Home PCRF Bypassing Visited PCRF for Policy Control

Resolve Bottlenecks,
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions

Solution Overview

Problem

Current 3GPP policy control architectures face challenges in interworking between mobile and fixed broadband networks, particularly in discovering and establishing control sessions between policy control entities like V-PCRF and H-PCRF, leading to unnecessary loading of visited PCRF entities.

Innovation Solution

The solution involves the home PCRF directly contacting the BPCF, bypassing the visited PCRF, by determining the BPCF contact address using the HNB address or address realm, and initiating or requesting an S9* control session to establish policy and charging control, especially when the GTP protocol is used between the SGW and PGW.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Ease of operation

If the visited PCRF is used as an intermediary to establish control sessions between policy control entities, then the control session establishment can be facilitated, but the load on the visited PCRF entity increases unnecessarily

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecontrol session establishmentVSAvoidload on visited PCRF

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of operationVSLoss of energy

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts the visited PCRF from the control session establishment process between H-PCRF and BPCF. The home PCRF directly contacts the BPCF to establish the S9* control session, bypassing the visited PCRF entirely. This removes the unnecessary load from the visited PCRF while maintaining the ability to establish control sessions efficiently.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces a new intermediary mechanism through direct addressing. The home PCRF uses the BPCF's address realm (derived from the HNB address) to directly locate and contact the BPCF, replacing the visited PCRF as the intermediary. This new direct addressing mechanism eliminates the need for the visited PCRF to mediate the control session establishment.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Loss of energy

If the home PCRF directly contacts the BPCF by determining the BPCF contact address using the HNB address, then the load on visited PCRF is reduced, but the complexity of address determination increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveload on visited PCRFVSAvoidaddress determination

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of energyVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent applies preliminary action by pre-establishing the address realm mapping in the home PCRF. The home PCRF maintains information about the address realm of the BPCF based on the HNB address beforehand. When a control session needs to be established, the home PCRF can directly determine the BPCF contact address using this pre-stored address realm information, avoiding complex real-time lookups.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent changes the addressing parameter from requiring full BPCF address information to using the address realm derived from the HNB address. This parameter change simplifies the address determination process by transforming the problem into a domain-based addressing scheme, where the home PCRF only needs to determine the address realm rather than the complete address.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

3Adaptability or versatility

If multiple policy control entities (V-PCRF, H-PCRF, BPCF) are involved in a user session, then comprehensive policy control can be achieved, but the difficulty of discovering and establishing control sessions increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvepolicy control coverageVSAvoidentity discovery and session establishment

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSDifficulty of detecting and measuring

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments the control session establishment process into two independent parts: (1) The home PCRF determines the BPCF address realm using the HNB address, and (2) The home PCRF directly establishes the S9* control session with the BPCF using the determined address realm. This segmentation eliminates the need for the visited PCRF to be involved in the discovery and establishment process, reducing the complexity of multi-entity coordination.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent inverts the traditional approach where the visited PCRF discovers and contacts the BPCF. Instead, the home PCRF performs the discovery by determining the BPCF address realm from the HNB address and directly initiates contact with the BPCF. This inversion simplifies the discovery process by eliminating the need for the visited PCRF to participate in entity discovery and session establishment.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #13The other way round (Inversion)

Data Source

PatentEP3629673B1Policy and charging rules apparatus, method and computer program product

Publication Date: 2022.03.30 NOKIA SOLUTIONS & NETWORKS OY

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3

AI summary

The invention relates to a policy and charging rules apparatus, comprising: receiving means for receiving (204) an address of an access network entity providing a user with a packet data connection; determining means for determining a contact address of a broadband policy control entity from the address of the access network entity; and transmitting means for transmitting (207) a request to the broadband policy control entity to trigger the broadband policy control entity to establish a control session towards the policy and charging rules apparatus.