Discovering mobile users' moving behaviors in wireless networks

Wireless networks and mobile applications have grown very rapidly and have made a significant impact on computer systems. Especially, the usage of mobile phones and PDA is increased very rapidly. Added functions and values with these devices are thus greatly developed. If some regularity can be known from the user mobility behavior, then these functions and values can be further expanded and used intelligently. This paper thus attempts to discover personal mobility patterns for helping systems provide personalized service in a wireless network. The classification and the duration of each location area visited by a mobile user are used as important attributes in representing the results. A data mining algorithm has then been proposed, which is based on the AprioriAll algorithm, but different from it in several ways. Experiments are also made to show the effect of the proposed algorithm. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.