Agent-based conferencing using mobile IP-telephony

This paper presents a new approach to provide computer telephony integration for mobile users and distribute services over the hybrid network domain. A new multimedia processing paradigm is presented in the form of a distributed, agent-based architecture, called `Distributed Agent Network´, DAN, together with example services. The proposed architecture is designed to support user and data mobility, media integration, and universal multimedia messaging. We provide a consistent distributed service platform and dedicated media processing algorithms for mobile multimedia conferencing, mobile messaging and related services. New agent-based techniques are introduced to deal with the abstraction of roles, embedding of media and to overcome the current obstacles in one-to-one and multiparty conferences. Techniques for novel software mobility are presented. The main benefits include scalability of services over different media types, and the ability to use agent intelligence in distributed communications for carrying out dedicated missions. The proposed architecture is demonstrated with a case study of an Internet video call center