Research of utility prepayment system based on wireless communication

This paper seeks to clarify differences and similarities among impressive array of radio access technologies which can be used in utility prepayment, analyzes the requirements of wireless prepayment utility meter system. It present a set of mobile prepayment solution in which the prepayment meter (PM) system is implemented without smart card and user need not go to agency by oneself for prepayment. For the purpose of solving the difficult problem of utility meter prepayment at the specific location in person, mobile payment client (MPC) with graph user interface (GUI) located on mobile device which is responded for business initiation. PM is connected to PS via Zigbee network or WLAN in short range access network and via the 3rd generation wireless communication infrastructure (3G) in long range access network, and utility meter may connect Zigbee node via RS485 bus. By means of identification and mutual authentication which generating different session key with time stamps every time, the cross validation mechanism among PM, MPC and PS improve the security of mobile prepayment system. The security mechanism is given in the end including user identification, mutual authentication, and data integrity and data confidentiality. In the end, ZigBee node hardware design and meter interface design is introduced and a practical application is given. The result of the present work implied that mobile phone is gradually becoming a data access and exchange platform of mobile payment, and WiMax is another competitive technology which will be used in the utility wireless prepayment solution.