Introducing Anonymous Real-Time Mobile Community Services

This paper analyzes the concept of anonymous real-time mobile community (ART-MC) services, which enables the real-time collection of information residing in a community of mobile terminals, which can then be processed and delivered to a service requesting terminal. An example application is the provision of real-time information concerning road-traffic conditions, based on the location and velocity of mobile terminals. The ART-MC concept requires the deployment of an appropriate software client at the terminal side, as well as the deployment of an ART-MC Server at the network side. The proposed architecture is presented and explained in detail. Anonymity and privacy issues are addressed, and an extensive analysis regarding scalability is given. Finally, additional example applications of the ART-MC concept are listed.