Signaling Security in LTE Roaming

LTE (Long Term Evolution) also known as 4G, is highly in demand for its incomparable levels of experience like high data rates, low latency, good Quality of Services(QoS) and roaming features. LTE uses Diameter protocol, which makes LTE an all IP network, connecting multiple network providers, providing flexibility in adding nodes and flexible mobility management while roaming. Which in turn makes LTE network more vulnerable to malicious actors. Diameter protocol architecture includes many nodes and the communication between the nodes is done through request and answer messages. Diameter manages the control session. Control session includes the signaling traffic which consists of messages to manage the user session. Roaming signaling traffic arises due to subscribers movement out of the geographical range of their home network to any other network. This signaling traffic moves over the roaming interconnection called S9 roaming interface. This thesis project aims to interfere and manipulate traffic from both user-to-network and network-to-network interfaces in order to identify possible security vulnerabilities in LTE roaming. A fake base-station is installed to establish a connection to a subscriber through the air interface. The IMSI (International Mobile Subscription Identity) is captured using this fake station. To explore the network-to-network communication an emulator based LTE testbed is used. The author has investigated how Diameter messages can be manipulated over the S9 interface to perform a fraud or DoS attack using the IMSI number. The consequences of such attacks are discussed and the countermeasures that can be considered by the MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) and Standardization Committees

UAV-Empowered Disaster-Resilient Edge Architecture for Delay-Sensitive Communication

The fifth-generation (5G) communication systems will enable enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low latency, and massive connectivity services. The broadband and low-latency services are indispensable to public safety (PS) communication during natural or man-made disasters. Recently, the third generation partnership project long term evolution (3GPPLTE) has emerged as a promising candidate to enable broadband PS communications. In this article, first we present six major PS-LTE enabling services and the current status of PS-LTE in 3GPP releases. Then, we discuss the spectrum bands allocated for PS-LTE in major countries by international telecommunication union (ITU). Finally, we propose a disaster resilient three-layered architecture for PS-LTE (DR-PSLTE). This architecture consists of a software-defined network (SDN) layer to provide centralized control, an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) cloudlet layer to facilitate edge computing or to enable emergency communication link, and a radio access layer. The proposed architecture is flexible and combines the benefits of SDNs and edge computing to efficiently meet the delay requirements of various PS-LTE services. Numerical results verified that under the proposed DR-PSLTE architecture, delay is reduced by 20% as compared with the conventional centralized computing architecture.Comment: 9,

Parlay X Web Services for Policy and Charging Control in Multimedia Networks

The paper investigates the capabilities of Parlay X Web Services for Policy and Charging Control (PCC) in managing all Internet-protocol-based multimedia networks (IMSs). PCC is one of the core features of evolved packet networks. It comprises flow-based charging including charging control and online credit control, gating control, and Quality of Service (QoS) control. Based on the analysis of requirements for PCC, the functionality for open access to QoS management and advanced charging is identified. Parlay X Web Services are evaluated for the support of PCC, and some enhancements are suggested. Implementation aspects are discussed, and Parlay X interfaces are mapped onto IMS control protocols. Use cases of Parlay X Web Services for PCC are presented

LTE Advanced: Technology and Performance Analysis

Wireless data usage is increasing at a phenomenal rate and driving the need for continued innovations in wireless data technologies to provide more capacity and higher quality of service. In October 2009, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) submitted LTE-Advanced to the ITU as a proposed candidate IMT-Advanced technology for which specifications could become available in 2011 through Release-10 . The aim of “LTE-Advanced” is to further enhance LTE radio access in terms of system performance and capabilities compared to current cellular systems, including the first release of LTE, with a specific goal to ensure that LTE fulfills and even surpass the requirements of “IMT-Advanced” as defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R) . This thesis offers an introduction to the mobile communication standard known as LTE Advanced, depicting the evolution of the standard from its roots and discussing several important technologies that help it evolve to accomplishing the IMT-Advanced requirements. A short history of the LTE standard is offered, along with a discussion of its standards and performance. LTE-Advanced details include analysis on the physical layer by investigating the performance of SC-FDMA and OFDMA of LTE physical layer. The investigation is done by considering different modulation schemes (QPSK, 16QAM and 64QAM) on the basis of PAPR, BER, power spectral density (PSD) and error probability by simulating the model of SC-FDMA & OFDMA. To evaluate the performance in presence of noise, an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel was introduced. A set of conclusions is derived from our results describing the effect of higher order modulation schemes on BER and error probability for both OFDMA and SC-FDMA. The power spectral densities of both the multiple access techniques (OFDMA and SC-FDMA) are calculated and result shows that the OFDMA has higher power spectral density.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Linking session based services with transport plane resources in IP multimedia subsystems.

The massive success and proliferation of Internet technologies has forced network operators to recognise the benefits of an IP-based communications framework. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) has been proposed as a candidate technology to provide a non-disruptive strategy in the move to all-IP and to facilitate the true convergence of data and real-time multimedia services. Despite the obvious advantages of creating a controlled environment for deploying IP services, and hence increasing the value of the telco bundle, there are several challenges that face IMS deployment. The most critical is that posed by the widespread proliferation ofWeb 2.0 services. This environment is not seen as robust enough to be used by network operators for revenue generating services. However IMS operators will need to justify charging for services that are typically available free of charge in the Internet space. Reliability and guaranteed transport of multimedia services by the efficient management of resources will be critical to differentiate IMS services. This thesis investigates resource management within the IMS framework. The standardisation of NGN/IMS resource management frameworks has been fragmented, resulting in weak functional and interface specifications. To facilitate more coherent, focused research and address interoperability concerns that could hamper deployment, a Common Policy and Charging Control (PCC) architecture is presented that defines a set of generic terms and functional elements. A review of related literature and standardisation reveals severe shortcomings regarding vertical and horizontal coordination of resources in the IMS framework. The deployment of new services should not require QoS standardisation or network upgrade, though in the current architecture advanced multimedia services are not catered for. It has been found that end-to-end QoS mechanisms in the Common PCC framework are elementary. To address these challenges and assist network operators when formulating their iii NGN strategies, this thesis proposes an application driven policy control architecture that incorporates end-user and service requirements into the QoS negotiation procedure. This architecture facilitates full interaction between service control and resource control planes, and between application developers and the policies that govern resource control. Furthermore, a novel, session based end-to-end policy control architecture is proposed to support inter-domain coordination across IMS domains. This architecture uses SIP inherent routing information to discover the routes traversed by the signalling and the associated routes traversed by the media. This mechanism effectively allows applications to issue resource requests from their home domain and enable end-to-end QoS connectivity across all traversed transport segments. Standard interfaces are used and transport plane overhaul is not necessary for this functionality. The Common PCC, application driven and session based end-to-end architectures are implemented in a standards compliant and entirely open source practical testbed. This demonstrates proof of concept and provides a platform for performance evaluations. It has been found that while there is a cost in delay and traffic overhead when implementing the complete architecture, this cost falls within established criteria and will have an acceptable effect on end-user experience. The open nature of the practical testbed ensures that all evaluations are fully reproducible and provides a convenient point of departure for future work. While it is important to leave room for flexibility and vendor innovation, it is critical that the harmonisation of NGN/IMS resource management frameworks takes place and that the architectures proposed in this thesis be further developed and integrated into the single set of specifications. The alternative is general interoperability issues that could render end-to-end QoS provisioning for advanced multimedia services almost impossible

An Architecture for QoS-Enabled Mobile Video Surveillance Applications in a 4G EPC and M2M Environment

© 2016 IEEE. Mobile video surveillance applications are used widely nowadays. They offer real-time video monitoring for homes, offices, warehouses, airports, and so on with live and pre-recorded on-demand video streaming. Quality of service (QoS) remains a key challenge faced by most of these applications. In this article, we propose an architecture for mobile video surveillance applications with a guaranteed and differentiated QoS support. The architecture relies on the 3GPP 4G evolved packet core (EPC). The main components are the QoS enabler, media server, and machine-to-machine gateway and surveillance application. To demonstrate its feasibility, a proof of concept prototype has been implemented and deployed. We also took measurements to evaluate the performance. Several lessons were learned. For instance, multimedia frameworks must allow for buffering controls in media streaming to reduce live streaming delay. In addition, we have learned that publicly available materials related to the EPC prototyping platform we have used (i.e., OpenEPC) are scarce. This has made our prototyping task rather difficult

OpenEPC Integration within 5GTN as an NFV proof of concept

Abstract. Gone are the days, when a hardware is changed on every malfunctioning and the whole operation either stays down or load on the replacing hardware becomes too much which ultimately compromises the QoS. The IT industry is mature enough to tackle problems regarding scalability, space utilization, energy consumption, cost, agility and low availability. The expected throughput and network latency with 5G in the cellular Telecommunication Networks seems to be unachievable with the existing architecture and resources. Network Function Virtualization promises to merge IT and Telecommunications in such an efficient way that the expected results could be achieved no longer but sooner. The thesis work examines the compatibility and flexibility of a 3GPP virtual core network in a virtualization platform. The testbed is established on an LTE (Long Term Evolution) based network being already deployed and OpenEPC is added as virtual core network on it. The integration of OpenEPC in 5GTN (5TH Generation Test Network) is discussed in details in the thesis which will give an account of the possibility of implementing such a simulated vEPC (Virtual Evolved Packet Core) in a real network platform. The deployed setup is tested to check its feasibility and flexibility for a platform which could be used for NFV deployment in future. The monitoring of OpenEPC’s individual components while utilizing the major resources within them, forms the primary performance test. The CPU Load and Memory Utilization is tested on different CPU stress levels having a constant data traffic from actual UEs. At the completion of the thesis work, a consensus is built up based on the test results that the test setup can hold number of subscribers to a certain amount without any performance degradation. Moreover, the virtual core network throughput and network latency is also compared to the commercial LTE networks and theoretical maximum values on similar resources to check performance consistency OpenEPC must offer

Evaluation of policy based admission control mechanisms in NGN

The 3GPP consortium proposed in the release 7 of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) a Diameter interface for the resource admission communication process replacing the previous COPS solution. Although both academic and industry communities have deeply debate the advantages and disadvantages of each protocol, its impact in NGN may have not been thoroughly quantified. This paper compares both protocols in terms of messages exchanged between network entities, and of bandwidth requirements during the admission control process. Based on general network operator environment characteristics, we present several exploitation scenarios where it is analyzed the scalability and adequacy of each protocol

Partage d'infrastructures et convergence fixe/mobile dans les réseaux 3GPP de prochaine génération

RÉSUMÉ Le déploiement de la technologie cellulaire de quatrième génération a débuté par quelques projets pilotes, notamment en Suède et en Norvège, dans la première moitié de 2010. Ces réseaux offrent dans un premier temps l’accès à Internet uniquement et comptent sur les réseaux de deuxième et troisième génération existants pour le support de la téléphonie et de la messagerie texte. Ce ne sera donc qu’avec l’avènement du IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) que tous les services seront supportés par la nouvelle architecture basée entièrement sur IP. Les réseaux mobiles de quatrième génération promettent aux usagers des taux de transfert au-delà de 100 Mbits/s en amont, lorsque l’usager est immobile, et le support de la qualité de service permettant d’offrir des garanties de débit, délai maximum, gigue maximale et d’un taux de perte de paquets borné supérieurement. Ces réseaux supporteront efficacement les applications utilisant la géolocalisation afin d’améliorer l’expérience de l’usager. Les terminaux d’aujourd’hui offrent un éventail de technologies radio. En effet, en plus du modem cellulaire, les terminaux supportent souvent la technologie Bluetooth qui est utilisée pour connecter entre autres les dispositifs mains-libres et les écouteurs. De plus, la majorité des téléphones cellulaires sont dotés d’un accès WiFi permettant à l’usager de transférer de grands volumes de données sans engorger le réseau cellulaire. Toutefois, cet accès n’est souvent réservé qu’au réseau résidentiel de l’usager ou à celui de son lieu de travail. Enfin, une relève verticale est presque toujours manuelle et entraîne pour le mobile un changement d’adresse IP, ce qui ultimement a pour conséquence une déconnexion des sessions en cours. Depuis quelques années, une tendance se profile au sein de l’industrie qui est connue sous de nom de convergence des réseaux fixes et mobiles. Cette tendance vise à plus ou moins long terme d’offrir l’accès Internet et la téléphonie à partir d’un seul terminal pouvant se connecter à un réseau d’accès local ou au réseau cellulaire. à ce jour, très peu d’opérateurs (e.g., NTT Docomo) offrent des terminaux ayant la possibilité de changer de point d’accès. Toutefois, le point d’accès doit appartenir à l’usager ou se situe à son lieu de travail. Par ailleurs, on remarque un mouvement de convergence selon lequel différents réseaux utilisés pour les services d’urgence (tels que la police, les pompiers et ambulanciers) sont progressivement migrés (en raison de leurs coûts prohibitifs) vers un seul réseau offrant un très haut niveau de redondance et de fiabilité. Les services d’urgence démontrent des besoins en QoS similaires à ceux des particuliers sauf qu’ils nécessitent un accès prioritaire, ce qui peut entraîner la déconnexion d’un usager non-prioritaire lors d’une situation de congestion. En plus des services publics qui tentent de réduire leurs coûts d’exploitation en partageant l’accès aux réseaux commerciaux de communications, les opérateurs de ces réseaux sont aussi entrés dans une phase de réduction de coûts. Cette situation résulte du haut niveau de maturité maintenant atteint par l’industrie des communications mobiles. Par exemple, l’image de marque ou la couverture offerte par chacun d’eux ne constituent plus en soi un argument de vente suffisant pour attirer une nouvelle clientèle. Ceux-ci doivent donc se distinguer par une offre de services supérieure à celle de leur compétition. Les opérateurs ont donc entrepris de sous-traiter des opérations non-critiques de leur entreprise afin de se concentrer sur l’aspect le plus profitable de cette dernière. Parallèlement à cette tendance, les opérateurs ont commencé à partager une portion de plus en plus importante de leurs infrastructures physiques avec leurs compétiteurs. Dans un premier temps, le partage s’est limité aux sites des stations de base et aux mâts qui supportent les antennes. Puis vint le partage des abris pour réduire les coûts de climatisation et d’hébergement des équipements. Ensuite, les opérateurs se mirent à partager les équipements radio, chacun contrôlant toutefois ses propres bandes de fréquences. . . Le partage des infrastructures physiques au-delà du premier nœud du réseau cœur n’est pas actuellement supporté en standardisation. Les propositions existantes d’architectures de réseaux de prochaine génération ont toutes comme point en commun d’être basées sur un réseau cœur tout-IP, d’offrir une QoS aux applications et une performance de l’ordre de 100 Mbits/s. De plus, ces dernières proposent des mécanismes de gestion des politiques qui définissent l’utilisation des services offerts aux abonnés ainsi que la façon de comptabiliser l’usage des ressources du réseau. On dénombre trois grandes catégories de politiques : celles se rattachant à l’usager (e.g., les abonnements or/argent/bronze, accès facturé vs. prépayé), celles qui dépendent du service demandé (e.g., pour un service donné, la bande passante maximale, la classe de service et la priorité d’allocation et de rétention des ressources) et enfin les politiques relatives à l’état du réseau (e.g., niveau de congestion, répartition des agrégats de trafic, etc). Dans un premier article dont le titre est « A Potential Evolution of the Policy and Charging Control/QoS Architecture for the 3GPP IETF-based Evolved Packet Core », les aspects de FMC ainsi que du partage du réseau cœur sont traités conjointement puisqu’il faut que l’architecture PCC reflète les réalités des tendances de l’industrie décrites précédemment. Suite à la description des tendances de l’industrie furent présentés les requis d’une architecture PCC qui rendent possibles la convergence des services (capacité d’utiliser un service à partir de n’importe quel accès), le partage du réseau cœur par plusieurs opérateurs mobiles virtuels , la création de politiques propres à chaque réseau d’accès ainsi que la micro-mobilité efficace des usagers dans les scénarios d’itinérance. Dans un second temps, deux architectures de NGN furent évaluées en fonction des requis énumérés ci-dessus. Cette étude permit de déterminer qu’une solution hybride (avec les avantages de chacune mais sans leurs défauts respectifs) constituait une piste de solution prometteuse qui servit de base à notre proposition. La solution proposée atteint son but par une meilleure répartition des rôles d’affaires ainsi que par l’introduction d’une entité centrale de contrôle nommée Network Policy Function (NPF) au sein du réseau de transport IP. En effet, les rôles d’affaires définis (fournisseurs d’accès, de réseau cœur et de services) permettent la création de domaines de politiques et administratifs distincts. Ces rôles deviennent nécessaires dans les cas de partage d’infrastructures. Dans le cas contraire, ils sont compatibles avec le modèle vertical actuel d’opérateur ; ce dernier joue alors tous les rôles. Quant à l’introduction du NPF dans le réseau cœur, celui-ci permet de séparer la gestion des politiques régissant le réseau de transport IP des usagers, des services et des réseaux d’accès. De plus, il permet le partage du réseau cœur de façon à respecter les ententes de services liant ce dernier à chaque opérateur virtuel ainsi que les ententes de services liant le réseau cœur et le(s) réseau(x) d’accès. Par ailleurs, le NPF permet d’ajouter au réseau cœur des services avancés à partager entre plusieurs opérateurs. Parmi ces services, on retrouve des fonctions de transcodage audio/vidéo, des caches de fichiers (e.g., pouvant servir à la distribution de films), d’antivirus grâce à l’inspection approfondie des paquets, etc. L’avantage d’introduire ces services au niveau transport est de permettre autant aux applications IMS qu’aux autres d’en bénéficier. Le second article intitulé « A Network Policy Function Node for a Potential Evolution of the 3GPP Evolved Packet Core » constitue une extension du premier article qui décrit en détail les tendances de l’industrie, les architectures de gestion de politiques existantes et leurs caractéristiques, et enfin offrit un survol de la solution. En contre-partie, le second article aborde beaucoup plus en détail les impacts de la solution proposée sur l’architecture existante. En effet, une contribution significative de ce second article est de dresser la liste exhaustive de toutes les simplifications potentielles que permet la proposition d’architecture. La contribution majeure du second article est que la solution proposée peut être déployée immédiatement avec un minimum d’impacts. Effectivement, une petite modification à l’architecture proposée dans le premier article, au niveau des interfaces du NPF, permit cette avancée. En conséquence, cette modification réconcilie les deux variantes actuelles d’architecture basées sur les protocoles GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) et Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6). Le dernier apport important du second article est la démonstration du fonctionnement interne du NPF lorsque ce dernier contrôle un réseau de transport basé sur un mécanisme de tunnels tels que Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) ou encore Provider Backbone Bridge-Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE). Un processus d’ingénierie de trafic permet aux flux de trafic de contourner une zone de congestion, de mieux balancer la charge du réseau et d’assurer que les exigences en QoS sont toujours respectées. Le troisième article intitulé « A MultiAccess Resource ReSerVation Protocol (MARSVP) for the 3GPP Evolved Packet System » traite de QoS dans les scénarios de FMC, plus particulièrement des applications qui ne sont pas supportées par le réseau. Par exemple, toutes les applications pair-à-pair qui représentent une portion infime du volume de trafic total attribué à ce type d’application ou celles qui sont naissantes et encore méconnues. Les réseaux de deuxième et troisième générations ont été conçus de telle sorte que l’usager fournit au réseau les paramètres de QoS de l’application. Toutefois, le nombre de combinaisons des paramètres de QoS était très élevé et trop complexe à gérer. Il en résulta que pour la quatrième génération il fut décidé que dorénavant ce seraient les serveurs d’applications dans le réseau qui fourniraient ces paramètres de QoS. De même, un nombre restreint de classes de services fut défini, ce qui eut pour résultat de simplifier énormément la gestion de la QoS. Lorsque sont considérés les concepts de FMC, il devient évident que le mécanisme décrit ci-dessus ne s’applique qu’aux accès 3GPP. En effet, chaque type d’accès définit ses propres mécanismes qui doivent souvent être contrôlés par le réseau et non par l’usager. De plus, certains accès ne disposent d’aucun canal de contrôle sur lequel circule les requêtes de QoS. De même, les protocoles existants de QoS sont souvent lourds et définis de bout-en-bout ; ils ne sont donc pas appropriés à l’utilisation qui est envisagée. En conséquence, la solution proposée consiste en un nouveau protocole multiaccès de réservation de ressources. MARSVP utilise le canal de données que l’on retrouve sur tous les accès et confine les échanges de messages entre l’usager et le premier nœud IP. Les besoins en QoS sont définis en fonction des QoS Class Indicators (QCIs) ce qui rend MARSVP simple à utiliser. Suite à une requête de réservation de ressources acceptée par le réseau, ce dernier configure l’accès et retourne au terminal les informations requises à l’envoi paquets (aux couches 2 et 3).----------ABSTRACT Fourth generation cellular networks trials have begun in the first half of 2010, notably in Sweden and Norway. As a first step, these networks only offer Internet access and rely on existing second and third generation networks for providing telephony and text messaging. It’s only after the deployment of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) that all services shall be supported on the new all-IP architecture. Fourth generation mobile networks should enable end users to benefit from data throughputs of at least 100 Mbps on the downlink, when the user is stationary, and of Quality of Service (QoS) support that allows guarantees on throughput, maximum delay, maximum jitter and on the packet loss rate. These networks will efficiently support applications that rely on geolocation in order to improve the user’s Quality of Experience (QoE). Today’s terminals can communicate using several radio technologies. Indeed, in addition to the cellular modem, terminals often support the Bluetooth technology which is used for connecting handsfree devices and headsets. Moreover, most cell phones feature a Wi-Fi interface that enables users to transfer huge volumes of data without congesting the cellular network. However, Wi-Fi connectivity is often restricted to the user’s home network or his workplace. Finally, a vertical handover is nearly always done manually and forces the terminal to change its IP address, which ultimately disrupts all active data sessions. A trend has emerged a few years ago among the mobile communications industry known as Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC). FMC is a trend aiming to provide Internet access and telephony on a single device capable of switching between local- and wide-area networks. At this time, very few operators (e.g., NTT Docomo) offer terminals capable of switching to another access automatically. However, the access point must belong to the user or be installed in his workplace. At the same time, another kind of convergence has begun in which the dedicated networks for public safety (such as police, fire prevention and ambulances) are being progressively migrated (because of their high operational costs) toward a single highly reliable and redundant network. Indeed, these services exhibit QoS requirements that are similar to residential costumers’ except they need a prioritized access, and that can terminate a non-priority user’s session during congestion situations. In addition to the public services that seek to reduce their operational costs by sharing commercial communications networks, the network operators have also entered a cost reduction phase. This situation is a result of the high degree of maturity that the mobile communications industry has reached. As an example, the branding or the coverage offered by each of them isn’t a sufficient sales argument anymore to enroll new subscribers. Operators must now distinguish themselves from their competition with a superior service offering. Some operators have already started to outsource their less profitable business activities in order to concentrate on their key functions. As a complement to this trend, operators have begun to share an ever increasing portion of their physical infrastructures with their competitors. As a first step, infrastructure sharing was limited to the base station sites and antenna masts. Later, the shelters were shared to further reduce the cooling and hosting costs of the equipments. Then, operators started to share radio equipments but each of them operated on different frequency bands. . . Infrastructure sharing beyond the first core network node isn’t actually supported in standardization. There is an additional trend into the mobile communications industry which is the specialization of the operators (i.e., the identification of target customers by the operators). As a result, these operators experience disjoint traffic peaks because their customer bases have different behaviors. The former have a strong incentive to share infrastructures because network dimensioning mostly depends on the peak demand. Consequently, sharing infrastructures increases the average traffic load without significantly increasing the peak load because the peaks occur at different times. This allows operators to boost their return on investment. Every existing Next Generation Network (NGN) architecture proposal features an all-IP core network, offers QoS to applications and a bandwidth on the downlink in the order of 100 Mbps. Moreover, these NGNs propose a number of Policy and Charging Control (PCC) mechanisms that determine how services are delivered to the subscribers and what charging method to apply. There are three main categories of policies: those that are related to the subscriber (e.g., gold/silver/bronze subscription, prepaid vs. billed access), those that apply to services (e.g., for a given service, bandwidth limitation, QoS class assignment, allocation and retention priority of resources) and finally policies that depend on the current state of the network (e.g., congestion level, traffic engineering, etc). In a first paper entitled “A Potential Evolution of the Policy and Charging Control/QoS Architecture for the 3GPP IETF-based Evolved Packet Core ”, FMC and Core Network (CN) sharing aspects are treated simultaneously because it is important that the logical PCC architecture reflects the realities of the industry trends described above. Following the description of the trends in the communications industry were presented a list of four requirements that enable for a PCC architecture: service convergence (capacity to use a service from any type of access), CN sharing that allows several Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) to coexist, the creation of local access network policies as well as efficient micro-mobility in roaming scenarios. As a second step, two NGN architectures were evaluated upon the requirements mentioned above. This evaluation concluded that a hybrid solution (based on the key features of each architecture but without their respective drawbacks) would offer a very promising foundation for a complete solution. The proposed solution achieved its goal with a clearer separation of the business roles (e.g., access and network providers) and the introduction of a Network Policy Function (NPF) for the management of the CN. Indeed, the business roles that were defined allow the creation of distinct policy/QoS and administrative domains. The roles become mandatory in infrastructure sharing scenarios. Otherwise, they maintain the compatibility with the actual vertically-integrated operator model; the latter then plays all of the business roles. Introducing the NPF into the CN enables the CN policy management to be separated from policy management related to subscribers, services and access networks. Additionally, the NPF allows the CN to be shared by multiple Network Service Providers (NSPs) and respect the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that link the IP Aggregation Network (IPAN) to the NSPs, as well as those that tie the IPAN to the Access Network Providers (ANPs). Another benefit of the NPF is that it can share a number of advanced functions between several NSPs. Those functions include audio/video transcoding, file caches (e.g., that can be used for multimedia content delivery), Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) antivirus, etc. The main advantage to integrate those infrastructure services at the IP transport level is to allow both IMS and non-IMS applications to benefit from them. A second paper entitled “A Network Policy Function Node for a Potential Evolution of the 3GPP Evolved Packet Core ” constitutes an extension of the first paper that extensively described the industry trends, two existing PCC architectures and their characteristics, and finally offered an overview of the proposed solution. On the other hand, the second paper thoroughly describes all of the impacts that the proposal has on the existing 3GPP PCC architecture. Indeed, a significant contribution of this second paper is that it provides an extensive list of potential simplifications that the proposed solution allows. The main contribution of the second paper is that from now on the proposed solution can be deployed over an existing PCC architecture with a minimum of impacts. Indeed, a small modification to the NPF’s reference points enables this enhancement. As a consequence, this enhancement provided a solution that is compatible with both PCC architecture variants, based on either GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) or Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6). A last contribution of the second paper is to demonstrate the NPF’s internals when the former is controlling a an IPAN based on tunneling mechanisms such as Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) or Provider Backbone Bridge-Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE). A traffic engineering process allows traffic flow aggregates to pass around a congested node, to better balance the load between the network elements and make sure that the QoS requirements are respected at all times. The third paper entitled “A MultiAccess Resource ReSerVation Protocol (MARSVP) for the 3GPP Evolved Packet System” deals with QoS provisioning in FMC scenarios, especially for applications that are not directly supported by the network. As an example, all peer-to-peer applications (such as online gaming) that represent a small fraction of the total peer-to-peer traffic or those that are new and relatively unknown. Second and third generation networks were designed such that the User Equipment (UE) would provide the network with the application’s QoS parameters. However, the number of possible combinations of QoS parameters was very large and too complex to manage. As a result, for the fourth generation of networks, an application server would provide the PCC architecture with the right QoS parameters. In addition, a limited number of QoS classes were defined which in the end greatly simplified QoS management. When FMC aspects are taken into account, it becomes trivial that the above mechanism only applies to 3GPP accesses. Indeed, each access type uses its own mechanisms that must often be controlled by the network instead of the user. Moreover, some accesses don’t feature a control channel on which QoS reservation requests would be carried. Also, existing QoS protocols are often too heavy to support and apply

Analysis of QoS Requirements for e-Health Services and Mapping to Evolved Packet System QoS Classes

E-Health services comprise a broad range of healthcare services delivered by using information and communication technology. In order to support existing as well as emerging e-Health services over converged next generation network (NGN) architectures, there is a need for network QoS control mechanisms that meet the often stringent requirements of such services. In this paper, we evaluate the QoS support for e-Health services in the context of the Evolved Packet System (EPS), specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a multi-access all-IP NGN. We classify heterogeneous e-Health services based on context and network QoS requirements and propose a mapping to existing 3GPP QoS Class Identifiers (QCIs) that serve as a basis for the class-based QoS concept of the EPS. The proposed mapping aims to provide network operators with guidelines for meeting heterogeneous e-Health service requirements. As an example, we present the QoS requirements for a prototype e-Health service supporting tele-consultation between a patient and a doctor and illustrate the use of the proposed mapping to QCIs in standardized QoS control procedures