Abstract

The technological advances in communications and consumer electronics led to phenomenal increases in the amounts of electronic coupon (e-coupon) that have been generated, distributed, stored, and redeemed. The reason for their popularity rests with its ability to appeal to both the mobile users and the coupon issuers because just as the coupon issuers stand to gain from the higher delivery efficiency and more precise targeting potential, so too does the consumers enjoy being able to more conveniently collect the sought after coupons. However, due to the openness nature of the radio channel and mobile phone's limited computation capability in general, building a secure e-coupon system against uncontrolled copy and unauthorized redemption in an efficient way has become quite a challenging task. That explains the motive behind our presenting a new e-coupon system targeted at mobile users in this paper, which uses simple cryptographic techniques which can securely and efficiently avoid unauthorized redemptions, control the amount of issued coupons, and permit transferring coupon ownership. Compared to the related works, the proposed scheme can guarantee more functionalities as well as higher security level so that it benefits the practicality.

Paper Details