Provisioning and management of IP-Based multimedia Mobility services over heterogeneous broadband wireless networks

在加拿大电信业内，我们见证了蜂窝服务提供商和互联网服务提供商的融合，这些服务提供商旨在提供“始终最佳连接”(ABC)服务，以使用各种不同的宽带有线和无线网络向不同的用户提供多媒体通信和内容，后者包括3G蜂窝、WiFi WLAN、WiMax等，在本提案中称为宽带无线网络(BWN)。这些不同网络的一个共同特征是使用通用网际协议(IP)来促进网络互连，并且业界正在部署IP多媒体子系统(IMS)技术以在这些不同的接入网络技术之间提供互通并在BWN上扩展多媒体服务。目前还不存在以统一方式管理用户对这些不同网络的访问的技术。多媒体应用的一个重要要求是传输网络需要提供适当级别的服务质量(Qos)支持，以确保可接受的接收质量。因此，另一个挑战是增强宽带无线网络技术以支持服务质量，并增强多媒体编码/解码以抵消一些宽带无线网络在服务质量方面的预期限制。该项目的总体目标是开发能够通过通过IMS互通的异类BWN向订户提供ABC多媒体服务的技术。具体目标包括：(1)开发一个接入管理框架，以全球管理个人用户的身份和服务配置文件，并促进ABC服务的多个BWN的高效接入；(2)为H.264多媒体开发可扩展和容错的多种描述性编码/解码技术，并与先进的传输层协议联合优化；(3)开发通过WiFi和WiMax网络以及通过IMS与核心IP网络互通的异类BWN进行高效实时多媒体访问的服务质量支持技术。我们将努力提供尖端技术和培训高素质人才，以满足加拿大电信业未来的需求。

Within the Canadian telecommunications industry, we are witnessing the convergence of cellular service providers and Internet service providers aiming to provide an "always best connected" (ABC) service to deliver multimedia communications and contents to diverse subscribers using a variety of heterogeneous broadband wireline and wireless networks, the latter including 3G cellular, WiFi WLANs, WiMax, etc., referred as broadband wireless networks (BWNs) in this proposal. A common characteristic of these diverse networks is the use of the universal Internet Protocol (IP) to facilitate network interconnection, and industry is deploying IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) technology to provide interworking between these heterogeneous access network technologies and extend multimedia services over BWNs. Technologies do not currently exist to manage subscriber access to these diverse networks in a unified manner. An important requirement of multimedia applications is that the transport network needs to provide an appropriate level of quality of service (QoS) support to ensure acceptable reception quality. Therefore another challenge is to enhance BWN technologies for QoS support, and to enhance multimedia encoding/decoding to counteract the anticipated limit in QoS offered by some BWNs. The overall goal of this project is to develop technologies that enable delivery of ABC multimedia services to subscribers via heterogeneous BWNs interworked through an IMS. Specific objectives include the following: (1) Development of an access management framework to globally manage the identity and service profile of individual subscribers and facilitate efficient access to multiple BWNs for ABC service; (2) Development of scalable and error resilient multiple descriptive coding/decoding techniques for H.264 multimedia and joint optimization with advanced transport layer protocol; (3) Development of QoS support techniques for efficient real-time multimedia access over WiFi and WiMax networks and over heterogeneous BWNs interworked with a core-IP network through an IMS.  Our efforts will provide cutting edge technologies and train highly qualified personnel to satisfy the future needs of Canadian telecommunications industry.