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Short Messaging Service as an alternative for pushing

information to build efficient Information Passing
Systems in Academic Institutions
Akundi Vamshi Krishna
Information Technology, Shri Sant Gajanan Maharaj COE , Shegaon
V.A.1993@ieee.org

Abstract Majority Applications in any
academic institutions make use of
technologies which involves student
paying for the service i.e. Internet and
most client end cell phones use Wi-Fi or
GPRS to achieve goals, Also institutions
have Institutional central database
servers and pay service providers for
Internet Services, so using Open Source
APIs and a middleware one can build a
service wherein students dont have to
pay for Student Information Services
Paper deals with using a text message as
an alternative to packets and the finer
details of the work which my group and I
are implementing for the final year
project.

Keywords Android, SMS, Silent SMS,
SMS Gateway Provider, Content
Delivery SMS, M- Learning
I. INTRODUCTION
Academic institutions use two major
networks for the flow of information,
Teacher to Student Network and Student to
Student Network. Both networks fail to
transmit information on a real time basis.
(E.g. Teacher wants to tell all students in
morning to bring steam tables with them in
his session, Chances are more likely that no.
of chart tables in class are less half the
number of students)
The paper deals with re modelling the
existing structure to improve interactions by
implementing real time student information
systems. A majority of university students
use a mobile phone for routine voice and
text message communication. Consequently,
SMS can be used as a trusted technology to
form a better learning environment having a
Huge potential in higher education with
active (sending a message) and passive
(reading a message) interactions
For communication with students a simple
internet communication via WiFi or GPRS
can also be used, but, in developing
countries Internet Connectivity is uneven
although, Smartphone percolation amongst
students is more than 70 %.
My solution focuses on the use of SMS as a
way of sending data and substituting
packets in a network.

II. RELATED WORK
Roshan DSouza, Kariyappa B. S, Santhosh
Kumar, Dr. M. Uttara Kumari[1] have
presented a methodology to provide Short
Message Service over Internet Protocol
(SoIP) network, which is addressed to
mobile or soft phone users connected over
IP network. The method is based on sending
SMS directly to the Short Message
Switching Centre (SMSC) using the Short
Message Peer to Peer (SMPP)
communication protocol over IP network
The SoIP system makes use of SMPP
protocol to communicate between the
gateway and SMSC. Fig. 1 shows the
network architecture for SoIP. From the
architecture, Short Message Entity (SME) at
the sending gateway composes the short
message which is encoded at sending
gateway before delivering to SMSC. SM
Receiver Gateway receives encoded PDUs
from SMSC and decodes them before
sending to the destination SME.


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Also work of M.A. Mohammad and A.
Norhayati[2] deals with implementing
software development that is based on Short
Messaging Service (SMS) system for
delivering messages to students. The
students' information is held on a database
that can be accessed through Graphical User
Interface (CUI).
This software allows the lecturer to
maintain a list of students with their
respective mobile phone numbers and send
message to them.

III. PROBLEM STATEMENT:
Earlier studies implement the framework
of sending SMSs to implement campus
wide information network effectively
however they fail to address following
problems:
A. Keeping tabs on sent messages: As
messages sent to any mobile are done on
a forward and forget basis, there is no
way to determine whether sent sms is
relevant i.e. has it reached student when
it matters most.
B. Keeping record of received messages:
On student front, information will be lost
if the message is deleted from inbox
hence undermining the importance.
C. Realtime Information Transfer : If sender
is unable to access the server, he will be
unable to pass on information to students
hence, a failsafe alternative is needed.
D. Student Interaction with faculty is not
covered as students have to pay for the
SMS sent by them.
E. Internet access may or may not be
present in cell phones of the students,
especially in developing countries like
India.

IV. SOLUTION
More than 70% of students in my institution
own an Android Based Smartphone,
however the internet connectivity amongst
these devices is low thereby rendering
Student Information Systems using internet
subject to connectivity and signal strength.
Even if students have internet access via
SIM cards they might consider switching of
internet to save data costs. Hence my
solution is to use SMS Service provided by
almost every cellular service provider to be
the bearer of information for the
Smartphone application.
This way Information is PUSHED onto
student, regardless of his pursuit for it.
Since SMS delivery efficiency is high it
provides a failsafe platform.
The resident application on user smartphone
will receive SMS and incorporate the
information into its coding thus securing
information. Also it will check the
timestamp of the sent message and
determine validity of message and take
action accordingly.
Whenever student wishes to interact on the
incoming information, the application will
initiate a PULL message to the server and
send the message. This way institution pays
for the message instead of student.
Same goes for teachers, application resident
on teachers smartphone will send realtime
updates to server, where it will be the job of
the server to process it, analyse it and send
it to appropriate group of students.
Also the messages sent will be silent SMSs
so that student is unaware of message being
received thereby preventing tampering.
Application will notify student/teacher of
the updates.

V. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
It is traditionally known that an SMSC
performs a "store and forward' mechanism
for sending and receiving messages The
mobile originated (MO) text message is
transported from a mobile station to the
SMSC where these MO text message may
be destined to other mobile stations or other


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services. In contrast, the mobile terminated
(MT) text message is transported from an
SMSC to a mobile station.
Two approaches, namely, PDU (Protocol
Description Unit) and Text can be applied
to send and receive text messages using AT
commands. The text mode (unavailable on
some phones) is just an encoding of the bit
stream represented by the PDU mode [16].
A majority of network services such as
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP),
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS),
mobile banking and Over-the-Air (OTA)
makes use of the PDU messaging standard.
Because this PDU mode is used to encode
the message header and user data (payload)
hexadecimal or decimal semi-octet format,
it is SMS-SUBMIT and SMS-DELIVER
Protocol Description Unit (PDU) The SMS-
SUBMIT PDU can be expressed as with
Service Centre Address (SCA) and the rest
of Transport Protocol Data Unit (TPDU).
The PDU format is a hexadecimal encoded
SaB2.3 binary format; Which means that
two hexadecimal digits, represent a byte of
data. A header with control information and
user data make up a TPDU [18]. As some
mobile phones do not supported the PDU
format but only the TPDU format, the SCA
is removed from the PDU and stored in the
SIM card by the network operator. This
information can be modified using AT
commands and hence, the default SCA
information (from the SIM card) can be
used to implement SMS-SUBMIT to insert
any type of SCA supported by the network
operator. As a result of this implementation,
the SCA part of the PDU can be replaced
with a 00 Octet.
The mobile phone receives an SMS-
DELIVER PDU from the SMSC as a
Mobile Terminated (MT) message. For this
architecture, the same method as described
above performs both SMS-DELIVER and
SMS-SUBMIT type messages [3].
Fig. < >. The architecture of the SMS-
SUBMIT protocol description unit (PDU)
and its data values

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VI. PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
Proposed architecture consists of
following important components:
1) SMS Gateway: A SMS Gateway like
Simplewires Wireless Messaging
Platform[4] for sending SMSs to students
cell phones, or a Bulk SMS Provider like
Airtel of BSNL(India).
2) Resident Android Application:
Application which processes the SMS sent
to the client directly from its inbox and
deletes the same without client knowing
about existence of the message and make
changes into its coding according to the
message.
3) A SMS Pull Server: To receive
requests from students and teachers and
process them accordingly.
4) Central Database: For bifurcating
requests among students and teachers and
broadcast teacher messages to students and
same time form a database for teachers to
access queries.



















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Fig. Proposed Architecture for SIS



VII. WORKING
A.SMS Services:
1. PUSH Services Generation
PUSH provides a standard means to send
data to a mobile subscriber without an
explicit request from the subscriber at the
time data is delivered.[6] This service
generation sub module is composed of three
categories Broadcast, Scheduling and Event
The Broadcast category of services allows
the authority to send PUSH SMS with
updated information to all of the application
holders. Implemented under this category
are changes in: Lecture Timings, Any
Change in College Rules and any public
notification.
Under Scheduling category, following
PUSH services are adopted: Monthly
Newsletters, Holiday Notifications, year
Planner etc. Messages are sent to students
on basis of a pre-defined schedule. An
algorithm is developed which keeps the
track of time count with service track and
gives alerts on the basis of prescheduled
date.
Event based PUSH service generation is too
effective for students. In Event Service a
PUSH Message is sent automatically to the
consumer when a certain event happens
defined by the college or it can be by the
student also. Event services generated in
this module are: Warning if Attendance of
Student falls below 75%, Pending Fee
Payment Notifications. In case of event
service sub table generation special alert
status with flag is set and saved in MYSQL
database. As a result, if any type of damage
occurs in any students account by this flag
warning it could be easily detected from
general case and enhance accuracy.
For sending A PUSH service SMS from
Institution Content Server
2. PULL Services Generation
PULL technique provides the required
services in reply of customers service
orders.[5] In our proposed system this is
composed Enquiry Service. It provides
interactivity to the customer, who can
through SMS make an enquiry and get the
answers in real time.
If the query is a doubt which requires
teachers attention, the message is stored in
Central Database and sent to teachers queue
of messages. Teacher may choose to reply
to the same at his convenience.



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Syntax of SMS of Pull Categorized Enquiry
type service:
Doubt <unique_id> <doubt>
Example: Doubt 3N72 What is an SMS

Algorithm: For sending A PUSH service
SMS from institution Server
sendmessage(ph,msg)
1. len = get the msg length
2. p_len = get the ph length
3. check for existence of 'F' in ph
4. if exist
5. p_len = p_len-1
6. len = length of msg*2+2
7. msg_len = get binary of len
8. c=27
9. msg = "001100"+get hex of
ph_len+num_type+ph+"00"+TP_DCS+TP_VP
+get
hex of msg_len+get PDUformat of msg+c;
10. send the AT command AT+CMGS= and
the value of expression
"((msg.length()/2)-8) +"\r""to the serial
port.
11. Wait for the port response
12. send the value of msg to the serial port.
13. Wait for the port response
14. if the response of port ends with 'K'
15. then show info "MESSAGE SENT
SUCCESSFULLY".
16. else
17. then show info "Massage send failed";

B. Android Application:
Proposed Push-Pull SMS Schema has a
small complication i.e. User has to
explicitly send the message and does not
have track of all the received messages.
Proposed Android Application will receive
messages sent by the server, and incorporate
the changes in its User Interface accordingly.
It involves use of SMS as a XML markup
for the application to make changes.
Information to be sent by the server will be
embedded in a XML Capsule with relevant
IDs and such a message can be fetched
from Inbox using method
getMessageBody()[6] of android.telephony
class of Android API.
Notification on reception of message in
phone can be stopped by using
abortBroadcast() method.
After processing the markup, application
will delete the SMS using method:
getContentResolver().delete(Uri.parse("con
tent://sms/conversations/" +
thread_id),null,null);[7]
Although same objectives can be achieved
by setting up intents in the
AndroidManifest.xml file like <intent-filter
android:priority="maxIntValue">[8] it will
effectively shut other applications off from
receiving their messages.
C. Back End:
On hitting query, application will generate
XML Markup pertaining to the query so that
message can be sent to the central server via
a pull message as discussed earlier. If query
exceeds the limit of 160 characters than
multipart SMS can be used for the same.
MySql will analyze message and route it
accordingly. Alternatively if client wishes to
send the query over internet, application
will support it.

VIII. CONCLUSION
The proposed system is a developed to
communicate administrative details such as
detailed notices and assessment/teaching
schedules to students and perform academic
activities such as lecturer feedbacks and
lecture summaries using extensive text
messages. Statistical analysis of students'
feedback during a campuswide
implementation of the proposed system
pointed out that the students' preference of
using proposed system in academic
activities is highly significant. As such, it is
evident students are eager to be reminded of
lecture summaries and feedbacks using
extensive text messages to gain pre-eminent
learning outcome from a lecture session at
any time before the scheduled class from
outside the boundaries of a traditional
classroom.
Being able to interact with teachers and
other institution without paying internet
costs will significantly increase the rate of
knowledge gathering and information
retrieval amongst the students and the
teacher fraternity.




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IX. FUTURE WORK
There are some certain limitations that are
beyond the theoretical and technical
implementation of the proposed system like
the possible scenario of network failure and
response of the entire architecture therein
and the other being analysis of message
percolation and read receipt of the message
being sent.
Future research directions will certainly
discover solutions to mitigate the above
limitations by inventing an all in a one
utility for lifelong learning of students and
faculty.
X. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
XI. REFERENCES

[1] Roshan DSouza, Kariyappa B. S, Santhosh Kumar, Dr. M.
Uttara Kumari. Protocol Implementation for Short Message
Service over IP: ICIIS 2011, Aug. 16-19, 2011, Sri Lanka
[2] M.A. Mohammad and A. Norhayati, A Short Message
Service for Campus Wide Information Delivery: 4& National
Conference on Telecommunication Technology Proceedings, Shah
Alam, Malaysia
[3] Salman Firdaus bin Haji Sidek, The Development of the
Short Messaging Service (SMS) Application for the School Usage
978-1-4244-6716-7/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE.
[4] Digital cellular telecommunications system (Phase 2+);
Technical realization of the Short Message Service (SMS) Point-
to-Point (PP) (GSM 03.40)
[5] Miachel Harrington, CFCE,EnCE : Understanding SMS :
Practitioners Basics
[6] http://www.code.google.com/android
[7]http://www.stackoverflow.com