Apparatus and method for sharing information through presence service in a communication network

#The present invention relates to a presence service. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for sharing information through a presence service in a communication network.

#A recent research for the unification of communication technologies has been actively made. An Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is one of the unifications of the communication technologies. IMS is a technology for complexly providing multimedia such as a voice, an audio, a video, large capacity data, etc. through an IP. Based on IMS, services such as a presence service, a Push to talk on Cellular (PoC) service, a Voice over IP (VoIP) service, a video/image sharing service, etc. can be provided.

#Among the listed IMS-based services, the presence service is a service designed to provide status information between user Mobile Stations (MSs). Up to now, the presence service is under active development, but it is general that the presence service provides status information input by a user. That is, the user MSs deliver their own presence information to a separate presence server. If there is a request for a presence service from a different MS, the presence server provides presence information of a target MS to the different MS.

#For a more complete understanding of the present disclosure and its advantages, reference is now made to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numerals represent like parts:

#FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an example of a screen displaying presence information of a Mobile Station (MS) in a communication network according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention;

#FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a flow of a signal dependent on a presence service of an MS in a communication network according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention;

#FIGS. 1 through 5, discussed below, and the various embodiments used to describe the principles of the present disclosure in this patent document are by way of illustration only and should not be construed in any way to limit the scope of the disclosure. Those skilled in the art will understand that the principles of the present disclosure may be implemented in any suitably arranged communication network.

#A technology for acquiring detailed status information on a called party's Mobile Station (MS) and more conveniently sharing information using the status information through a presence service in a communication network according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention is described below. Here, the MS represents a communication MS accessible to an Internet Protocol (IP) network. For example, the MS means the inclusion of all of a cellular phone, a Personal Communication System (PCS), a Personal Data Assistant (FDA), an International Mobile Telecommunication (IMT)-2000 terminal, a laptop computer, a desktop computer, etc.

#A presence service according to the present invention has the following features.