An Intelligent Agent-Based Framework for Mobile Business

This paper proposes a mobile, intelligent agent-based framework that allows buyers and sellers to perform business at remote locations. A business participant can generate a mobile, intelligent agent via a mobile device and dispatch the agent to the Internet to do business. The proposed framework brings in several advantages: First, it provides great convenience for traders as business can be conducted anytime and anywhere. Secondly, the user is freed from the time-consuming task of finding and negotiating with appropriate traders. Thirdly, it addresses the problem of limited and expensive connection time for mobile users: A trader can disconnect her mobile device from its server after launching a mobile 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 of FIPA, this flexible framework increases the interoperability between agent systems and provides high design scalability.