Some embodiments relate to a method and apparatus and in particular but not exclusively to a method and apparatus for PLMN (public land mobile networks) operation management.
Some public land mobile networks (PLMN) operate according to a management reference model in which a plurality of lower management functions manage a respective network element or set of closely related types of network elements under the general management of a network management function.
Operations managed by the lower management function are generally performed remotely from the network management function, and it has been found that some operations can take more time than expected to complete.
There has been identified the challenge of providing better control over such operations at the network management function.
According to an aspect there is provided a method comprising: providing to a network management function of a public land mobile network from another management function of said public land mobile network, one or more notifications of the extent of progress of an operation performed remotely from the network management function, in accordance with one or more input parameters.
The other management function may be a lower management function.
The providing may be via a management interface.
The one or more notifications may be interim notifications.
The operation may be an uncompleted operation.
The providing may be in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided a method comprising: providing to a network management function of a public land mobile network from a lower management function of said public land mobile network via a management interface, one or more interim notifications of the extent of progress of an uncompleted operation performed remotely from the network management function, in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided an apparatus comprising: a processor and memory including computer program code, wherein the memory and computer program code are configured to, with the processor, cause the apparatus to: provide to a network management function of a public land mobile network from said apparatus, one or more notifications of the extent of progress of an operation performed remotely from the network management function, in accordance with one or more input parameters.
The other management function may be a lower management function.
The providing may be via a management interface.
The one or more notifications may be interim notifications.
The operation may be an uncompleted operation.
The providing may be in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided an apparatus comprising: a processor and memory including computer program code, wherein the memory and computer program code are configured to, with the processor, cause the apparatus to: provide to a network management function of a public land mobile network from a lower management function of said public land mobile network via a management interface, one or more interim notifications of the extent of progress of an uncompleted operation performed remotely from the network management function, in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided a computer program product comprising program code means which when loaded into a computer controls the computer to: provide to a network management function of a public land mobile, one or more notifications of the extent of progress of an operation performed remotely from the network management function, in accordance with one or more input parameters.
According to some embodiments the other management function may be a lower management function.
The providing may be via a management interface.
The one or more notifications may be interim notifications.
The operation may be an uncompleted operation.
The providing may be in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to a another aspect there is provided a computer program product comprising program code means which when loaded into a computer controls the computer to: provide to a network management function of a public land mobile network from a lower management function of said public land mobile network via a management interface, one or more interim notifications of the extent of progress of an uncompleted operation performed remotely from the network management function, in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided a method comprising: receiving at a network management function of a public land mobile network from another management function of said public land mobile network, one or more notifications of the extent of progress of an operation performed remotely from said network management function, in accordance with one or more input parameters.
The other management function may be a lower management function.
The providing may be via a management interface.
The one or more notifications may be interim notifications.
The operation may be an uncompleted operation.
The providing may be in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided a method comprising: receiving at a network management function of a public land mobile network from a lower management function of said public land mobile network via a management interface, one or more interim notifications of the progress of an uncompleted operation performed remotely from said network management function, in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided an apparatus comprising: a processor and memory including computer program code, wherein the memory and computer program code are configured to, with the processor, cause the apparatus to: from a management function of said public land mobile network, one or more notifications of the progress of an operation performed remotely from said apparatus, in accordance with one or more input parameters.
The other management function may be a lower management function.
The providing may be via a management interface.
The one or more notifications may be interim notifications.
The operation may be an uncompleted operation.
The providing may be in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided an apparatus comprising: a processor and memory including computer program code, wherein the memory and computer program code are configured to, with the processor, cause the apparatus to: receive at a network management function of a public land mobile network from a lower management function of said public land mobile network via a management interface, one or more interim notifications of the progress of an uncompleted operation performed remotely from said network management function, in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided a computer program product comprising program code means which when loaded into a computer controls the computer to: receive from a management function of a public land mobile network, one or more notifications of the progress of an operation performed remotely from said computer, in accordance with one or more input parameters.
The providing may be via a management interface.
The one or more notifications may be interim notifications.
The operation may be an uncompleted operation.
The providing may be in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided a computer program product comprising program code means which when loaded into a computer controls the computer to: receive at a network management function of a public land mobile network from a lower management function of said public land mobile network via a management interface, one or more interim notifications of the progress of an uncompleted operation performed remotely from said network management function, in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided means for providing to a network management function of a public land mobile network from another management function of said public land mobile network, one or more notifications of the extent of progress of an operation performed remotely from the network management function, in accordance with one or more input parameters.
The other management function may be a lower management function.
The providing may be via a management interface.
The one or more notifications may be interim notifications.
The operation may be an uncompleted operation.
The providing may be in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
According to another aspect there is provided means for receiving at a network management function of a public land mobile network from another management function of said public land mobile network, one or more notifications of the extent of progress of an operation performed remotely from said network management function, in accordance with one or more input parameters.
The other management function may be a lower management function.
The providing may be via a management interface.
The one or more notifications may be interim notifications.
The operation may be an uncompleted operation.
The providing may be in accordance with the setting of one or more input parameters.
It should be appreciated that any one or more of the following features may be used with any one or more of the above aspects.
The operation may be triggered by said network management function.
The operation may comprise one of: downloading of network element software from a specified location; installation of software at a network element; and activation of network element software that has been downloaded or installed at network element.
The one or more parameters may specify an indicator by which to express said extent of progress.
The indicator may include a numerical indicator or a textual indicator.
The numerical indicator may comprise one of: percentage of completion; number of steps completed out of a total number of steps; and estimated completion time
The one or more of said one or more notifications may comprise at least one of: number of steps; and estimated completion time.
The one or more parameters may specify one of the following: length of elapsed time after which to provide said notification; one or more partial completion targets at which to provide said notification; amount of time delay after which to provide said notification.
The technique may further comprise determining at said network management function based on said notification whether or not to cancel said uncompleted operation.
The network management function and said lower management function may both form part of an operations system, and said operation is performed outside of the operations system.
The numerical indicator may comprise one of: percentage of completion; number of steps completed out of a total number of steps; and estimated completion time.
The operation may comprise a download process to an entity other than said network management function.
The lower management function may be an element manager or a domain manager.
A detailed description of embodiments follows hereunder, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
An embodiment of the invention is described below in detail, by way of example only, in the context of a public land mobile network (PLMN) including an evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (EUTRAN) operating in accordance with 3GPP standards.
The radio access network comprises a plurality of cells 4 with transceivers located at base stations called eNodeBs (eNBs) 2. Only nine cells are shown in
A domain/element manager (DM) 10 manages the operation and maintenance (O&M) of all the eNBs of the network under the management of a network manager (NM) 14. DM 10 is part of an element management system (EMS) 12 including other element and/or domain managers controlling other respective network elements or respective sets of closely related types of network elements. The lines between eNBs 2 and DM 10 and the line between DM 10 and NM 14 illustrate management interfaces, which are referred to as Type 1 and Type 2 interfaces, respectively, in 3GPP TS 32.101.
It would be appreciated that the apparatus shown in
An embodiment of the invention is described hereunder for the example of the asynchronous operation of installing at one of the eNBs 2 software that has previously been downloaded from a remote file server 16, which installation is triggered by NM 14. However, the same kind of techniques are also applicable to other operations such as the NM-triggered downloading of said eNB software from said remote file server, and the NM-triggered activation of eNB software downloaded or installed at the request of NM 14.
DM 10 is configured to inform NM 14 via the Itf-N management interface about the progress of the installation according to the settings of one or more input parameters; and NM 14 determines whether or not to cancel the operation according to whether or not the notified extent of progress compares to a predetermined progress rate threshold.
One input parameter specifies how to indicate the extent of progress of the installation. The extent of progress can be indicated by numerical indicators such as the percentage of completion, the number of steps completed out of number of total steps; and the estimated time to completion. Alternatively, the extent of progress can be indicated by a textual indicator that includes a more detailed description about the progress of the installation.
One or more other input parameters specify the timing at which interim notifications are to be made to NM 14, and/or other conditions for making interim progress notifications. Examples are as follows.
One input parameter could be set such that DM 10 makes notifications at specified intervals of time.
One input parameter could be set such that DM 10 makes a notification to NM 14 whenever there has been a predefined percentage increase (such as e.g. 10%) towards completion of the operation (software installation). For the example of 10%, DM 10 would make notifications to NM at 10% completion, 20% completion, 30% completion, and so on.
One input parameter could be set such that DM 10 makes a notification every time the completion percentage reaches each of a plurality of predefined values, which are not necessarily equally spaced. For example, the setting could be that DM 10 makes a progress notification to NM when the completion percentage reaches 10%, 25%, 80% and 90%.
One input parameter could be set such that DM 10 if the estimated completion time is later than a specified point in time. For example, the setting could be that DM 10 makes a progress notification to NM 14 only if the completion time is later than 5 pm on 25 Dec. 2011.
One input parameter could set other conditions for making progress notifications. For example, one input parameter could specify that progress notifications are only made at all for operations for which the number of steps is a predetermined minimum number of steps or greater. For example, the setting could be that DM 10 only makes interim progress notifications to NM 14 for operations involving 10 or more steps.
One input parameter could be set such that DM 10 makes a progress notification to NM 14 whenever the number of completed steps reaches each of a plurality of predefined values. For example, the setting could be that DM 10 makes interim progress notifications to NM 14 when the number of completed steps reaches 1, 5, 20 and 21.
One input parameter could specify whether or not each step should be reported. A “YES” setting for this parameter would cause DM 10 to make an interim progress notification to NM 14 upon completion of each and every one of the steps that constitutes the operation.
The above notification technique could be implemented by adding input and output parameters to the operation described at Section 5.8 of 3GPP 32.532 for initiating installation of a network element software entity which has previously been downloaded at the request of NM 14.
The revised set of input and output parameters for this operation according to an embodiment of the present invention are shown in
For the above-mentioned operations of downloading eNB software from a specified location or activating downloaded or installed eNB software, the same kind of input and output parameters can be added to the operations described at Sections 5.7.1 and 5.7.2 of 3GPP 32.532.
The notification of the kind illustrated in
The technique of the kind illustrated in
The cancel operation illustrated in
The implementation example shown in
One way of controlling the timing of the progress notification in this implementation example is to define a specific information object class which holds information about the controlling parameters. These parameters could be set respectively for each operation type or set commonly for all types of operations.
The progress notification of
Another implementation example for a cancel operation to cancel an incomplete operation is shown in
Another alternative example for implementing notifications about operation progress is to provide an object class operation that holds an attribute indicating the progress, which could be read or which could be configured to send out notifications about changes in the value of the attribute. For an actual operation an instance of this operation object class is created. The creation of this instance is triggered by the reception at the DM. Similarly, another alternative example for implementing the cancellation of an operation is to provide the possibility to delete the instance of such an operation object class when there is a decision to cancel the one operation represented by that operation object class instance.
The above-described operations may require data processing in the various entities. The data processing may be provided by means of one or more data processors. Similarly various entities described in the above embodiments may be implemented within a single or a plurality of data processing entities and/or data processors. Appropriately adapted computer program code product may be used for implementing the embodiments, when loaded to a computer. The program code product for providing the operation may be stored on and provided by means of a carrier medium such as a carrier disc, card or tape. A possibility is to download the program code product via a data network. Implementation may be provided with appropriate software in a server.
For example, the embodiments of the invention may be implemented as a chipset, in other words a series of integrated circuits communicating among each other. The chipset may comprise microprocessors arranged to run code, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), or programmable digital signal processors for performing the operations described above.
Embodiments of the invention may be practiced in various components such as integrated circuit modules. The design of integrated circuits is by and large a highly automated process. Complex and powerful software tools are available for converting a logic level design into a semiconductor circuit design ready to be etched and formed on a semiconductor substrate.
Programs, such as those provided by Synopsys, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. and Cadence Design, of San Jose, Calif. automatically route conductors and locate components on a semiconductor chip using well established rules of design as well as libraries of pre stored design modules. Once the design for a semiconductor circuit has been completed, the resultant design, in a standardized electronic format (e.g., Opus, GDSII, or the like) may be transmitted to a semiconductor fabrication facility or “fab” for fabrication.
In addition to the modifications explicitly mentioned above, it will be evident to a person skilled in the art that various other modifications of the described embodiment may be made within the scope of the invention.