Presence in the IP multimedia subsystem

Issue title: Improving Quality of Service in Mobile Information Systems, Services and Networks

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Lin, Ling | Liotta, Antonio

Affiliations: Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Note: [] Corresponding author. University of Essex, ESE Department, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK. Tel.: +44 (0)1206 87 4247; Fax: +44 (0)1206 87 2900; E-mail: antonio.liotta@ieee.org

Abstract: With an ever increasing penetration of Internet Protocol (IP) technologies, the wireless industry is evolving the mobile core network towards all-IP network. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a standardised Next Generation Network (NGN) architectural framework defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to bridge the gap between circuit-switched and packet-switched networks and consolidate both sides into on single all-IP network for all services. In this paper, we provide an insight into the limitation of the presence service, one of the fundamental building blocks of the IMS. Our prototype-based study is unique of its kind and helps identifying the factors which limit the scalability of the current version of the presence service (3GPP TS 23.141 version 7.2.0 Release 7 [1]), which will in turn dramatically limit the performance of advanced IMS services. We argue that the client-server paradigm behind the current IMS architecture does not suite the requirements of the IMS system, which defies the very purpose of its introduction. We finally elaborate on possible avenues for addressing this problem.

Keywords: Presence service, IMS prototype

Journal: Mobile Information Systems, vol. 3, no. 3-4, pp. 187-202, 2007