Research On Payment Protocols For M-Learning Resources

With the rapid development of network and information technology, mobile communication and wireless internet technology have been widely applied to educational field. Since the tensity of modern life is increasingly remarkable, more and more people are hankering for learning in their dispersed time. In such background, a new studying pattern, M-learning (mobile learning), has been brought out. Obviously, the prospering and expanding of mobile learning market depends on highly shared abundant excellent learning resources, so compensated service of learning resources is the general trend. Today, secure electronic payment for mobile learning resources has aroused the attention of many scholars all over the world; in addition, it is gradually growing into a new hotspot. Compared with the electronic payment technology adopted in normal network, the communication environment in M-learning resource electronic payment is more open and unsafe, therefore, more challenge must be faced with, mainly followed as:1. The terminal devices of mobile learners cannot perform enough complicated calculates with such constraints of storage capacity, processing power and electricity capacity. As a consequence, it is very difficult to make the best of the flexible, convenient and economical advantages of M-learning if traditional payments are applied directly to M-learning.2. M-learning electronic payment is typical of micropayment,existing large electronic payment that adopted the high intensity security cryptosystem unsuitable to the payment of mobile electronic learning resources.3. Wireless network's openness and dynamic topology make mobile learning resource payment transactions more vulnerable to malicious attacks.With a thorough study of the above problems and a large number of literatures referred to, the M-learning theoretic research of this dissertation focuses on: (1) Multi-PayWord micropayment protocol for minimum transactions with low security requirement; (2) An ECC electronic cash micropayment protocol for high quality terminals with high security requirement; (3) bilinear pairings ring signature payment protocol for balance of efficiency and security; (4) Adaptive electronic payment system for mobile electronic learning resources based on the above three protocols.The work is supported partly by a project of the"11th Five-Year"PLAN for national science and technology support plan named"knowledge of modern education technology support services system"and a fostering found project of Science and Technology University and major innovation projects named"National Knowledge Service System Support Technology"(No.705038).The contributions of this dissertation include:1. Aimed at that existing micropayment schemes can not meet the commands of security and efficiency, part research focuses on improving more efficient hash function and presenting a practical M-learning resource micropayment protocols based on Multi-PayWord.2. Aimed at the high mobile device configuration of mobile learners'special attention in the privacy of their own consumption, an electronic cash micropayment protocol based on elliptic curve cryptosystem is put forward. This protocol can be applied to micro-payment transaction for M-learning resources with its advantages such as small length of key and high level security.3. To meet the handling capacity of ordinary mobile device security and the efficiency of the comprehensive needs, an M-learning resource micropayment protocol based on identity Authentication and bilinear pairings ring signature is presented. The protocol can apply to majority of M-learning resources payment transactions.Founded on the above theory researchs on payment protocols, a prototype payment system for M-learning resources is designed and developed together with all-around performance testing and analyzing.