Mobile Wireless Security Applications
A Solution for real time Application in Mobile Commerce
Mobile Commerce Applications
The applications of electronic commerce are already widespread; mobile commerce applications not only cover these but also include new ones. For example, some tasks that are not feasible for electronic commerce, such as mobile inventory tracking and dispatching, are possible for mobile commerce. Table 1 lists some of the major mobile commerce applications (Sadeh, 2002).
Table 1: Major mobile commerce applications
Mobile Middleware
The term middleware refers to the software layer between the operating system and the distributed applications that interact via the networks. The primary mission of a middleware layer is to hide the underlying networked environment's complexity by insulating applications from explicit protocol handling disjoint memories, data replication, network faults, and parallelism (Geihs, 2001). Mobile middleware translates requests from mobile stations to a host computer and adapts content from the host to the mobile station (Saha, Jamtgaard, & Villasenor, 2001).
WAP and i-mode
According to an article in Eurotechnology.com (2000), 60 percent of the world’s wireless Internet users use i-mode, 39 percent use WAP, and 1 percent use Palm middleware. Table 3 compares i-mode and WAP, along with details of each.
Table 2: Comparisons of two major kinds of mobile middle ware
WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). WAP (Open Mobile Alliance Ltd, n.d.) is an open, global specification that allows users with mobile stations to easily access and interacts with information and services instantly. The most important technology applied by WAP is probably the WAP Gateway, which translates requests from the WAP protocol stack to the WWW stack, so they can be submitted to Web servers.
I-mode. I-mode (NTT-Do Como, n.d.) is the full-color, always-on, and packet-switched Internet service for cellular phones offered by NTT Do Como. The i-mode network structure not only provides access to i-mode and i-mode-compatible contents through the Internet, but also provides access through a dedicated leased-line circuit for added security. Users are charged based on the volume of data transmitted, rather than the amount of time spent connected.
Wireless and Wired Networks
Network infrastructure provides essential voice and data communication capability for consumers and vendors in cyberspace. Wireless networking technologies are advancing at a tremendous pace and each represents a solution for a certain phase, such as 1G, 2G, and 3G, in a particular geographical area, such as the United States, Europe, or Japan. In this subsection, we will categorize them from the perspective of radio coverage into three networks:
Wireless Local Area Network: Devices used in wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies are light-weight (easy to carry) and flexible in network configuration. In a one-hop WLAN environment, where an access point (AP) acting as a router or switch is a part of a wired network, mobile devices connect directly to the AP through radio channels. Data packets are relayed by the AP to the other end of a network connection. If no APs are available, mobile devices can form
a wireless ad hoc network among themselves and exchange data packets or perform business transactions as necessary.
Wireless Metropolitan Area Network: The most important technology in this category is the cellular wireless network. Cellular system users can conduct mobile commerce operations through their cellular phones. Under this scenario, a cellular phone connects directly to the closest base station, where communication is relayed to the service site through a radio access network (RAN) and other fixed networks.
Wireless Wide Area Network: In large geographic areas lacking the infrastructure of wireless cellular networks, satellite systems can be utilized to provide wireless communication services. Communication through satellites is very similar to the scenario in cellular systems, apart from the differences in transmission distance and coverage range.
Wired networks are optional for a mobile commerce system. However, most computers (servers) usually reside on wired networks such as the Internet, so user requests are routed to these servers using transport and/or security mechanisms provided by wired networks.
Host Computers
A host computer processes, produces, and stores all the information for mobile commerce applications. This component is similar to that used in an electronic commerce system because the host computers are usually not aware of differences among the targets, browsers or micro browsers they serve. It is the application programs that are responsible for apprehending their clients and responding to them accordingly. Most of the mobile commerce application programs reside in this component, except for some client-side programs such as cookies. This component contains three major components:
Web servers: A Web server is a server-side application program that runs on a host computer and manages the Web pages stored on the Web site’s database. There are many Web server software applications, including public domain software from NCSA and Apache, and commercial packages from Microsoft, Netscape, and others. Apache was developed in early 1995 based on code and ideas found in the most popular HTTP server of the time, NCSA httpd 1.3.
Database servers: A database server manages database access functions, such as locating the actual record being requested or updating the data in databases. Some popular databases are Oracle10g, Microsoft Access, and IBM DB2. Other than the server-side database servers, a growing trend is to provide a mobile database or an embedded database to a handheld device with a wide range of data-processing functionality. Some leading embedded-databases are Progress Software databases, Sybase’s Anywhere products, and Ardent Software’s DataStage (Ortiz, 2000).
Application Programs and Support Software: Web and database servers are mandatory for mobile commerce systems; application programs handle all server-side processing. However, to facilitate mobile commerce applications, some other support software is needed. For example, various programming languages, including Perl, Java, Visual Basic, C/C++, etc., and the CGI (Common
Gateway Interface) are necessary to transfer information between Web interfaces and CGI scripts are necessary.
Mobile Handheld Devices
Mobile users interact with mobile commerce applications by using small wireless Internet-enabled devices, which come with several aliases such as handhelds, palms, PDAs, pocket PCs, and smart phones. Mobile handheld devices are small general-purpose, programmable, battery-powered computers, but they are different from desktop PCs or notebooks due to the following special features:
Limited network bandwidth,
Small screen/body size, and
Mobility.Figure 3 shows a typical system structure for handheld devices, which includes thefollowing six major components: i) a mobile operating system, ii) a mobile centralprocessing unit, iii) a microbrowser, iv) input/output devices, v) a memory, and vi)batteries.
Figure 3: System structure of mobile handheld devices
A typical system structure for hand held devices includes the following six major components: i) a mobile operating system, ii) a mobile central processing unit, iii) a micro browser, iv) input/output devices, v) a memory, and vi) batteries, which will be detailed in the following sub-sections.
Mobile Operating Systems
Simply adapting desktop operating systems for mobile hand held devices has proved to be a futile endeavor; an example of this effort is Microsoft Windows CE. A mobile operating system needs a new architecture and different features in order to provide adequate services for hand held devices. Several mobile operating systems are already available and each employs a different architecture and implementation. Figure 4 shows a generalized mobile operating system structure, which can be visualized as a six-layer stack.
Figure 4: A generalized mobile operating system structure
Although a wide range of mobile hand held devices are available in the market, the operating systems, the hub of the devices, are dominated by just three major organizations. The following two lists show the operating systems used in the top three brands of smart cellular phones and PDAs in descending order of market share:
Smart cellular phones: Microsoft Smartphone 2002, Palm OS 5, and Symbian OS 7. (Vaughan-Nichols, 2003)
PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants): Palm OS 5, Microsoft Pocket
PC 2002, and Symbian OS 7. (PCTechGuide, n.d.) The market share is changing frequently and claims concerning the share vary enormously. It is almost impossible to predict which will be the ultimate winner in the battle of mobile operating systems.
Mobile Central Processing Units
The core hardware in mobile handheld devices is the mobile processors, and the performance and functionality of the devices are largely dependent on the capabilities of the processors. There used to be several brands available, but recently mobile processors designed by ARM Ltd. have begun to dominate the market. Handheld devices are becoming more sophisticated and efficient every day and mobile users are demanding more functionality from the devices. For example, In-Stat/MDR (2002) predicted that worldwide mobile Internet access device unit shipments would increase from approximately 430 million that year to approximately 760 million in 2006. To achieve this advanced functionality, in addition to the obvious feature, low cost, today’s mobile processors must have the following features: i) high performance, ii) low power consumption, iii) multimedia capability, and iv) real-time capability.
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