Kristin F. Kocan

Reducing complexity for converged voice/data networks and services architecture

The telecommunications industry today is facing an increasing degree of complexity due to the proliferation of available technologies and separate implementations of voice and data networks and services. Recent trends in the industry toward a convergence of telephony/computer technologies, networks, and services create an opportunity for reducing complexity in the converged voice/data network. The converged telecommunications network will be packet based, providing integrated voice/data/video services with third-party programmability to any subscriber, anywhere, over any access media. This paper describes an architectural approach to meet these challenges. A set of guiding principles is formulated and used for developing the converged network and service architectures. These principles, which provide an overall framework for partitioning network and service functions into components, are illustrated using the planned 7R/E™ Packet Solutions system and service architectures to build component-based converged voice and data services with interfaces to operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P) frameworks for industry-grade reliability, availability, and security.

A novel software approach for service brokering in advanced service architectures

Service brokering considerably enhances advanced service architectures, such as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), since the myriad applications potentially involved in a call or other session are located in the application layer and are separate and large grained. Through effective service brokering — that is, the effective blending and coordinating of services — interaction problems can be controlled and new composite services offering an enriched end-user experience can be provided. How can an effective service brokering capability be realized in a product when it must address needs not yet known? This question instigated the novel software approach (covered by filed Lucent patents) used in the Lucent Service Broker™ product. Adapting techniques used in Web servers and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) servlet engines, but bringing to the design the special needs for service interaction and blending along with attendant needs for scalability and performance, the Lucent Service Broker was designed as a software engine with a powerful but easy-to-use API for customer programmability. This paper describes the software design of the Lucent Service Broker, particularly focusing on its novel aspects.

Documenting architectures with patterns

Software patterns have been used for a decade or more to describe solutions to design and architecture problems. This paper illustrates the value of using software patterns to describe and generate specific architectures and discusses the objectives and techniques of documenting architectures using these patterns. It defines the specialized system of software patterns called a pattern language and presents example patterns and an example pattern language. Finally, it introduces a set of software patterns that represents service architectures, including service architectures for offering advanced services.

Service capability interaction management in IMS using the Lucent Service Broker™ product

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project/3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP/3GPP2) designates the service capability interaction manager (SCIM) as a functional component in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). This paper focuses on how the Lucent Service Broker™ product has been designed and how it would be deployed to perform as a SCIM in an IMS network. We discuss the challenges in managing service capability interaction and providing blended services that are encountered in IMS and show how Lucent Service Broker flexibility is needed to accommodate the breadth of challenges. We describe how the internal structure of the Lucent Service Broker and its application programming interface (API) offer this flexibility while minimizing the effort involved in adding new SCIM logic. We also demonstrate how the Lucent Service Broker may be used to marshal IMS application resources on behalf of revenue-generating applications in various usage scenarios.

Functionality and structure of the service broker in advanced service architectures

This paper discusses the service broker, a function introduced into next-generation networks to manage interactions among applications, to reuse existing applications in a combined fashion, and/or to enable existing applications with capabilities such as presence, location, and policy. With the service broker, a minimal set of applications can be configured in a multiplicity of ways as its elements are brought into play in mix and match arrangements. For the degree of flexibility needed for the service broker to support unique service combinations, the service broker must be programmable. Various functional subcomponents enable these service broker capabilities. These subcomponents include service descriptors, the mechanisms to identify the logic that governs how the applications interact; user and endpoint data managers, the entities that present user-specific and endpoint-specific information; and session contexts, the transient entities that contain the context associated with an instance of call/session or multi-call/session. The session context includes state information and provides multi-session awareness that allows both simultaneous and sequential state-dependent sequential activity to be managed. This paper introduces a lightweight, programmable, Session Initiation Protocol (SlP)-centric service broker architecture and the concept of the “steplet,” which is central to this architecture.

Blending telephony and IPTV: Building the TV-Link service package using the Alcatel-Lucent Service Broker™

This paper discusses the design and implementation of blended services—composite services whose base component services interact within a common control structure. The paper focuses on blended services that combine aspects of Internet Protocol television (IPTV) and IP Multimedia Subsystem–(IMS)-based telephony services and, in particular, focuses on a service that blends TV viewing and telephone call-handling functions. If a subscriber to this service receives a telephone call while watching TV, the caller ID is displayed on the subscribers TV screen and the subscriber can signal call control instructions using the set-top box remote control. In this service blend, functions from each base service are coordinated with actions in the other. The mechanism allowing this service is an information channel that allows status and control information to move between the subscribers set-top box and the IMS system. The services described in this paper are built upon a software foundation called the Alcatel-Lucent Service Broker™ platform, a platform that has unique capabilities to support such an information channel and to serve as the gateway between IMS and digital TV. This foundation offers service developers a set of important functions for the creation of blended services. Specifically, the Alcatel-Lucent Service Broker offers a means of controlling the invocation of base services, a means of communicating through different protocols, and support for large-scale deployment and for service customization.

Service creation for next-generation networks

The ability to more easily create and deploy new services is a major driver for movement toward next-generation converged communication networks. There are many approaches to provide this ability, each suited to different kinds of services, customers, and network operators. This paper presents a framework for service creation that organizes service creation methods. It can be used to help select the most appropriate enabling products and technologies. We define a set of domains of services and show how different methods of service creation apply to each of these domains. We show how the various methods of service creation differ in the ways they define the service, distribute the definition to network elements, interpret or execute the definition, and perform the functions that embody the service. We also explore how networks can expose application programming interfaces, protocol interfaces, and user interfaces to allow third parties to create services.

Performance of soft phones and advances in associated technology

Soft-phone technology for Internet protocol (IP) voice is growing in importance. However, soft phones exhibit poorer quality than public switched telephone network (PSTN) phones. A goal is to improve that quality, perhaps even to the point that the communication experience is better than with PSTN phones. This letter presents an analysis of soft-phone performance and describes acoustic echo cancellation and other technologies that improve soft-phone performance.

Future wireless communications

The explosive growth in the rate of adoption of wireless technologies has forever changed the communications landscape for business as well as personal activities. There are no signs of abatement in this wireless revolution. In fact, whole new spaces are being created by the deployment of new capabilities and services such as data-optimized networks, location-based services, and integration with wireless local area networks (WLANs). At the same time, these new services make it possible to envision even richer and more advanced offerings, thus fueling a virtuous cycle and ensuring the continued need for better and faster wireless networks for the foreseeable future. This issue of the Bell Labs Technical Journal presents a wide cross section of activities in wireless systems, ranging from performance evaluation of recently deployed systems to the key elements that will likely be part of the generation of technologies to be deployed in the next seven to ten years.

The SCF: A framework for application enablement service composition

Communication service provider ambitions to profitably leverage their network capabilities, provide novel differentiating services, and potentially even to tap into the talents of global development communities motivates the idea of a flexible service platform and service creation environment. Optimally, the platform should include a multiplicity of enablers that provide convenient programming interfaces to network elements and an environment where those enablers may be woven into composite services. The Service Composition Framework (SCF) for Alcatel-Lucents Open API Platform is robust and sophisticated middleware for hosting composite services. Such services can be created by third parties via an innovative service creation environment. The SCF is built on a core of open source software, with the valuable addition of a maintenance infrastructure, and a suite of services, enablers, policies, and utilities to support new services. This paper also describes the SCFs run-time hosting of composite services, their configuration, and their creation using the companion SCE.