Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

Deployment of Mobile Agents in the Mobile Telephone Network

Management

IGOR BRUSIC
Technical University of Vienna, Institute of Communication Networks, Favoritenstr. 9/388,
A-1040 Vienna, Austria, E-Mail: igor.brusic@tuwien.ac.at

VESNA HASSLER, WOLFGANG LUGMAYR

Technical University of Vienna, Information Systems Institute, Argentinierstrasse 8/184-1,
A-1040 Vienna, Austria, E-mail: {hassler, lugmayr}@infosys.tuwien.ac.at

Abstract
Mobile agents are autonomous, asynchronous and, general-purpose common channel signaling system
optionally, intelligent software entities which can specified by the International Telecommunication
migrate to and reside in a number of network nodes. In Union. It employs 64 kbit/s per signaling channel.
our proposal mobile agents are used for collecting Beside the common use for signaling, the SS#7 is used
subscriber information on the terminal side in mobile also for operation, maintenance, and provisioning of the
communication networks. Mobile agents are sent out by mobile networks Personal Communication Services
the network part for collecting information, such as (PCS) and for Short Message Service (SMS). Also,
location area identifier and cell identifier, from the area future supplementary services will be based on the use
the subscriber is passing by (e.g. base station). By using of SS#7. This could overload the SS#7 in the near
a subscriber profile containing these data the number of future [2]. One part of our work (Section 3.1) is
signaling messages caused by location update could be motivated by the fact that currently deployed SS#7
reduced. Also, by analyzing these data the network networks may not have enough capacity to spare for
provider would be able to discover areas without growing signaling traffic. We introduce the use of
proper radio signal coverage. For future generations of mobile agent supported localization of subscribers in
mobile networks, such as the European Universal cellular networks.
Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), the Traditional approaches initiate a so-called location
proposed use of mobile agents could be enhanced by the update every time the mobile subscriber is crossing a
possibility of using mobile stations as relay stations. location area (LA) border (explained in detail in Section
3.1.1). The number of location update messages
1. Introduction exchanged between network elements may range from 5
to 36 messages. This causes a high overhead in the
signaling network. We show how this load can be
Mobile networks are often called “cellular” because of
decreased by introducing mobile agents.
the use of base stations covering a specific geographic
In the current practice, many complex simulations and
area called “cell” by a radio signal. The main difference
data measurements are necessary at the early stage of
between fixed and cellular networks is the mobility of
network planning and design to decide where to locate
users in cellular networks. For the signaling network
the base stations (BS). Unfortunately, in this way it is
this means a much higher signaling information
impossible to consider all possible influences, so that in
exchange caused by mobile network-specific actions,
some areas the customers are partly or even completely
such as location registration, location update and
unreachable. In order to locate areas without radio
handover.
signal it is a common practice to use vehicles with
The signaling traffic in mobile networks is handled by
expensive measurement equipment.
the Signaling System number 7 (SS#7 [1]). It is a

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

We propose mobile agents for mobile stations (MS,
learning,

mobile phone or cellular phone) to be used to collect
cooperation.
measurement data of the field strength (Section 3.2). Mobility refers to an agent's ability to move among
With these data it is possible to locate areas without different environments. A mobile agent could be seen as
radio signal. a software process that can transport its state from one
A new generation of GSM (Global System for Mobile environment to another and still perform appropriately
Communication) SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) in the new environment. The response method refers to
smart cards essentially transforms mobile phones into the means that an agent uses to react to any request. The
network computers: they can run software and use a ability to react to requests depends on the “knowledge”
mobile phone user interface and communication about their environment. If an agent has a model of any
resources. Currently there are many projects under way environment in which it can exist, it can “reason” about
to test GSM and smart card based services [13]. It is which activities it can perform. However, the code for
planned to use Java as a smart card programming such an agent is typically larger than for an agent
language in the near future. These developments as well without this knowledge.
as mobile agent technology described in Section 2 An autonomous agent can operate on the user’s behalf
represent the main building blocks of the infrastructure without explicit guidance. It only has to get the
necessary to enable deployment of mobile agents in information what to search for, but not where to search.
mobile telephone networks. In Section 4 we give our Learning is an agent's ability to take the information it
view of the possible future developments, and with has gained about the environment in which it is
Section 5 we conclude the paper. Finally, in Section 6 deployed and use it to modify its own behavior.
we give a list of references used throughout the paper, Cooperation denotes the ability the agent has to avoid
and in Section 0 the explanation of frequently used redundant efforts and conduct high-level
abbreviations. communications.
To understand the benefits of using mobile agents we
2. Mobile Agents should consider how computers (or nodes) in a
distributed network communicate today.
The most common approach is known as the client-
2.1. The Evolution Path
server paradigm. Client software on one computer sends
one set of data to server software on another and waits
Agents are software components that “live” inside to hear back the result of that operation before sending
computer environments. The first agent development the next set of data. Each message exchanged in the
was done in the research area of artificial intelligence network involves a request for service or an
(AI). At first agents were constrained to a single acknowledgment of information received. A protocol
computing environment (i.e. a homogenous network). has to be established to agree upon the format of the
Today there are two main groups of software agents: exchanges and the communication requires a persistent
intelligent agents and mobile agents. Mobile agents are connection. Thus the communication overhead is
called mobile because they can move from one extremely high, and the procedure can tie up a large
computer (node) to another within and among amount of bandwidth. For telecommunication systems
heterogeneous networks. In our work we will discuss this means a lot of signaling and consumption of
only the use of mobile agents in mobile communication processing power [16].
networks. The use of mobile agents, on the other hand, supplies
Developers of the agent technology concentrate not not only the data to be processed, but also the procedure
only on how the agents can negotiate, coordinate, and to be performed [16]. The data that travels with the
work together, but also on the architecture of agents and procedure can also be regarded as the state of the
the languages that are useful for creating them. A good procedure.
definition of a mobile agent is the following: For an agent to be executed (e.g. running) on different
A mobile agent is a program that helps a user to host environments in a network, each host must have
perform some task (or a set of tasks), possibly by specialized support software, so a portable mobile code
maintaining persistent state and communicating with its system like Java and the Java Virtual Machine are
owner, other agents or its environment in general [7]. required.
The main characteristics of an agent [15] are The Sun Microsystems have developed a special Java

mobility, chip (microJava) for embedded systems [8] which is

response method, considered the best choice for personal digital assistants

autonomy,

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

(PDA). One of the reasons is that the direct execution of or more places depending on its special task: a virtual
the Java bytecode has low memory requirements, shop, an interface to special services (e.g. methods for
whereas just-in-time compilers may have footprints up measurements in the underlying system), or an agent
to 200K or more. In addition, the bytecode image is meeting point.
typically less than half the size of the machine code Mobility
image which makes the bytecode especially suitable for One of the key features of mobile agents is their ability
wireless and other low-bandwidth environments. to move from one server to another. In some systems an
Existing products such as the Nokia Communicator agent can request to be sent to another server. The agent
show that cellular phones and PDAs can be integrated. carries a list of servers to visit and it can also query a
Furthermore, we can imagine the next generation SIM special service at the server for new interesting places to
cards to be based on Java chips. go to. Special network communicators handle the
Agent technology as well as high processing power but transport of agents, such as in Java by using Java
low power consuming chipsets are on their way [17]. Remote Method Invocation (RMI) or the OMG Mobile
New mobile stations will be able to execute agents Agent System Interoperability Facility [11].
locally, so it is very promising to consider agent These network communicators normally only receive
applications in third generation cellular networks like the data of an agent and construct the object with the
the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System installed program code (bytecode). If the bytecode is
(UMTS). not available at the server, it uses a special Java
Classloader and SecurityManager for loading it from
2.2. The infrastructure untrusted codebases. A codebase is a dedicated
host/directory where the executable bytecode can be
A mobile agent infrastructure should provide the loaded as classfiles or as an optionally signed Java
following facilities: archive (JAR).

Agents Communication
A mobile agent is an object that visits agent-enabled To accomplish its task an agent must be able to
servers in a computer network. A mobile agent consists communicate with other agents or the server. It is not
of its code and persistent state. Cellular phones sufficient to provide an API (Application Programming
currently have their own operating system and therefore Interface) for every task the agent could execute.
a special compiled version of a mobile agent is needed. There are prototypes like JATlite [10] from Stanford
To support services like location of areas without radio University, which supports the Knowledge Query and
signal (Section 3.2) the MS has to be extended by the Manipulation Language (KQML), a language for
infrastructure required to receive and execute agents. In knowledge representation (KR) or the Knowledge
the case of Java a minimal class library must be Interchange Format (KIF). Finally, the agents must be
installed on the MS. The rapid growth of Java-based able to communicate with their owners and vice-versa,
PDAs and their integration with cellular phones would e.g. send a status email or SMS message to the owner.
provide this execution environment with no additional
software needed except the mobile agent’s code that has Security
to be transferred once together with the agent’s state. Security is one of the most important issues for the wide
Another advantage of this approach is that the data acceptance of mobile agent systems. An agent might try
could be sent and processed at times of lower traffic to interfere with the server host or gain unauthorized
load, such as in the early morning. access to another agent’s state. Also, the server should
not be able to tamper with the agent or pull sensitive
Servers information out of the agent without the agent’s
An agent server offers one or more services to the cooperation. The server should be able to authenticate
mobile agent that enters it. Each server has a network the agent’s owner, assign access permissions based on
communicator for transferring and receiving agents and the authentication, and audit the agent’s execution. The
handling the agent’s messages to/from the owner or Java programming language with its security model
other agents. The network communicator also checks an [12] also provides a high level of security.
agent’s attributes (such as resource requirements,
expiration date, security issues, etc.) before it accepts
the agent. The agent is then transferred to a special
place, where it is actually executed. Each server has one

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

3.1.1. Introduction
One of the main difficulties introduced by mobile
2.3. Advantages and disadvantages networks, compared to public switching networks, is the
fact that mobile stations (MS) have no permanent
connection to the mobile telephone network. For this
The capability of mobile agents to migrate between
reason the network has to track the position of a mobile
networks offers several advantages [18]:
subscriber. This is why so-called location areas (LA) are
introduced.

Sending the service agents dynamically and on
A location area is a geographic area covered by base
demand to customers can perform the provision of
stations belonging to the same group. The identity of the
services represented by mobile agents very flexibly
location area a cell belongs to is sent in the cell on a

Providing automation of distributed task-processing
broadcast channel, thus enabling mobile stations to be
means performing activities at different locations
informed about the location area they are in. Location
and taking advantage of local access to distributed
management schemes are essentially based on MS
resources
mobility and incoming call rate characteristics. The

Asynchronous task execution allowed by the
network mobility paradigm exhibits a strong
autonomy of mobile agents
antagonism between locating and paging. The locating

Reduction in network traffic by performing local
procedure provides the network with the initial
interaction
information (i.e. the Location Area) about a MS

Reduction in dependence regarding network
location. The paging procedure results in the exact MS
availability by migrating from one network node to
location information (i.e. the Base Station to which the
another
subscriber is connected). Within the same LA the MS
may roam between different base stations (e.g. cells) of
Beside these advantages, some problems still exist
this area without initiating a location update. Location
[6,19]:
update occurs every time the MS crosses a LA border.
A LA consists of one or more cells (Figure 2). Paging is

The security aspect or how to protect the network
used to determine the cell in which the MS is located.
nodes from malicious agents.
Paging includes sending paging messages to all cells of

The network load could be higher and not lower if
the location area. With a high number of cells the
there are no strategies established under which
paging cost can be very high. On the other hand, a high
circumstances an agent would migrate.
number of cells per LA also means that LAs are big so

The ownership and charging policies are other very
that the location update cost is low, since the MS will
important issues.
less often cross a LA border. The locating procedure
brings the MS service profile near its location and
In [18], the agent technology offers a number of very
allows the network to rapidly provide the user with the
interesting advantages, but it should not be seen as the
required service.
one and only solution for all communication
Each cell has one Base Station (BS) representing the
environments. In their opinion, it is not the aim of the
connection point for MSs to the network. Several BSs
agent technology to replace the client/server remote
may be grouped together under the control of a Base
procedure calls (RPCs). They should rather be used as
Station Controller (BSC). In turn, several BSCs are
an enhancement of communication relationships inside
usually controlled by a mobile switching center (MSC,
networks.
see Figure 1). For incoming calls the MSC sends out a
paging message to all BSs of the LA in which the called
3. Using mobile agents in mobile user is registered. If the called MS answers, the MSC
communication networks connects the calling subscriber and the called one.

3.1. Reducing signaling

In this section we will present the idea of reducing
signaling for location update purposes by the use of
mobile agents and subscriber profiles.

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Operation, Administration and Maintenance

Home Visitor
Location Location
Register Register

Mobile Switching Centre

Public network
Controller Gateway Incoming call

Base
Station

Figure 1. System architecture

MSC 1 MSC 2

Controller Controller Controller

A B C

Location Area 
Location Area 
Location Area

Figure 2: Location Areas

to broadcast and paging messages and to access the
The action taken by a MS in order to provide location network for location updating and outgoing calls.
information to the mobile network is referred to as Moving from one LA to another, the Location Area
location update. In the case of the European GSM Identifier (LAI) received over the BCCH is changing.
System, the location update can be described as follows: The old LAI stored in the MS memory is not matching
all base stations of a LA send the same Location Area the new one and the MS has to perform a location
Identifier (LAI) on the Broadcast Control Channel update. Crossing the LA border is not the only way of
(BCCH) over the air interface. When the MS is initiating a location update. Switching on a MS in a new
switched on it needs to find the radio frequency carrier location area will initiate a location update and at the
in its cell that carries the Common Control Channel same time reset a timer T. T has a time-out value of
(CCCH), and then to achieve synchronization with the several hours. When T expires (i.e. the user has not
BCCH, the Paging Channel (PAGCH), and the Random moved to another LA which would have reset the timer
Access Channel (RACH), which enable the MS to listen again) the MS initiates a location update.

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For incoming calls the mobile network has to locate the urban environments can be 10 times that of the call rate
called MS by paging. In current approaches this at peak traffic hours [4].
problem is solved by introducing location registers. Location management methods are divided into two
Functionally, there are two types of registers: major groups. In the first group there are methods based
- Visitor Location Register (VLR) where all relevant on algorithms and network architecture, mainly
data concerning a MS are stored as long as the MS depending on the processing capabilities of the system.
is within the area controlled by the VLR; In the second group there are memory-based methods
- Home Location Register (HLR) where all which, for instance, require the collection of statistics
subscriber parameters of the MS are permanently on the user mobility behavior.
stored, and where the current location (i.e. the VLR Observing that users show repetitive mobility patterns, a
address) is temporary stored. so-called Alternative Strategy is defined [4]. Its main
The whole area in which the network enables MSs to goal is to reduce the traffic related to mobility
connect to it (Roaming area) is divided into several management - and thus reduce the frequency of location
Location Areas (LA, see Figure 2). One or more LAs updates - by taking advantage of highly predictable user
are allocated to a particular VLR that records all mobility patterns. In the Alternative Strategy, the
subscribers within these LAs. If the subscriber is system handles a profile recording the most probable
moving to a LA allocated to a different VLR, the new mobility patterns of each user. The subscriber profile
VLR will record the newcomer and report the change of can be provided and updated manually by the subscriber
LA (i.e. VLR) to the HLR to which the subscriber is himself or determined automatically by monitoring the
assigned. This procedure is called location update. subscriber’s movements over a period of time.
Location updates store the current subscriber’s LAI in The role of a mobile agent that we propose is collecting
the VLR. Depending on the relationship between the the user mobility data and creating a user profile to be
old and the new LA, three cases of location updates can handled by a mobile agent. The agent could be located
be distinguished: at the subscriber side or at the network side. The agent

location update occurring in the same VLR area would collect all LAIs during a specified period of time.

location update between two VLR areas, within the The goal is the same as in [4]: building up a set of LAs
reach of the same MSC whereby the LA in the first position is the most

location update between two VLR areas allocated to probable one in which the subscriber is roaming, the LA
different MSCs in the second position the second most probable one,
etc.
Table 1. Location update overhead The user profile is stored in both the Mobile Switching
Traffic generated by LU Messages Bytes Center and the Mobile Subscriber (e.g. on the SIM-card
In the same VLR area 5 122 in GSM). If the subscriber is moving within the
Inside the same MSC 21 1131 Location Areas that are registered in his profile, the MS
Between different MSCs 36 1309 will not initiate a location update. Only if he is moving
“outside” of his profile, i.e. if the MS is moving to a LA
The number of messages (i.e. bytes) exchanged at each which is not stored in his profile, the MS will initiate a
interface in the location update processes for GSM are regular location update and store the Location Area
shown in Table 1. Particularly in highly urban spots, Identifier in the Visitor Location Register. For incoming
where the location areas are relatively small, the calls the system will look up for the identifier in the
location updating rate can be much higher than the VLR. If the identifier is not up-to-date, the paging call
calling rate. In future wireless systems it is even will be sent according to the subscriber profile. First the
expected to augment dramatically since the LA sizes Location Area in the first position of the profile will be
tend to be decreasing [3]. paged. If the subscriber is in this area, he will answer
the request and the connection will be established. If he
3.1.2. Reducing the number of location updates is not, the network has to page the subscriber one more
with mobile agents time (in the Location Area in the second position in the
As we have seen, the part of registering or, in other profile). In other words, the network would page the
words, tracking the user while roaming causes a high subscriber until the subscriber answers. This is a
load in the network because it requires quite a number disadvantage of this approach. In this way more than
of signaling messages to be exchanged for every one Location Area could be paged, in contrast to the
location update. Recent statistics from GSM operators classical approach where the system pages only once.
in Paris show that the location update rate in dense However, simulation results [4,5] show that the

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

approach with subscriber profiles shows better the Base Station to the Base Station Controller at
performance results for subscribers with stable mobility regular time intervals. If the subscriber is in an area
patterns than the classical approach. The main savings without radio signal, there will be no measurement data
enabled by this method are due to the fact that the (i.e. signal strength is zero) at the time of measurement.
location updates become unnecessary if the user keeps We suggest to use a mobile agent to store a specific set
moving “within” his profile. of measurement data. This set of data would be the Cell
If the agent is at the subscriber side, the profile has to be Identifier of a few (e.g. five) Base Stations before the
transmitted to the network, for instance to the Mobile signal is lost. The agent could run on the SIM-card of
Switching Center that can analyze the data for every the Mobile Subscriber. With each measurement data
subscriber. If the mobility pattern of the subscriber is item the corresponding Cell Identifier (CI) would be
highly predictable (over a certain threshold) this stored, as well as a timestamp. Each Base Station is
subscriber will be located by its profile. For users with determined by a unique Cell Identifier. In this way the
low predictability the traditional approach would be cell within which the zero signal strength was measured
used. could be unambiguously determined. In other words, if
Collecting subscriber-related data may under certain the connection is broken (no BCCH carrier available),
circumstances cause privacy problems. This problem there is a table entry with a timestamp only, and no
could be solved by keeping the connection between the further data. All measurement data could be sent by the
subscriber and the corresponding location table secret. agent to the MSC to be analyzed further.
The subscriber profile (i.e. a collection of Location Area The agent could also execute on the Base Station
Identifiers) could be referred to by a secret number that Controller [Figure 2]. If the MS moves towards a base
represents the subscriber, but without the possibility for station outside the controller's area, the agent would
anybody (operator, third party, etc.) to identify him. We migrate to the new controller which controls the new
suppose that each network provider would require its base station. If the agent is already executing on the
subscribers to sign some kind of agreement by which MS, the agent migration would not be necessary.
the provider would be allowed to collect certain data The next step would be to determine the exact position
about subscribers for the internal use with the only of losing the signal, i.e. determine the location of the
purpose of achieving a better service quality. area without radio signal. This would be possible
because the agent has stored a set of data with Cell
3.2. Locating of areas without radio signal Identifiers of Base Stations that the subscriber passes on
the way to the area without signal. Since there will be
more than one subscriber losing connection to the base
One of the most important goals of a mobile network
station in this particular area, all data should be
provider is to provide the customers with transmission
analyzed together.
channels. In order to be competitive, the provider has to
The data could be analyzed using software based on an
achieve high reachability for the customers during
iterative method and a digital map of the corresponding
roaming. Specifically, an area coverage of 98% or
area. Urban area digital maps - and urban areas are the
higher is required in dense urban areas. For this
most critical from the viewpoint of radio distribution -
purpose, many complex simulations and data
are already used in vehicle navigation systems. Since
measurements are necessary at the early stage of
the cells in urban areas are in general getting smaller
network planning and design in order to decide where to
(pico-cells measure 100m or less in diameter) in order
locate the base stations. Unfortunately, in this way it is
to increase the network capacity, it would be possible to
impossible to consider all possible influences, so that in
determine the exact location at which the connection
some areas the customers are partly or even completely
was lost.
unreachable. In order to discover such areas without
radio signal it is a common practice to use vehicles with
measurement equipment. 4. Future developments
We propose a new approach for discovering areas
without radio signal that deploys mobile agents. It is a In this paper we proposed the usage of one-hop mobile
common practice that the Mobile Subscribers agents. Their main task is collecting data at one side
equipment measures the strength of the signal (to be (subscriber) and delivering the data to the other side
precise – the BCCH signal) it receives from the (network). In a more advanced approach the agents
surrounding base stations in order to determine which could be given the ability to move from one Mobile
base station should provide the transmission channel. Subscriber to another. By “jumping” from one
The measurement data is sent from the subscribers over subscriber to another, i.e. between Mobile Subscribers

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that are moving around the area without radio signal, an Another application area for mobile agents is mobile
agent could determine the exact location and size of this computing. Mobile devices such as portable computers
area. In the Universal Mobile Telecommunication are only intermittently connected to a network and have
System (UMTS) - the successor of GSM - the new radio only intermittent access to a server. The advantage lies
access supports the ODMA (Opportunity Driven in the mobile client’s ability to create an agent request
Multiple Access) protocol [14]. This protocol allows the and launch the agent during a brief connection session,
use of Mobile Subscribers as relay-stations for other and then immediately disconnect. The response, if any,
Mobile Subscribers. This would also reduce the load in is collected during a subsequent connection session. The
the network since it would become unnecessary for the mobile devices are getting smaller, but the wireless
Mobile Switching Centers to analyze the data collected access to the services will remain slow due the
by the agents. Attempts based on time-of-arrival relatively low-bandwidth connection. The mobile agent
measurements of signals between MSs and BSs have can perform information retrieval and filtering at the
shown that without using a GPS (Global Positioning server, and then return only the relevant information to
System) receiver the position of subscribers in GSM can the client [6]. In our case the opposite direction can be
be located with an accuracy of about 100 m [9]. This used as well (i.e. client-server). The mobile agent can be
accuracy is satisfactory for all non-picocellular sent to a cellular phone to extend the phone’s
environments. In this way the use of additional software capabilities with the latest software features or fulfill
to calculate the position of areas without signal certain administrative tasks for the service providers. In
coverage would be avoided. the area of cellular phones there may be agents that do
Research projects within the European Research not have to migrate back to the server. They stay and
programs of ACTS (Advanced Communication terminate on the cellular phone. For instance, a cellular
Technologies and Services) will investigate the field of phone may have a dynamic configuration so that the
potentialities which are offered by the mobile agent subscriber can configure it and download all desired
technology. The next step will be to find the appropriate features the first time the phone is switched on.
agent technology and to investigate the possibility to We also described the basic infrastructure necessary for
implement the applications we proposed. deployment of the mobile agent technology in cellular
networks.
5. Summary and conclusion The future success of agent technology depends on
future developments of Digital Signal Processors and
software platforms such as the JDK (Java Development
In this work we propose two possible applications of
Kit) for mobile environment or platforms as
mobile agents in mobile network management. Our
GRASHOPPER [20] which enables, through the
assumptions are based on an existing agent platform. It
provision of common interfaces, agent platforms of
is shown that the use of mobile agents in this growing
different vendors used by different components. The
and demanding environment is very promising. First,
ideas presented have just scratched the surface of the
we have seen how mobile agents, by collecting location
potentialities, which are offered by the use of mobile
area identifiers, could reduce the number of location
agents in mobile communications
updates. The second proposal is based on collecting
base station identifiers and using this information for
detecting areas without radio signal. These are only two 6. References
examples of a wide range of possible applications for
mobile agents in mobile networks. [1] Specifications of Signaling System No.7, Rec.
Network monitoring is another field of application for Q.700, CCITT Blue Book, VI.7, ITU, Geneva,
mobile agents. In big networks monitoring and fault 1989.
detection are very difficult and involve large amounts of [2] Glitho, R.H., “Use of SS7 in D-AMPS-Based PCS:
Orthodoxy vs. Heterodoxy”, IEEE Personal
logging data. It is not possible to produce out-of-the-
Communications, June 1997, pp. 15-23.
box diagnostic programs for every purpose, but it would
[3] Tabbane, S., “Location Management Methods for
be possible to use mobile agents to monitor the system Third-Generation Mobile Systems”, IEEE
and bring possible trouble spots to the attention of the Communication Magazine, August 1997, pp. 72-84.
system maintainer [7]. Besides the system monitoring, [4] Tabbane, S., “An Alternative Strategy for Location
service providers could update their switching systems Tracking”, IEEE JSAC, vol. 13, no. 5, June 1995,
by using mobile agents for software installation that can pp. 880-892.
install new features on the switching systems.

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

[5] Lin, Y.-B., “Reducing Location Update Cost in a 7. Abbreviations

PCS Network”, IEEE/ACM Transaction on
Networking, vol. 5, no. 1, February 1997, pp. 25-33.
BS Base Station
[6] Colin G. Harrison, David M. Chess, Aaron
BSC Base Station Controller
Kershenbaum, “Mobile Agents: Are they a good
idea?”, Technical Report, IBM T.J. Watson GSM Global System for Mobile
Research Center, 1995. communication
[7] Lingnau A., O. Drobink, “An infrastructure for HLR Home Location Register
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