Jens HartmannSenior Researcher
Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH
Germany
Bremen, Januar 2001
Invited Talk
MCAP - agent-based servicesolutions for mobile networks
The idea of agents is not new!
the age old dream of intelligent robots
asynchronous processing tasks
decentralisation of control
Agents - the good old dream
Several contributing disciplines
Artificial Intelligence
Distributed Systems
Object Technology
Agent
Artificial Intelligence
User InterfaceProgramming Languages
Network Management
Agents - a buzzword for everything?
RoboticDistributed Systems
Shortcomings of 2nd Generation Mobile Networks
• Limited Bandwidth
• Home Services not always available
• Low Processing Power of Terminals
• Simple User Interfaces
• High Connectivity Costs
Applications of Agent Technology
• Task Delegation (e.g. Search Machines)
• Service Personalization
• Adaptability to Networks and Terminals
• Virtual Home Environment
• Fixed Mobile Convergence
• Open Architecture and Networks
Why Agent Technology?
Why M-Commerce with Agents?
• Internet Boom
• Personalized Services
• Network and Terminal Independence
Service Provider
Complex transactions
Application Server
Mobile User
Application Scenario: Banking & Payment
Application Scenario: Intelligent Shopping
WAP Gateway
Merchant 1
WAP / Agent Server
Merchant n
Internet
ProviderNetwork
WAP Terminal
Product:_____Price:_______Distance:__kmetc. ____
SQL
SQL
SQL
- WML pages- list of merchants
Products
Products
M-Commerce
M-Commerce is the driver for mobile data services
current activities are concentrating around payment solutions
for a retrieval and shopping scenario user interfaces have to be simple number of interactions with the user should be reduced by the use of agents adaptation of output to different end-systems data over radio interfaces should decrease WAP offers with WBXML an efficient and ease to use compression mechanism
M-Commerce Agent Platform (MCAP)
Agents/WAP/XML over GSM/GPRS/Bluetooth/WLAN/IRDA
Internet/Backbone
Agents/SQL
Agent-based M-Commerce solution
-Data (SQL)
-Mobile Agent
Mobile Agent Stationary Agent
MCAPMerchant A
Merchant BMerchant C
Merchant D MCAPMerchant A
Merchant BMerchant C
Merchant D
MCAP creates list of merchantsMobile agents move from host to hostMobility enables filtering data locallyMobile agents generate a higher base load
(data volume and processing time); load is distributed among all hosts, thus the increase of the MCAP load is less critical
Information retrieval with agents
M-Commerce: A comparison
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Measurements
Tim
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MSA+XML
MSA
SSA
stationary agents are fastermobile agents are more complexXML-interface creates additional delay
M-commerce: MCAP performance vs. merchants
Impact of mobile and stationary agents
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FIRST THREE BEST SMART
Dat
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[kb
yte]
MSA
SSA
Summary
Small amounts of data (3 to 5 kbyte) are sufficientExpected service times will around 2 minutesSimple queries will be best achieved by RPCsMobile agents are advantageous for complex queriesMobile agents are also very helpful in respect to load
balancing (processing power of the MCAP)GPRS and UMTS are designed for packet-oriented
applicationsthe air interface will remain as bottleneck of the systemM-Commerce services will benefit from
volume-based billingHigh penetration of WAP phones is the
entry point for m-commerce servicesEffective data reduction through WMLCXML is a sensible interface to create
flexible and extendable mobile agents
the agent paradigm is applicable for multiple application segments (modelling)
service roaming could be achieved through mobile agents (flexibility, personalisation)
performance evaluations have shown that mobile agents have advantageous when it comes to multiple data transmission and complex transactions (reduction of network traffic)
mobile agents are well-suited for mobile applications for wireless networks and rare resources (asynchronous task execution)
Conclusions concerning mobile agents
With today’s platforms, mobile agent technology faces open issues such as security, scalability and
disconnected operations.
• to offer new value-added services (FMC)• to reduce time-to-market• to reduce development and maintenance costs
and change the nature of service provisioning.
In the near future, however, mobile agent
technology will solve many problems efficiently, and are well-designed for packet-switched networks.
Mobile agent technology will allow
Mobile agents - outlook