The MRF is an integral component in the overall IMS architecture, responsible for all media related processing: streaming, recording, transcoding, mixing, conferencing and more. In a nutshell, all voice and video manipulations are performed in the MRF.
As the IMS is delivering voice, video and audio services, the MRF provides the necessary multimedia processing.
Some of the main challenges for the multimedia MRF include:
- The MRF is required to support an extremely high density and bottleneck-free architecture. The legacy TDM-based architecture is no longer valid, as it becomes a bottleneck, limiting the supported streams per blade to a few hundred. Support for thousands of concurrent streams per blade is currently required, with a CPS count of well over 250 new calls every second.
- Multiple services including voice and video streaming, conferencing, transcoding and more. As video services are penetrating into the IMS network, the new generation MRF is required to address various additional multimedia tasks on top of the traditional playing and recording of voice communications.
- Voice conferencing of 1,000 or more concurrent participants.
- Support for cost-effective, server-based platforms, as well as high-end ATCA-based platforms.
