Home Key Component of COSMOS-II Platform

There are few distributed components in SDP.

IP Core

The i nternal switching fabric of the system is based on IP with SIP as the common signaling protocol and RTP for media traffic. This provides a native migration to NGN and IMS architecture. Advanced switching and routing mechanism is accomplished by the Softswitch, which sits as the heart of the switching core, managing the network components and user endpoints.

Routing Capability

  • The Softswitch has built in SIP Proxy, Registration and Redirection Server for standard SIP call routing.
  • Extended routing based on routing table or optionally external entity with flexible routing rules
  • Tandem Switch setting as central hub for different service providers.
  • Efficient SIP Load Balancer for balancing traffic to different service platforms

 

 

 

 

 

 

Service Creation Environment (SCE)

The core of the Service Creation Environment is COSMOS Designer, which provides the GUI based click-n-drop application flow development environment. The Designer automatically renders the graphical flow into VoXML scripts to be deployed on the execution server. Product manager can use this tool to quickly prototype his idea and communicate it in effective and efficient manner to other parties such as customers and developers. For developer, after receiving the prototype from product manager, he can focus on service creation and optimization, and avoid misunderstanding of the requirement.

Service Execution Server (SES)

Service Execution Server is the server running the application scripts, controlling the resources and interacting with backend application servers. Multiple applications can run on the server with easy management. It is highly optimized to achieve carrier grade stability and performance requirement. The following diagram depicts the internal system architecture of the Service Execution Server.

The core of the server is the CCXML and VoXML engine. By linking to external application server, unprecedented extensibility and controllability are brought forward to system integrator and service creator for different deployment needs.

Call Control by CCXML

CCXML, or Call Control XML, compliments VoXML by providing flexible call control functionality. CCXML supports:

  • Multi-party Conference
  • Outbound call
  • Call bridge and call transfer.
  • Various call control: queue, park, hold
  • Asynchronous event handling

CCXML allows great flexibility in call handling. Packaged systems such as PBX, IP-PBX and Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) can be built with the programmable call handling capability provided by CCXML.

Dialog Flow Control by VoXML Script Engine

  • COSMOS-II incorporates W3C VoXML 2.0 compliant engine for rapid service creation. Application can be developed in any common tools such as JSP/ASP in web server.
  • Optimized performance with static call flow cached in local memory.
  • Multiple services can be deployed on the same platform.
  • It can extend to support Video, as in the application of IVVR or Video Portal.
Application Server (AS)

Application Server is standard web server such as Tomcat, Apache, WebSphere, WebLogic,…etc. These web servers are commonly deployed in enterprise and service provider networks. Common service objects such as web services built for web/IT applications can largely be reused and deployed for voice applications, saving thousands of dollars from re-writing the logic in proprietary means.

Access Network

COSMOS-II provides network connectivity to PSTN, 2G Mobile, 3G and NGN network. Signaling includes SS7 ISUP, ISDN and SIP. Media transmission standards include TDM PCM, RTP and 3G-324M.

With media gateway, both legacy TDM network and NGN/VoIP network can be served with the same application server. Such convergence of service saves the initial investment and open up business opportunities to a larger customer base.

The session border controller extends the connectivity to VoIP endpoints, such as softphone, SIP hard-phone and other carrier’s NGN/VoIP connection and protects the internal core network from intruder’s attack.

Highlights of ISUP signaling gateway

  • Supports signaling redundancy with single point code across two signaling gateways
  • Supports up to 64000 circuits per signaling gateway
  • Able to handle up to 4000 calls per second

Highlights of VoIP/NGN access

  • IETF RFC 3261 SIP core
  • SIP based call control for multi-vendor SIP devices support such as:
    • IADs
    • Softswitches
    • Media Gateway
    • Softphone
  • Re-route media path in a call session. Useful for follow-on-call and low credit warning in calling card application.
  • Blind transfer and bridged transfer.
  • T.38 fax relay.
  • SIP keep alive checking to ensure duly clearing up of abnormal call-drop sessions.
  • NAT traversal

Media Processing Servers

COSMOS-II provides various media processing capabilities, including voice, fax, conference and video. Same resource server can serve requests from different network domains, saving the capital investment. Because of the modular and distributed architecture, different media resources can be deployed and expanded on-demand along with the system expansion.

In additional to basic voice processing, speech synthesis technology (text-to-speech, TTS) and Automatic-Speech-Recognition (ASR) can be incorporated, which greatly enhances the user interaction experience and increase service efficiency.

COSMOS-II is also committed to support video applications both in 3G (3G-324M) and pure NGN IP environment. Multimedia services such as video mail, video ring back and Interactive Voice and Video (IVVR) Response (also known as Video Portal) are natural deployment areas of COSMOS-II.

Video processing capabilities include:

  • Transrating: Recalling and frame rate/bit rate conversion. E.g. recalling between QCIF and CIF
  • Transcoding: Conversion between MPEG4 and H.263
  • Text-overlay: dynamically overlay text information on the video stream
  • Conference: multi-party video conference