Reference architecture for 3G thin client multimodal applications

Abstract

As 3G mobile networks emerge, they offer the potential to develop new and enhanced services that have been previously impractical over 2G networks. Many of these value added services focus on the higher data rates supported by 3G. An additional capability of 3G networks is the Multicall supplementary service, which enables the transmission of both voice and data simultaneously. This capability can be leveraged to provide a Multimodal user interface. In this paper, we propose a browser (thin) client reference architecture for supporting a conversational Multimodal application. We observe that such an architecture possesses several additional challenges when compared to a thick client application approach. We demonstrate the feasibility of our architecture with our prototype results, and devise a reference architecture for commercial implementations that enables users to interact with applications using simultaneous voice and data over 3G networks, without the restriction of software deployed to the device.