Using JAIN SLEE as an Interaction and Policy Manager for Enabler-based Services in Next Generation Networks
The IP Multimedia Subsystem is a telecommunications framework with a standard architecture for the provision of services. While the services themselves have not been standardised, standards do exist for basic technologies that can be re-used and aggregated in order to construct more complex services. These elements are called service capabilities by the 3GPP and service enablers by the OMA, both of which are reputable standards bodies in this area. In order to provide re-usability, there is a need to manage access to the service capabilities. Also, in order to build complex services, there is a further need to be able to manage and coordinate the interactions that occur between service capabilities. The 3GPP and the OMA have separately defined network entities that are responsible for handling aspects of these requirements, and are known as a service capability interaction manager (SCIM) and a policy enforcer respectively. However, the internal structure of the SCIM and the policy enforcer have not been standardised by the relevant bodies. In addition, as the SCIM and the policy enforcer have been defined through complementary yet separate processes, there is an opportunity to unify efforts from both bodies. This paper builds on work and standards defined by the bodies, and proposes the design of an interaction manager with features borrowed from both the SCIM and the policy enforcer. To help validate the design, we have identified a platform known as JAIN SLEE which we believe conforms to the model proposed, and we discuss how JAIN SLEE can be used to implement our ideas.
