Athanassia Alonistioti

Charging, accounting and billing management schemes in mobile telecommunication networks and the internet

The current technological advances in mobile telecommunication networks and the Internet are about to alter existing business models. These different worlds converge and create an open market, where a large number of independent application/service providers will offer their services to users through a limited number of network providers. At the same time, the evolution of existing network technologies and the specification of new concepts requires new advanced and holistic solutions in several technical areas. One such area is related to the design and management of new sophisticated functions and protocols to support innovative, flexible, and efficient charging, accounting, and billing mechanisms. This survey article considers the key concepts of such mechanisms, and the requirements they impose upon the network infrastructure. The article presents the latest efforts undertaken by standardization bodies in the mobile telecommunication industry as well as by Internet Working Groups to meet these requirements.

A platform for charging, billing, and accounting in future mobile networks

Current technological advances enable the modification of existing mobile telecommunications business models. In future mobile networks, mobile users will be able to choose from multiple network operators and service providers. This capability requires the extension of the existing charging collection information mechanisms and billing systems to assist the oncoming mass service offering by independent service providers. In this paper, we present a platform that extends the existing systems to provide for advanced and flexible charging mechanisms and pricing policies.

Advanced adaptability and profile management framework for the support of flexible mobile service provision

The long-term vision of beyond 3G wireless communications describes a mobile service provision environment dramatically different from that of today. Users are expected to raise their demands to a significantly higher level, towards the situation-aware provision of ubiquitous personalized multimedia services. From this perspective, the need is emerging to apply, in a systematic way, adaptability and reconfigurability concepts for service delivery in largely diverse contexts. Generic dynamically extensible adaptation mechanisms that can be employed in a wide variety of situations and are independent of the subject and criteria of adaptation is a significant step in this direction. Moreover, effective profile representation and management becomes an increasingly important issue. In the present article we introduce an advanced adaptability and profile management framework aiming to fulfill these requirements. The proposed system has been designed, implemented, and incorporated in a distributed middleware platform for next-generation mobile service provision.

Evolving perspectives of 4th generation mobile communication systems

The last decade of the 20/sup th/ century has been witness to remarkable technological developments in the area of wireless communication technologies. Following the commercial deployment-and subsequent worldwide success-of 2/sup nd/ generation mobile telecommunication systems, such as GSM, standardization bodies, industry partners and regulatory fora from around the globe joined forces in producing the standards for 3/sup rd/ generation mobile telecommunication systems. In parallel, the academic research community has been gradually shifting its focus in defining the scope of 4/sup th/ generation systems. The present paper highlights fundamental concepts and presents key market developments in 4/sup th/ generation mobile communication environments. It outlines their major high level requirements and identifies the fundamental building blocks of 4/sup th/ generation system architectures in terms of technological solution sets. Finally, it proposes a set of priorities for the 4/sup th/ generation research agenda.

Intelligent service mediation for supporting advanced location and mobility-aware service provisioning in reconfigurable mobile networks

Service differentiation, customization, and personalization in the market of 3G mobile services and applications has caused many standards groups, telecommunication companies, and institutions to introduce advanced frameworks and architectures for the support of flexible service provisioning. An important feature in such architectures is location information management, which is a key aspect in future mobile systems and networks, enabling new approaches to service provisioning, customization, and personalization. We present our proposal for a generic open flexible service provisioning architecture that supports location-aware service provisioning and management.

Context-Aware Composition of Mobile Services

This paper describes an intelligent distributed framework that enables the dynamic composition of mobile services and applications based on existing services and technologies, while enriching them with high-level and up-to-date contextual information. The framework makes the service implementation totally platform-unaware, thus increasing the number of potentially available services and shortening application time-to-market

An integrated charging, accounting and billing management platform for the support of innovative business models in mobile networks

In the near future, it is expected that mobile operators will offer their subscribers a plethora of services as well as the ability to access value-added services offered by independent providers. However, until this goal is reached, there are several technical issues related to dynamic service provision and charging that have to be tackled. In order to examine in detail all the attributes of the aforementioned issues, we present the involved players and the prospective business models for flexible service provisioning. Furthermore, we outline the key concepts of such mechanisms and respective interdependencies between business entities, network/communication domains and the charging functionality. We also present the latest efforts undertaken by standardisation bodies to address these issues and the mechanisms that are planned to be deployed. Finally, we introduce a generic integrated architecture for charging, accounting and billing enabling flexible service provision in an open marketplace.

Enabling Delivery of Mobile Services Over Heterogeneous Converged Infrastructures

Traditionally, end customers have been offered different categories of communication, data and media services (e.g., fixed/mobile voice, fixed/mobile data, broadcasting) through vertically separated, rigidly integrated infrastructures. Major advances in a variety of technological fields, mainly in the area of mobile computing and networking, have created prospects for a fully converged environment, where ubiquitous access to an abundance of value-added services will be offered over a single, as perceived by the users, highly reconfigurable system. This vision can be enabled by the seamless “plugging” of diverse access networks to a high-speed IP backbone; however the path to its realization poses a variety of additional challenges. The required support of complicated business models and service delivery over highly diverse contexts introduces significant complexity to service management and provision. The present contribution presents object-oriented mediating service management platforms as a catalyst for making these demanding tasks feasible, identifies their desired functionality and provides an overview of such a distributed framework that we have designed and prototyped. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the latter is able to be a critical enabler of flexible, adaptable service provision over future heterogeneous networks, while supporting advanced business paradigms.

An advanced service provision framework for reconfigurable mobile networks

The success of next generation mobile networks is highly dependent on the availability of a plethora of functionality-rich applications, accessible via a variety of network infrastructures and terminals. This can be achieved through the cooperation of various business players in addition to network operators and infrastructure providers. The specification by major standardisation organisations of open APIs for network access by third parties is a significant step in this direction. A critical issue in such architectures is reconfiguration management, which is regarded as the mean to enable new approaches to service provision, customisation and personalisation. In this paper, we present our proposal for a generic, open, flexible, service provision framework that supports context-aware service provision and reconfiguration management.

An advanced location information management scheme for supporting flexible service provisioning in reconfigurable mobile networks

The evolution of third-generation mobile communications networks has nominated the requirements for flexible service provisioning, intelligent and customized charging, as well as location-aware service and data management as key enablers for the support of new advanced service offerings to mobile users. Our work is related to the design and implementation of a flexible service provisioning and reconfigurability management middleware for third-generation systems and beyond. The article focuses especially on the location-related features and functionality of our architecture, discussing the interactions required to accomplish location- and mobility-aware user profiling, service deployment and discovery, as well as charging and billing.