Paper presentation on

IP MULTIMEDIA SUBSYSTEM (IMS)

Presented by:
Alex Asave
David Rafati
Emil Ivanov
Facia Freeman
Michael Kim
Milind Soni
Robert Hou
Sameer Mutalik
Zeeba Dhody

Course: Business Data Communication Date: December 05, 2006

 IMS - a revolution in Telecommunication
Telecommunications industry is at a crossroads. It was till yesteryears that many
technologies came into play in telecom industry. Some of these evolved with time and
some started new. All these efforts to make telecommunication more secured, effective,
consumer friendly, and cost effective. Recently a new trend emerged to provide a
complete solution for convergence, interoperability, and security. IMS, an acronym for IP
Multimedia Subsystem, redefined the inter-working of different networks and provides a
user friendly, cost effective solution for the consumers. It made a big impact as it also
addresses the problems faced by service providers and mobile operators through standard
specifications to reduce operational cost, roaming problems, and many others. IMS is a
big vision of the future of telecommunications it hangs on.
World before IMS
Till early 2000, operators were facing lot of difficulties in interconnecting networks
working on different technologies. With this consumers, when outside the home network
were made to pay a big amount towards roaming charges. These overhead charges
increased as the number of mobile users increased. Though technology evolved to a great
extent, service providers were not ready to go for “rip and replace” option and invest a
huge amount to have a 3G system in place.
The GSM system which started as 2G technology evolved into GPRS (also known as
2.5G), then to a 3G called UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)
Almost at the same time a new technology came into existence called CDMA (Code
Division Multiple Access). This system developed with a greater speed in United States
and evolved to 3G system called CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and then to CDMA2000 1xEV-
DV.
In IP domain people were moving from H323 to all SIP and RTP based systems
emphasizing more on security, bandwidth utilization, and 3G features. IP Multimedia
Subsystem (IMS) came as a Next Generation Network (NGN) to address these issues
with Service oriented architecture.
IMS for everyone
The international standardization of IMS started in 2000 within 3GPP and 3GPP2 for the
mobile world, and has now been extended in 2005 towards the fixed network domain by
ITU-T and ETSI under the banner of NGN standardization.
The aim of IMS is not only to provide new services but the services, current and future,
that the internet provides. The primary advantages being,
Cost effective: IMS standardization is done based on horizontal architecture. Unlike the
conventional systems, which use vertical based architecture, horizontal based architecture
is more flexible. A single application can be used in different network interfaces.
Interoperability: Seamless integration with 802.11(WiFi) and 802.16(WiMax) wireless
technologies. Supports both PSTN (fixed) and mobile networks. It also supports multi-
vendor environment.
Convergence: IMS started as a technology for 3G mobile network, but soon become as
NGN covering fixed, wireless and mobile networks using SIP protocol. With IMS
convergence in place, users will have single network for home telephones, cable TV, IP
traffic and mobile phone service. Thus convergence being a crucial part of it, IMS is
expanding its horizon by supporting features like Single Sign On (SSO).
Better QoS: With 3G technology, it made possible to provide a better quality of service.
Some of these include video on demand, video conferencing, voice and data
communications.
All these add-ons give operators the necessary ability to control and change each of the
service.
IMS will eventually work with all the networks; fixed, mobile, and wireless with packet
switching functions, such as GPRS, UMTS, CDMA2000, WiFi, WiMax, and old circuit
switched phones.

Figure: Simplified IMS network architecture

Key elements in IMS architecture

Home Subscriber Server (HSS) – is the master database server containing the
subscription-related information of all users to support the IMS network entities as CSSF,
AS to handle calls/sessions. The HSS is similar to Home Location Register(HLR) in
GSM network.
Call Session Control Function (CSCF) - is responsible for Charging, O&M, and control
functions. CSCF entity is divided into different types depending on the services they
handle. They are P(Proxy)-CSCF, I(Interrogating)-CSCF, S(Serving)CSCF.
Application Server (AS) - executes and manages the services such as CLIP, Call waiting,
Call forwarding, Conf. Call, IM, SMS, MMS, and other services.
Gateways - provide necessary protocol conversion on different interfaces of the network.
Gateways help to communicate with devices which are not in same network. Gateways
are categorized into Signaling gateways and media gateways.
Realizing the IMS services
Push to talk on Cellular (PoC): PoC is one of the first IMS features implemented by
mobile operators. Converged PoC offers the subscriber all the benefits of two-way radio,
across the country or around the world. Users can self-provision their own call groups,
making changes and updates at any time. Users can find which call group members are
available for instant PoC contact, and make one-button communication with family
members or workgroups fast and easy.
Multiparty Gaming: This solution allows operators to deploy a wide variety of exciting
multiplayer games that can be supported on both mobile and wireline devices including
3G phones and desktop PCs.
Video Conferencing: Subscribers can conduct two-way streaming-video conference
sessions, enabling parents to send live video of their children to their grandparents, teens
to share video of the party they're at with their friends, and co-workers to conduct live
video conferences from any location.
Instant Messaging (IM): With the presence enabled messaging service (such as SIMPLE
and XMPP), user can text other users through their mobile handsets, PDAs, or even
through PCs. Users can see the status of the all users available his ‘buddy list’.
Presence Information: This feature uses location and presence technology to alert users
when friends, family or points of interest are in their vicinity, and facilitate services that
can take advantage of that location information. For example, consumers can receive a
mobile phone notification about a sale at a favorite store, or locate the nearest gas station
or restaurant. Or parents who will know whether their kid is in school locality or
somewhere else. Business users can also benefit from this technology. For instance, an
auto insurance company could locate the claims processors nearest to an accident and
send them to assess the damage and initiate claims quickly.
Lucent came up with an application called iLocator which provides this feature.
Push to share or content sharing: Users can share the videos with others using this
feature. When user wants to share the content (or video information), he can check the
status of the person if available in contact list on his wireless handset and send the
information in real time. This Push to Share feature can be used along with instant
messaging in same session with single or multiple users.
Access to third party content: Operators can create more integrated, user friendly
services through accessing the third party applications and contents. This will expand the
service offering and revenues for the operators.
Business prospects
The IMS infrastructure is growing at enormous speed with number of IMS services
supported by different service providers, mobile operators, vendors, and others are
increasing. This directly increases the ROI (Return on Investment) and allowing the
service providers and other key players to invest more into IMS. The early IMS deployed
operators have found that as the number of IMS services/features increased the faster
they got ROI. It also reduced their OPEX(operational expenditure) and CAPEX(Capital
expenditure). The big boost for switch to IMS being simplified service delivery,
unrestricted roaming without compromising on services, better quality of service, and
support for legacy networks.
More to come with IMS next release
As IMS standardization is getting realized, we find few issues that need to be addressed.
These include:

Discrepancies between TISPAN and 3GPP/3GPP2 standards causing problems in
arriving to one standard specification.

Interoperability issues such as supplementary services and voice quality
enhancements.

Providing seamless handoff of calls in all possible scenarios when working with
DMS(Dual Mode Service): WiFi to mobile handoffs, mobile to WiFi handoffs,
WiFi to WiFi handoffs.

Other difficult aspects that could hamper the advance of the NGN, as conceived
by the ITU under the auspices of the United Nations, include government policy
issues having to do with internationalizing Internet governance and removing the
existing digital divide between more and less technologically advanced countries.