Mobile Digital TV (MDTV), the hybrid of Digital Television (DTV) and mobile devices (such as mobile phones), has introduced a new way for people to watch DTV and has brought new opportunities for development in the DTV industry. Nowadays, the development of the next generation MDTV service has progressed in terms of both hardware layers and software, with interactive services/applications becoming one of the future MDTV service trends. However, current MDTV interactive services still lack in terms of attracting the consumers and the service creation and implementation process relies too much on commercial solutions, resulting in most parts of the process being proprietary. In addition, this has increased the technical demands for developers as well as has increased substantially the cost of producing and maintaining MDTV services. In light of the aforementioned situation, the Thesis has contributed to this field, by proposing an innovative MDTV service creation and consumption system based on XHTML and Java ME. On the head-end it introduces a semi-automatic creation mechanism to facilitate a less technical and more efficient interactive service creation process. This enables designers and creative individuals to be actively involved in the MDTV service creation process and to develop interactive-rich MDTV service. On the client-end it employs an open-source software environment as the interactive service MDTV consumption platform, rendering the MDTV service implementation process as less proprietary as possible. Furthermore, the Thesis offers a discussion on the different MDTV interactive application models currently used and based on the proposed software, a novel MDTV service presentation method is further introduced and adopted instead of the Rich Media and ECMAScript based methods. Finally, a series of qualitative testing procedures have been implemented with regards to conducting an essential evaluation on the operability of the proposed software system.

With a prospect of creating a new generation of cellular networks using IP based communication, service providers, operators and developers have created the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Which with a more open architecture than older cellular networks will make it more like the internet in terms of service creation. This thesis creates an example service that uses subscriber data in the Home Subscriber Server (HSS) to deliver a service to the network’s users. The service is created to extend the functionality of the IMS test environment at Attentec AB to assist them in their efforts of learning and experimenting with the IMS core network. In this thesis the FoHSS used in the test environment is evaluated in order to measure its performance. This thesis gives examples of the implementation overhead of creating services in the IMS network and shows some of the functionality that is available to IMS services compared to service creation on the internet. Load tests of the FoHSS are made and shows that it uses polling to maintain subscription updates and that it has a negative impact on performance under heavy load. This thesis suggests that it is good for IMS test environments but not commercial use. / Med ambitionen att skapa nästa generations mobilnätverk med IP-baserad kommunikation, har tjänsteleverantörer, operatörer och utvecklare skapat IMS. IMS som med en mer öppen arkitektur än dess föregångare försöker närma sig internet när det gäller skapande av nya tjänster. Det ska vara enklare och ta mindre tid än i ett äldre mobilnät. Detta examensarbete skapar en exempeltjänst som använder användaruppgifter i IMS användardatabas för att leverera en tjänst till nätets användare. Tjänsten har skapats för att utöka funktionerna i den IMS testmiljö som Attentec AB har satt upp för att underlätta för sina anställda att lära sig mer om med IMS-kärnan genom att experimentera med den. I denna avhandling utvärderas även den HSS som finns i testmiljön. Examensarbetet ger exempel på det extraarbete som behöver göras för att skapa tjänster i ett IMS-nätverk och visar på en del av den funktionalitet som finns tillgänglig för tjänster i IMS jämfört med skapande av nya tjänster på Internet. De lasttester som utfördes på användardatabasen visar att den använder pollning för att upptäcka ändringar i användardata och skicka ut uppdateringar till prenumeranter samt att dessa har en negativ inverkan på prestandan under tung belastning. Denna avhandling visar att den passar bra i IMS testmiljöer men för inte kommersiellt bruk.

The subject of this research is to find a continuous solution, which allows the description, the creation, the provisioning, and the execution of value-added telecommunication services. This work proposes a framework for an easy and timesaving creation and provisioning of value-added telecommunication services in Next Generation Networks. As research method, feasibility, comparative methods are used in this study. Criteria and requirements for service description, service creation, service execution, and service provisioning, are defined and existing technologies are compared with each other and evaluated regarding these criteria and requirements. Extensions to the selected technologies are proposed and possibilities to combine these technologies are researched. From the results of the previous steps, a framework is defined which offers a continuous solution for the description, creation, provisioning and execution of value-added services. In order to test the proof of concept, this framework is prototypically implemented. For a qualitative analysis of the research targets and the proof of concept, an example service is created and executed within the framework prototype. Furthermore, in order to examine the validity of the quantitative aims and objectives of this research work, a second example service is created, and its characteristics are measured and analysed. The result of this research is a novel continuous approach for the creation of value-added telecommunication services. This research introduces new possibilities for the service description, service creation, service provisioning, and service execution through an extension of the common telecommunication real-time execution environment JAIN SLEE. Value-added services are described by using the business process execution language BPEL. This language facilitates a simple and fast service design. The service can automatically be composed from pre-defined and pre-deployed components.

MSc thesis - Faculty of Engineering / Service creation in the Next Generation Network (NGN) is focused around software creation and borrows heavily from the Software Engineering community. In the NGN, telecommunication companies demand simple, rapid and economical service creation. The key to this type of service creation is software re-use. Software re-use is a conundrum where limited, dedicated solutions exists. These solutions include amongst others Enterprise JavaBeansTM (EJBs), design patterns and object-oriented programming. The Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture- Conformance And Testing (TINA-CAT) workgroup has done work on a functionality centric concept called RP-facets. This report proposes a redefinition of RP-facets, as Facets, for software re-use across the design and code level. We redefine Facets as functionality centric reusable components. A Facet is independent of the implementation language and the execution platform. Facets allow containment in a structured manner via a user defined Facet Hierarchy. Facets are resource, context and data agnostic. They also introduce a structured way to allow source code to be changed based on design level decisions. Also, possessing the ability to allow the simultaneous use of other reuse solutions and programming paradigms. Abstraction of detail from developers and platform migration can be achieved by using Facets. Facets are composed of a Generic definition and any number of Implementation definitions. The definitions are supported by an underlying informational model called meta-¼. Meta- ¼ is a model at the M3 meta-level that focuses on describing entities. Most of the Facet’s capabilities are enabled by the meta-¼ model. An environment for developing Facets is created, called the Facet Development Environment (FDE). The Facet Developer (FD) role is introduced to develop and maintain Facets. The FD verifies programmes from programmers to be included into the catalogue of Facets via the FDE. The FD interacts with service creation teams to determine which Facets can be used in the service they wish to develop. Facets prove their capability in targeted areas, yet lack in other categories. It is recommended that the underlying informational model should be revised to form a more robust and flexible entity describing model. In addition, a cataloging capability to easily find Facets with particular functionality should be appended to the capabilities of the facet. It is proposed, for future work, that a development environment be created that encompasses a process for using Facets to create services.

The programmable network envisioned in the 1990s within standardization and research for the Intelligent Network is currently coming into reality using IPbased Next Generation Networks (NGN) and applying Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles for service creation, execution, and hosting. SOA is the foundation for both next-generation telecommunications and middleware architectures, which are rapidly converging on top of commodity transport services. Services such as triple/quadruple play, multimedia messaging, and presence are enabled by the emerging service-oriented IPMultimedia Subsystem (IMS), and allow telecommunications service providers to maintain, if not improve, their position in the marketplace. SOA becomes the de facto standard in next-generation middleware systems as the system model of choice to interconnect service consumers and providers within and between enterprises. We leverage previous research activities in overlay networking technologies along with recent advances in network abstraction, service exposure, and service creation to develop a paradigm for a service environment providing converged Internet and Telecommunications services that we call Service Broker. Such a Service Broker provides mechanisms to combine and mediate between different service paradigms from the two domains Internet/WWW and telecommunications. Furthermore, it enables the composition of services across these domains and is capable of defining and applying temporal constraints during creation and execution time. By adding network-awareness into the service fabric, such a Service Broker may also act as a next generation network-to-service element allowing the composition of crossdomain and cross-layer network and service resources. The contribution of this research is threefold: first, we analyze and classify principles and technologies from Information Technologies (IT) and telecommunications to identify and discuss issues allowing cross-domain composition in a converging service layer. Second, we discuss service composition methods allowing the creation of converged services on an abstract level; in particular, we present a formalized method for model-checking of such compositions. Finally, we propose a Service Broker architecture converging Internet and Telecom services. This environment enables cross-domain feature interaction in services through formalized obligation policies acting as constraints during service discovery, creation, and execution time. / Das programmierbare Netz, das Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Standardisierung und Forschung für das Intelligente Netz entworfen wurde, wird nun Realität in einem auf das Internet Protokoll basierendem Netz der nächsten Generation (Next Generation Network). Hierfür kommen Prinzipien aus der Informationstechnologie, insbesondere aus dem Bereich dienstorientierte Architekturen (Service-Oriented Architecture / SOA) für die Diensterstellung, -ausführung und -betrieb zum Tragen. SOA bietet hierbei die theoretische Grundlage für Telekommunikationsnetze, vor allem jedoch für die dazugehörigen Dienstplattformen. Diese erlauben dem Telekommunikationsbetreiber seine Position in einem offenen Marktplatz der Dienste auszubauen. Dazu bedarf es allerdings möglichst flexibler Dienstumgebungen, die die Kooperation zwischen Dienstanbietern und Nutzern aus unterschiedlichsten Domänen durch Unterstützung geeigneter Werkzeuge und Mechanismen fördert. Im Rahmen dieser Dissertation definieren wir aufbauend auf Forschungsergebnisse im Bereich Overlay-Netze, Netzabstraktion und Zugriff auf exponierte Dienste eine Service Broker genannte Dienstumgebung für konvergente Internet- und Telekommunikationsdienste. Dieser Service Broker stellt Mechanismen für die Komposition von Diensten und Mediation zwischen unterschiedlichen Dienstparadigmen und Domänenspezifika beim Dienstaufruf zur Verfügung. Der Forschungsbeitrag dieser Arbeit findet auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen statt: Aufbauend auf einer Analyse und Klassifikation von Technologien und Paradigmen aus den Bereichen Informationstechnologie (IT) und Telekommunikation diskutieren wir die Problemstellung der Kooperation von Diensten und deren Komposition über Domänengrenzen hinweg. In einem zweiten Schritt diskutieren wir Methoden der Dienstkomposition und präsentieren eine formalisierte Methode der modellbasierten Diensterstellung. Der Schwerpunkt der Arbeit liegt auf der Spezifikation der Service Broker Dienstumgebung und einem zugrundeliegenden Informations- und Datenmodell. Diese Architektur erlaubt die Komposition und Kooperation von Diensten über Domänengrenzen hinweg, um konvergente Internet- und Telekommunikationsdienste zu realisieren. Hierfür wird ein auf Obligationspolitiken basierendes Regelsystemformalisiert, das Interaktionen zwischen Dienstmerkmalen während der Diensterstellung und -ausführung definiert.

Internet Protocol multimedia subsystem (IMS) is an architecture for services such as voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in IP based communication systems. IMS is standardized by the 3GPP standardization forum, and was first released in 2002. Since then IMS has not had the wide adoption by operators as first anticipated. As 3G already supported voice and video, the operators could not justify the expense of IMS. The current emergence of the fourth generation mobile communication system named Long Term Evolution (LTE) has, however, increased the need for knowledge of IMS and of creating services for it. LTE networks are IP only networks that provide low latency. In order to use LTE for making phone calls, VoIP technologies are needed. IMS is the architecture intended to be used for Voice over LTE (VoLTE). The need for tools for education within IMS was seen in 2006 by Enea Experts in Linköping, Sweden. The author of this thesis designed an IMS for educational purposes, but the project was never fully completed. This thesis will reexamine the design decisions previously made by the author. The requirements stated by the customer remain: that an IMS with basic signaling and logging should be easy to install, maintain, and evolve at a low cost. A literature study of IMS and VoLTE is presented to contribute with knowledge in these areas. The previous design and implementation made by the author is presented and analyzed. The third-party software that the previous implementation was based on is reexamined. Existing open source components are analyzed in order to identify how they can be used to solve the problem and to identify what remains to be developed in order to fulfill the requirements. New design suggestions, presented in today´s context, are proposed and verified using analytical reasoning and experiments. The outcome of the final work is new verified design decisions for the customer to use when implementing a new IMS for educational purposes. The thesis should also provide useful insights which instructors and students can use to teach and learn more about IMS. / Internet Protocol multimedia subsystem (IMS) är en arkitektur för tjänster, som IP-telefoni (Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP), i IP baserade kommunikationssystem. IMS standardi¬seras av standardiseringsforumet 3GPP och första utgåvan släpptes år 2002. IMS fick dock inte det breda genomslag bland operatörer som förväntats. Eftersom 3G redan hade stöd för tal och video kunde operatörerna inte se skäl till ytterligare utgifter för IMS. Den fjärde generationens mobila kommunikationssystem, Long Term Evolution (LTE) är helt IP-baserat och ger lägre fördröjningar i nätet. För att kunna ringa telefonsamtal via LTE krävs VoIP-teknik. IMS är en arkitektur avsedd för att användas för Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Den nuvarande utvecklingen av LTE har därför ökat behovet av kunskap om IMS och av utveckling av IMS-tjänster. Enea Experts i Linköping insåg behovet av verktyg för utbildning inom IMS år 2006. Författaren av det här examensarbetet designade därför ett IMS för utbildningssyfte. Projektet slutfördes dock aldrig. Syftet med examensarbetet är att ompröva de tidigare designbesluten. Kundens krav kvarstår: att ett IMS med grundläggande signalering och loggning bör vara enkelt att installera, enkelt att underhålla och möjligt att utveckla till en låg kostnad. Arbetet innehåller en litteraturstudie av IMS och VoLTE för att ge en inblick i dessa områden. Den tidigare designen och implementationen presenteras och analyseras. Tredjeparts mjukvara, som den tidigare implementationen baserades på, omprövas. Befintliga programvaror med öppen källkod analyseras i syfte att kartlägga hur de kan användas för att lösa uppgiften, samt att identifiera vad som återstår att utveckla för att uppfylla kraven. Nya beslut kring design presenteras och besluten verifieras med experiment och analytiskt resonemang. Resultatet av detta examensarbete innefattar nya verifierade beslut kring design som kunden kan använda vid utveckling av ett nytt IMS för utbildningssyfte. Arbetet erbjuder också värdefulla insikter som instruktörer och elever kan använda för att undervisa samt för att lära sig mer om IMS.