, 28 September, Atlanta, GA, USA

  10. Wohltorf J, Cissee R, Rieger A, Scheunemann H (2003) Berlin Tainment: an agent-based serviceware framework for context-aware services. DAI-Labor, Technische University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

  11. Jain R, Puglia S, Wullert J, Parmeswaran K, Bakker J (2004) The Mobile Application Server (MAS): an infrastructure platform for mobile wireless services. Inf Syst Front 6(1):23–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Li CL, Lu ZD, Li LY (2003) Design and implementation of a hybrid agent platform. Program Comput Softw 29(1):28–42

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Roque R, Soares T, Oliveira J “VESPER project—validation of VHE concept”. Available online at http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/459241.html

  14. Lankhorst MM, van Kranenburg H, Salden A, Peddemors AJH (2002) Enabling Technology for Personalizing Mobile Services. In: Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

  15. Mahmoud QH, Yu L (2005) An architecture and business model for making software agents commercially viable. In: Proceedings of the 38 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Big Island, HI, USA

  16. Lang DB, Oshima M (1999) Seven good reasons for mobile agents. Commun ACM 42(3):88–89

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Claessens J, Preneel B, Vandewalle J (2003) How can mobile agents do secure electronic transactions on untrusted hosts? A survey of security issues and the current solutions. ACM Trans Internet Technol 3(1):28–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Mahmoud QH, Wang Z (2005) An agent-enabled system for personalizing wireless mobile services. In: Proceedings of the 11 Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Omaha, NE, USA, pp 2506–2512

  19. Al-Masri E, Mahmoud QH (2006) A context-aware mobile service discovery and selection mechanism using artificial neural networks. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC 2006), Fredericton, NB, Canada, pp 594–598

  20. Mahmoud QH “Getting Started with CC/PP and JSR 188”. Available online http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/midp/articles/ccpp/

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant Number 045635.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qusay H. Mahmoud.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Mahmoud, Q.H., Al-Masri, E. & Wang, Z. Design and implementation of a smart system for personalization and accurate selection of mobile services. Requirements Eng 12, 221–230 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-007-0051-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-007-0051-3

Keywords

Navigation