Design And Implementation Of PCC-based Telecommunication Charging Platform

With the development of mobile communication technology,commercial service offering of 3G and 4G network with higher transmission bit rate and larger capacity,and growing popularity of smart mobile devices,mobile internet is rapidly developing.The subscribers have increased demand for mobile data service,which pushes carriers to roll out more various service packages and more flexible tariffs.So the charging platform is needed urgently to provide key support for these new business requirements.Against this background,this paper developed a new telecommunication charging platform,based on PCC(Policy Control and Charging)architecture from 3GPP standard.It implements charging,rating,account balance management,spending limit reporting,and other functions.This platform has characteristics of modularization,high availability,high throughout,and low latency,and capacity of flexible customizability.The charging platform adopts layer architecture style,including: infrastructure layer which provides operation system environment,JVM environment and OSGi container;business service layer which solves related technologies and provides common services;application layer which focuses on implementation of charging business.These layers make one-way and loose coupling interaction through application program interface,service interface,and configuration.Each layer consists of several subsystems and modules.Due to OSGi technology,each module exposes interfaces and services and hides concrete implementations.The platform can provides standalone applications with different functionalities through packaging different subsystem assembly.Then this paper researches and implements three key technologies of this platform:(1)Cluster management,which maintains partition table of distributed cache,and monitors node status through heart-beat.Once certain node crashes,the platform dynamically adjusts partition table,and the load balancer redirects subsequent charging requests to backup node,without subscriber session interruption.(2)Distributed cache,which is implemented based on in-memory database and JGroups multicast technology,is used to cache subscriber profile and session,replicate data between nodes,and thus ensures high availability and good performance.(3)Workflow technology,which provides visible process editor based on Oryx technology,and capacity of dynamical compilation and deployment using Groovy script engine.It makes possible that charging process is modifiable.After that this paper designs in detail and implements charging application layer,including subscriber profile management subsystem,rating subsystem,account balance management subsystem,charging subsystem,and spending limit reporting subsystem.These subsystems interact with each other to implement charging business.Finally this paper conducts system testing,finds and fixes defects through functional testing,and tunes the platform through performance testing.So far multiple charging solutions have already gone to production all over the world.These solutions are based on the charging platform from simple to complex business requirements,adding secondary development and customization with local team's corporation.