This application is a national phase application based on PCT/IB2004/004308, filed Dec. 30, 2004.
The present invention refers to the techniques for monitoring the Quality of Service or QoS. In particular, the invention deals with a system for monitoring the quality of service in a communication network.
With the outcome and development of telecommunications networks of the mobile type (GSM, GPRS, UMTS, WLAN), the variety and number of voice, data, multimedia services that a service provider/operator is able to offer to its customers is constantly growing.
For a service provider/operator, being able to obtain an accurate and reliable monitoring of the Quality of Service (or QoS) level offered to users is thereby more and more a major need.
Examining next some contributions in the art, U.S. Pat. No. 6,434,364 discloses a communication system supporting test “agents” (MTSA) that are software modules run on mobile stations in order to put them in a “test” mode. In a “test” mode, each mobile station is configured according to parameters defined by a MTSA, to allow for system performance measurements. Each MTSA represents an addressable and active computer program that can observe and start activities in its scenario, can communicate with other agents and can be transported across data networks that are configured to take performance measurement.
EP 1304831 discloses a monitoring agent for monitoring, transferring and distributing specific channel QoS data in a mobile packet communication network. The monitoring agent has three functions: the first one is pre-processing and transforming QoS data into a form that is adapted to applications, the second one is transmitting data in a network and the third one is distributing QoS data to user applications. The monitoring agent is placed at least on the user equipment, in the RNC (Radio Network Controller) and in the SSGN (Serving GPRS Support Node) and GGSN (GPRS Gateway Support Node).
Moreover, US 2004/0058652 discloses a method and a system for monitoring the quality of service associated to a wireless network including at least one mobile device and a fixed transceiver, connected via radio to the mobile device. On the network, mobile devices perform measures of MQoS (Quality of Experience) coefficients that are processed in order to determine the quality of service perceived by mobile devices themselves. Processed data are provided via radio to the fixed transceiver. The MQoS monitoring system is divided into two components, a client component and a server component. The server component resides on a server that can be part of, or coupled to the transceiver. The client component of the monitoring system can be integrated in one or more mobile devices or can be implemented as a software integrated in the operating system of a SIM or USIM, or can be a J2ME application, a JavaCard application and the like.
The Applicant has analyzed the problem of performing the QoS monitoring in a way that can be adapted to the conditions in which terminals connected to the communication network and the related SIMs operate.
The Applicant has also analyzed the problem of performing the QoS monitoring independently from the type of terminal used by the user.
It is suitable to specify that in the following description the term “SIM” refers to a SIM-card or a USIM-card or a Smartcard or more generally to any card that is removable from the terminal and is adapted to allow identifying and/or authenticating of a user in a network and is equipped with at least one microprocessor, comprising at least one data processing logic (CPU) and one memory, and an interface towards suitable development environments to allow loading new applications in the microprocessor memory.
Moreover, in the following description, the term “operating conditions”, referred to each terminal and its respective SIM, means the set of operating conditions of the terminal and its respective SIM that can comprise: terminal memory usage, SIM memory usage, terminal CPU processing load, SIM CPU processing load, data transfer speed between terminal and respective SIM (that is a performance limit affecting the communication capability, defined by the standards, between terminal and SIM itself).
The invention solves the above-described technical problem through a monitoring system comprising a set of peripheral monitoring agents including processing functionalities housed on the SIMs. Such processing functionalities, depending at least on the operating conditions of each terminal and its respective SIM, are able to adaptively establish a distribution of measuring functionalities included in peripheral monitoring agents between the terminal itself (for example storing them in the respective memory or multimedia card) and the respective SIM.
The peripheral monitoring agents also comprise initialisation functionalities that are housed on the SIMs in order to make the QoS monitoring independent from the type of terminal used by the user.
More specifically, the system for monitoring the quality of service in a communication network comprising at least one terminal (TM) and at least one SIM adapted to be housed in said terminal (TM), comprises at least one monitoring agent (MEA1, MEA2, MEM, CA1) including processing functionalities (MEM) housed on said SIM and measuring functionalities (MEA1, MEA2), said processing functionalities (MEM) being configured in order to adaptively distributing said measuring functionalities (MEA1, MEA2) between said terminal (TM) and said SIM depending at least on detected operating conditions of said terminal (TM) and said SIM.
Another aspect of the present invention deals with a method for monitoring the quality of service in a communication network comprising at least one terminal (TM) and at least one SIM adapted to be housed in said terminal (TM), said method comprising the steps of:
Another aspect of the present invention deals with a communication network comprising said monitoring system.
A further aspect of the present invention refers to an information product that can be loaded in the memory of at least one electronic processor and comprising portions of software code for implementing the architecture and/or the process according to the invention when the product is run on an electronic processor. The reference to at least one electronic processor is clearly aimed to point out the chance of using the arrangement according to the invention at decentralised level.
Further preferred aspects of the present invention are disclosed in the dependent claims and in the present description.
The invention will now be described, merely as a non-limiting example, with reference to the enclosed drawings, in which:
a, 2b are diagrams showing the flow of interactions for using the monitoring system of
It is suitable to specify that, in the following description, the term user equipment TE will mean the set of terminal TM and its respective SIM.
With reference to the embodiment shown in
The operating functionalities of the peripheral monitoring agent (MEA1, MEA2, MEM, CA1) are distributed between terminal TM and its respective SIM as will be shown in the following description.
It can be noted that the structure of the peripheral monitoring agent (MEA1, MEA2, MEM, CA1) shown with reference to the user equipment TE can be reproduced at a level of many user equipment TE and, virtually, at a level of all user equipment TE connected to the communication network.
According to the embodiment shown in
The monitoring system 1 can also comprise a measure data collection managing subsystem (Terminal Data Collector Manager or TDCM) that, in turn, can include:
Communication between the above-described monitoring system 1 components is ensured by the communicating agents CA1, CA2 and CA3.
Moreover, the communicating agent CA2 installed in the measure management subsystem TQMS can perform the function of coordinating node between user equipment TE and measuring data collecting management subsystem TDCM, though being provided, above all for measuring data exchange, a direct communication between these two units. In the embodiment shown in
It is suitable to specify that, in the following description, reference will be made to networks and mobile services, simply due to the fact that they are the most stringent environment due to the limited availability of resources, both at user equipment TE level (in terms of CPU usage and memory usage of terminals TM and their respective SIMs), and at connection level, where the channel throughput is limited by the radio access. The monitoring system 1 can anyway be extended also to services (mainly data) that use fixed (“wireline”) networks or services that use mixed fixed (“wireline”) and mobile (“wireless”) networks with user equipment TE, being for example cellular phones or PC, connected to the network both via radio and through cables.
Herein below the operating functionalities of the different elements making the monitoring system 1 are described in more detail.
Measure Management Subsystem TQMS
The scheduling module S is arranged for configuring the measuring campaigns. For such purpose, the user U, through interface A1, interacts with the measure management subsystem TQMS defining the identifying characteristics of the measuring campaign to be performed. This operation can comprise many steps, for example:
In order to activate the measuring campaign, the scheduling module S can perform the following operations:
1) continuous search, for the whole length of the measuring campaign, of user equipment TE that comply with the previously-described identifying characteristics;
2) for each located user equipment TE, the scheduling module S:
3) locating user equipment TE that are subjected to changes in identifying characteristics required by the measuring campaign, making them complying therewith. For these user equipment TE the scheduling module S:
Moreover, in order to establish the end of the measuring campaign, the scheduling module S identifies for example when a time-out elapses. Upon this event, for every user equipment TE that has been involved in the measuring campaign, the scheduling module S:
Peripheral Monitoring Agent (MEA1, MEA2, MEM, CA1)
As shown in
More in detail, the communicating agent CA1, that can be placed on the SIM or when activating the SIM itself, through the service provider/operator, or in following steps, can have the following operating functionalities:
According to the present invention, the processing agent MEM is able to detect the operating conditions of the terminal TM and its respective SIM and at least depending on them, to distributed the measuring functionalities of the measuring agents MEAL and MEA2. The operating functionalities of the processing agent MEM can comprise, for example:
or:
a) classifying the types of measures required by the scheduling module S, for example discriminating those linked to events that dynamically change in time such as: terminal TM position, keys pressed on terminal TM, service session steps, etc., from those referred to static data such as: user identification, terminal type, service session origin and destination, etc.);
b) assigning a priority to each measure to be performed;
c) locating different operating modes according to which the required measures can be performed (for example, reducing the measuring sample numbers, sending the measures one by one or all together, locally storing the measures waiting for their transmission when there are radio availability conditions, etc.);
d) evaluating the effect of each operating mode according to which the required measures can be performed in terms of necessary resources for realising it (for example use of terminal TM and/or SIM memory, use of terminal TM and/or SIM CPU, radio resources usage if the communication network is a mobile communication network mobile, etc.);
e) choosing, depending on previous evaluations, how to distribute the measuring functionalities of the measuring agents MEA1, MEA2;
The measuring agent MEA1, MEA2 performs the measures and, according to the invention, is configured every time by the processing agent MEM.
For example, in the embodiment of the invention shown in
According to the embodiment in
For executing the measuring campaign, it is necessary that the processing agent MEM coordinates the joint action of measuring agents MEA1 and MEA2 so that each one of them performs the measures for which it is responsible as previously established.
Interactions between peripheral agents being present on terminal TM and on its respective SIM are realised through the communication interface A3, realised for example by using similar mechanisms to the one described in ETSI TS 102.223 specification.
It can be noted that, for performing the measures related to the service application session, it can be useful to have measuring agents available also on application servers (namely servers involved in providing the service) for the various types of services.
Preferably, every measuring agent MEAL can be interfaced with:
Preferably, every measuring agent MEA2 can be interfaced with:
Moreover, the peripheral monitoring agent (MEA1, MEA2, MEM, CA1) can interact, through interfaces of the API (Application Programming Interface) type, with other processes that can be:
Preferably, API interfaces or interfacing with applications (for example for interfacing with other environments such as JavaPhone, JavaCard etc.) are accessible by the peripheral monitoring agent (MEA1, MEA2, MEM, CA1) through a general API that releases the development of peripheral agents from operating and development environment.
Preferably, for managing/configuring the functionalities included in the peripheral monitoring agent (MEA1, MEA2, MEM, CA1) and communicating among the various functionalities, the Jade (JAVA Agent Development Framework, such as described, for example, in “A communication protocol for agents on hand held devices” AAMAS 2002, July 15-16, Bologna, Italy) technology is used, that allows developing distributed applications of the peer-to-peer type, developed in JAVA and complying with the FIPA standard; The technology, that can be used both within a fixed network (JAVA J2EE and J2SE) and within a mobile network (Personal Java and J2ME) and the related characteristics (white pages, yellow pages) are used in managing the agents. This choice is not constraining for the herein-described platform operation, since Jade could be replaced by other communication middleware between agents. Communication between agents can use different transport techniques that can be selected according to the detected operating conditions (for example if it is not possible to establish a TCP/IP connection on GPRS since it is not available, the platform can decide to use the transport on SMS). Preferably, for exchanging messages between agents, the TCP/IP or UDP/IP transport will be used. This capability of making interactions between platform modules possible occurs even when, though there is an electromagnetic coverage, the user is not able to access the service (for example in case of a UMTS network, a user could not be able to access a high-bit-rate video streaming service and, simultaneously, the terminal agents can, by choosing a suitable transport, send and receive data for and to other platform modules).
Measure Data Collection Managing Subsystem TDCM
The operating functionalities of the measure data collection managing subsystem TDCM are those of its component elements, as described in the following description.
In particular, the collecting centre CCC:
This latter one, in the initial measuring campaign step, receives the configuration commands from the scheduling module S. In this way, the processing centre EC knows:
When processing, the processing centre EC reads the context data (namely memory usage in involved terminals and SIMs, CPU usage, etc.) of every measure received by the collecting centre CCC for:
a) update of the number of measures sent by every involved user equipment TE;
b) possible errors detected on peripheral agents (for example the elapse of a time-out dealing with the recording of an event by the peripheral agent);
When a measuring campaign ends, the measure data collection managing subsystem TDCM applies a criterion for accepting or not accepting the information records received from user equipment TE (for example those received after the measuring campaign end and dealing with events started before the end of the campaign itself, or those that are still incomplete), then processing the correct information records with the modes provided by the campaign and storing them in data base DB.
Herein below, the operating steps involving the herein-described monitoring system 1 are described in more detail.
Initially, it is assumed that, upon a subscription by a user, of the contract with a service provider/operator in order to exploit the service provided by the monitoring system 1, the user SIM is configured by placing the communicating agent CA1 thereon. This operation will make the user equipment TE, belonging to the user, known to the measure management subsystem TQMS for locating the user equipment TE itself.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the communicating agent CA1 can be placed on the user SIM directly by the service provider/operator before his subscription. In this way, the service provider/operator is not compelled to operate on the terminal TM, but only on the SIM (that he himself distributes).
Afterwards, by referring to
The diagram in
The use scenarios of the monitoring system 1 that are herein specifically pointed out are first of all related to QoS monitoring, shown as 200 in the diagram in
The use of the monitoring system 1 is then provided for troubleshooting functions, namely for locating possible QoS degrading causes within the user equipment TE.
This set of functions, globally designated as 210, essentially comprises the decoding and signalling of malfunctions (user equipment TE side and/or application server side).
The diagram in
Always in the diagram in
For example with reference to block 220, in case of multimedia service malfunction, the video component can be removed in order to deliver at least the audio component with an acceptable quality.
With reference to block 230, it is possible for example to provide the user with an automatic update of software applications installed on its equipment when a now obsolete version of these applications does not allow obtaining an optimum QoS level.
Advantageously, the monitoring system according to the invention is for example able to:
Moreover, the chance of making one or more operating functionalities of peripheral monitoring agents reside on SIMs allows both correlating the measures performed by the monitoring system with user-related data and with subscribed service profile to which the user can access (for example for associating the delivered QoS level with the subscribed SLA), and the chance of accessing to already available measures on the SIM (for example, measures related to mobile telephone network, such as bit error rate and power measures).
Moreover, the monitoring system 1 is suitable for performing the QoS monitoring also in evolved multi-standard environments (for example UMTS/W-LAN) in which a smart multi-mode terminal is able to simultaneously use many access systems for transporting information (communication formed of many parallel links on many radio systems).
Still further, the herein-described monitoring system for end-to-end QoS monitoring for services supported by radio-mobile user equipment can be used, through an ad hoc interface API (Application Program Interface) development, with operating and development environments of fixed networks (LAN, MAN and WAN) and wireless networks (W-LAN). Moreover, such system can operate in multi-standard environments on board multi-mode terminals.
Obviously, notwithstanding the principle of the invention, the constructive parts and the embodiments can be widely changed with respect to what has been described and shown, without thereby departing from the scope of the present invention, as defined by the attached claims.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/IB2004/004308 | 12/30/2004 | WO | 00 | 8/15/2007 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
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WO2006/070218 | 7/6/2006 | WO | A |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
6434364 | O'Riordain | Aug 2002 | B1 |
7245725 | Beard | Jul 2007 | B1 |
20020013163 | O'Prey | Jan 2002 | A1 |
20040058652 | McGregor et al. | Mar 2004 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country |
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1 304 831 | Apr 2003 | EP |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20080214186 A1 | Sep 2008 | US |