On the integration and convergence of IN and IP mobile service infrastructures

Due to business requirements and the historical network evolution process, service infrastructures owned by most mobile operators present high degrees of heterogeneity and isolation, thus compromising their scalability and hindering the inclusion of new services. This paper presents a mobile service platform architecture that, based on the integration and convergence features facilitated by the adoption of JAIN SLEE carrier-grade middleware, enables operators to gradually evolve their infrastructures towards a homogeneous and flexible service provisioning environment for IN, IT and IMS services. In addition, the validation trials of the proposed solution undertaken in the service infrastructure of a mobile operator are described, along with the performance results achieved on such tests.