Delay-sensitive mobile group services over cellular networks

A scalable framework for handling delay-sensitive, real-time mobile group applications over cellular infrastructure is introduced in this work. Examples for such applications are mobile instant messaging services, mobile social networks, mobile conference calls, and mobile multi-player on-line games. The key idea is to exploit the cellular database hierarchy in order to provide group applications in an efficient manner, to scalable groups, starting from 3 to 5 members, up to a few thousands members, dispersed over a wide geographic area. The main focus is on tracking the presence and the locations of the participating members in an efficient manner, and on advanced group services, such as multicast messages and conference calls, to group members, and advanced searches such as "find the nearest taxi". As a result, the delay associated with delivering a message to many independent users is significantly reduced, in comparison with the delay typically expected from existing cellular networks. The proposed method is consistent with the existing mobility management scheme currently used in cellular networks, and fits into MIP and MIPv6. Thus, it can be easily applied on existing cellular networks, as well as on future all-IP wireless networks.