Inter-working and integration of messaging in a heterogeneous wireless environment

Messaging service such as email, short message, instant messaging and etc. has become one of the most important applications in both Internet and personal communication systems. Unfortunately, most of the messaging systems are not interoperable, and users using different systems might not be able to communicate with each other. Besides the message inter-working issue, to facilitate users accessing their messages through the preferred devices, networks and messaging systems at anytime and anywhere is also an important feature for a future messaging system. In this paper, we present a generic inter-working and integration architecture of messaging systems in a heterogeneous wireless environment. By employing the architecture, different messaging systems can be easily integrated, and provide users a pervasive messaging service. A prototype system based on this concept is thus implemented to demonstrate the correctness of the proposed architecture and design.