A link and network layer approach to support mobile commerce transactions

With deployment of 3G and 4G mobile networks, one expects that a sizable proportion of e-commerce traffic will move to mobile and wireless networks. Mobile commerce traffic can be classified into messaging, information connectivity and transactions. In this research our focus is on mobile commerce transactions. We believe that these transactions have unique requirements such as atomicity (all or none steps), push or pull, security and privacy. These transactions are also likely to be very diverse therefore, support for multiple type of transactions is required. Due to user mobility, wireless link characteristics and other problems, some mobile commerce transactions may not be completed. We contend that probability of completing a mobile commerce transaction is a vital parameter for measuring QoS of a network supporting mobile commerce. Therefore, we introduce a new metric, called "transaction completion probability" to measure such performance. In this paper, we propose ways to improve the transaction completion probability.