Mapweb: A Location-based Converged Communication Platform

Location is valuable information in personal communication systems. Various communication mechanisms, e.g. PSTN, cellular, and soft IP phones, SMS, MMS, email, instant messaging, and real-time video streaming, are economically available today. An interesting issue is how to combine the location-based service and a variety of communications services together. We present Mapweb, a location-based platform that allows a user, from a map interface, to locate buddies and surrounding interested points such as restaurants, hotels, banks, and gas stations and to communicate with these entities via the communication mechanism of his/her choice. The system is built upon the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture and is fully extensible at both the server and client sides. The system has many potential applications in security, fleet and traffic management, emergency response, salvage, Olympic-scale activity organization, etc.