Mobile multimedia instant messaging and presence services: The architecture and protocols

Instant Messaging and Presence service is emerging as a major killer application in the telecommunications industry. Hence in the wireless industry there is a need for an initiative of mobile, multimedia instant messaging and presence service (IMPS) architecture and protocol standard that takes mobile requirements into account and ensures interoperability, between different mobile terminals, operators and fixed Internet service providers. In the current 2G and 2.5G mobile networks, the Wireless Village initiative provides a standard architecture and protocol suite to build interoperable IMPS service covering multimedia content sharing group chat and presence notification, and addresses the privacy and access control issues. However with the gaining popularity of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) in the 3G network, it is anticipated that the mobile multimedia IMPS architecture and protocol standard will converge and align with the SIP family. SIP is currently being, adopted as the core call control protocol in 3G IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) networks. It is expected that the Wireless Village standard will eventually integrate with the SIP approach. In this paper we introduce the common IMPS set-vice architecture, analyze the state-of-art IMPS protocol standards, and envision the IMPS evolution in the mobile arena.