A VoIP emergency services architecture and prototype

Abstract

Providing emergency services in VoIP networks are vital to the success of VoIP. It not only presents design and implementation challenges, but also gives an opportunity to enhance the existing emergency call handling infrastructure. We propose an architecture to deliver emergency services in SIP-based VoIP networks, which can accommodate PSTN calls through PSTN to SIP gateways. Our architecture addresses the issues of identifying emergency calls, determining callers' locations, routing emergency calls to appropriate public safety answering points (PSAPs), and presenting required information to emergency call takers. We have developed a prototype implementation to prove our architecture's feasibility and scalability. We expect to undertake a pilot project at a working PSAP with our implementation once it is thoroughly tested.