Presence Aware Location-Based Services For Managing Mobile Communications Vishal K. Singh, Henning Schulzrinne Department of Computer Science, Columbia University Piotr Boni, Boris Elman and David Kenneson Verizon Communications

Overview Presence-Aware Location-Based Service Support mobile work force with standards-based location-based services Integrate location and presence for managing communications to mobile employees Presence event architecture for fleet management

Presentity and Watchers Bob’s Presentity Presence Server (PS) Watchers SUBSCRIBE Watchers Watchers PUBLISH NOTIFY Bob’s status, location Available, Busy, Somewhat available, Invisible Bob’s Filters (Rules), PIDF *) wife PUBLISH son R u there ? BUZZ friend Cell Phone PC-IM Client Bob’s play station Bob’s Presence User Agents (PUA) external world *) - PIDF = Presence Information Data Format

*) - Verizon Service Assurance Business Intelligence Toolkit Goals of the Project Presence architecture to develop advanced services Combine vehicle’s location and user’s presence for managing mobile communications Generalize the event-driven data ( e.g., from a vehicle) and entity association procedures (vehicle  person) Verify the approach on the existing, deployed system: Verizon SABIT *) *) - Verizon Service Assurance Business Intelligence Toolkit

What is SABIT PALS? SABIT is a web-based mobile employee productivity management system PALS - Presence-Aware Location-Based Service Advanced communication services based on aggregation of presence information Enhanced vehicle management system A service, where presence/availability information of a user is combined with the location information (of the vehicle) to achieve an integrated communication environment

SABIT PALS Solution Integrates: Status and diagnostic information of the vehicle Mobile employee’s location data obtained from a GPS device in a vehicle Mobile employee’s presence information data obtained from his/her cell-phone Laptop-based IM/VoIP soft client

Components of PALS architecture Integrated In-Vehicle Device (IIVD – Vehicle Events) SABIT System HTTP-SIP Gateway (LBS Presence User Agent) Media Server Watcher or Supervisor Application Presence Server (PS) GPS EVDO WiFi VZ Data/Real Time VZ VPN Field Tech Laptop-Connect via WiFi or Ethernet

SABIT PALS Architecture DB DB Location from vehicle GPS SABIT System EVDO Watcher SUBSCRIBE Presence Server HTTP/ SIP Gateway PUBLISH Watcher HTTP NOTIFY Media Server Gateway MSC/HLR PUBLISH SIP Proxy SABIT Supervisor “sees” mobile employees via the web-interface Mobile Employee’s status is relayed through multiple devices Systems View

Advantages of PALS Improved monitoring Management knows the mobile workforce status in real-time Easy, ad-hoc and/or planned communications Cross-domain reach: PSTN, wireless, VoIP, IM Multi-modal exchanges Rendezvous calls triggered by different conditions and events: being available, reaching certain landmark, vehicle stop or movement Notifications based on mobile employee status Better task dispatching Increased efficiency

Main Contributions of PALS Aggregating presence information from multiple sources User’s presence information is aggregated from mobile employee’s cell-phone and his/her IM client or soft-phone (laptop) Deriving user location from vehicle’s location Cross domain derivation of presence information Deriving presence information of a user from location information of a vehicle which is a different entity; assumes entity association: user   vehicle Vehicle as an entity in a presence system Extending the PIDF schema to update the vehicle’s location and health information to the presence server Identifying need for defining a new SIP event-package for managing vehicles (health info based on OBD-II standard) Enabling advanced service creation Dispatching or redirecting crews based on their location and availability

Issues and Challenges Interoperability IIVD box has a proprietary interface; standards-based approach is recommended Microsoft’s LCS used as PS does not interoperate with standard SIP-based presence servers (Columbia Presence Server) Data model for vehicle tracking system Vehicle as a managed presentity User as a managed presentity PIDF schema extension Location object Vehicle Info object Associating entities Vehicle presentity to user presentity association Vehicle’s ID and user’s URI association in SABIT PALS Can be dynamic and cross-domain (e.g., car rental co. and person renting a car)

SABIT PALS Supervisor Application

Communications Webpage

Conclusion SABIT PALS has a great potential of improving employee efficiency Presence event architecture can be used to develop services for both consumer (residential) and an enterprise scenarios E911, rental car management, delivery companies (Fedex) Unification of vehicle location tracking with the core communication services - via Presence - allows building advanced domain-specific services Vehicle status monitoring, automatic communication setup based on triggers, Automated Route Planning A need for new SIP event package for managing vehicles A need for entity association mechanism (e.g., vehicle  person)