Quality of service control mechanisms for multimedia services

The new applications coming up in third generation mobile networks combine media types such as real-time audio and video. It is needed to assure the Quality of Service (QoS) by providing the right mechanisms that allow to processing the different media types in the correct manner and offer a good service experience to the user. Nowadays, GSM and UMTS networks offer QoS control mechanisms that are based on the terminal capabilities, subscription and available resources in the network. It is important to complement these mechanisms to allow a QoS management based on the needs of the new applications so the QoS provided in the access network is guaranteed. This paper shows a solution to guarantee the correspondence of the QoS given in the access network with the QoS that the terminal has negotiated with the application when the session is being established. In addition, a practical implementation is shown using the multimedia WeShare service as an example.