ABSTRACT As mobile devices become more affordable and powerful, new families of applications are built to utilize the mobility of such mobile computing resources. Some of the most appealing and profitable kinds of applications in mobile and pervasive computing nowadays are location based service applications. In this article, we tackle such applications from a software engineering perspective, and propose an architecture for building location based service applications suitable for pushing data and advertisements to mobile devices as such devices become into proximity with service providers. Our proposed architecture is independent of any communication protocol, and as different communication mechanisms arise, the architecture still remains valid. We explain the architecture in detail, including its various subsystems, and eventually demonstrate an application prototype that was built using the proposed architecture as a reference.
