The present invention relates to methods and apparatuses for operation administration and management of communications networks and is particularly concerned with multi-vendor wireless networks.
Every wireless communication service provider has its own management infrastructure for its service networks' Operation, Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning (OAM&P). The management infrastructure is designed to manage many different types of networks such as radio access networks, exchanges, transmission networks, area networks, intelligent nodes and substantial amount of computer hardware/software. The different types of network elements are generally supported with unique vendor specific management systems according to:
As a result, duplicate management applications are supplied by different vendors implemented with proprietary interfaces and protocols. The heterogeneous nature of the wireless communication networks has made the OAM&P of the service network ever challenging and costly. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), standard body for UMTS, has recognized the problems and summarized them as follows:
There have been efforts to standardize the most important and strategic context and server as a framework to help define a physical architecture. However, most of the efforts, so far, have been on underlining communication interfaces (e.g. Q or X interfaces) instead of providing a common platform capable of handling centralized and distributed management transaction as well as independent of RAT, coverage footprints, transmission network topologies, network interfaces, signalling mechanisms, locations and equipment vendors.
The architecture of the network management system is very complex and can vary greatly in scope and detail. It does not seem possible to have a single architecture that can meet all the needs from different service providers.
Some solutions choose the approach of divide-and-conquer by solving the costly and resource intensive management tasks one at a time. Once a task is identified, a management platform is defined and, likely, supported by new management protocols.
The task can be managing a network element at the edge of a service network or within a network segment. One example is the deployment and management of a Wide Area Network (WAN) Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), e.g. Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) modem. Another example is the deployment and management of cellular network base stations (e.g. pico-cell or femtocell).
The deployment and management of a DSL modem in a WAN involves configuration and dynamic service provisioning, software/firmware image management, status and performance monitoring, and diagnostics.
The DSL Forum, which was later renamed as Broadband Forum, has defined a transport layer communication protocol between CPE and Auto-Configuration Server (ACS), namely Technical Report 069 (TR-069) CPE WAN Management Protocol. TR-069 provides a centralized management platform that allows the ACS to manage multiple CPEs remotely, periodically and simultaneously.
It serves the TCP/IP based LAN/WAN CPEs well utilizing point-to-point client-server transaction model between CPE and the ACS. However, it is limited to management of TCP/IP based CPEs and it does not offer point-to-multi-point peer-to-peer transactions.
The deployment and management of a femtocell in a cellular network involves configuration and dynamic service provisioning, Radio Frequency (RF) power measurement, QoS and interference coordination, software/firmware image management, status and performance monitoring, and diagnostics.
The Femto Forum has adopted TR-069 as the basis for the management protocol for femtocells. TR-069 is sufficient for configuration and dynamic service provisioning, software/firmware image management, status and performance monitoring, and diagnostics so long as the femtocells have IP based broadband connectivity (LAN/WAN) for their backhaul traffic.
However, the femtocell management requirements go well beyond what the TR-069 has covered, for example RF power measurement, QoS and interference coordination. In addition, TR-069 does not address the communication mechanism for femtocells utilizing none IP based backhaul connectivity.
In a smaller cell dominated environment where picocells, femtocells, and microcells are deployed in high density with great overlap, such as 3.5G or 4G networks, self-organized networking (SON) capability and coordination between the basestastions are essential, thus a communication platform proposed in this invention is required.
Systems and methods disclosed herein provide for operation administration and management of communications networks to obviate or mitigate at least some of the aforementioned disadvantages.
An object of the present invention is to provide a framework for operation administration and management of communications networks as well as self organized networking (SON).
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention there is provided a system for operating, administering, managing and provisioning of a communications network comprising a network element in a first network, for each network element, an element agent residing on the network element, e.g. user agent if SIP is used an interface for coupling the first network to a second network and a registrar in the second network for registering each element agent.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of operating, administering, managing and provisioning of a communications network, the method comprising the steps of enabling each network element in a first network to communicate with a server in a second network, interfacing each network element in the first network with the second network and sending a message from a selected network element of the first network to the second network for at least one of operating, administering, managing and provisioning the selected network element.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is provided a system for SON comprising network elements in a first network and interfaces for coupling the network elements to the first network.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is provided A method of SON communications, the method comprising the steps of enabling each network element in a first network to communicate with other network elements in the first network, interfacing other network elements in the first network and sending a message from a selected network work element of the first network to at least one other selected network element in the first network.
The network manages applications without the specific knowledge of the radio access technologies, coverage footprints, transmission network topologies, network interfaces, signaling mechanisms and equipment vendors. In addition, it has the flexibility to adapt to the dynamics of the environment and sustain for future expansion.
The present invention provides a common platform for network management applications by utilizing existing networks (e.g. WAN, LAN, cellular, Wi-Fi etc.) and standard communication protocols (e.g. SIP, TCP/IP, SMS, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, CDMA, WCDMA, LTE, WiMax etc.). The present invention defines the transportation mechanism for the network management traffic from the application layer down to the physical layer.
The present invention allows centralized and distributed management models. In addition, it allows client-server, peer-to-peer, point-to-point and point-to-multi-point transactions.
The present invention will be further understood from the following detailed description with reference to the drawings in which:
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The embodiments of the present invention include the following components in the network infrastructure as network elements:
The following components are optional and deployed for additional services, e.g. element redirection, SMS service etc.
The EA 106 is usually part of a managed network element 102 (e.g. femtocell, CPE etc.) and responsible for the management signals' (request and response generated from management applications) transmission and reception. In addition, the EA 106 registers the network element 102 with the registrar 108. The registrar 108 is responsible for handling the registration of the EAs 106 and forwarding the location information to the location server 112. The redirect server assists the proxy server 110 in locating EAs 106 with alternative locations. The proxy server 110 is responsible for request and response routing, authentication and service provider specific features. The location server 112 maintains EA location information (e.g. IP address, phone number, GPS location). The location information, at a minimum, has to be sufficient to allow the proxy server 110 to route the request or response to its destination successfully. If the GPS location information is also included in the location database, it can be used for other management purposes, such as forming interference management groups or QoS coordination groups. The SMS gateway 114 is responsible for routing request and response between cellular SMS network and IP network, for example 116 and 118, respectively. The dynamic DNS server is to handle the femtocell or CPE that is utilizing Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).
In addition, the network element (e.g. femtocell) under management includes the following components:
The EA request and response transceiver is to provide the network element an alternative network management signaling channel that is not always IP dependent. The transceiver can be LAN, WAN or cellular UE module.
The following components are optional and deployed to handle network element using dynamic or private IP address.
The DNS update client and the NAT traversal and application level gateway help resolve IP packet routing to private IP addresses.
To minimize the deployment and management cost, the embodiments of the present invention establishes a secure and stable transportation mechanism for network management signaling and provide network management applications a single Application Programming Interface (API).
The embodiments of the present invention are designed to operate in three modes:
A network element enters the registration and discovery mode during its initial auto-configuration, restarting, restarting from different geological location, or forming peer-to-peer groups for self-organized and/or self-coordinated networks. Managing mode is entered after the network element completes its registration with the registrar server 106.
Embodiments of the present invention allow the network element to perform registration and discovery through five different network interfaces:
In operation, the embodiments of the present invention use the session initiation protocol (SIP) or functional equivalent session layer protocol and an Internet protocol (IP) backhaul to establish a common platform for network operation administration management and provisioning (OAM&P). Consequently, all the network operators can implement their own OAM&P applications on generic servers that support session layer protocol (e.g. SIP) and TCP/IP without having to worry about the proprietary operating systems, network topologies, and network interfaces. Given the common platform, instead of adapting equipment vendors' proprietary OAM&P protocol, the network operators are able to define and standardize the OAM&P requirements for the network elements. As a result, the network operators are able to request the equipment vendors to meet network operators' OAM&P requirements to establish a unified OAM&P environment based on the common platform layout provided by embodiments of the present invention and allow plug-and-play (e.g. femtocell), peer/client/server discovery, peer/client/server communication.
The key components to establish the common platform can be grouped into three parts—core components, network edge components and application components.
The core components include:
These are common components that always available in the network. Their main functions include:
The edge components include:
In operation, these components are used to bridge two networks. For example, TCP/IP router supporting NAT-PMP, NAT transversal and application level gateway, Dynamic DNS server and DNS update client are needed to bridge private TCP/IP Local Area Network (LAN) and operator's core network. Cellular UE module and SMS gateway are needed to bridge cellular SMS network and operator's core network.
The application components are OAM&P servers. These components should be defined and implemented by network operators. The only requirements are to comply to the session layer protocol in operation (e.g. SIP). The details of these components are implementation specific and therefore beyond the scope of this application.
The registration serves multiple purposes, such as notifying network management server of the existence of a network element, establishing routine path(s) for network management signals and allowing peer discovery by other network elements.
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The embodiments of the present invention allow the network management applications to send the management signals to network elements that are in managing mode. The embodiments provide a single session layer protocol based API that allows the implementation of the network applications independent of RAT, coverage footprints, transmission network topologies, network interfaces, signaling mechanisms, locations and equipment vendors.
In the client-server transaction model, the embodiments of the present invention allow the either the server (i.e. network management server) or client (i.e. network element) to initiate the communication provided both sides have registered with the registrar.
In the peer-to-peer transaction model, the embodiments of the present invention allow any network element (e.g. femtocell) compliant with the embodiments of the present invention to initiate communication with any other network element that is also compliant to the embodiments of the present invention provided the peers have registered with the registrar and discoverable.
The following figures illustrate the procedures for registration, authentication, peer discovery, provisioning and sending/receiving network management signals.
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The EA utilizes the protocol stack to transmit and receive packets via protocol stack adaptation software. The applications utilize the EA to communicate with the peers or servers via application adaptation software.
Numerous modifications, variations and adaptations may be made to the particular embodiments described above without departing from the scope patent disclosure, which is defined in the claims.
This non-provisional application claims benefit to U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/073,309, which is hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61073309 | Jun 2008 | US |