TOWARDS FUTURE 4G MOBILE NETWORKS: A REAL-WORLD IMS TESTBED

In the near future, current mobile communication networks will converge towards an All-IP network in order to provide richer applications, stronger customer satisfaction, andfurther return on investment for the industry. However, such a convergence induces a strong level of complexity when handling interoperability between different operators and different handset vendors. In this context, the 3GPP consortium is working on the standardization of the convergence, and IMS is emerging as the internationally agreed upon standard that is multi-operator and multi-vendor. In this paper, we shed further light on the subtleties of IMS, and we delineate a blueprint for the implementation of a real-world IMS testbed. An open source Presence Server is deployed as well. The operation of the IMS testbed and the Presence Server are checked to assess their conformance with 3GPP standards. A simple third party application is developed on top the IMS testbed to further assess its operation.