Development And Application Of Online Charging System Based On OCM

More and more various and abundant request on service from customers, telecom carriers are confronted with intense competition. From service privders and telecom carriers, real time service and balance control is mandatory, including real time/online charging on customer services. With appearance of the third generation technology on network, the network basis for online charing system is avaiable. In this article, OCM(Online Charging Model) is put forward to expatiate implement online control and charging based on OCM and construct complete real-time control and charging system.OCM composes four layer including NE(Network element) layer, CM(Charging Management) layer, RB(Rating and Balance) layer and SID(Shared Information Data) layer. NE layer is network equipment and network management system, which can be devided into circuit switch, packet switch switch and IN(Intelligent Network). From definition from OCM, NE can be deem as elements invoking message, data flow, files, etc. CM is consisted of network controler, with responsibility for call management or session management, update and release. The key component of it is CSCF(Call Session Control Function), including monitor, charging and maintenance function. Boundary gateway will manage communication between other network and providers. RB can support convergent rating angent and balance function, besides rating, billing managment. SID is core data centre, including customer, product, price, bill, domain and order business information, which will be shared for internal and external with exclusive entry to exchange and interact.OCM was achieved in project and current business and service and be supported by OCM. The most of all, current network and system can be reused without discarded and new business and service can be kept in function within OCM. RTBS (Real-Time Billing System) based on OCM can support real time process and stable capability to archieve business category/package group/promotion range/billing mode to meet target purpose of providers and carriers.The innovation point is to propose OCM to improve OCS of 3GPP :(1) Diameter interface protocol is employed to communicate with NE in OCM. (2) Other interfaces to support Radius, HTTP, FTP and current 2G/2.5G etc in OCM. (3) Access managment and charging control are taken over different function, the front is responsible for request parsing from NE, the later is responsible for business logic process function. (4) In order to archieve convergent charging on multiple business, prepaid and postpaid, multiple system, data centre is to exchange information with CRM, Hotbilling, SID. (5) Maintenance system can support entia managment. (6) RTBS based on OCM is implemented successfully.