Context aware M-commerce services: C-IOB model approach

Context-aware computing is useful in providing individualized services focusing mainly on acquiring surrounding context of user. By comparison, only very little research has been completed in integrating context from different environments, despite of its usefulness in diverse applications such as healthcare, M-commerce and tourist guide applications. In particular, one of the most important criteria in providing personalized service in a highly dynamic environment and constantly changing user environment, is to develop a context model which aggregates context from different domains to infer context of an entity at the more abstract level. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a context model based on cognitive aspects to relate contextual information that better captures the observation of certain worlds of interest for a more sophisticated context-aware service. We developed a C-IOB (Context-Information, Observation, Belief) conceptual model to analyze the context data from physical, system, application, and social domains to infer context at the more abstract level. The beliefs developed about an entity (person, place, things) are primitive in most theories of decision making so that applications can use these beliefs in addition to history of transaction for providing intelligent service. We enhance our proposed context model by further classifying context information into three categories: a well-defined, a qualitative and credible context information to make the system more realistic towards real world implementation. The proposed model is deployed to assist a M-commerce application. The simulation results show that the service selection and service delivery of the system are high compared to traditional system.

A Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism for decentralized supply chain formation

In this paper we consider a decentralized supply chain formation problem for linear multi-echelon supply chains when the managers of the individual echelons are autonomous, rational, and intelligent. At each echelon, there is a choice of service providers and the specific problem we solve is that of determining a cost-optimal mix of service providers so as to achieve a desired level of end-to-end delivery performance. The problem can be broken up into two sub-problems following a mechanism design approach: (1) Design of an incentive compatible mechanism to elicit the true cost functions from the echelon managers; (2) Formulation and solution of an appropriate optimization problem using the true cost information. In this paper we propose a novel Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism for eliciting the true cost functions. This improves upon existing solutions in the literature which are all based on the classical Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanisms, requiring significant incentives to be paid to the echelon managers for achieving dominant strategy incentive compatibility. The proposed solution, which we call SCF-BIC (Supply Chain Formation with Bayesian Incentive Compatibility), significantly reduces the cost of supply chain formation. We illustrate the efficacy of the proposed methodology using the example of a three echelon manufacturing supply chain.

A method of fraud & intrusion detection for e-payment systems in mobile

The need for paying with mobile devices has urged the development of payment systems for mobile electronic commerce. In this paper we have considered two important abuses in electronic payments systems for detection. The fraud, which is an intentional deception accomplished to secure an unfair gain, and an intrusion which are any set of actions that attempt to compromise the integrity, confidentiality or availability of a resource. Most of the available fraud and intrusion detection systems for e-payments are specific to the systems where they have been incorporated. This paper proposes a generic model called as Activity-Event-Symptoms(AES) model for detecting fraud and intrusion attacks which appears during payment process in the mobile commerce environment. The AES model is designed to identify the symptoms of fraud and intrusions by observing various events/transactions occurs during mobile commerce activity. The symptoms identification is followed by computing the suspicion factors for event attributes, and the certainty factor for a fraud and intrusion is generated using these suspicion factors. We have tested the proposed system by conducting various case studies, on the in-house established mobile commerce environment over wired and wire-less networks test bed.

Design of an optimal auction for sponsored search auctions

In this paper we first describe a framework to model the sponsored search auction on the web as a mechanism design problem. Using this framework, we design a novel auction which we call the OPT (optimal) auction. The OPT mechanism maximizes the search engine's expected revenue while achieving Bayesian incentive compatibility and individual rationality of the advertisers. We show that the OPT mechanism is superior to two of the most commonly used mechanisms for sponsored search namely (1) GSP (Generalized Second Price) and (2) VCG (Vickrey-Clarke-Groves). We then show an important revenue equivalence result that the expected revenue earned by the search engine is the same for all the three mechanisms provided the advertisers are symmetric and the number of sponsored slots is strictly less than the number of advertisers.

Optimal auctions for multi-unit procurement with volume discount bids

Our attention, is focused on designing an optimal procurement mechanism which a buyer can use for procuring multiple units of a homogeneous item based on bids submitted by autonomous, rational, and intelligent suppliers. We design elegant optimal procurement mechanisms for two different situations. In the first situation, each supplier specifies the maximum quantity that can be supplied together with a per unit price. For this situation, we design an optimal mechanism S-OPT (Optimal with Simple bids). In the more generalized case, each supplier specifies discounts based on the volume of supply. In this case, we design an optimal mechanism VD-OPT (Optimal with Volume Discount, bids). The VD-OPT mechanism uses the S-OPT mechanism as a building block. The proposed mechanisms minimize the cost to the buyer, satisfying at the same time, (a) Bayesian, incentive compatibility and (b) interim individual rationality.

The core and shapley value analysis for cooperative formation of procurement networks

Formation of high value procurement networks involves a bottom-up assembly of complex production, assembly, and exchange relationships through supplier selection and contracting decisions, where suppliers are intelligent and rational agents who act strategically. In this paper we address the problem of forming procurement networks for items with value adding stages that are linearly arranged We model the problem of Procurement Network Formation (PNF) for multiple units of a single item as a cooperative game where agents cooperate to form a surplus maximizing procurement network and then share the surplus in a stable and fair manner We first investigate the stability of such networks by examining the conditions under which the core of the game is non-empty. We then present a protocol, based on the extensive form game realization of the core, for forming such networks so that the resulting network is stable. We also mention a key result when the Shapley value is applied as a solution concept.

Scientometric analysis of some disciplines: Comparison of Indian institutions with other international institutions

We have carried out a three-part study comparing the research performance of Indian institutions with that of other international institutions. In the first part, the publication profiles of various Indian institutions were examined and ranked based on the h-index and p-index. We found that the institutions of national importance contributed the highest in terms of publications and citations per institution. In the second part of the study, we looked at the publication profiles of various Indian institutions in the high-impact journals and compared these profiles against that of the top Asian and US universities. We found that the number of papers in these journals from India was miniscule compared to the US universities. Recognizing that the publication profiles of various institutions depend on the field/departments, we studied the publication profiles of many science and engineering departments at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, the Indian Institutes of Technology, as well as top Indian universities. Because the number of faculty in each department varies widely, we have computed the publications and citations per faculty per year for each department. We have also compared this with other departments in various Asian and US universities. We found that the top Indian institution based on various parameters in various disciplines was IISc, but overall even the top Indian institutions do not compare favourably with the top US or Asian universities.

Waveform synthesis using Walsh functions International Journal of Electronics

A software and a microprocessor based hardware for waveform synthesis using Walsh functions are described. The software is based on Walsh function generation using Hadamard matrices and on the truncated Walsh series expansion for the waveform to be synthesized. The hardware employs six microprocessor controlled programmable Walsh function generators (PWFGs) for generating the first six non-vanishing terms of the truncated Walsh series. Improved approximation to a given waveform may be achieved by employing additional PWFGs.