Personal mobility support in future service architectures

Support for personal mobility will be among the key factors for success in the competitive communications market of the future. This paper proposes enhancements to the personal mobility support capabilities of service architectures. The TINA service architecture is used as a reference, even though our approach is applicable to other models as well. Our starting point is a business case that falls into the realm of personal mobility. The aim of the business case is to enable users that are found outside their home domain to access services by choosing the best visited retailer, i.e. the one offering adequate quality services in the most cost-efficient manner. In the sequel the following key issues are addressed. First, the introduction of the additional functionality that is required for supporting the business case, and the realisation through appropriate service components. Second, the integration of the new service components in the standard TINA service architecture. Third, the detailed description of a version of the logic of the new components. In this last respect, we formally state, mathematically formulate and solve problems related to the visited retailer selection. Copyright, 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.