Reliability and stability have been treated as the major requirements for the Business Support System (BSS) in telecommunications networks. It is crucial and essential for service providers to maintain good operating state of the BSS. In this article, we aim at system error prediction for a BSS, i.e., we predict occurrences of the abnormal state or behavior of the BSS. Because the occurrences of system errors are rare events in the BSS (i.e., the dataset of system status is highly imbalanced), it is highly challenging to use machine learning or deep learning algorithms to predict system error for the BSS. To address this challenge, we propose a machine learning-based framework for the system error prediction and a Frequency-based Feature Creation (FFC) algorithm to create new features to improve prediction. By adding the time-series information created by the existing features, the proposed FFC can amplify the effects of important features. Our experimental results show that the FFC significantly improves the prediction performance for the Random Forest algorithm.

Recently, more and more network operators have deployed cloud environment to implement network operations centers that monitor the status of their large-scale mobile or wireline networks. Typically, the cloud environment adopts container-based virtualization that uses Docker for container packaging with Kubernetes for multihost Docker container management. In such a container-based environment, it is important that the Kubernetes can dynamically monitor the resource requirements and/or usage of the running applications, and then adjust the resource provisioned to the managed containers accordingly. Currently, Kubernetes provides a naive dynamic resource-provisioning mechanism which only considers CPU utilization and thus is not effective. This paper aims at developing a generic platform to facilitate dynamic resource-provisioning based on Kubernetes. Our platform contains the following three features. First, our platform includes a comprehensive monitoring mechanism that integrates and provides the relatively complete system resource utilization and application QoS metrics to the resource-provisioning algorithm to make the better provisioning strategy. Second, our platform modularizes the operation of dynamic resource- provisioning operation so that the users can easily deploy a newly designed algorithm to replace an existing one in our platform. Third, the dynamic resource-provisioning operation in our platform is implemented as a control loop which can consequently be applied to all the running application following a user-defined time interval without other manual configuration.

The performance of Smart Data Pricing (SDP) highly depends on the accuracy and reliability of measuring network bandwidth usage. The existing Internet protocol uses the distributed control, and the transport network protocols run together inside the routers and switches. However, it is hard to manage and retrieve online and precise measurements from the networks due to the large number of traffic flows, and the complexity of deploying measurement infrastructures. In this paper, we propose the Location-based Time-dependent SDP (LTDP) mechanism where based on SDN, we apply different data fusion models for fusing the measured Internet traffic status from different locations. Emulation experiments are conducted to investigate the performance of the proposed LTDP.

Today, Internet services are utilized as major service platforms to provide business services. Web-based Internet applications that follow the multi-tier architecture are a well-accepted computation model when providing Internet services. Such a model suffers from interruption caused by software failures, hardware errors or software maintenance. The interruption may incur significant financial loss to Internet service providers. Thus, Service Continuity is one of the main challenges for Web-based Internet applications. Although several service continuity technologies have been developed, many of them focus on a single tier of the applications and do not guarantee end-to-end service continuity. In this paper, we describe the design, implementation, and performance evaluation of our proposed service continuity technology. This technology resolves the long time interruption problem caused by database schema evolution, handles software components upgrade, and achieves end-to-end Service Continuity. We propose a mechanism that contains multiple modules running interactively between each module. This approach only requires minimal amount of code rewriting and a small storage space. Comparing with existing approaches, our approach is more efficient with the least overhead.

Wireless charging technology is considered as one of the promising solutions to solve the energy limitation problem for large-scale wireless sensor networks. Obviously, charger deployment is a critical issue since the number of chargers would be limited by the network construction budget, which makes the full-coverage deployment of chargers infeasible. In many of the applications targeted by large-scale wireless sensor networks, end-devices are usually equipped by the human and their movement follows some degree of regularity. Therefore in this paper, we utilize this property to deploy chargers with partial coverage, with an objective to maximize the survival rate of end-devices. We prove this problem is NP-hard, and propose an algorithm to tackle it. The simulation results show that our proposed algorithm can significantly increase the survival rate of end-devices. To our knowledge, this is one of very first works that consider charger deployment with partial coverage in wireless rechargeable sensor networks.

3GPP defines the Policy and Charging Control (PCC) architecture to enforce network resources dynamically and to manage charging functions. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of Group Accounting System (GAS). GAS is based on the PCC architecture and is integrated with the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) of Chunghwa Telecom. GAS allows a group of people to share one or more accounts. Through a Java web-based graphical interface furnished by the GAS, the administrator can manage accounts and develop charging rules. When the group members purchase a product, the Online Charging System (OCS) will deduct the amount from users account managed by PCC according to dynamic PCC rules. Finally, the corresponding performance metrics (e.g., the signaling delays) can be obtained through the GAS.

Different from unicast data delivery through dedicated channels, next generation Multicast and Broadcast Service (MBS) delivers data with higher bandwidth efficiency through multicasting. When a group of online users receive the same MBS content, the average MBS network cost per user can be significantly reduced. However, traditional charging methods are unable to account for the variation of network resource. To address this shortfall, this paper develops an innovative concept in MBS charging to realize the goal that “the more users join an MBS session, the more everyone saves.” Specifically, we propose a multi-tariff charging method for MBS with a competitive advantage that attracts more users to subscribe to MBS services. Analysis and numerical results demonstrate that operators can alleviate customer concerns about user credit consumption with dynamic tariff while remaining profitable in MBS. These features in our multi-tariff charging method can create a “win-win” situation for both operators and subscribers.

ABSTRACT The Evolved Packet System (EPS) is standardized to support a common IP‐based core network with heterogeneous radio accesses in the latest 3GPP release. In the EPS, the Policy and Charging Control (PCC) framework provides dynamic policy control combined with real‐time charging management. Long core network signaling for PCC degrades session continuity performance during handover. In this paper, we investigate the handover for an EPS session. Based on the results, we propose a proactive scheme along with a user mobility tracking model to improve session continuity. More specifically, our proposed scheme attempts to reduce PCC reauthorization signaling delay during the handover procedure. Then, we formulate a Markov process to model the user mobility pattern and to derive the session continuity probability. Numerical results show that our scheme can significantly keep the session continuity at a user acceptable level even when the mobility pattern is high. We also provide guidelines for operators to set up the network configuration parameters according to various traffic conditions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

As mobile technologies evolved, the mobile networks provided users not only high mobility, but also high data rates and flexible services. Meanwhile, Internet services had been very successful from 1970s to date. However, the Internet and the mobile telecommunications evolved separately and were not compatible until 3GPP proposed the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). In this paper, we first introduce mobile Web 2.0 application creation in the next generation IMS network. Then we propose a proof-of-concept service called “JoinMe” on the IBM-NCTU IMS network to study how a social networking service can be created for mobile networks.

Internet services are now the major service platforms to provide services for all sectors of business and industries. To assure the correctness for concurrent data access, transaction-based Internet service is a well-accepted computation model. Because of the proliferation of networked devices and globalization, internet services can barely undertake any service interruption during any time of the day. However, transaction-base service model does not guarantee service continuity and could lower the quality of service in many circumstances. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation for service continuity technology to provide seamless online service upgrade for transaction-based Internet services. In particular, we report the implementation details on enterprise testbed. The developed mechanism is verified against on-line telecommunication web-services. The experimental results show that the recovery overhead is negligible and the mechanism is practical for deployment.

3GPP has standardized Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) to deliver multimedia services with high bandwidth efficiency through IP multicasting technology. In this paper, we present the implementation details of an MBMS test-bed with the standardized Policy and Charging Control (PCC) to realize the dynamic charging plan for multicast services. Specifically, we illustrate the detailed message flow and the design block diagram with 3GPP policy and charging control. The corresponding performance metrics (e.g., signaling delays) have been measured through our test-bed.

The service providers introduce new telecom services, which are managed by different Operations Support Systems (OSSs), to retain existing and attract new customers. The working group, TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum), proposed a unified network infrastructure, Next Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS), as the standard interface between different OSSs to reduce the overhead for integration of sophisticated operating environments, and to shorten the time for launching new telecom services. For most of service providers, existing legacy OSSs are generally not compatible to the NGOSS framework. Due to the fact that those legacy systems have been working for a long time, modification or replacement of all systems incurs extra overhead for implementation and management. This paper proposes a systematic approach Middleware Architecture (MA) for migrating the existing legacy systems to the NGOSS compliant systems. We use the OSS through Java Initiative (OSS/J) Service Provisioning as an example to show how MA exercises for provision of new telecom service. Through the proposed approach, service providers can perform the migration in an incremental manner.

When the basic functionalities of a wireless mobile network have been achieved, customers are then more interested in value-added mobile applications. In order to attract more customers to such mobile applications, a solid, secure and robust trading model is a must. This paper proposes such a secure trading model named mobile electronic payment (MEP) for wireless mobile networks, which applies the emerging ID-based cryptography for key agreement and authentication. Our MEP attempts to alleviate the computational cost, reduce the memory space requirement in mobile devices, and meet the requirements for secure trading: avoidance of overspending and double spending, fairness, user anonymity and privacy. Our design is transparent to the bearer networks and is of low deployment cost. We expect that our MEP provides a viable trading architecture model for the future mobile applications.

During an online charging general packet radio service (GPRS) session, a number of mid-session events, such as changes of quality of service (QoS), could dynamically affect the rating of the in-progress service. When such events occur, the GPRS support node needs to re-authorize the granted credit units with the online charging system (OCS). This paper proposes a threshold-based scheme that utilizes a threshold parameter delta to reduce the signaling traffic for the credit re-authorization procedure. By selecting an appropriate delta value, the signaling overhead in the OCS can be significantly reduced while the inaccuracy of the credit information insignificantly increases. The mobile operator can choose appropriate parameter values in the threshold-based scheme based on our study.

The IP multimedia core network subsystem (IMS) provides real-time multimedia services for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). Through recharge threshold-based credit reservation (RTCR) mechanism, prepaid IMS services can be supported by the online charging system (OCS) in UMTS. In RTCR, when the remaining amount of prepaid credit is below a threshold, the OCS reminds the user to recharge the prepaid account. It is essential to choose an appropriate recharge threshold to reduce the probability that the in-progress service sessions are forced-terminated. An analytic model is developed to investigate the performance of RTCR for the OCS. Based on our study, the network operator can select the appropriate parameter values for various traffic conditions.