A chapter preloading mechanism for e-reader in mobile environment

E-book is a fast growing service for mobile Internet. A user reads e-books through an e-reader that could be a dedicated reading device or a mobile application on the smartphones or the tablets. With content protection of Digital Right Management (DRM), e-books take longer chapter loading time due to necessary data decryption. This paper propose a mechanism that preloads a small number of chapters into the buffer for DRMprotected e-books. When the user reads a chapter in the buffer, our solution reduces the user waiting time without affecting existing content protection. We also analyze the buffer replacement cost and effects of the limited buffer resource. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.