Mobile Application Development with SMS and the SIM Toolkit

Mobile Application Development with SMS and the SIM Toolkit

Mobile Application Development with SMS and the SIM Toolkit

Mobile Application Development with SMS and the SIM Toolkit

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Overview

Get mobile messaging going on virtually any platform, in any language

Mobile Application Development Using SMS and the SIM Toolkit is just the guide you’ve been looking for if you’re building applications for GSM or 3G networks, wish you had sample code for reality-based applications, or want to add mobile extensions to your software products and corporate network. In this straight-talking tutorial, smart card expert Scott Guthery teams with information management specialist Mary Cronin to provide you with authoritative guidance on SIM application design, integration, and management for any platform. Seasoned developers will quickly learn how to:

  • Create code that harnesses the power of the SIM
  • Use the micro-browsers and micro-Web servers in 3G phones
  • Construct leading-edge mobile commerce applications on today's network
  • Send and receive SMS messages from your server or your laptop
  • Enable interfaces and other needed components
  • Create secure wireless applications for corporate networks and VPNs

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780071394475
Publisher: McGraw Hill LLC
Publication date: 12/21/2001
Series: Professional Telecom
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
File size: 9 MB

About the Author

SCOTT B. GUTHERY is one of the best-known names in the technical aspects of smart cards. As Chief Technology Officer of Mobile-Mind, a provider of wireless consulting services and SIM applications, he was the lead designer of Microsoft's Smart Card for Windows. He also led the team that developed the first Java Card. A regular contributor to GSM and 3G standards, he holds 3 patents for smart card applications and real-time systems. He is the convener of the Architecture Working Group of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Smart Card Platform (SCP) project.

MARY J. CRONIN, Mobile-Mind President, is the author of five books on technology and business strategy, including Doing Business on the Internet, a groundbreaking work that has been translated into 10 languages. As a Professor of Management at Boston College, Dr. Cronin specializes in Electronic Commerce, International Telecommunications, and Wireless Information Management.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Introducing SMS and the SIM

Wireless devices have overtaken every other technology —including the Internet —in global adoption. By 2003 more than a billion people will be using a wireless phone or personal digital assistant (PDA)for voice and data communications. Three factors that have helped to drive this phenomenal growth have also inspired this book:

1. The worldwide availability and popularity of an inexpensive Short Message Service (SMS);

2. The evolution of the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)inside GSM phones into a standardized and secure application platform for GSM and next-generation networks;and

3. The demand for applications that let people use their mobile phones for more than just talking.

Let's take a quick look at how SMS and the SIM have contributed to the growth of wireless applications and then discuss what you can expect to learn from this book.

The number of SMS messages sent every month has risen from about 1 billion messages in July 1999 to more than 20 billion in July 2001, with projections that the total number of SMS messages exchanged in 2001 will top 200 billion. These SMS exchanges range from simple text greetings or questions sent between individual subscribers (sometimes called "texting") to news and information services offered by the wireless carriers, to more advanced applications offered by third parties such as retrieving data from a corporate sales database or mobile banking. One result of all this texting and other SMS activity is that wireless carriers now view SMS as an important source of revenues. Another outcome is that hundreds of millions of subscribers are ready and eager to try out interesting new services based on SMS. But to move beyond the basic text message delivery and create applications that can be customized and trusted, developers need a standardized and secure application platform. That's where the SIM comes in.

The SIM is a smart chip that was designed as a secure, tamper-resistant environment for the cryptographic keys that GSM carriers use to authenticate individual subscribers to the network connection and track those subscribers'activities once they are on the air. The SIM maintains a constant connection to the network as long as the mobile device remains on. This location-aware, authenticated connection is what allows subscribers to "roam" from network to network around the world and, very importantly from the viewpoint of the carrier, the SIM keeps track of and reports on the subscriber's network usage and roaming activity so that the carrier can bill customers accurately.

The only way to ensure that the SIM can accomplish its handoff of subscribers from one network to another without interrupting communication is to base all of its functions on very detailed international standards. Every GSM equipment manufacturer and carrier adheres to these standards, which cover everything from the physical size and characteristics of the chip to the way it handles and stores incoming information. Anyone developing applications that interact with the SIM also has to become familiar with the relevant standards and keep up with changes. This book describes the most important standards in detail and points readers to online sources of complete standard documentation and updates.

The SIM is also an essential part of the move to higher speed and more capable "next-generation"wireless networks, discussed later in this chapter. Because the 2001 digital network is referred to as the second generation (analog wireless was the first generation), these upgraded networks have been dubbed 2. 5G (a significant notch up from the current speed and performance) and 3G. Although the timetable and technology for rolling out next-generation networks differs around the world, carriers everywhere recognize the importance of keeping today's SIM and SMS applications working during and after the upgrade. Therefore, the SIM will manage the roaming of traffic between generations of networks and between geographic locations. In addition, applications that work with today's SIM standards will be in a good position to take advantage of the higher speed and multimedia capabilities of the 3G networks as they emerge.

Carriers, mobile equipment makers, and other service providers agree that applications are the most important driver for continued growth of wireless data exchange. The providers are searching for new killer applications to generate additional revenues from their networks and increase subscriber use and loyalty. They see that individual subscribers are looking for applications that will allow them to get more from their mobile phones or wireless PDAs. Businesses need applications that make mobile employees more productive and enable them to reach their mobile customers. There are different ideas about who should develop such applications. Some carriers prefer to do their own development work, whereas others contract with third-party developers or look to the SIM and mobile equipment vendors to provide the applications. One way or another, the demand for applications continues to increase.

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), which many people thought of as the fastest route to mobile applications, was something of a wake-up call for network operators. When wireless communications were all about voice, the operators controlled every aspect of the mobile phone. The emergence of WAP allowed well-known Web-based services like yahoo. com and literally hundreds of start-up WAP sites to download programs to the mobile handset and take control of the screen and the keypad. The wireless operators looked around and discovered that all they still really controlled was the SIM, a tiny computer deep in the guts of the mobile phone that was designed to protect security, not support applications. We'll discuss how this computer sprouted an application programming interface called the SIM Application Toolkit (SAT) and other development tools like the SIM Micro-Browser in Chapter 10, but you should know that today's SIMs are an underappreciated platform for a rich variety of mobile applications.

At the same time, application developers, especially developers who are expert in creating SMS and SIM-based applications are in short supply. It is hard to find all the information needed to start using SMS and SAT, and even harder to find clear examples of how to program specific applications. This book provides a step-by-step explanation of the commands, standards, and programming techniques that will take you from basic SMS applications to advanced SAT functionality. If you want to learn more about SMS and SIM development, this is the place to start.

Foundations and Definitions

SMS is the abbreviation for Short Message Service. SMS is a way of sending short messages to mobile telephones and receiving short messages from mobile telephones. "Short" means a maximum of 160 bytes. According to the GSM Association, "Each short message is up to 160 characters in length when Latin alphabets are used, and 70 characters in length when non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic and Chinese are used."* The messages can consist of text characters, in which case the messages can be read and written by human beings. SMS text messages have become a staple of wireless communications in Europe and Asia/Pacific and are gradually gaining popularity in North America.

The messages also can consist of sequences of arbitrary 8-bit bytes, in which case the message probably is created by a computer on one end and intended to be handled by a computer program on the other. SIM is the abbreviation for Subscriber Identity Module. As its name implies, its original purpose (and continuing role) was to identify a particular mobile user to the network in a secure and consistent manner. To accomplish this, the SIM stores a private digital key that is unique to each subscriber and known only to the wireless carrier. The key is used to encrypt the traffic to and from the handset. It is essential to keep this key out of the hands of mischief makers who might get hold of a SIM and try to steal the subscriber's identity. Because smart cards were designed to be extremely difficult to crack under a variety of attacks, the smart card's core electronics and design architecture were adopted as the base of the SIM. Building applications for the SIM has a lot in common with designing smart card applications and, as we will see later, the standards that guide the evolution of smart cards and the SIM have started to converge in the international standard-setting bodies.

One of the most important standards for SIM application developers is the SIM Application Toolkit (SAT). As the name implies, the SAT standardizes the way in which applications besides the subscriber's private keys can be developed for and loaded onto the SIM. Wireless carriers are understandably sensitive about guarding the security of the SIM and preserving its primary function of subscriber identity and encryption. Because the carrier controls what code is loaded directly onto the SIM, adhering to SAT standards in building your application doesn't mean that it will run on any given network. Typically, there is a testing and certification process required for any application that is not developed directly by the network providers or SIM vendors.

On the one hand, such a process can make it difficult to get your applications on the SIM because, if any Tom, Dick, or Sally can download programs to the SIM it wouldn't be a trusted computer. On the other hand, when you do get your applications on the SIM, you will be in good company. Or, if your applications don't require the full-blown trust and security apparatus built into the SIM, you can work with SMS and a tool called the USAT Interpreter to interact with Web-based information via the SIM. As more SIMs capable of running virtual machines such as Java come to market, you can also develop applications that can be downloaded over the air —as long as the application is acceptable to the wireless carrier. This book explains the range of possibilities and illustrates the steps involved in developing those possibilities.

The SIM is the smaller of two computer chips inside a GSM mobile handset. Early SIMs typically were 1 /3 million instruction per second (MIP)with 3K memory, and most SIMs in use today are 1 /2 MIP with 16K memory. To handle virtual machines and larger applications, the current high-end SIM provides 32K of memory, with 64K SIMs anticipated within the next year. The computer chip that runs the handset is much larger, typically with a couple of megabytes of memory and a couple of MIPs of computer power. The larger chip controls the keypad and the display, encodes and decodes voice conversations, and runs the protocols that enable the handset to connect to the telephone network. The SIM may be a small computer compared with the handset computer and a tiny one compared with PDA and notebook processors, but its size doesn't have to be a gating factor for innovative applications. In fact, the SIM has about the same computing power as the first IBM PC and that computer opened the eyes of corporations and individuals to the potential of word processing, spreadsheets, and other applications to change the way we do our work and live our lives.

Bear in mind that there are other ways of exchanging data with a mobile telephone that are not covered in the following chapters. General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) is one example. There are also other ways to build mobile applications. WAP is one of the best known and has a large following. Nevertheless, SMS and the SIM have some characteristics that make them attractive for many types of application.

SMS is cheap, always on, gets through when other messages don't, is a store-and-forward system and is quite easy to build with. The SIM is portable so you can move it from one mobile device to another; it is tamper resistant, so it can be used to hold sensitive data;and it provides access to the full range of capabilities of the handset. One sweet spot for applications using SMS and the SIM is trusted transactions. Although this includes mobile commerce and financial transactions, the trust inherent in the SIM can be leveraged to a much broader group of applications where privacy and performance are important. The case-study chapters describe how companies and carriers are using this trust in real-world situations.

An SMS message nearly always gets through. If the mobile phone isn't on when you send a message, the system holds it until the phone is turned on and then delivers it. The system also can generate a return receipt that tells you that the message has been delivered. SMS messages are encrypted, so there is no fear that your message will be snatched out of the air and read. You can even add your own encryption to an SMS message so that not even the phone company can read what you are sending. There are many standards, software packages, and service providers that make building industrial-strength SMS applications easy, quick, and even fun (if you have a somewhat distorted sense of fun)....


*GSM Association, "Introduction to SMS"on the web at http://www.gsmworld.com/ technology/sms.html.

Table of Contents

Foreword Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Introducing SMS and the SIM Chapter 2: Basic SMS Messaging Chapter 3: Details of SMS-SUBMIT and SMS-DELIVER Chapter 4: SMS Integration Chapter 5: SMS Brokers Chapter 6: SMS in an Airport Logistics Application Chapter 7: The SIM Chapter 8: SIM Toolkit API: Proactive Commands and Events Download Chapter 9: End-to-End Security for SMS Messages Chapter 10: The SmartTrust Microbrowser and the 3GPP USAT Interpreter Chapter 11: The USAT Interpreter at Work Chapter 12: The USAT Virtual Machine and SIM Toolkit Programs Chapter 13: Smart Signatures for Secure Mobile Commerce Chapter 14: The ETSI Smart Card Platform APPENDIX: Standards for SMS and the SIM Index
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