Centralized Service Capability Interaction Manager (SCIM) architecutre to support dynamic-blended services in IMS network

Abstract

Major success factor for the futuristic IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) based network is dynamically delivering a blend of one or more services simultaneously to the end-users based on their preferences and context. Such blended services, can range from triple play to dynamic context based services. To deliver such services 3GPP introduces a functional block called SCIM (service capability interaction manager). SCIM works at the service delivery layer and provides a capability to interact across various service capabilities and thereby enabling a framework to deliver a blended service. However to the best of authorspsila knowledge 3GPP has not detailed the roles and responsibilities of SCIM though it has envisioned its need. Moreover, the architectural details (distributed and centralized) of SCIM are kept open for finalization by scientific community or organization-based. In this paper, authors have presented a novel internal architecture for a centralized-SCIM to cater the needs of blended services in IMS networks. Authors study the proposed SCIM architecture by demonstrating a dynamic blended service. In this approach a blended service is represented in the form of an acyclic service graph where each node in the graph represents a service capability. Centralized-SCIM would choose one of the paths in the service graph dynamically resulting in delivering blended service. To demonstrate such functionality a typical use case related to a media, entertainment and content provider enterprise have been chosen. The call flow diagram for the proposed use case has been discussed.