Virtual community management for enabling P2P services in the IMS network

This paper addresses forming and management of a virtual community (VC) in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network. A VC provides scope for mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) service sharing among end users and allows them control of sharing. The paper describes a number of services that enable forming and management of virtual communities and presents several service-oriented system architecture alternatives focusing on distribution of service access control and service discovery control between end users and operators as the owners of the IMS home-networks. Presented architecture alternatives are IMS compatible since they only introduce 5 additional services into the existing IMS architecture. A key service is an orchestrator that exposes new services composed of other services. A proof-of-concept realization of the IMS architecture in which control of mobile service sharing is distributed among end users and operators is shown.