Nextgen Short Message Gateway architecture for supporting short message services across different IP connectivity access networks

The Short Message Service (SMS) is one of the most successful service in 3GPP and 3GPP2 cellular networks. Any emerging cellular technologies like LTE have to support this basic tele-service. Operators migrating from existing 3GPP or 3GPP2 networks to new cellular technology like Long Term Evolution (LTE) have to support existing 3GPP or 3GPP2 as overlay networks until the entire network is completely migrated to new technology. This will be a bigger challenge for the operator to make sure common services like SM seamlessly work across different networks. As part of the 3G and 4G technology evolution and All IP Network (AIPN) architecture, the SM service is also extended to non-cellular IP Connectivity Access Networks (IP-CANs). This technical paper describes the NextGen Short Message Gateway (NSMG) Architecture, which can support SMS over cellular, non-cellular generic IP networks and interworking between the different messaging methods used in different networks.