Facilitating mobile service provisioning in IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) using service oriented architecture

This paper presents an extension of the IMS software architecture using a service orientation, which provides flexibility of mobile service provisioning. The suggested extension facilitates composition of new mobile services in run-time based on the existing services and enables the end users to become mobile service providers. Moreover, it enables addition of new mobile services with plug-n-play similar to an addition of an end user device to the network. With this extension, the core system architecture of IMS is not affected. The extension is realized by introducing Web services in combination with the SIP protocol. Using SIP will enable operators to remain in control of mobile service provisioning as they are the owners of the IMS networks. This property of the extension may also facilitate its acceptance by the operators. A proof-of-concept prototype is discussed to demonstrate feasibility of the proposed extension.