A Service Supplier Database for Location-Based Mobile Commerce

Dynamic development and improvement of mobile devices in nowadays enforces more attention to the manner in which information is handled (storage and management) among participating components in mobile commerce environment. Many are times tourists become strangers in foreign countries and become worried about available services in each and every place they visit. These services which are known as location based services are normally available to only subscribers of those services. This research proposes a dynamic service discovery mechanism whereby every mobile user is capable of service discovery irrespective of being a subscriber or not. The research focuses on the structure of location based service supplier´s database and the infrastructure in which participating components interact to enable mobile users in a given coverage area to easily access available services that are provided by suppliers in an advertising form. Through network operators using mobile network coverage area (MNCA), mobile device´s current location is automatically detected. This mechanism occurs when a user with mobile device registers with local network transmitter through which network operators identify its location and inform location based application server (LBAS) about the current location of the user.