MRM System Architecture

Figure 1 shows the system architecture of the MRM system. The MRM system contains an MRM server system and several MRM Local Stations. The MRM server system hosts user agents and MRM Local Station agents that act as the interface agents, content agents that act as information agents, and a matchmaking service object acting as a task agent. The matchmaking service object calls a dynamic personalization engine to select appropriate content for users who bring their mobile devices close to an MRM Local Station. Each of the user agents and the MRM Local Station agent calls a personal profile access manager to obtain the profile data which each agent is permitted to access.

One of the key characteristics of the system architecture is the use of MRM Local Stations that have capabilities to sense the proximity of users with mobile devices and which are able to communicate with those nearby mobile devices. A user’s mobile device has information about the user's identity and local communication ability, such as RF-ID, IrDA, Bluetooth, or a wireless LAN. One of advantages of this configuration is that it does not require any standard for requesting or providing location information. Since the user’s mobile device communicates indirectly with applications running on the MRM server via a nearby MRM Local Station, the user's position is effectively the same as the MRM Local Station (which has a fixed and well-known location). Another advantage is the user’s mobile device can receive a large volume of content via the nearby MRM Local Station, since the connection between the MRM Local Station and the MRM server can be a broad-band network and the bandwidth between the user’s mobile device and the MRM Local Station could exceed 10M bps if it is using an IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN. (On the other hand, an IMT-2000 connection, a third generation mobile system, would provide only 384 Kbps for pedestrians.)

The MRM Local Stations provide communication interfaces to users’ mobile devices. The local communication gateway of the MRM Local Station provides a common communication interface for the mobile devices independent of their physical communication method such as RD-ID, IrDA, Bluetooth, or wireless LAN. The user device interface of the MRM Local Station senses the proximity of a user bearing a mobile device, obtains a user ID and device ID from the mobile device, and sends the data with its local station ID to the MRM server. The user device interface also provides capabilities for sending and receiving data to and from the user's mobile device and for managing user interactions.

When a user approaches an MRM Local Station, the MRM Local Station tries to notify any corresponding user agent that is waiting on the MRM server, via a corresponding MRM Local Station agent. The user agent manages and maintains the user state information, such as the connection status, user profile, user contact history, and connecting MRM Local Station ID, in spite of changes in the user’s connection status. It receives user profile data from the personal profile access manager, and sends update information about the current user state to the matchmaking service object.

The MRM Local Station agent manages and maintains the session of a corresponding MRM Local Station and maintains the connected user information.

The content agent manages the link to and the metadata of the content that is deliverable to the target users, and provides that information to the matchmaking services object.

The matchmaking service object coordinates the matchmaking between the connected users and the relevant data for those users. This also involves keeping track of the profile data for the connected users, and tracking which MRM Local Stations are connected to which users, so that the appropriate content is sent to the corresponding MRM Local Stations.

The personal profile access manager manages the directory information of the users personal profiles and the location profiles, and handles access control for this profile data. This module must approve the profile access requests from the agents hosted on the MRM server.