Technologies to facilitate information commerce: Dissemination of data using broadcasts

Such large quantities of data and information are already being "trafficked" over networks, that the term information commerce has been coined. To facilitate information commerce, various infrastructures have been used, ranging from the Internet to local area networks. However, traditional information access strategies, termed pull-based strategies, tend to work poorly in most frameworks due to the notion of communication asymmetry [IVB97]. An alternative paradigm of disseminating information to a large number of clients is through the use of broadcasts. This dissertation addresses two major issues of interest in the broadcast scenario: (1) determining what to broadcast, and how the clients retrieve from the broadcasts, and, (2) how to provide secure access control to broadcast data. In this dissertation, we explore the general domain of data organization and access in broadcasts. Specifically, we design solutions that enable clients to retrieve their data of interest efficiently, as well as with a minimum of energy expenditure, particularly in a wireless context, and, we facilitate clients' subscription to the broadcast data by providing a secure access control layer