A Study of Virtual Home Environment (VHE) in IMT-2000—Requirements, Issues and Resolution for Realization of VHE—

This article clarifies the requirements of VHE (Virtual Home Environment), issues and resolution for realization of VHE, when the environment will use Intelligent Network (IN) within IMT-2000 networks that is targeted to start in the year 2000. The IN aims the applicability of it’s architecture to any kind of network. However, the following subjects need to be considered when IN will be used in the IMT-2000 network; The approach of the service related capabilities’ extraction and specification; security management; cooperation between the service switching function within a core network and the IN function(s); cooperation between the mobility management function and the IN function(s); and consideration of mobile and fixed network convergence/integration. This article mainly focuses on these subjects. Some open issues like service/feature interaction and their tentative solutions are identified. Main results are; expandability of current IN to supporting IMT-2000 requirements, identification of key issues in providing VHE in IMT-2000, identification of candidate relationships, and associated issues for VHE. The currently available scenarios for VHE are evaluated from these points, and it is proposed that the specification to be common both for mobile and fixed network. key words: advanced intelligent network, IN, AIN, IMT-2000, VHE