The Design and Implementation of a Gateway for IP Multimedia Subsystem/Wireless Sensor Networks Interworking

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is becoming the de-facto standard for IP-based multimedia services, while Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are gaining a lot of popularity due to their ability of capturing a rich set of contextual information and their high application potential. Making the rich set of contextual information, captured by WSNs, available to the IMS can greatly enhance its service provisioning capabilities and open the door to a wide range of novel multimedia services. We have previously proposed a solution for WSNs/IMS integration. One of the key components of this solution is a WSN/IMS gateway acting as intermediary between the two networks. This paper focuses on the design and implementation of this gateway. The gateway architecture proposed encompasses the information management and support functions needed to enable IMS interaction with different types of WSNs. A prototype of this architecture is built and tested using Ericsson´s IMS simulated environment. Furthermore, two applications (a pervasive game and a personalized call control application) are used to demonstrate the system operation.