Elsevier

Computer Communications

Volume 23, Issue 8, 1 April 2000, Pages 754-760
Computer Communications

Advanced service provisioning based on mobile agents

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-3664(99)00235-2Get rights and content

Abstract

Service provisioning is currently a challenging issue to offer future telecommunication services efficiently and at the same time in a flexible and user-friendly manner. As a contribution of the ACTS CAMELEON [CAMELEON project: http://www.comnets.rwth-aachen.de/~cameleon and CLIMATE ACTS cluster for intelligent mobile agents in telecommunication environments: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/cc/ima/climate/] project to the VHE (Virtual Home Environment) concept of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) [ETS ITS 22.70 Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), service aspects: Virtual Home Environment (VHE). UMTS Draft Version, 3.00, 1998], this paper describes an advanced approach for service execution and service provisioning based on agent technology.

The mobile and autonomous agent paradigm is a promising new approach for flexible service provisioning as well as automatic feature updates in terminals and network nodes. This paper describes an Adaptive Profile Manager, which is an agent-based mechanism that allows a telecommunication user access to his personalised services independent of the used end device (mobile phone, Laptop, PDA, among other devices). The service presentation is adapted to the corresponding end device considering its capacity and system features as well as the specific user profile.

Introduction

Third generation Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems (UMTS) are the realisation of a new generation of mobile communications technology for a world in which personal communications services should allow person-to-person calling, independent of location, the terminal used, the means of transmission (wired or wireless) and the choice of technology. Personal communication services should be based on a combination of fixed and wireless/mobile services to form a seamless end-to-end service for the user. Beyond that UMTS will operate in parallel with pre-UMTS technologies (e.g. GSM, DECT). UMTS will offer the following capabilities:

  • provide a wide range of telecommunication services;

  • provide a single integrated system in which the user can access services in an easy and uniform way in all environments;

  • allow differentiation between service offerings of various serving networks and home environments;

  • provide services via hand held, portable, vehicular mounted, movable and fixed terminals, to provide support of roaming users by enabling users to access services provided by their home environment in the same way even when roaming;

  • provide the flexible integration of new telecommunication services.

Service provisioning in UMTS is the overall provision of services to users where a service is defined as a set of functions offered to a user by an organisation. The serving network, which is a possibly often-changing access network of the user, provides the user with access to the services.

Pre-UMTS systems have largely standardised the complete set of teleservices, applications and supplementary services. As a consequence, re-engineering is often required to enable new services to be provided and this makes it more difficult for operators to differentiate their services. UMTS will standardise service capabilities and not the services themselves.

It is intended that these standardised capabilities should provide a defined platform which will enable the support of speech, multimedia, messaging, data, user applications etc.

The User Interface (UI) from the end user's point of view should be as flexible as possible and capable of being updated so as to meet the requirements of new services which are still to be envisaged. The activation of UMTS services should be as simple as possible with minimum input expected from the user.

Section snippets

Virtual home environment

The concept of a Virtual Home Environment (VHE) for UMTS was introduced into the standardisation process for the provision and delivery of personalised services across network and terminal boundaries with the same look and feel. The concept of the VHE is such that users are consistently presented with the same personalised features, user interface customisation and services in whatever network, whatever terminal (within the capabilities of the terminal), and wherever the user may be located.

The

Agents in future communication systems

An agent is defined as a piece of software that is able to perform a task autonomously on behalf of a user or application, using its intelligence to access distributed resources. A place is an execution environment for agents at a specific location. Two types of agents are distinguished: Provider Agents (PA) and Service Agents (SA). A provider agent is permanently available at a fixed location and offers access to local resources. More than one provider agent can exist at a place. The agent

Agent-based service provisioning

With the requirements mentioned above in mind an agent-based approach, the Adaptive Profile Manager (APM) has been developed and prototyped within the framework of the CAMELEON project. The APM focuses mainly on the terminal independent service provisioning which is an essential aspect of the VHE concept and will offer the following capabilities:

  • flexible service provisioning;

  • remote, network and platform independent modification of all user profiles for different services;

  • handling of different

Service prototypes

Currently, the APM provides access to three services namely ICM (Intelligent Communication Manager), PDQ (Personal Data Query), and IRS (Information Retrieval Service) which can be accessed terminal independently and can be presented adaptively to the capabilities of the current terminal and network connection. However, more new services may be added flexibly to the system.

Underlying agent platform

The development and prototyping of APM and the integration of described services are based on the Voyager [9] agent platform. The central register for user data is realised by an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server.

The ObjectSpace Voyager platform is a development platform and object request broker for distributed Java-based applications. It allows the usage of regular message syntax to construct remote objects, Messaging between distributed objects and code migration.

The core

Example scenario

The following scenario describes the usage of the Information Retrieval Service through the APM illustrated in Fig. 4.

After the user authentication and service request through the terminal agent (TA) on a Laptop the corresponding GUI is transported to the terminal (Laptop) by the user interface agent (UIA). Now the user enters the data he is looking for (e.g. find the best flight offer to London on next Monday). After sending the agent with the query (mission) the connection can be dropped.

Conclusion

Sophisticated mobile agent technology will allow flexible service provisioning, execution and access for future telecommunication networks and services. Agent technology allows the co-existence of different types of agents: e.g. intelligent, autonomous, and mobile. These agents can use the same mechanisms for communication and thus allows very flexible service architecture. This will lead to more reliable and performant services. A failure of a central service node will affect fewer users and

Peyman Farjami received his Dipl. -Ing. degree in electrical engineering from Aachen University of Technology, Germany in 1996. Since 1997 he is research assistant and PhD student at the Department of Communication Networks, the Aachen University of Technology. His main research interests are Java-based value added services, personal communication management and mobile agents. In addition he is supervising and coaching practical exercises, semestral and masters theses in his research area. He

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Peyman Farjami received his Dipl. -Ing. degree in electrical engineering from Aachen University of Technology, Germany in 1996. Since 1997 he is research assistant and PhD student at the Department of Communication Networks, the Aachen University of Technology. His main research interests are Java-based value added services, personal communication management and mobile agents. In addition he is supervising and coaching practical exercises, semestral and masters theses in his research area. He is member of the ITG and VDE, and author of technical papers on intelligent communication management and mobile agent based services in telecommunication networks.

Carmelita Görg received the Dipl.-Inform. degree in computer science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany in 1976, and the Dr. rer. nat. degree from Aachen University of Technology, Germany in 1984 for her dissertation in the field of queueing strategies for communication networks. From 1985 until 1989 she worked as a consultant in the field of communication networks. From 1989 until 1999 she worked as a group leader at the Communication Networks Institute, the Aachen University of Technology, Germany, where she received the certificate of habilitation in 1997. In 1999 Dr Görg joined Bremen University as a professor for Communication Networks. Her research interests are: performance analysis of communication networks, stochastic simulation, rare event simulation, high-speed networks, personal communication, and new services in telecommunication networks.

Frank Bell received his Dipl. -Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Aachen University of Technology, Germany, in 1999. His masters' thesis has been performed at the Department of Communication Networks in the framework of the ACTS CAMELEON project. Now, he is working as a consultant for CMG.

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