A Mobile, Intelligent Agent-Based Architecture for E-Business

Abstract

This paper proposes a mobile, intelligent agent-based e-business architecture that allows buyers and sellers to perform business at remote locations. An e-business participant can generate a mobile, intelligent agent via some mobile devices (such as a personal digital assistant or mobile phone) and dispatch the agent to the Internet to do business on her behalf. This proposed architecture promises a number of benefits: First, it provides great convenience for traders as business can be conducted anytime and anywhere. Secondly, since the task of finding and negotiating with appropriate traders is handled by a mobile, intelligent agent, the user is freed from this time-consuming task. Thirdly, this architecture addresses the problem of limited and expensive connection time for mobile devices: A trader can disconnect her mobile device from its server after generating and launching a mobile, intelligent agent. Later on, she can reconnect and call back the agent for results, therefore minimizing the connection time. Finally, by complying with the standardization body FIPA, this flexible architecture increases the interoperability between agent systems and provides high scalability design for swiftly moving across the network.