Monday, July 2, 2012

Network Hierarchy Concept: The OSI Reference Model


Application Network service part of applications
Provides network services to applications
(e.g. protocols to applications such as snmp)

Presentation Data presentation
Presents data in the right format to the application layer
(includes encryption, reformating, restructuring of data)

Session Interapplication communication
Maintains sessions between applications

Transport End-to-end connection
Ensures data transport reliability, information flow
(includes maintaining of virtual circuits between hosts)
Network Data delivery
Provides routes between two host systems (might be at different locations)
(includes network discovery and routing decision)
Data Link Access to media
Defines the data format and how the access to the media is controlled
(includes bit-error correction)
Physical Binary transmission on a physical link
Electrical, mechanical, procedural, and functional specification

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

GSM Mobility Management


Mobility Management is one of the features of the GSM network that allows the mobile phones to make or receive calls while moving one place to another.
Mobile device uses the location update procedure to update the current location information to the cellular network. Mainly there are three different reasons for a mobile station to do a location update.

  • Normal location update
  • IMSI attach
  • Periodic registration


Whenever a mobile station moves from one location to another or comes to an active state (IMSI attach), the mobile station will check the Location Aread Identity (LAI) stored in its SIM against the LAI of the cell. When both LAIs are different, mobile station will initiate a location update process. The network also has a provision for periodic registration to avoid the unnecessary paging of the mobile if MSC never receives the IMSI detach message.

Normal location update

Mobile station will initiate a normal loaction update procedure as when it finds a change of location area. As soon as a mobile station changes the location ares, it will compare the LAI stored in the SIM with the current LAI. If the two differs, then mobile station has to update the new location information to ensure that the mobile station will be paged to corret location.
The location update procedure will start with the mobile station sending the new location information to the network. After the authentication, the MSC will update its VLR. If the mobile station is new to this MSC, then MSC will interact with the HLR to get all the necessary information about the subscriber and then updates its VLR.

IMSI attach

When a mobile station switched on, ie, moved from an idle state to active state, it will try to attach to the network. This process of attachment is called IMSI attachment. During the IMSI atatch procedure, if the MSC finds that the mobile station is new, then MSC will query the corresponding HLR and then it will update the VLR with status “IMSI Attached”. During the process, the HLR will update its own data base and sends a message to the old MSC where the mobile station was located before to update its VLR.
Similarly, when a mobile station is switched off or sim card is removed, the mobile station will sends a message to the VLR and the VLR will mark the mobile station status as detached. Once the status is updated in the VLR, the incoming call to the mobile station will not be paged.

Periodic Registration

It is not necessary that the MSC will always gets the IMSI detach request from the mobile station whenever the later is switched off. So there will be a possibility of unnecessay paging of the mobile whenever there is an incoming call. The periodic registration is provisioned to avoid such unnecessay paging.
After each registration, the mobile station and MSC will reset their timers and when the timer in mobile station expires, the mobile station will perform a location update. If the mobile station does not perform a location update within the time, then the MSC will update the VLR and HLR with status a “detached”.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Standardization of CdPA

Different formats
Format Numbers
National format 0 9443 124365
International format 91 9443 124365
Unknown format 0091 9443 124365 (Longest unknown format, a complete phone number up to 20 digits)

Thursday, February 2, 2012

BCSM Detection Points 50 and 51

Till Camel Phase 4, the O_Not_Reachable and T_Not_Reachable conditons were only able to armed using O_Busy and T_Busy events. In this case, in order to differentiate the Not Rechable condition from the Busy conditions we have to relay on the Release Causes in the ISUP Messages. When ISUP Release Cause 17 identifies the Busy condition, 20 will be used to identify the Not Rechable / Subscriber Not Present condition.

In Camel Phase 4, the Not Rechable conditions can be armed using detection points 50 for originationg and 51 for terminating calls.

O-BCSM Detection Points:

1

Origination_Attempt_Authorized

2

Collected_Info

3

Analyzed_Info

4

Route_Select_Failure

5

O_Called_Party_Busy

6

O_No_Answer

7

O_Answer

8

O_Mid_Call

9

O_Disconnect

10

O_Abandon

50

O_Not_Rechable

T-BCSM Detection Points:

12

Termination_Attempt_Authorized

13

T_Called_Party_Busy

14

T_No_Answer

15

T_Answer

16

T_Mid_Call

17

T_Disconnect

18

T_Abandon

51

T_Not_Rechable

ISUP Release Causes:

Rel Cause Value

ITU-T Description

1

Unallocated (unassigned) number

3

No route to destination

5

Misdialled trunk prefix (national use)

16

Normal call clearing

17

User busy

18

No user responding

19

No answer from user (user alerted)

20

Subscriber absent

21

Call rejected

22

Number changed

27

Destination out of order

28

Invalid number format (address incomplete)

31

Normal, unspecified

34

No circuit/channel available

38

Network out of order

41

Temporary failure

42

Switching equipment congestion

44

Requested circuit/channel not available

47

Resource unavailable, unspecified

50

Requested facility not subscribed

57

Bearer capability not authorized

63

Service or option not available, unspecified

65

Bearer capability not implemented

69

Requested facility not implemented

88

Incompatible destination

95

Invalid message, unspecified

102

Recovery on timer expiry

111

Protocol error, unspecified

127

Interworking, unspecified

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Cloud Phone

A new mobile phone solution which allows the user to access the data using cloud technology without changing the handset or device. Since all the datas are stored in one place over the internet, the chances of losing the same is very less.

An UK based company Movirtu has developed an email like concept for Cloud Phone. In this concept, the user has to buy a card from the local service providers and log in to their accounts with the user id and password from any mobile phone where they can make and receive calls, sms, mms, and any other service provides by the service providers. This concept involved two parties, the mobile phone user and the lender. The lender will get the credits for the usage.

Since the user can not log in all the times, the user can not receive the calls all the time. They can inform the log in time in advance to the other parties for receiving the calls. And the user can share their user id and password to their friends or relatives so that they can check the users accounts when ever they have access to some mobile phones.

This concept may not be interesting for the developed or developing countries where normally peoples has more than one hand set. But Movirtu is claiming that their concept will help the users to track all of their calls and messages in one place.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Global USSD

USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) service is one of the easiest value added service in the GSM world which provides a fast and real time transmission of data when compared to SMS.

Global USSD is a new technology based on traditional USSD messaging for delivering the messages to different operators across the world. This platform also provides a mechanism for creating the mobile services and deploying without integrating to any operators infrastructure.

Global USSD platform serve as an interface between the network operators and the service providers. The Service Delivery Platform will allows to create and deploy new USSD service.