Multi-Session Fund Reservation Aggregation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current charging systems lack optimization for distributing funds across simultaneous and parallel services, leading to inefficiencies in fund resource management and increased signaling traffic, especially when dealing with multi-session and multi-type communication scenarios.
Innovation Solution
A method for real-time charging that initiates fund reservations for multiple services and service types, minimizing predicted fund use-up time deviations, and prioritizes fund allocation based on pre-determined preferences and minimum requirements, allowing for optimized fund resource management and reduced signaling overhead by grouping feedback into a single message.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If traditional charging systems handle each service separately with individual fund reservations, then service delivery is simple to manage, but fund resource utilization is inefficient and signaling traffic increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple individual service reservations into a single aggregated fund reservation that covers multiple services and service types. This merging approach optimizes fund resource utilization by treating the collection of services as a unified charging entity, reducing the number of separate reservation operations while maintaining control over fund distribution across different service types.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal fund reservation mechanism that can handle multiple service types (circuit switched voice, SMS, MMS, GPRS, etc.) under a single reservation framework. This multi-functional approach allows the charging system to manage diverse services with unified fund allocation rules, improving resource efficiency while accommodating various service delivery requirements.
2Ease of operation
If individual fund reservations are made for each service, then service-specific control is maintained, but signaling traffic increases due to multiple separate reservation requests and feedback messages
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple service feedback operations into a single aggregated feedback message. Instead of generating separate feedback messages for each service when funds are depleted, the system consolidates the feedback into one message that covers all services under the unified reservation, significantly reducing signaling traffic while maintaining the ability to track individual service fund consumption.
3Adaptability or versatility
If funds are reserved for multiple services simultaneously without optimization, then service delivery flexibility is improved, but fund distribution becomes inefficient leading to suboptimal resource allocation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by distributing funds to different service types based on their specific characteristics and requirements. The system allocates portions of the total reserved funds to individual service types according to predetermined criteria, ensuring that each service receives appropriate fund allocation while maintaining overall optimization. This localized fund distribution approach balances flexibility with efficiency.
Data Source
AI summary
To provide optimized real-time charging for simultaneous services there is provided a method and apparatus for executing a real-time charging session in a charging system being interfaced to at least one communication network. At start of a charging session or during re-authorization of reserved funds there is executed an optimized fund reservation for multi-service and/or multi-unit type services such that it is possible to optimize the fund resources considering various services and related service types in parallel. Fund reservation is executed for multi-service and/or multi-unit type services such that deviations between time of predicted fund depletion for the at least two services and/or for the at least two service types are minimized. Therefore, the signalling traffic to and from the charging system is reduced significantly.