Quadruple Play - Session Management Enabler for Multimedia Streaming

As the IMS represents an overlaying architecture, it is not limited to a single type of access network. However, the switching logic between different access networks is not provided by the IMS on its own. In fact this logic has to be integrated into a dedicated application server. Such an application server manages the transmission of multimedia streaming sessions over different access networks (UMTS, DVB-H, WiFi etc.) via different transmission schemes (unicast, multicast, broadcast). These multimedia streaming sessions are to be controlled within a stateful session management. This component has to be aware of both the content provider´s delivery and the user´s receiving behavior. Additionally the session management needs to be aware of the access network and the transmission scheme regarding the current user, network or content context to guarantee QoS and ensure the efficiency in providing this service delivery from network side. As a result, the session manager covers mobility aspects like session mobility and bearer mobility. This paper proposes and describes a session management enabler for a real time multimedia streaming architecture in the scope of quadruple play on top of the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS).