Future Multimedia System: SIP or the Advanced Multimedia System

In future multimedia systems, seamless access to application services on different devices available to users in their vicinity, will be commonplace. The availability of these services will change as the mobile user moves. Current 3G multimedia systems do not support access to multiple applications operating on multiple different devices in context of a session or indeed seamless device session handover. Considering these requirements, the authors outline two multimedia communication platforms which potentially solve this problem. This paper describes a backward compatible architecture based on the widely adopted Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and also outlines a clean slate approach from ITU-T SG 16 called the Advanced Multimedia System (AMS). For each of these solutions the paper describes in terms of architecture, signalling, and capability negotiation, what are viewed as the most critical functions in future multimedia systems design. The result of this comparison displays the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and outlines solutions to satisfy challenges of current and future multimedia systems based on the service access requirement in ubiquitous environments. Furthermore, this comparison is used to suggest approaches that are best suited for future multimedia system design.