CN117397219A

CN117397219A - Policy authorization and event exposure performance measurement for network exposure functions

Info

Publication number: CN117397219A
Application number: CN202280037991.3A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 姚羿志; 乔伊·周
Original assignee: Intel Corp
Current assignee: Intel Corp
Priority date: 2021-09-29
Filing date: 2022-09-28
Publication date: 2024-01-12
Also published as: WO2023055852A1; EP4409858A1

Abstract

The present disclosure describes systems, methods, and devices related to performance measurements. An apparatus may decode a service request received from a management service (MnS) consumer of a 5G system (5 GS), wherein the service request is associated with a performance measurement collection service related to a Policy Control Function (PCF) to be delivered to the consumer by a service producer. The device may detect performance measurement data received from the PCF. The device may decode a measurement tag associated with the performance measurement data from the performance measurement data based on the MnS service. The device may encode a service response based on the performance measurement data received from the PCF.

Description

Policy authorization and event exposure performance measurement for network exposure functions

Cross Reference to Related Applications

The present application claims the benefit of U.S. provisional application No. 63/250,163 filed on 29, 9, 2021, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference as if fully set forth.

Technical Field

The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods for wireless communications, and more particularly to policy authorization and event exposure performance measurement for network exposure functions.

Background

In a 5G system (5G system,5 gs), the policy control function (policy control function, PCF) is one of the control plane network functions (control plane network function, NF) of the 5G core network (5G core network,5GC).

Drawings

FIG. 1 depicts an illustrative schematic diagram of performance measurements in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 2 depicts an illustrative schematic diagram of performance measurements in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 3A-3B depict illustrative schematic diagrams of performance measurements in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4 illustrates a flowchart of an illustrative process for an illustrative performance measurement system, according to one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 5 illustrates an example network architecture in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the disclosure.

Fig. 6 schematically illustrates a wireless network in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 7 illustrates components of a computing device in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Detailed Description

The following description and the drawings sufficiently illustrate specific embodiments to enable those skilled in the art to practice them. Other embodiments may incorporate structural, logical, electrical, process, algorithm, and other changes. Portions and features of some embodiments may be included in, or substituted for, those of others. The embodiments recited in the claims encompass all available equivalents of those claims.

Example embodiments of the present disclosure relate to systems, methods, and apparatus for policy authorization and performance measurement of event exposure for network exposure functions.

In one or more embodiments, a Policy Control Function (PCF) provides the following session management related functions: 1) Policy and charging control of service data flows; 2) PDU session-related policy control; and/or 3) report PDU session events to the AF. In addition, the PCF provides policy rules for the control plane functions. This includes network slicing, roaming and mobility management.

The PCF provides authorized QoS for the service data flows and other network control regarding service data flow detection, gating, qoS, and billing (except credit management) to the session management function (session management functio, SMF). The PCF uses the service information received from the AF and/or subscription information received from the unified data repository (unified data repository, UDR) to calculate the appropriate QoS authorization (QoS class identifier, bit rate). The PCF may also consider the requested QoS received from the SMF and analysis information (e.g., analysis related to "service experience") received from the network data analysis function (network data analytics function, NWDAF). Before storing the service information, the PCF may check that the service information provided by the AF is consistent with the operator defined policies and related subscription information received from the UDR during PDU session establishment. When the service information is inconsistent with the relevant subscription information or operator defined policy, the PCF may reject the request received from the AF and indicate in the response to the AF the service information (e.g., acceptable bandwidth) that the PCF may accept. The PCF supports interaction with only a single AF for each AF session.

The above description is intended to be illustrative, and not restrictive. Many other examples, configurations, procedures, algorithms, etc. may exist, some of which are described in more detail below. Example embodiments will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Fig. 1 illustrates an architecture of a system 100 of a network of some embodiments. In accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure, a service-based interface is used within the control plane of a 5G system architecture. Unified data warehouse (UDR).

UDR in a 5G environment is considered a database of 5G specific information about subscriptions. These four different sets of parameters are provided to various 5G network functions. Subscription data is provided via a unified data management (Unified Data Management, UDM) front end to several NFs that control the activities of UEs within the network: AMF, SMF, AUSF, etc. Policy data is provided to the PCF (directly via the N36 interface) -this means that the UDR actually replaces the functionality of the earlier subscriber profile repository (Subscriber Profile Repository, SPR). Application data is put into the UDR by the external AF via a network exposure function (Network Exposure Function, NEF) in order to be provided to the 5G NF that needs and has the information about the subscriber authorized to be requested.

Because of poor performance (e.g., overload) of the data management service, the user's service may not be fulfilled, and thus, it is essential to be able to monitor the performance of the data management service. Thus, performance measures related to data creation, updating, deletion and modification notification subscriptions to the NEF are needed to monitor performance of the services and events of the NEF.

Defining different parameter groups also enables distributed UDR deployment, and different functions are defined according to parameter sets. Multiple UDRs may be deployed in a network, each UDR may house different sets or subsets of data (e.g., subscription data, subscription policy data, data for exposure, application data) and/or provide services for different groups of NFs. Such a deployment is possible: the UDR serves a single NF and stores its data so that it can be integrated with this NF.

The system 100 is shown to include a UE, a RAN node, a Data Network (DN), which may be, for example, an operator service, internet access, or a third party service; and a 5G core network (5 GC or CN).

The CN may include NSSAAF, service communication proxy (Service Communication Pro, SCP), network slice admission control Function (Network Slice Admission Control Function, nsafc), authentication server Function (Authentication Server Function, AUSF), access and mobility management Function (Access and Mobility Management Function, AMF), session management Function (Session Management Function, SMF), network exposure Function (Network Exposure Function, NEF), policy control Function (Policy Control Function, PCF), network Function (NF) repository Function (NF Repository Function, NRF), unified data management (Unified Data Management, UDM), application Function (Application Function, AF), user plane Function (User Plane Function, UPF); and a network slice selection function (Network Slice Selection Function, NSSF).

Network Slice specific and independent Non-Public Network (SNPN) authentication and authorization functions (NSSAAF) support Network Slice specific authentication and authorization functions. When the NSSAAF is deployed in the PLMN, the NSSAAF may support network slice specific authentication and authorization, while when the NSSAAF is deployed in the SNPN, the NSSAAF may support network slice specific authentication and authorization, and/or the NSSAAF may support access to the SNPN using credentials from a credential holder.

UPF may serve as an anchor point for intra-RAT and inter-RAT mobility, an external PDU session point for interconnection to DN, and a branching point to support multi-homing PDU sessions. The UPF can also perform packet routing and forwarding, perform packet inspection, user plane part of enforcing policy rules, lawful interception packets (UP collection); traffic usage reporting is performed, qoS handling (e.g., packet filtering, gating, UL/DL rate enforcement) is performed for the user plane, uplink traffic verification (e.g., SDF to QoS flow mapping), transport level packet marking in uplink and downlink, and downlink packet buffering and downlink data notification triggering is performed. The UPF may include an uplink classifier to support routing traffic flows to the data network. The DN may represent various network operator services, internet access, or third party services. The DN may include or be similar to the application servers previously discussed. The UPF may interact with the SMF via an N4 reference point between the SMF and the UPF.

The AUSF may store data for authentication of the UE and handle authentication related functions. The AUSF may facilitate a common authentication framework for various access types. The AUSF may communicate with the AMF via an N12 reference point between the AMF and the AUSF; and may communicate with the UDM via an N13 reference point between the UDM and the AUSF. Furthermore, the AUSF may present a Nausf service-based interface.

The AMF may be responsible for registration management (e.g., for registering UEs, etc.), connection management, reachability management, mobility management, lawful interception of AMF related events, and access authentication and authorization. The AMF may be an end point of the N11 reference point between the AMF and the SMF. The AMF may provide transport for session management (Session Management, SM) messages between the UE and the SMF and act as a transparent proxy for routing SM messages. The AMF may also provide for transmission of short message service (short message service, SMS) messages between the UE and an SMS function (SMSF) (not shown in fig. 1). The AMF may act as a security anchor function (Security Anchor Function, SEA), which may include interactions with the AUSF and the UE, receipt of an intermediate key established as a result of the UE authentication procedure. When USIM-based authentication is used, the AMF may retrieve security materials from the AUSF. The AMF may also include a security context management (Security Context Management, SCM) function that receives a key from the SEA, which is used by it to derive an access network specific key. Furthermore, the AMF may be AN end point of the RAN CP interface, which may include or may be AN N2 reference point between the (R) AN and the AMF; and the AMF may be a termination point for NAS (N1) signaling and perform NAS encryption and integrity protection.

The AMF may also support NAS signaling with the UE through an N3 interworking-function (IWF) interface. The N3IWF may be used to provide access to non-trusted entities. The N3IWF may be the termination point of the N2 interface between the (R) AN and the AMF for the control plane and the termination point of the N3 reference point between the (R) AN and the UPF for the user plane. Thus, the AMF may handle N2 signaling from the SMF and AMF for PDU sessions and QoS, encapsulate/decapsulate packets for IPSec and N3 tunneling, label the N3 user plane packets in the uplink, and enforce QoS corresponding to the N3 packet label, taking into account the QoS requirements associated with such labels received over N2. The N3IWF may also relay uplink and downlink control plane NAS signaling between the UE and the AMF via the N1 reference point between the UE and the AMF, and relay uplink and downlink user plane packets between the UE and the UPF. The N3IWF also provides a mechanism for IPsec tunnel establishment with the UE. The AMF may present a Namf service-based interface and may be an N14 reference point between two AMFs and an end point of an N17 reference point between the AMF and a 5G device identity registrar (5G-Equipment Identity Register, 5G-EIR) (not shown in fig. 1).

The SMF may be responsible for session management (e.g., session establishment, modification, and release, including tunnel maintenance between the UPF and AN node); UE IP address assignment and management (including optional authorization); selection and control of the UP function; configuring traffic manipulation at the UPF to route traffic to an appropriate destination; termination of the interface towards the policy control function; policy enforcement and QoS control; lawful interception (for SM events and interfaces to LI systems); terminating the SM portion of the NAS message; downlink data notification; initiation of AN-specific SM information sent to the (R) AN via AMF through N2; and determining the SSC mode of the session. The SMF may include the following roaming functions: handling local enforcement to apply QoS SLAB (VPLMN); a billing data collection and billing interface (VPLMN); lawful interception (in VPLMN for SM events and interfaces to LI systems); support for interactions with external DNs is used to transport signaling for PDU session authorization/authentication by external DNs. An N16 reference point between two SMFs may be included in the system, which in a roaming scenario may be between another SMF in the visited network and an SMF in the home network. In addition, the SMF may expose an Nsmf service-based interface.

The NEF may provide a means for third parties to securely expose services and capabilities provided by 3GPP network functions, internal exposure/re-exposure, application functions (e.g., AF), edge computing or fog computing systems, and so forth. In such embodiments, the NEF may authenticate, authorize, and/or throttle the AF. The NEF may also translate information exchanged with the AF and information exchanged with internal network functions. For example, the NEF may translate between an AF service identifier and internal 5GC information. The NEF may also receive information from other Network Functions (NFs) based on the exposed capabilities of the other network functions. This information may be stored as structured data at the NEF or at the data store NF using a standardized interface. The stored information may then be re-exposed by the NEF to other NFs and AFs, and/or for other uses, such as parsing. Furthermore, the NEF may present an Nnef service-based interface.

The NRF may support a service discovery function, receive an NF discovery request from an NF instance, and provide information of the NF instance discovered to the NF instance. The NRF also maintains information about available NF instances and the services that it supports. As used herein, the term "instantiation" and the like may refer to the creation of an instance, and "instance" may refer to a specific occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code. Furthermore, the NRF may exhibit an Nnrf service-based interface.

The PCF may provide policy rules to the control plane function(s) to enforce them and may also support a unified policy framework to constrain network behavior. The PCF may also implement a Front End (FE) to access subscription information related to policy decisions in the UDR of the UDM. The PCF may communicate with the AMF via an N15 reference point between the PCF and the AMF, which in the case of a roaming scenario may be included between the PCF and the AMF in the visited network. The PCF may communicate with the AF via an N5 reference point between the PCF and the AF; and communicates with the SMF via an N7 reference point between the PCF and the SMF. The system 100 and/or CN may also include an N24 reference point between the PCF (in the home network) and the PCF in the visited network. Further, the PCF may expose an Npcf service-based interface.

The UDM may handle subscription related information to support handling of communication sessions by network entities, and may store subscription data for UEs. For example, subscription data may be communicated between the UDM and the AMF via an N8 reference point between the UDM and the AMF. The UDM may comprise two parts, namely an application FE and a User Data Repository (UDR). The UDR may store subscription data and policy data for the UDM and PCF, and/or store structured data and application data for the NEF for exposure, including packet flow descriptions (Packet Flow Description, PFD) for application detection, application request information for multiple UEs. The Nudr service-based interface may be exposed by the UDR to allow the UDM, PCF, and NEF to access a particular set of stored data, as well as to read, update (e.g., add, modify), delete, and subscribe to notifications of related data changes in the UDR. The UDM may include a UDM FE that is responsible for the handling of credentials, location management, subscription management, and so forth. Several different front ends may serve the same user in different transactions. The UDM-FE accessing subscription information stored in the UDR and performing authentication credential processing; user identifier handling; access authorization; registration/mobility management; subscription management. UDR may interact with SMF via an N10 reference point between UDM and SMF. The UDM may also support SMS management, where the SMS-FE implements similar application logic as previously discussed. Furthermore, UDM may present an Nndm service-based interface.

The AF may provide application impact on traffic routing, provide access to network capability exposure (Network Capability Exposure, NCE), and interact with policy frameworks for policy control. The NCE may be a mechanism that allows the 5GC and AF to provide information to each other via the NEF, which information may be used in an edge computing implementation. In such an implementation, an attachment access point near the UE may host network operators and third party services to enable efficient service delivery with reduced end-to-end latency and load on the transport network. For edge computing implementations, the 5GC may select a UPF near the UE and perform traffic steering from UPF to DN via the N6 interface. This may be based on UE subscription data, UE location, and information provided by the AF. Thus, AF may affect UPF (re) selection and traffic routing. Based on the carrier deployment, the network operator may allow the AF to interact directly with the associated NF when the AF is considered a trusted entity. Furthermore, the AF may present a Naf service-based interface.

NSSF may select a set of network slice instances to serve the UE. The NSSF may also determine, if needed, the allowed network slice selection assistance information (Network Slice Selection Assistance Information, nsai) and the mapping to subscribed individual nsais (S-nsais). The NSSF may also determine the set of AMFs, or list of candidate AMFs, to be used to serve the UE based on the appropriate configuration and possibly by querying the NRF. Selecting a set of network slice instances for a UE may be triggered by the AMF with which the UE registers by interacting with the NSSF, which may result in a change in AMF. NSSF may interact with AMF via an N22 reference point between AMF and NSSF; and may communicate with another NSSF in the visited network via an N31 reference point (not shown in fig. 7). Furthermore, NSSF may present an Nnssf service-based interface.

As previously described, the CN may include an SMSF that may be responsible for SMS subscription checking and authentication, as well as relaying SM messages to/from other entities such as SMS-GMSC/IWMSC/SMS router. SMS may also interact with AMF and UDM to conduct notification procedures about the UE being available for SMS delivery (e.g., set a UE unreachable flag and notify UDM when UE is available for SMS).

The CN may also include other elements not shown in fig. 1, such as data storage system/architecture, 5G device identity registrar (5G-EIR), security edge protection proxy (Security Edge Protection Pro, SEPP), etc. The data storage system may include structured data storage network functions (Structured Data Storage network function, SDSF), unstructured data storage network functions (Unstructured Data Storage network function, UDSF), and so forth. Any NF may store and retrieve unstructured data (e.g., UE context) into and from the UDSF via an N18 reference point between any NF and the UDSF (not shown in fig. 1). Individual NFs may share UDSF to store their respective unstructured data, or individual NFs may each have their own UDSF located at or near the individual NF. Furthermore, UDSF may exhibit a Nudsf service-based interface. The 5G-EIR may be an NF that checks the status of the permanent device identifier (Permanent Equipment Identifier, PEI) to determine if a particular device/entity is blacklisted in the network; and SEPP may be a non-transparent proxy that performs topology hiding, message filtering, and policy policing on the inter-PLMN control plane interface.

In addition, there may be many reference points and/or service-based interfaces between NF services in the NF; however, these interfaces and reference points have been omitted from fig. 1 for clarity. In one example, the CN may include an Nx interface, which is an inter-CN interface between the MME and the AMF, to enable interworking between the CN and other CNs. Other example interfaces/reference points may include an N5G-EIR service-based interface exhibited by a 5G-EIR, an N27 reference point between an NRF in the visited network and an NRF in the home network, and an N31 reference point between an NSSF in the visited network and an NSSF in the home network.

In another example, the system 100 may include a plurality of RAN nodes, wherein an Xn interface is defined between two or more RAN nodes (e.g., gnbs, etc.) connected to the 5GC, between a RAN node (e.g., gNB) connected to the 5GC and an eNB (e.g., RAN node), and/or between two enbs connected to the 5 GC. In some implementations, the Xn interface may include an Xn user plane (Xn-U) interface and an Xn control plane (Xn-C) interface. Xn-U may provide for the non-guaranteed delivery of user plane PDUs and support/provide data forwarding and flow control functions. An Xn-C may provide management and error handling functions, functions to manage the Xn-C interface; mobility support for UEs in CONNECTED mode (e.g., CM-CONNECTED) includes functionality to manage CONNECTED mode UE mobility between one or more RAN nodes. Mobility support may include context transfer from an old (source) serving RAN node to a new (target) serving RAN node, and control of user plane tunnels between the old (source) serving RAN node to the new (target) serving RAN node. The protocol stack of an Xn-U may include a transport network layer built on top of an internet protocol (Internet Protocol, IP) transport layer, and a GTP-U layer above the UDP and/or IP layer(s) to carry user plane PDUs. The Xn-C protocol stack may include an application layer signaling protocol, referred to as the Xn application protocol (Xn Application Protocol, xn-AP), and a transport network layer built on top of the SCTP layer. The SCTP layer may be above the IP layer. The SCTP layer provides guaranteed delivery of application layer messages. In the transport IP layer, point-to-point transport is used to deliver signaling PDUs. In other implementations, the Xn-U protocol stack and/or the Xn-C protocol stack may be the same as or similar to the user plane(s) and/or control plane protocol stack(s) shown and described herein.

In one or more embodiments, all of the depicted network functions may interact with UDSF, UDR, NEF and NRF as desired. The UDM uses subscription data and authentication data, and the PCF uses policy data that may be stored in the UDR.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system can generate measurements related to data creation, update, deletion, and modification notification subscriptions to UDRs. Measurements related to data creation, update, deletion and modification notification subscription for UDR are basic data reflecting the performance of the data management service in 5 GS.

It is to be understood that the above description is intended to be illustrative, and not restrictive.

The 5G core network is based on a service-based architecture (SBA) that centers on Network Function (NF) services. Each NF can register itself and its supported services with a network repository function (Network Repository Function, NRF) that other NFs use to discover NF instances and their services.

In some embodiments, to ensure that the 5GS has the proper access and mobility (access and mobility, AM) and session management (session management, SM) policies to support external applications, the AF may need to query, create, or change the AM and SM policies of the UEs in the 5 GS. The PCF may authorize the AF to query, create or change AM and SM policies directly or indirectly via the NEF. Authorizing the performance of AM and SM policy management to AF may directly impact the user's experience when using the subject application, thus requiring monitoring of policy authorization.

NF (e.g., NEF or NWDAF) may need to subscribe to PCF events for any UE of a group of UEs or a combination of accesses (DNN, S-NSSAI) and obtain relevant notifications. TS23.503, v.17.2.0, 6.1.3.18 describes events that NF consumers can subscribe to from PCFs. NF consumers can use events exposed by the PCF to control the UE, thus requiring monitoring of the performance of event exposure. Embodiments of the present disclosure address these matters, and others. Some embodiments are directed to generating measurements related to policy authorization and event exposure for PCFs.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate a 5G performance measurement generation mechanism. For example, performance measurements are generated for PCFs. The service producer 202 collects raw performance measurements from NFs (e.g., NFs 204 and 206) and then generates performance measurements for NFs for its consumers (e.g., service consumer 208). One example of such a consumer may be a management service consumer. The basic building blocks of a service-based management architecture are management services. A management service is a set of provided functions for the management and orchestration of networks and services. The entity producing the management service is called the management service producer. The entity that consumes the management service is referred to as the management service consumer. Any entity can consume the management service provided by the management service producer with proper authorization and authentication. The management service producer provides its services via a standardized service interface consisting of individually specified management service components.

In one or more embodiments, the NF is a PCF and the service producer may be implemented within the NF or in a separate management system.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate AM policy authorization related measurements. This measurement can be used for the creation of AM policy authorizations. The performance measurement system may facilitate the measurement of the number of AM policy authority creation requests. This measurement provides the number of AM policy authorization creation requests received by the PCF. The PCF receives an npcf_ampoliciyauthentication_create request from an NF consumer (e.g., AF) triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of an accumulation counter (cumulative counter, CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is an integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.ambeatereq. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection. This measurement is important because it provides a window into which to enter the success rate measurement for evaluating the performance of the PCF. This makes the number of requests received by the PCF clearer.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate the measurement of the number of successful AM policy authorization creations. This measurement provides the number of successful AM policy authorization creations at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_ampoliciyauthorization_create response to the NF consumer indicating a successful AM policy authorization creation, which triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is an integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.ambeatesicc. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate the measurement of the number of failed AM policy authorization creations. This measurement provides the number of failed AM policy authority creations at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_ampolichization_create response to the NF consumer indicating the failed AM policy authorization creation, each message triggers the PCF to increment the associated sub-counter for each failure reason by 1. Each sub-counter is an integer value. Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The counter may be calculated during a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is pau.amyeatefail.cause, where cause indicates the failure cause for AM policy authorization creation. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of AM policy authorization update requests. This measurement provides the number of AM policy authorization update requests received by the PCF. The PCF receives an npcf_ampoliciyauthentication_update request from an NF consumer (e.g., AF) and triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag for this PCF measurement is pau.amopdatereq. This is a network resource model labeled NEFFUNection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of successful AM policy authorization updates. This measurement provides the number of successful AM policy authorization updates at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_amppolicy authorization_update response by the PFC to the NF consumer indicating a successful AM policy authorization Update, which triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is pau.amopdateucc. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of failed AM policy authorization updates. This measurement provides the number of failed AM policy authorization updates at the PCF. An npcf_ampolichiAuthorization_update response indicating a failed AM policy authorization Update is sent by the PCF to the NF consumer, and each message triggers the PCF to increment the associated sub-counter for each failure cause by 1. Each sub-counter is an integer value. Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The counter may be calculated during a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label of this PCF measurement is pau.amopdatefail.cause, where cause indicates the failure cause for AM policy authorization creation. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of AM policy grant delete requests. This measurement provides the number of AM policy grant delete requests received by the PCF. The PCF receives an npcf_ampoliciyauthorization_delete request from the NF consumer, triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates the value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.ambelereq. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate the measurement of the number of successful AM policy authorization deletions. This measurement provides the number of successful AM policy authorization deletions at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_amppolicy authorization_delete response by the PFC to the NF consumer indicating a successful AM policy authorization deletion, which triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.ambeletsucc. This is a network resource model labeled NEFFUNection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate the measurement of the number of failed AM policy authorization deletions. This measurement provides the number of failed AM policy authority creations at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_ampolichization_create response to the NF consumer indicating the failed AM policy authorization creation, each message triggers the PCF to increment the associated sub-counter for each failure reason by 1. Each sub-counter is an integer value. Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The counter may be calculated during a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is pau.ambelefail.cause, where cause indicates the failure reason for the AM policy authorization to delete. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate SM policy authorization related measurements. This measurement can be used for the creation of SM policy authorizations. The performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of SM policy authorization creation requests. This measurement provides the number of SM policy authorization creation requests received by the PCF. The PCF receives an npcf_policy authorization_create request from an NF consumer (e.g., AF) and triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of an accumulation counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is an integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.smcreatereq. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection. This measurement is important because it provides a window into which to enter the success rate measurement for evaluating the performance of the PCF. This makes the number of requests received by the PCF clearer.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of successful SM policy authorization creations. This measurement provides the number of successful AM policy authorization creations at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_policy authorization_create response to the NF consumer indicating a successful SM policy authorization creation, which triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is an integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.smcreatesucc. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of failed SM policy authorization creations. This measurement provides the number of failed SM policy authorization creations at the PCF. The PCF sends to the NF consumer an npcf_npcf_policy authorization_create response indicating the failed SM policy authorization creation, each message triggering the PCF to increment the associated sub-counter for each failure reason by 1. Each sub-counter is an integer value. Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The counter may be calculated during a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is pau.smcreatefail.cause, where cause indicates the failure cause for SM policy authorization creation. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of SM policy authorization update requests. This measurement provides the number of AM policy authorization update requests received by the PCF. The PCF receives an npcf_policy authorization_update request from an NF consumer (e.g., AF) and triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of a Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.smupdatereq. This is a network resource model labeled NEFFUNection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of successful SM policy authorization updates. This measurement provides the number of successful SM policy authorization updates at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_policy authorization_update response by the PFC to the NF consumer indicating a successful SM policy authorization Update, which triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is pau.smupdatesucc. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of failed SM policy authorization updates. This measurement provides the number of failed SM policy authorization updates at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_policy authorization_update response to the NF consumer indicating a failed SM policy authorization Update, each message triggers the PCF to increment the associated sub-counter for each failure reason by 1. Each sub-counter is an integer value. Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The counter may be calculated during a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label of this PCF measurement is pau.smupdatefail.cause, where cause indicates the failure reason for SM policy authorization update. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of SM policy authorization deletion requests. This measurement provides the number of SM policy authorization delete requests received by the PCF. The PCF receives an npcf_policy authorization_delete request from an NF consumer (e.g., AF) triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of a Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.smdeletreq. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate the measurement of the number of successful AM policy authorization deletions. This measurement provides the number of successful AM policy authorization deletions at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_policy authorization_delete response by the PFC to the NF consumer indicating a successful SM policy authorization Delete, which triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The tag measured by this PCF is pau.smdeleteucc. This is a network resource model labeled NEFFUNection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of failed SM policy authorization deletions. This measurement provides the number of failed SM policy authorization deletions at the PCF. The PCF sends an npcf_policy authorization_delete response to the NF consumer indicating that the failed SM policy authorization was deleted, and each message triggers the PCF to increment the associated sub-counter for each failure reason by 1. Each sub-counter is an integer value. Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The counter may be calculated during a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is pau.ambelefail.cause, where cause indicates the failure reason for SM policy authorization deletion. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate event exposure related measurements. The measurement may be used for event exposure subscription. The performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of event exposure subscription requests. This measurement provides the number of event exposure subscription requests received by the PCF. The PCF receives an npcf_eventExponsure_subscore request from an NF consumer (e.g., NEF) and triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is an integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is eex. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection. This measurement is important because it provides a window into which to enter the success rate measurement for evaluating the performance of the PCF. This makes the number of requests received by the PCF clearer.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of successful event exposure subscriptions. This measurement provides the number of successful event exposure subscriptions at the PCF. Sending an npcf_eventExponsure_subscore response by the PCF to the NF consumer (e.g., NEF) indicating a successful event exposure subscription triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is an integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is eex. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of failed event exposure subscriptions. This measurement provides the number of failed event exposure subscriptions at the PCF. An npcf_eventExponsure_subscore response indicating the failed event exposure subscription is sent by the PCF to the NF consumer (e.g., NEF), and each message triggers the PCF to increment the associated sub-counter for each failure cause by 1. Each sub-counter is an integer value. Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The counter may be calculated during a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is eex. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of event exposure unsubscribe requests. This measurement provides the number of event exposure unsubscribe requests received by the PCF. The PCF receives an npcf_eventExposure_un ubscribe request from an NF consumer (e.g., NEF) and triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is eex. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of unsubscribes to successful event exposure. This measurement provides the number of successful event exposure unsubscribes at the PCF. Sending a npcf_eventExposure_un-ubscript response by the PCF to the NF consumer (e.g., NEF) indicating that the successful event exposure unsubscribes triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is eex. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of unsubscribes to failed event exposures. This measurement provides the number of failed event exposure unsubscribes at the PCF. An npcf_eventExposure_un-ubscribe response is sent by the PCF to the NF consumer (e.g., NEF) indicating that the failure event exposure unsubscribes, each message triggering the PCF to increment the associated sub-counter for each failure cause by 1. Each sub-counter is an integer value. Whenever the PCF sends this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The counter may be calculated during a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label of this PCF measurement is eex. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In one or more embodiments, the performance measurement system may facilitate measurement of the number of event exposure notifications. This measurement provides the number of event exposure notifications sent by the PCF. Sending an npcf_eventExponsure_notify message by the PCF to the NF consumer (e.g., NEF) triggers the PCF to generate a measurement that generates a value of the Cumulative Counter (CC). Whenever the PCF receives this message, it will trigger the PCF to take measurements. The value of CC is a single integer value. There may be one collection period during which CC is calculated. The collection period may be a predetermined time, such as five minutes or any other time. The PCF will provide a counter value for each collection period. The initial CC value will be reset to zero during each correction period. This means that the PCF will report only events within the collection period and not previous events. The label measured by this PCF is eex. This is a network resource model labeled pcffsection.

In some embodiments, the electronic device(s), network(s), system(s), chip(s) or component(s) or portions or implementations thereof of fig. 5-7 or some other figure herein may be configured to perform one or more processes, techniques or methods as described herein, or portions thereof. One such process is depicted in fig. 4.

For example, the process may include, at 402, decoding a service request received from a management service (MnS) consumer of a 5G system (5 GS), wherein the service request is associated with a performance measurement collection service related to a Policy Control Function (PCF) to be delivered to the consumer by a service producer.

The process also includes, at 404, detecting performance measurement data received from the PCF.

The process also includes, at 406, decoding f from the performance measurement data a measurement tag associated with the performance measurement data based on the MnS service.

The process also includes, at 408, encoding a service response based on the performance measurement data received from the PCF.

In one or more embodiments, decoding the service request will trigger the PCF to initiate the generation and delivery of performance measurement data. In one or more embodiments, the service generator is in a separate management system external to the PCF or internal to the PCF. In one or more embodiments, generating the first performance measurement data includes initiating an accumulation counter for the measurements during the collection period. In one or more embodiments, the performance measure is a number of event exposure subscription requests, a number of successful event exposure subscriptions, a number of failed event exposure subscriptions, a number of event exposure unsubscribe requests, a number of successful event exposure unsubscribes, a number of failed event exposure unsubscribes, or a number of event exposure notifications. In one or more embodiments, the performance measure is based on the number of Access and Mobility (AM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions. In one or more embodiments, the AM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is individually accumulated using an accumulation counter (CC) based on the PCF's receipt or transmission of predefined messages, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_ampoulicy authorization_create request message, an npcf_ampoulicy authorization_create response message, an npcf_ampiiicy authorization_update response message, an npcf_ampicy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_ampicy authorization_delete response message. In one or more embodiments, the performance measure is based on the number of Session Management (SM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions. In one or more embodiments, SM policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions are individually accumulated using an accumulation counter (CC) based on the PCF's receipt or transmission of predefined messages, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_policy authorization_create request message, an npcf_policy authorization_create response message, an npcf_policy authorization_update request message, an npcf_policy authorization_update response message, an npcf_policy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_policy authorization_delete response message. In one or more embodiments, the initial value of the accumulation counter is set to zero at the beginning of each collection period. For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components recited in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, procedures, and/or methods recited in the following example section. For example, the baseband circuitry described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples set forth below. As another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc., described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures, can be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples recited below in the examples section.

Fig. 5-7 illustrate various systems, devices, and components that may implement aspects of the disclosed embodiments.

Fig. 5 illustrates an example network architecture 500 in accordance with various embodiments. The network 500 may operate in a manner consistent with the 3GPP technical specifications of LTE or 5G/NR systems. However, the example embodiments are not limited thereto, and the described embodiments may be applied to other networks that benefit from the principles described herein, such as future 3GPP systems, and the like.

Network 500 includes a UE 502, which is any mobile or non-mobile computing device designed to communicate with RAN 504 via an over-the-air connection. The UE 502 is communicatively coupled with the RAN 504 through a Uu interface, which may be applicable to both LTE and NR systems. Examples of UEs 502 include, but are not limited to, smart phones, tablet computers, wearable computers, desktop computers, laptop computers, in-vehicle infotainment systems, in-vehicle entertainment systems, dashboards, head-up display (HUD) devices, in-vehicle diagnostic devices, dashboard mobile devices, mobile data terminals, electronic engine management systems, electronic/engine control units, electronic/engine control modules, embedded systems, sensors, microcontrollers, control modules, engine management systems, networking appliances, machine-to-machine (M2M), device-to-device (D2D), machine-to-type communication, MTC) devices, internet of things (Internet of Things, ioT) devices, and so forth. The network 500 may include a plurality of UEs 502 directly coupled to each other via a D2D, proSe, PC5 and/or Sidelink (SL) interface. These UEs 502 may be M2M/D2D/MTC/IoT devices and/or in-vehicle systems that communicate using physical side link channels, such as, but not limited to PSBCH, PSDCH, PSSCH, PSCCH, PSFCH, etc. UE 502 may perform blind decoding attempts for the SL channel/link in accordance with various embodiments herein.

In some embodiments, the UE502 may also communicate with the AP 506 via an over-the-air (OTA) connection. The AP 506 manages WLAN connections that may be used to load transfer some/all network traffic from the RAN 504. The connection between the UE502 and the AP 506 may conform to any IEEE 802.11 protocol. Further, the UE502, RAN504, and AP 506 may utilize cellular-WLAN aggregation/integration (e.g., LWA/LWIP). cellular-WLAN aggregation may involve the UE502 being configured by the RAN504 to utilize both cellular radio resources and WLAN resources.

The RAN504 includes one or more access network nodes (access network node, AN) 508. The AN 508 terminates the air interface(s) for the UE502 by providing AN access plane protocol that includes RRC, PDCP, RLC, MAC and PHY/L1 protocols. In this way, the AN 508 enables data/voice connectivity between the CN 520 and the UE 502. The AN 508 may be a macrocell base station or a low power base station for providing a femtocell, picocell, or other similar cell with a smaller coverage area, smaller user capacity, or higher bandwidth than a macrocell; or some combination of these. In these implementations, the AN 508 is referred to as a BS, gNB, RAN node, eNB, ng-eNB, nodeB, RSU, TRxP, or the like.

One example implementation is a "CU/DU splitting" architecture, wherein AN 508 is embodied as a gNB-Central Unit (CU) communicatively coupled with one or more gNB-Distributed Units (DUs), wherein each DU may be communicatively coupled with one or more Radio Units (RUs) (also known as RRHs, RRUs, etc.) (see, e.g., 3GPP TS 38.401v16.1.0 (2020-03)). In some implementations, one or more RUs may be individual RSUs. In some implementations, instead of or in addition to the gNB-CU and gNB-DU, the CU/DU split may include one ng-eNB-CU and one or more ng-eNB-DUs, respectively. AN 508 employed as a CU may be implemented in a separate device or as part of one or more software entities running on a server computer, for example, as a virtual network including a virtual baseband Unit (BBU) or pool of BBUs, cloud RAN (CRAN), radio equipment controller (Radio Equipment Controller, REC), radio cloud center (Radio Cloud Center, RCC), centralized RAN (C-RAN), virtualized RAN (vRAN), etc. (although these terms may refer to different implementation concepts). Any other type of architecture, arrangement, and/or configuration may also be used.

Multiple ANs may be coupled to each other via AN X2 interface (if the RAN 504 is AN LTE RAN or AN evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network, E-UTRAN) 510) or AN Xn interface (if the RAN 504 is a NG-RAN 514). The X2/Xn interface (which may be separated into control/user plane interfaces in some embodiments) may allow the AN to communicate information related to handover, data/context transfer, mobility, load management, interference coordination, etc.

The ANs of the RAN 504 may each manage one or more cells, cell groups, component carriers, etc. to provide the air interface for network access to the UE 502. The UE 502 may be simultaneously connected with multiple cells provided by the same or different ANs 508 of the RAN 504. For example, the UE 502 and the RAN 504 may use carrier aggregation to allow the UE 502 to connect with multiple component carriers, each component carrier corresponding to one Pcell or Scell. In a dual connectivity scenario, the first AN508 may be a primary node providing AN MCG and the second AN508 may be a secondary node providing AN SCG. The first/second AN508 may be any combination of eNB, gNB, ng-enbs, etc.

RAN 504 may provide the air interface over licensed spectrum or unlicensed spectrum. To operate in unlicensed spectrum, a node may use LAA, eLAA and/or feLAA mechanisms based on CA technology with PCell/Scell. Prior to accessing the unlicensed spectrum, the node may perform medium/carrier sense operations based on, for example, listen-before-talk (LBT) protocols.

In a V2X scenario, the UE 502 or AN 508 may be or act as a roadside unit (RSU), which may refer to any traffic infrastructure entity for V2X communications. The RSU may be implemented in or by a suitable AN or a fixed (or relatively fixed) UE. An RSU implemented in or by a UE may be referred to as a "UE-type RSU"; an RSU implemented in or by an eNB may be referred to as an "eNB-type RSU"; an RSU implemented in or by a gNB may be referred to as a "gNB-type RSU"; etc. In one example, the RSU is a computing device coupled with a roadside-located radio frequency circuit that provides connectivity support to passing vehicle UEs. The RSU may also include internal data storage circuitry to store intersection map geometry, traffic flow statistics, media, and applications/software to sense and control ongoing vehicle and pedestrian traffic flow. The RSU may provide extremely low latency communications required for high speed events such as collision avoidance, traffic alerting, and the like. Additionally or alternatively, the RSU may provide other cellular/WLAN communication services. The components of the RSU may be enclosed in a weather-proof enclosure suitable for outdoor installation, and may include a network interface controller to provide a wired connection (e.g., ethernet) to a traffic signal controller or backhaul network.

In some embodiments, the RAN 504 may be an E-UTRAN 510 with one or more enbs 512. The E-UTRAN 510 may provide an LTE air interface (Uu) with the following characteristics: SCS of 15 kHz; a CP-OFDM waveform for DL and an SC-FDMA waveform for UL; turbo coding for data and TBCCs for control; etc. The LTE air interface may rely on CSI-RS for CSI acquisition and beam management; PDSCH/PDCCH demodulation by means of PDSCH/PDCCH DMRS; and rely on CRS for cell search and initial acquisition, channel quality measurements, and channel estimation for coherent demodulation/detection at the UE. The LTE air interface may operate in the frequency band below 6 GHz.

In some embodiments, the RAN 504 may be a Next Generation (NG) -RAN 514 with one or more gnbs 516 and/or one or more NG-enbs 518. The gNB 516 connects with the 5G enabled UE 502 using a 5G NR interface. The gNB 516 is connected to the 5GC 540 via a NG interface, which includes an N2 interface or an N3 interface. The NG-eNB 518 is also connected to the 5gc 540 over the NG interface, but may be connected to the UE 502 via the Uu interface. The gNB 516 and the ng-eNB 518 may be connected to each other through an Xn interface.

In some embodiments, the NG interface may be split into two parts, one being a NG user plane (NG-U) interface that carries traffic data between the node of NG-RAN 514 and UPF 548 (e.g., an N3 interface), and the other being a NG control plane (NG-C) interface that is a signaling interface between the node of NG-RAN 514 and AMF 544 (e.g., an N2 interface).

The NG-RAN 514 may provide a 5G-NR air interface (also referred to as Uu interface) with the following characteristics: a variable SCS; CP-OFDM for DL, CP-OFDM for UL and DFT-s-OFDM; polar codes for control, repetition codes, simplex codes, and Reed-Muller codes, and LDPC codes for data. The 5G-NR air interface may rely on CSI-RS, PDSCH/PDCCH DMRS, similar to the LTE air interface. The 5G-NR air interface may not use CRS but may use PBCH DMRS for PBCH demodulation; PTRS is used for phase tracking of PDSCH; and the tracking reference signal is used for time tracking. The 5G-NR air interface may operate on an FR1 band including a band below 6GHz or an FR2 band including a band from 24.25GHz to 52.6 GHz. The 5G-NR air interface may comprise an SSB, which is a region of the downlink resource grid comprising PSS/SSS/PBCH.

The 5G-NR air interface may utilize BWP for various purposes. For example, BWP may be used for dynamic adaptation of SCS. For example, the UE 502 may be configured with multiple BWP, where each BWP configuration has a different SCS. When a BWP change is indicated to the UE 502, the SCS of the transmission is also changed. Another example of use of BWP relates to power saving. In particular, the UE 502 may be configured with multiple BWPs having different amounts of frequency resources (e.g., PRBs) to support data transmission in different traffic load scenarios. BWP containing a smaller number of PRBs may be used for data transmission with small traffic load while allowing power saving at the UE 502 and in some cases at the gNB 516. BWP comprising a larger number of PRBs may be used for scenarios with higher traffic load.

RAN 504 is communicatively coupled with a CN 520 that includes network elements and/or Network Functions (NFs) to provide various functions to support data and telecommunications services to clients/subscribers (e.g., UE 502). The components of CN 520 may be implemented in one physical node or in a separate physical node. In some embodiments, NFV may be utilized to virtualize any or all of the functionality provided by the network elements of CN 520 onto physical computing/storage resources in servers, switches, and the like. The logical instantiation of the CN 520 may be referred to as a network slice, and the logical instantiation of a portion of the CN 520 may be referred to as a network sub-slice.

CN 520 may be an LTE CN 522 (also referred to as evolved packet core (Evolved Packet Core, EPC) 522). EPC 522 may include MME 524, SGW 526, SGSN 528, HSS 530, PGW 532, and PCRF 534, which are coupled to each other through an interface (or "reference point"), as shown. NF in EPC 522 is briefly described as follows.

The MME 524 implements mobility management functions to track the current location of the UE 502 to facilitate paging, bearer activation/deactivation, handover, gateway selection, authentication, and so forth.

SGW 526 terminates the S1 interface towards RAN 510 and routes data packets between RAN 510 and EPC 522. SGW 526 may be a local mobility anchor point for inter-RAN node handover and may also provide an anchor for inter-3 GPP mobility. Other responsibilities may include lawful interception, charging and some policy enforcement.

SGSN528 tracks the location of UE 502 and performs security functions and access control. SGSN528 also performs EPC inter-node signaling for mobility between different RAT networks; select PDN and S-GW as specified by MME 524; selecting MME 524 for handover; etc. The S3 reference point between MME 524 and SGSN528 is the 3GPP inter-access network mobility enabled user and bearer information exchange in idle/active state.

HSS 530 includes a database for network users including subscription related information to support the handling of communication sessions by network entities. HSS 530 may provide support for routing/roaming, authentication, authorization, naming/addressing resolution, location compliance, and so on. The S6a reference point between HSS 530 and MME 524 may enable the transfer of subscription and authentication data to authenticate/authorize user access to EPC 520.

PGW 532 may terminate an SGi interface towards a Data Network (DN) 536, which may include an application (app)/content server 538.PGW 532 routes data packets between EPC 522 and data network 536. PGW 532 is communicatively coupled with SGW 526 through S5 reference point to facilitate user plane tunneling and tunnel management. PGW 532 may also include nodes (e.g., PCEFs) for policy enforcement and charging data collection. Further, the SGi reference point may communicatively couple PGW 532 with the same or different data network 536. PGW 532 may be communicatively coupled with PCRF 534 via a Gx reference point.

PCRF 534 is a policy and charging control element of EPC 522. PCRF 534 is communicatively coupled with application/content server 538 to determine appropriate QoS and charging parameters for the service flow. PCRF 532 also configures the associated rules into the PCEF with the appropriate TFTs and QCIs (via Gx reference points).

CN 520 may be 5gc 540 including AUSF542, AMF544, SMF 546, UPF 548, NSSF 550, NEF 552, NRF 554, PCF 556, UDM 558, and AF 560, coupled to each other through various interfaces as shown. NF in 5gc 540 is briefly described as follows.

AUSF542 stores data for authentication of UE 502 and handles authentication related functions. AUSF542 may facilitate a common authentication framework for various access types.

AMF544 allows other functions of 5GC 540 to communicate with UE 502 and RAN 504 and subscribe to notifications about mobility events for UE 502. The AMF544 is also responsible for registration management (e.g., for registering the UE 502), connection management, reachability management, mobility management, lawful interception of AMF related events, and access authentication and authorization. The AMF544 provides transport for SM messages between the UE 502 and the SMF 546 and acts as a transparent proxy for routing SM messages. AMF544 also provides transmission for SMS messages between UE 502 and SMSF. The AMF544 interacts with the AUSF542 and the UE 502 to perform various security anchoring and context management functions. Furthermore, the AMF544 is an end point of the RAN-CP interface, which includes an N2 reference point between the RAN 504 and the AMF 544. The AMF544 is also a termination point for NAS (N1) signaling and performs NAS ciphering and integrity protection.

The AMF544 also supports NAS signaling with the UE 502 over the N3IWF interface. The N3IWF provides access to non-trusted entities. The N3IWF may be the termination point of the N2 interface between the (R) AN 504 and the AMF544 for the control plane and the termination point of the N3 reference point between the (R) AN 514 and the UPF548 for the user plane. Thus, AMF544 handles N2 signaling from SMF 546 and AMF544 for PDU sessions and QoS, encapsulates/decapsulates packets for IPSec and N3 tunneling, marks the N3 user plane packets in the uplink, and enforces QoS corresponding to the N3 packet mark, taking into account the QoS requirements associated with such mark received over N2. The N3IWF may also relay UL and DL control plane NAS signaling between the UE 502 and the AMF544 and uplink and downlink user plane packets between the UE 502 and the UPF548 via the N1 reference point between the UE 502 and the AMF 544. The N3IWF also provides a mechanism for IPsec tunnel establishment with the UE 502. AMFs 544 may present a Namf service-based interface and may be an end point of an N14 reference point between two AMFs 544 and an N17 reference point between AMFs 544 and a 5G-EIR (not shown in FIG. 5).

The SMF 546 is responsible for SM (e.g., session establishment, tunnel management between UPF548 and AN 508); UE IP address assignment and management (including optional authorization); selection and control of the UP function; configuring traffic manipulation at UPF548 to route traffic to the appropriate destination; terminating the interface facing the strategy control function; policy enforcement, charging and QoS control; lawful interception (for SM events and interfaces to LI systems); terminating the SM portion of the NAS message; downlink data notification; initiating AN specific SM information sent to AN 508 over N2 via AMF 544; and determining the SSC mode of the session. SM refers to the management of PDU sessions, while PDU session or "session" refers to a PDU connectivity service that provides or enables the exchange of PDUs between UE 502 and DN 536.

UPF 548 serves as an anchor point for intra-RAT and inter-RAT mobility, an external PDU session point for interconnection to data network 536, and a branching point to support multi-homing PDU sessions. The UPF 548 also performs packet routing and forwarding, packet inspection, user plane parts that enforce policy rules, lawful interception packets (UP collection), traffic usage reporting, qoS handling for the user plane (e.g., packet filtering, gating, UL/DL rate enforcement), uplink traffic verification (e.g., SDF to QoS flow mapping), transport level packet marking in the uplink and downlink, and downlink packet buffering and downlink data notification triggering. UPF 548 may include an uplink classifier to support routing traffic flows to the data network.

NSSF550 selects a set of network slice instances to serve UE 502. NSSF550 also determines allowed NSSAIs and mappings to subscribed S-NSSAIs, if desired. NSSF550 also determines, based on the appropriate configuration and possibly by querying NRF 554, a set of AMFs, or a list of candidate AMFs 544, to be used to serve UE 502. Selecting a set of network slice instances for the UE 502 may be triggered by the AMF 544 with which the UE 502 registers by interacting with the NSSF 550; this may result in a change in the AMF 544. NSSF550 interacts with AMF 544 via an N22 reference point; and may communicate with another NSSF in the visited network via an N31 reference point (not shown).

The NEF552 securely exposes the services and capabilities provided by the 3GPP NF to third parties, internal exposure/re-exposure, AF 560, edge computing or fog computing systems (e.g., edge computing nodes, etc.). In such embodiments, NEF552 may authenticate, authorize, or throttle AF. The NEF552 may also translate information exchanged with the AF 560 and information exchanged with internal network functions. For example, the NEF552 may translate between an AF service identifier and internal 5GC information. The NEF552 may also receive information from other NFs based on their exposed capabilities. This information may be stored as structured data at NEF552 or at data store NF using a standardized interface. The stored information may then be re-exposed by the NEF552 to other NFs and AFs, or used for other purposes, such as parsing.

The NRF554 supports a service discovery function, receives NF discovery requests from NF instances, and provides information of the discovered NF instances to the requesting NF instance. NRF554 also maintains information of available NF instances and services supported by them. The NRF554 further supports a service discovery function, wherein the NRF554 receives an NF discovery request from an NF instance or an SCP (not shown) and provides information of the discovered NF instance to the NF instance or the SCP.

PCF 556 provides policy rules to control plane functions to enforce them and may also support a unified policy framework to constrain network behavior. PCF 556 may also implement a front end to access subscription information related to policy decisions in the UDR of UDM 558. In addition to communicating with functions through reference points as shown, PCF 556 may also present an interface based on the Npcf service.

The UDM 558 handles subscription related information to support handling of communication sessions by network entities and stores subscription data for the UE 502. Subscription data may be communicated, for example, via an N8 reference point between UDM 558 and AMF 544. The UDM 558 may include two parts, an application front-end and a UDR. The UDR may store subscription data and policy data for UDM 558 and PCF 556 and/or store structured data and application data for NEF552 for exposure (including PFD for application detection, application request information for multiple UEs 502). The Nudr service-based interface may be exposed by UDR 221 to allow UDM 558, PCF 556, and NEF552 to access a particular set of stored data, as well as to read, update (e.g., add, modify), delete, and subscribe to notifications of related data changes in the UDR. The UDM may include a UDM-FE that is responsible for handling credentials, location management, subscription management, and so forth. Several different front ends may serve the same user in different transactions. The UDM-FE accesses subscription information stored in the UDR and performs authentication credential processing, user identification handling, access authorization, registration/mobility management, and subscription management. In addition to communicating with other NFs through reference points as shown, UDM 558 may also present a Nudm service-based interface.

AF 560 provides application impact on traffic routing, provides access to NEF 552, and interacts with the policy framework for policy control. AF 560 may affect UPF 548 (re) selection and traffic routing. Based on the carrier deployment, the network operator may allow the AF 560 to interact directly with the associated NF when the AF 560 is considered a trusted entity. Furthermore, AF 560 may be used in an edge computing implementation.

The 5gc 540 may enable edge computation by selecting an operator/third party service to be geographically close to the point where the UE 502 attaches to the network. This may reduce latency and load on the network. In an edge computing implementation, the 5gc 540 may select a UPF 548 near the UE 502 and perform traffic steering from the UPF 548 to the DN 536 via the N6 interface. This may be based on UE subscription data, UE location and information provided by AF 560, which allows AF 560 to influence UPF (re) selection and traffic routing.

The Data Network (DN) 536 can represent various network operator services, internet access, or third party services, which can be provided by one or more servers, including, for example, an application (app)/content server 538.DN 536 may be an operator external public network, a private PDN, or an operator internal packet data network, e.g., provisioning for IMS services. In this embodiment, application server 538 may be coupled to the IMS via an S-CSCF or an I-CSCF. In some implementations, DNs 536 may represent one or more Local Area DNs (LADNs), that is, DNs 536 (or DN names (DNNs)) that UE 502 may access in one or more particular areas. Outside these particular areas, the UE 502 cannot access the LADN/DN 536.

Additionally or alternatively, DN 536 may be an edge DN 536, i.e., a (local) data network supporting an architecture for implementing edge applications. In these embodiments, application server 538 may represent a physical hardware system/device that provides application server functionality and/or application software residing in the cloud or at an edge computing node that performs server function(s). In some embodiments, the application/content server 538 provides an edge hosting environment that provides the support required for the execution of the edge application server.

In some embodiments, the 5GS may use one or more edge computing nodes to provide an interface and load transfer for processing of wireless communication traffic. In these embodiments, the edge computing node may be included in one or more RANs 510, 514 or co-located with one or more RANs 510, 514. For example, the edge computing node may provide a connection between the RAN 514 and the UPF 548 in the 5gc 540. The edge computing node may process wireless connections with the RAN 514 and the UPF 548 using one or more NFV instances instantiated on a virtualization infrastructure within the edge computing node.

The interface of the 5gc 540 includes a reference point and a service-based interface. The reference points include: n1 (between UE 502 and AMF 544), N2 (between RAN 514 and AMF 544), N3 (between RAN 514 and UPF 548), N4 (between SMF 546 and UPF 548), N5 (between PCF 556 and AF 560), N6 (between UPF 548 and DN 536), N7 (between SMF 546 and PCF 556), N8 (between UDM 558 and AMF 544), N9 (between two UPF 548), N10 (between UDM 558 and SMF 546), N11 (between AMF 544 and SMF 546), N12 (between AUSF 542 and AMF 544), N13 (between AUSF 542 and UDM 544), N14 (between two AMF 544; not shown), N15 (between PCF 556 and AMF 544 in the case of a non-roaming scenario, or between PCF 556 and AMF 544 in the visited network in the case of a roaming scenario), N16 (between two SMF 546; not shown), and N22 (between AMF 544 and AMF 550). Other reference point representations not shown in fig. 5 may also be used. The service-based representation of fig. 5 represents NFs within the control plane that enable other authorized NFs to access their services. A service-based interface (SBI) includes: namf (SBI shown by AMF 544), nsmf (SBI shown by SMF 546), nnef (SBI shown by NEF 552), npcf (SBI shown by PCF 556), nudm (SBI shown by UDM 558), naf (SBI shown by AF 560), nnrf (SBI shown by NRF 554), nnssf (SBI shown by NSSF 550), nausf (SBI shown by AUSF 542). Other service-based interfaces not shown in fig. 5 (e.g., nudr, N5g-eir, and Nudsf) may also be used. In some embodiments, NEF 552 may provide an interface to edge computing node 536x, which may be used to handle wireless connections with RAN 514.

In some implementations, the system 500 may include an SMSF that is responsible for SMS subscription checking and authentication, and relaying SM messages to/from other entities such as SMS-GMSC/IWMSC/SMS routers to/from the UE 502. SMS may also interact with AMF 542 and UDM 558 to perform notification procedures regarding UE 502 being available for SMS delivery (e.g., setting a UE unreachable flag and notifying UDM 558 when UE 502 is available for SMS).

The 5GS may also include an SCP (or individual instances of an SCP) that supports indirect communications (see, e.g., 3gpp ts23.501 section 7.1.1); delegated discovery (see, e.g., 3gpp ts23.501 section 7.1.1); message forwarding and routing to destination NF/(one or more) NF services, communication security (e.g., authorizing NF service consumers to access NF service producer APIs) (see, e.g., 3gpp TS 33.501), load balancing, monitoring, overload control, etc.; and for the UDM(s), AUSF(s), UDR(s), PCF(s), discovery and selection functions that can access subscription data stored in the UDR based on the SUPI, sui, or GPSI of the UE (see, e.g., 3gpp ts23.501 section 6.3). The load balancing, monitoring and overload control functions provided by the SCP may be implementation dependent. The SCPs may be deployed in a distributed manner. There may be more than one SCP in the communication path between the various NF services. SCPs, while not NF instances, may also be deployed in a distributed, redundant, and scalable manner.

Fig. 6 schematically illustrates a wireless network 600 in accordance with various embodiments. The wireless network 600 may include a UE 602 in wireless communication with AN 604. The UE 602 and the AN 604 may be similar to, and substantially interchangeable with, the similarly named components described with reference to fig. 5.

The UE 602 may be communicatively coupled with the AN 604 via a connection 606. Connection 606 is illustrated as an air interface to enable communicative coupling and may conform to a cellular communication protocol, such as the LTE protocol or the 5G NR protocol operating at frequencies below mmWave or 6 GHz.

The UE 602 may include a host platform 608 coupled with a modem platform 610. Host platform 608 may include application processing circuitry 612, which may be coupled with protocol processing circuitry 614 of modem platform 610. The application processing circuitry 612 may run various applications that source/sink application data for the UE 602. The application processing circuitry 612 may further implement one or more layer operations to send and receive application data to and from the data network. These layer operations may include transport (e.g., UDP) and internet (e.g., IP) operations.

Protocol processing circuitry 614 may implement one or more layers of operations to facilitate sending or receiving data over connection 606. Layer operations implemented by the protocol processing circuit 614 may include, for example, MAC, RLC, PDCP, RRC and NAS operations.

Modem platform 610 may also include digital baseband circuitry 616, which may implement one or more layer operations in the network protocol stack that are "lower" than the layer operations performed by protocol processing circuitry 614. These operations may include, for example, PHY operations, including one or more of the following: HARQ Acknowledgement (ACK) functions, scrambling/descrambling, encoding/decoding, layer mapping/demapping, modulation symbol mapping, received symbol/bit metric determination, multi-antenna port precoding/decoding (which may include one or more of space-time, space-frequency, or space coding), reference signal generation/detection, preamble sequence generation and/or decoding, synchronization sequence generation/detection, control channel signal blind decoding, and other related functions.

Modem platform 610 may also include transmit circuitry 618, receive circuitry 620, radio frequency circuitry 622, and Radio Frequency Front End (RFFE) 624, which may include or be connected to one or more antenna panels 626. Briefly, transmit circuit 618 may include digital-to-analog converters, mixers, intermediate Frequency (IF) components, and the like; the receive circuit 620 may include digital-to-analog converters, mixers, intermediate Frequency (IF) components, and the like; the radio frequency circuitry 622 may include low noise amplifiers, power tracking components, and the like; RFFE 624 may include filters (e.g., surface/bulk acoustic wave filters), switches, antenna tuners, beam forming components (e.g., phased array antenna components), and so forth. The selection and arrangement of the components of the transmit circuit 618, receive circuit 620, radio frequency circuit 622, RFFE 624, and antenna panel 626 (commonly referred to as "transmit/receive components") may depend on the specifics of the particular implementation, e.g., whether the communication is TDM or FDM, frequencies below mmWave or 6gHz, etc. In some embodiments, the transmit/receive components may be arranged in multiple parallel transmit/receive chains, may be arranged in the same or different chips/modules, and so on.

In some embodiments, protocol processing circuit 614 may include one or more instances of control circuitry (not shown) to provide control functions for the transmit/receive components.

UE 602 reception may be established by and via antenna panel 626, RFFE 624, RF circuitry 622, receive circuitry 620, digital baseband circuitry 616, and protocol processing circuitry 614. In some embodiments, the antenna panel 626 may receive transmissions from the AN 604 via receive beamformed signals received by multiple antennas/antenna elements of one or more antenna panels 626.

UE 602 transmissions may be established by and via protocol processing circuitry 614, digital baseband circuitry 616, transmit circuitry 618, RF circuitry 622, RFFE 624, and antenna panel 626. In some embodiments, the transmit component of the UE 604 may apply a spatial filter to the data to be transmitted to form a transmit beam that is transmitted by the antenna elements of the antenna panel 626.

Similar to the UE 602, the AN 604 may include a host platform 628 coupled with a modem platform 630. Host platform 628 may include application processing circuitry 632 that is coupled with protocol processing circuitry 634 of modem platform 630. The modem platform may also include digital baseband circuitry 636, transmit circuitry 638, receive circuitry 640, RF circuitry 642, RFFE circuitry 644, and antenna panel 646. The components of the AN 604 may be similar to similarly named components of the UE 602 and are substantially interchangeable. In addition to performing data transmission/reception as described above, the components of the AN 608 may perform various logic functions including, for example, RNC functions such as radio bearer management, uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management, and data packet scheduling.

Fig. 7 illustrates components of a computing device 700 capable of reading instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and performing any one or more of the methods discussed herein, according to some example embodiments. In particular, FIG. 7 shows a diagrammatic representation of hardware resources 700, including one or more processors (or processor cores) 710, one or more memory/storage devices 720, and one or more communication resources 730, each of which may be communicatively coupled via a bus 740 or other interface circuit. For embodiments that utilize node virtualization (e.g., NFV), hypervisor (hypervisor) 702 can be executed to provide an execution environment for one or more network slices/sub-slices to utilize hardware resources 700.

Processor 710 includes, for example, a processor 712 and a processor 714. Processor 710 includes circuitry such as, but not limited to, the following: one or more processor cores, one or more of: cache memory, low drop-out (LDO) voltage regulators, interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as SPI, I2C or universal programmable serial interface circuits, real Time Clock (RTC), timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, universal I/O, memory card controllers such as secure digital/multimedia card (SD/MMC), interfaces, mobile industrial processor interface (mobile industry processor interface, MIPI) interfaces, and joint test access group (Joint Test Access Group, JTAG) test access ports. The processor 710 may be, for example, a central processing unit (central processing unit, CPU), a reduced instruction set computing (reduced instruction set computing, RISC) processor, an acorn RISC machine (Acorn RISC Machine, ARM) processor, a complex instruction set computing (complex instruction set computing, CISC) processor, a graphics processing unit (graphics processing unit, GPU), one or more digital signal processors (Digital Signal Processor, DSP) (e.g., baseband processor), an Application-specific integrated circuit (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, ASIC), a Field-programmable gate array (Field-Programmable Gate Array, FPGA), a radio frequency integrated circuit (radio-frequency integrated circuit, RFIC), one or more microprocessors or controllers, another processor (including those discussed herein), or any suitable combination of these. In some implementations, the processor circuit 710 may include one or more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices (e.g., FPGAs, complex programmable logic devices (complex programmable logic device, CPLDs), etc.), and so forth.

Memory/storage 720 may include main memory, disk storage, or any suitable combination of these. Memory/storage 720 may include, but is not limited to, any type of volatile, nonvolatile, or semi-volatile memory such as random access memory (random access memory, RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), static RAM (SRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), erasable programmable read only memory (erasable programmable read-only memory)ry, EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, solid state memory device, phase change RAM (PRAM), resistive memory (e.g., magnetoresistive random access memory (magnetoresistive random access memory, MRAM)), etc., and may include data fromAnd three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memory. Memory/storage 720 may also include persistent storage devices, which may be any type of temporary and/or persistent storage, including, but not limited to, non-volatile memory, optical, magnetic, and/or solid-state mass storage, and the like.

Communication resources 730 may include an interconnection or network interface controller, component, or other suitable device to communicate with one or more peripheral devices 704 or one or more databases 706 or other network elements via network 708. For example, communication resources 730 may include wired communication components (e.g., for coupling via USB, ethernet over GRE tunnel, ethernet over multiprotocol Label switching (Multiprotocol Label Switching, MPLS), ethernet over USB, controller area network (Controller Area Network, CAN), local Internet (Local Interconnect Network, LIN), deviceNet, controlNet, dataHighway +, PROFIBUS, PROFINET, etc.), cellular communication components, NFC communication components, etc,(or->) Assembly, & gtof>Components, and other communication components. Network connectivity to/from the computing device 700 may be provided via communication resources 730 using physical connections (which may be electrical connections (e.g., "copper cabling") or fiber optic connections). Physical connections also include suitable input connectors (e.g., ports, sockets, jacks, etc.) and output connectors (e.g., plugs, pins, etc.). Communication resources 730 may include one or more dedicated processors and/or FPGAs to communicate using one or more of the above-described network interface protocols.

The instructions 750 may include software, programs, applications, applets, apps, or other executable code for causing at least any one of the processors 710 to perform any one or more of the methods discussed herein. The instructions 750 may reside, completely or partially, within at least one of the processors 710 (e.g., within a cache memory of the processor), within the memory/storage device 720, or any suitable combination of these. Further, any portion of the instructions 750 may be transferred from any combination of the peripheral 704 or the database 706 to the hardware resource 700. Accordingly, the memory of processor 710, memory/storage 720, peripherals 704 and database 706 are examples of computer readable and machine readable media.

For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components recited in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, procedures, and/or methods recited in the following example section. For example, the baseband circuitry described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples set forth below. As another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc., described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures, can be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples recited below in the examples section.

Other examples of the presently described embodiments include the following non-limiting implementations. Each of the following non-limiting examples may exist independently or may be combined in any permutation or combination with any one or more of the other examples provided below or throughout this disclosure.

For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components recited in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, procedures, and/or methods recited in the following example section. For example, the baseband circuitry described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples set forth below. As another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc., described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures, can be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples set forth below.

The following examples relate to further embodiments.

Example 1 may include an apparatus comprising processing circuitry coupled with a storage device, the processing circuitry configured to: decoding a service request received from a management service (MnS) consumer of a 5G system (5 GS), wherein the service request may be associated with a performance measurement collection service related to a Policy Control Function (PCF) to be delivered to the consumer by a service producer; detecting performance measurement data received from the PCF; decoding a measurement tag associated with the performance measurement data from the performance measurement data based on the MnS service; and encodes a service response based on the performance measurement data received from the PCF.

Example 2 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein decoding the service request triggers the PCF to initiate the generation and delivery of the performance measurement data.

Example 3 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the service producer may be in a separate management system external to the PCF or internal to the PCF.

Example 4 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to initiate an accumulation counter for measurements during the collection period.

Example 5 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be a number of event exposure subscription requests, a number of successful event exposure subscriptions, a number of failed event exposure subscriptions, a number of event exposure unsubscribe requests, a number of successful event exposure unsubscribes, a number of failed event exposure unsubscribes, or a number of event exposure notifications.

Example 6 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be based on a number of Access and Mobility (AM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

Example 7 may include the apparatus of example 6 and/or some other example herein, wherein the AM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_ampoulichemical creation request message, an npcf_ampoulichemical creation response message, an npcf_ampoulichemical Update request message, an npcf_ampoulichemical Update response message, an npcf_ampoulichemical_delete request message, or an npcf_ampoulichemical_delete response message.

Example 8 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be based on a number of Session Management (SM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

Example 9 may include the apparatus of example 8 and/or some other example herein, wherein the SM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated using an accumulation counter (CC) alone based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_policy authorization_create request message, an npcf_policy authorization_create response message, an npcf_policy authorization_update request message, an npcf_policy authorization_update response message, an npcf_policy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_policy authorization_delete response message.

Example 10 may include the apparatus of example 9 and/or some other example herein, wherein an initial value of the accumulation counter may be set to zero at a beginning of each collection period.

Example 11 may include a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause performance of operations comprising: decoding a service request received from a management service (MnS) consumer of a 5G system (5 GS), wherein the service request may be associated with a performance measurement collection service related to a Policy Control Function (PCF) to be delivered to the consumer by a service producer; detecting performance measurement data received from the PCF; decoding a measurement tag associated with the performance measurement data from the performance measurement data based on the MnS service; and encodes a service response based on the performance measurement data received from the PCF.

Example 12 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 11 and/or some other example herein, wherein decoding the service request triggers the PCF to initiate the generation and delivery of the performance measurement data.

Example 13 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 11 and/or some other example herein, wherein the service producer may be in a separate management system external to the PCF or internal to the PCF.

Example 14 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 11 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise initiating an accumulation counter for the measurements during the collection period.

Example 15 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 11 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be a number of event exposure subscription requests, a number of successful event exposure subscriptions, a number of failed event exposure subscriptions, a number of event exposure unsubscribe requests, a number of successful event exposure unsubscribes, a number of failed event exposure unsubscribes, or a number of event exposure notifications.

Example 16 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 11 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be based on a number of Access and Mobility (AM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

Example 17 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 16 and/or some other example herein, wherein the AM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of a predefined message by the PCF, wherein the predefined message includes an npcf_ampoulicy authorization_create request message, an npcf_ampoulicy authorization_create response message, an npcf_ampoulicy authorization_update request message, an npcf_ampoulicy authorization_update response message, an npcf_ampiiicy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_ampicy authorization_delete response message.

Example 18 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 11 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be based on a number of Session Management (SM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

Example 19 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 18 and/or some other example herein, wherein the SM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_policy authorization_create request message, an npcf_policy authorization_create response message, an npcf_policy authorization_update request message, an npcf_policy authorization_update response message, an npcf_policy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_policy authorization_delete response message.

Example 20 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 19 and/or some other example herein, wherein an initial value of the accumulation counter may be set to zero at the beginning of each collection period.

Example 21 may include a method comprising: decoding a service request received from a management service (MnS) consumer of a 5G system (5 GS), wherein the service request may be associated with a performance measurement collection service related to a Policy Control Function (PCF) to be delivered to the consumer by a service producer; detecting performance measurement data received from the PCF; decoding a measurement tag associated with the performance measurement data from the performance measurement data based on the MnS service; and encodes a service response based on the performance measurement data received from the PCF.

Example 22 may include the method of example 21 and/or some other example herein, wherein decoding the service request triggers the PCF to initiate the generation and delivery of the performance measurement data.

Example 23 may include the method of example 21 and/or some other example herein, wherein the service producer may be in a separate management system external to the PCF or internal to the PCF.

Example 24 may include the method of example 21 and/or some other example herein, further comprising initiating an accumulation counter for the measurements during the collection period.

Example 25 may include the method of example 21 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be a number of event exposure subscription requests, a number of successful event exposure subscriptions, a number of failed event exposure subscriptions, a number of event exposure unsubscribe requests, a number of successful event exposure unsubscribes, a number of failed event exposure unsubscribes, or a number of event exposure notifications.

Example 26 may include the method of example 21 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be based on a number of Access and Mobility (AM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

Example 27 may include the method of example 26 and/or some other example herein, wherein the AM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_ampoulichemical creation request message, an npcf_ampoulichemical creation response message, an npcf_ampoulichemical Update request message, an npcf_ampoulichemical Update response message, an npcf_ampoulichemical_delete request message, or an npcf_ampoulichemical_delete response message.

Example 28 may include the method of example 21 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be based on a number of Session Management (SM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

Example 29 may include the method of example 28 and/or some other example herein, wherein the SM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_policy authorization_create request message, an npcf_policy authorization_create response message, an npcf_policy authorization_update request message, an npcf_policy authorization_update response message, an npcf_policy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_policy authorization_delete response message.

Example 30 may include the method of example 29 and/or some other example herein, wherein an initial value of the accumulation counter may be set to zero at the beginning of each collection period.

Example 31 may include an apparatus comprising means for: decoding a service request received from a management service (MnS) consumer of a 5G system (5 GS), wherein the service request may be associated with a performance measurement collection service related to a Policy Control Function (PCF) to be delivered to the consumer by a service producer; detecting performance measurement data received from the PCF; decoding a measurement tag associated with the performance measurement data from the performance measurement data based on the MnS service; and encodes a service response based on the performance measurement data received from the PCF.

Example 32 may include the apparatus of example 31 and/or some other example herein, wherein decoding the service request triggers the PCF to initiate the generation and delivery of the performance measurement data.

Example 33 may include the apparatus of example 31 and/or some other example herein, wherein the service producer may be in a separate management system external to the PCF or internal to the PCF.

Example 34 may include the apparatus of example 31 and/or some other example herein, further comprising initiating an accumulation counter for the measurements during the collection period.

Example 35 may include the apparatus of example 31 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be a number of event exposure subscription requests, a number of successful event exposure subscriptions, a number of failed event exposure subscriptions, a number of event exposure unsubscribe requests, a number of successful event exposure unsubscribes, a number of failed event exposure unsubscribes, or a number of event exposure notifications.

Example 36 may include the apparatus of example 31 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be based on a number of Access and Mobility (AM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

Example 37 may include the apparatus of example 36 and/or some other example herein, wherein the AM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_ampoulichemical creation request message, an npcf_ampoulichemical creation response message, an npcf_ampoulichemical Update request message, an npcf_ampoulichemical Update response message, an npcf_ampoulichemical_delete request message, or an npcf_ampoulichemical_delete response message.

Example 38 may include the apparatus of example 31 and/or some other example herein, wherein the performance measure may be based on a number of Session Management (SM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

Example 39 may include the apparatus of example 38 and/or some other example herein, wherein the SM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated using an accumulation counter (CC) alone based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_policy authorization_create request message, an npcf_policy authorization_create response message, an npcf_policy authorization_update request message, an npcf_policy authorization_update response message, an npcf_policy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_policy authorization_delete response message.

Example 40 may include the apparatus of example 39 and/or some other example herein, wherein an initial value of the accumulation counter may be set to zero at a beginning of each collection period.

Example 41 may include an apparatus comprising means for performing any of the methods described in examples 1-36.

Example 42 may include a network node comprising a communication interface and processing circuitry coupled thereto, the processing circuitry configured to perform the methods of examples 1-36.

Example 43 may include an apparatus comprising means for performing one or more elements of the methods described in or associated with any of examples 1-36 or any other method or process described herein.

Example 44 may include one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, cause the electronic device to perform one or more elements of the methods described in or related to any of examples 1-36 or any other method or process described herein.

Example 45 may include an apparatus comprising logic, modules, or circuitry to perform one or more elements of the methods described in or related to any of examples 1-36 or any other method or process described herein.

Example 46 may include a method, technique, or process as described in any of examples 1-36 or in connection with any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof.

Example 47 may include an apparatus comprising: one or more processors and one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method, technique, or process as described in any one of examples 1-36 or in connection with any one of examples 1-36, or some portion thereof.

Example 48 may include signals as described in any of examples 1-36 or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof.

Example 49 may include a datagram, packet, frame, fragment, protocol Data Unit (PDU), or message as described in any of examples 1-36 or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof, or other described datagrams, packets, frames, fragments, protocol Data Units (PDUs), or messages in this disclosure.

Example 50 may include a signal encoded with data as described in any of examples 1-36 or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof, or other described data in this disclosure.

Example 51 may include a signal encoded with a datagram, packet, frame, fragment, protocol Data Unit (PDU) or message as described in any of examples 1-36 or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof, or other described datagrams, packets, frames, fragments, protocol Data Units (PDUs) or messages in this disclosure.

Example 52 may include an electromagnetic signal carrying computer-readable instructions, wherein execution of the computer-readable instructions by one or more processors causes the one or more processors to perform the method, technique, or process as described in any one of examples 1-36 or in connection with any one of examples 1-36, or portions thereof.

Example 53 may include a computer program comprising instructions, wherein execution of the program by a processing element causes the processing element to perform a method, technique, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or some portion thereof.

Example 54 may include signals in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

Example 55 may include a method of communicating in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

Example 56 may include a system for providing wireless communications as shown and described herein.

Example 57 may include a device for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein.

An example implementation is an edge computing system that includes various edge processing devices and nodes to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is a client endpoint node operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an aggregation node, hub node, gateway node, or core data processing node within or coupled to an edge computing system operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an access point, base station, roadside unit, street unit, or in-field unit within or coupled to an edge computing system operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge provisioning node, a service orchestration node, an application orchestration node, or a multi-tenant management node within or coupled to an edge computing system operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge node that operates an edge provisioning service, an application or service orchestration service, a virtual machine deployment, a container deployment, a function deployment, and a computing management, within or coupled to an edge computing system, operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system operable as an edge grid, an edge grid with side car loading, or with grid-to-grid communications operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system that includes aspects of network functionality, acceleration hardware, storage hardware, or computing hardware resources operable to invoke or execute the use cases discussed herein, utilizing the examples described above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system adapted to support client mobility, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-everything (V2X), or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) scenarios, and optionally operating in accordance with ETSIMEC specifications, operable to invoke or execute the use cases discussed herein, utilizing the examples described above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system adapted for mobile wireless communications, including configurations according to 3GPP4G/LTE or 5G network capabilities, operable to invoke or execute the use cases discussed herein, utilizing the examples described above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is a computing system adapted for network communication, including in accordance with a configuration of O-RAN capabilities, operable to invoke or execute the use cases discussed herein, utilizing the examples described above, or other subject matter described herein.

Any of the above examples may be combined with any other example (or combination of examples) unless explicitly stated otherwise. The foregoing description of one or more implementations provides illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of the embodiments to the precise form disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various embodiments.

Terminology

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the disclosure. As used herein, the singular forms "a," "an," and "the" are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms "comprises" and/or "comprising," when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof.

For the purposes of this disclosure, the phrase "a and/or B" means (a), (B), or (a and B). For purposes of this disclosure, the phrase "A, B and/or C" means (a), (B), (C), (a and B), (a and C), (B and C), or (A, B and C). The description may use the phrases "in an embodiment" or "in some embodiments," which may each refer to one or more of the same or different embodiments. Furthermore, the terms "comprising," "including," "having," and the like, as used with respect to embodiments of the present disclosure, are synonymous.

The terms "coupled," "communicatively coupled," and their derivatives are used herein. The term "coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other, may mean that two or more elements are in indirect contact with each other but still co-operate or interact with each other, and/or may mean that one or more other elements are coupled or connected between the elements purportedly coupled to each other. The term "directly coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in direct contact with each other. The term "communicatively coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in contact with each other through communication means, including by wire or other interconnection connection, by wireless communication channels or links, and so forth.

The term "circuitry" as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes, hardware components such as the following configured to provide the described functionality: electronic circuitry, logic circuitry, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group), an application specific integrated circuit (Application Specific Integrated Circuit, ASIC), a field-programmable device (FPD) (e.g., field-programmable gate array, FPGA), a programmable logic device (programmable logic device, PLD), a Complex PLD (CPLD), a high-capacity PLD (hcpll), a structured ASIC, or programmable SoC), a digital signal processor (digital signal processor, DSP), and so forth. In some embodiments, circuitry may execute one or more software or firmware programs to provide at least some of the described functions. The term "circuitry" may also refer to a combination of one or more hardware elements (or circuitry for use in an electrical or electronic system) and program code for performing the functions of the program code. In these embodiments, the combination of hardware elements and program code may be referred to as a particular type of circuit.

The term "processor circuit" as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes the following circuitry: the circuitry is capable of sequentially and automatically performing a sequence of operations or logic operations, or recording, storing, and/or transmitting digital data. The processing circuitry may include one or more processing cores to execute instructions and one or more memory structures to store program and data information. The term "processor circuit" may refer to one or more application processors, one or more baseband processors, a physical Central Processing Unit (CPU), a single core processor, a dual core processor, a tri-core processor, a quad-core processor, and/or any other device capable of executing or otherwise operating computer executable instructions such as program code, software modules, and/or functional processes. The processing circuitry may include further hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices, or the like. The one or more hardware accelerators may include, for example, computer Vision (CV) and/or Deep Learning (DL) accelerators. The terms "application circuitry" and/or "baseband circuitry" may be considered synonymous with "processor circuitry" and may be referred to as "processor circuitry".

The terms "memory" and/or "memory circuitry" as used herein refer to one or more hardware devices for storing data, including RAM, MRAM, PRAM, DRAM and/or SDRAM, core memory, ROM, magnetic disk storage media, optical storage media, flash memory devices, or other machine-readable media for storing data. The term "computer-readable medium" can include, but is not limited to, memory, portable or fixed storage devices, optical storage devices, and various other mediums capable of storing, containing or carrying instruction(s) or data.

The term "interface circuit" as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes a circuit that enables the exchange of information between two or more components or devices. The term "interface circuit" may refer to one or more hardware interfaces, such as a bus, an I/O interface, a peripheral component interface, a network interface card, and so forth.

The term "user equipment" or "UE" as used herein refers to a device that has radio communication capabilities and may describe a remote user of network resources in a communication network. The term "user equipment" or "UE" may be considered synonymous with, and may be referred to as, the following terms: a client, mobile phone, mobile device, mobile terminal, user terminal, mobile unit, mobile station, mobile user, subscriber, user, remote station, access agent, user agent, receiver, radio, reconfigurable mobile device, etc. In addition, the term "user equipment" or "UE" may include any type of wireless/wired device or any computing device that includes a wireless communication interface.

The term "network element" as used herein refers to a physical or virtualized device and/or infrastructure for providing wired or wireless communication network services. The term "network element" may be considered synonymous with and/or referred to by the following terms: networked computers, networking hardware, network devices, network nodes, routers, switches, hubs, bridges, radio network controllers, RAN devices, RAN nodes, gateways, servers, virtualized VNFs, NFVI, and so forth.

The term "computer system" as used herein refers to any type of interconnected electronic device, computer device, or component thereof. Furthermore, the terms "computer system" and/or "system" may refer to components of a computer that are communicatively coupled to each other. Furthermore, the terms "computer system" and/or "system" may refer to a plurality of computer devices and/or a plurality of computing systems communicatively coupled to each other and configured to share computing and/or networking resources.

The terms "appliance," "computer appliance," and the like, as used herein, refer to a computer device or computer system having program code (e.g., software or firmware) specifically designed to provide a particular computing resource. A "virtual appliance" is a virtual machine image to be implemented by a hypervisor-equipped device that virtualizes or emulates a computer appliance or is otherwise dedicated to providing specific computing resources. The term "element" refers to a unit that is indivisible at a given level of abstraction and has well-defined boundaries, wherein an element may be any type of entity, including, for example, one or more devices, systems, controllers, network elements, modules, etc., or a combination of these. The term "device" refers to such a physical entity: which is embedded within or attached to another physical entity in its vicinity, has the ability to communicate digital information from or to that physical entity. The term "entity" refers to a unique component of an architecture or device, or information conveyed as a payload. The term "controller" refers to an element or entity that has the ability to affect a physical entity, for example, by changing its state or causing the physical entity to move.

The term "cloud computing" or "cloud" refers to a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and resilient pool of shareable computing resources with on-demand self-service provisioning and management and without active management by users. Cloud computing provides cloud computing services (or cloud services) that are provided via cloud computing one or more capabilities that are invoked using defined interfaces (e.g., APIs, etc.). The term "computing resource" or simply "resource" refers to any physical or virtual component within a computer system or network that has limited availability, or the use of such a component. Examples of computing resources include use/access to servers, processor(s), storage devices, memory areas, networks, power, input/output (peripheral) devices, mechanical devices, network connections (e.g., channels/links, ports, network sockets, etc.), operating systems, virtual Machines (VMs), software/applications, computer files, etc., over a period of time. "hardware resources" may refer to computing, storage, and/or network resources provided by physical hardware element(s). "virtualized resources" may refer to computing, storage, and/or network resources provided by a virtualization infrastructure to applications, devices, systems, and the like. The term "network resource" or "communication resource" may refer to a resource that is accessible by a computer device/system via a communication network. The term "system resource" may refer to any kind of shared entity that provides a service and may include computing and/or network resources. A system resource may be considered a collection of coherent functions, network data objects, or services accessible through a server, where such system resource resides on a single host or multiple hosts and is clearly identifiable. As used herein, the term "cloud service provider" (cloud service provider) (or CSP) refers to an organization that operates generally large-scale "cloud" resources that consist of centralized, regional, and edge data centers (e.g., used in the context of a public cloud). In other examples, CSP may also be referred to as cloud service operator (Cloud Service Operator, CSO). References to "cloud computing" generally refer to computing resources and services provided by CSP or CSO at remote locations with at least some increase in latency, distance, or constraint relative to edge computing.

As used herein, the term "data center" refers to a specially designed structure intended to accommodate multiple high performance computing and data storage nodes such that there are a large amount of computing, data storage, and network resources at a single location. This often requires specialized rack and enclosure systems, appropriate heating, cooling, ventilation, security, fire suppression, and power delivery systems. In some contexts, the term may also refer to compute and data storage nodes. The size of the data center may vary between a centralized or cloud data center (e.g., maximum), an area data center, and an edge data center (e.g., minimum).

As used herein, the term "edge computation" refers to the implementation, coordination, and use of computing and resources at locations closer to the "edge" or "set of edges" of the network. Deploying computing resources at the edge of a network may reduce application and network latency, reduce network backhaul traffic and associated energy consumption, improve service capabilities, improve compliance with security or data privacy requirements (especially as compared to traditional cloud computing), and improve overall ownership costs. As used herein, the term "edge computing node" refers to a real-world, logical, or virtualized implementation of computing capable elements in the form of devices, gateways, bridges, systems or subsystems, components, whether operating in server, client, endpoint, or peer-to-peer mode, or whether located at the "edge" of a network or at a more distant connection location within a network. References herein to "nodes" are generally interchangeable with "devices," "components," and "subsystems"; however, references to "edge computing systems" or "edge computing networks" generally refer to a distributed architecture, organization, or collection of multiple nodes and devices, and are organized to accomplish or provide some aspect of a service or resource in an edge computing environment.

Additionally or alternatively, the term "edge computation" refers to a concept, as described in [6], that enables operators and third party services to be hosted close to the UE's attached access point to achieve efficient service delivery by reducing end-to-end latency and load on the transport network. As used herein, the term "edge computing service provider" refers to a mobile network operator or third party service provider that provides edge computing services. As used herein, the term "edge Data Network" refers to a local Data Network (DN) that supports an architecture for implementing edge applications. As used herein, the term "edge hosting environment" refers to an environment that provides the support required for the execution of edge application servers. As used herein, the term "application server" refers to application software residing in the cloud that performs server functions.

The term "internet of things" or "IoT" refers to systems of interrelated computing devices, machines, and digital machines capable of transmitting data with little or no human-machine interaction, and may involve technologies such as real-time analysis, machine learning and/or AI, embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, control systems, automation (e.g., smart home, smart building, and/or smart city technologies), and so forth. IoT devices are typically low power devices that do not have powerful computing or storage capabilities. An "edge IoT device" may be any kind of IoT device that is deployed at the edge of a network.

As used herein, the term "cluster" refers to a collection or grouping of entities as part of an edge computing system(s) in the form of physical entities (e.g., different computing systems, networks, or groups of networks), logical entities (e.g., applications, functions, security constructs, containers), and so forth. In some locations, a "cluster" is also referred to as a "group" or "domain. Membership of a cluster may be modified or affected based on conditions or functions, including from dynamic or attribute-based membership, from a network or system management scenario, or from various example techniques discussed below, which may add, modify, or remove entities in the cluster. Clusters may also include or be associated with multiple layers, levels, or attributes, including security functions and variations in results based on such layers, levels, or attributes.

The term "application" may refer to a complete, deployable packaging environment for implementing a function in an operating environment. The term "AI/ML application" or similar terms may be an application that contains some AI/ML model and application-level descriptions. The term "machine learning" or "ML" refers to the use of a computer system implementing algorithms and/or statistical models to perform a particular task(s), without the use of explicit instructions, but rather relies on patterns and reasoning. The ML algorithm builds or estimates mathematical model(s) (referred to as "ML model" or the like) based on sample data (referred to as "training data", "model training information" or the like) in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform such tasks. Generally, an ML algorithm is a computer program that learns from experience with a certain task and a certain performance metric, and an ML model may be an object or data structure created after training the ML algorithm with one or more training data sets. After training, the ML model can be used to make predictions on the new dataset. Although the term "ML algorithm" refers to a different concept than the term "ML model", these terms may be used interchangeably for purposes of this disclosure as described herein.

The terms "machine learning model", "ML model" or similar terms may also refer to ML methods and concepts used by ML-assisted solutions. An "ML-assisted solution" is a solution that uses an ML algorithm to solve a particular use case during operation. The ML model includes supervised learning (e.g., linear regression, K-nearest neighbor (KNN), decision tree algorithms, support machine vectors, bayesian algorithms, lumped algorithms, etc.), unsupervised learning (e.g., K-means clustering, principal component analysis (principal component analysis, PCA), etc.), reinforcement learning (e.g., Q-learning, multi-arm robbery learning, deep RL, etc.), neural networks, and the like. Depending on the implementation, a particular ML model may have many sub-models as components, and the ML model may train all sub-models together. During reasoning, separately trained ML models can also be chained together in the ML pipeline. An "ML pipeline" is a set of functions, or functional entities that depend on an ML auxiliary solution; the ML pipeline may include one or several of a data source in a data pipeline, a model training pipeline, a model evaluation pipeline, and an actor. An "actor" is an entity that uses the output of ML model reasoning to host ML auxiliary solutions. The term "ML training host" refers to an entity, such as a network function, that hosts the training of a model. The term "ML inference host" refers to an entity, such as a network function, that hosts a model during an inference mode (which includes both model execution and any online learning (if applicable)). The ML host informs the actor of the output of the ML algorithm and the actor makes a decision for the action (the "action" is performed by the actor as a result of the output of the ML assistance solution). The term "model reasoning information" refers to information that is used as input to the ML model to determine the reasoning(s); the data used to train the ML model and the data used to determine reasoning may overlap, however, "training data" and "reasoning data" refer to different concepts.

The term "instantiation" and the like as used herein refers to the creation of an instance. "instance" also refers to a specific occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code. The term "information element" refers to a structural element that contains one or more fields. The term "field" refers to the individual content of an information element, or a data element containing content. As used herein, a "database object," "data structure," or similar terminology may refer to any representation of information in the form of objects, attribute-value pairs (AVPs), key-value pairs (KVP), tuples, etc., and may include variables, data structures, functions, methods, classes, database records, database fields, database entities, associations (also referred to as "relationships") between data and/or database entities, blocks in a blockchain implementation, links between blocks, etc.

An "information object" as used herein refers to a collection of structured data and/or any representation of information, and may include, for example, an electronic document (or "document"), a database object, a data structure, a file, audio data, video data, raw data, archive file, an application package, and/or any other similar representation of information. The term "electronic document" or "document" may refer to a data structure, computer file, or resource for recording data, and includes various file types and/or data formats, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, multimedia items, web pages and/or source code documents, and the like. For example, the information object may include a markup and/or source code document, for example For example HTML, XML, JSON,CSS、JSP、MessagePackTM、/>ThriftTM、ASN.1、/>Protocol Buffer (Protocol Buffer) or some other document/format, such as those discussed herein. The information object may have both a logical structure and a physical structure. Physically, an information object comprises one or more units called entities. An entity is a unit of storage that contains content and is identified by a name. An entity may refer to other entities such that it is included in an information object. The information object starts with a document entity, also called a root element (or "root"). Logically, an information object includes one or more declarations, elements, annotations, character references, and processing instructions, all of which are indicated in the information object (e.g., using tags).

The term "data item" as used herein refers to an atomic state of a particular object having at least one particular attribute at a point in time. Such objects are typically identified by object names or object identifiers, and the attributes of such objects are typically defined as database objects (e.g., fields, records, etc.), object instances, or data elements (e.g., markup language elements/tags, etc.). Additionally or alternatively, the term "data item" as used herein may refer to data elements and/or content items, although these terms may refer to different concepts. The term "data element" or "element" as used herein refers to a unit that is indivisible at a given level of abstraction and has well-defined boundaries. A data element is a logical component of an information object (e.g., an electronic document) that may start with a start tag (e.g., "< element >") and end with a matching end tag (e.g., "</element >") or only an empty element tag (e.g., "< element/>). Any character, if any, between the start tag and the end tag is the content of the element (referred to herein as a "content item" or the like).

The content of the entity may include one or more content items, each having an associated data type representation. The content items may include, for example, attribute values, character values, URIs, qualifying names (qnames), parameters, and so forth. qname is a fully qualified name of an element, attribute, or identifier in an information object. The qname associates the URI of the namespace with the local name of the element, attribute, or identifier in the namespace. To establish such an association, the qname would assign a prefix to the local name that corresponds to its namespace. qname includes the URI of the namespace, the prefix, and the local name. Namespaces are used to provide uniquely named elements and attributes in an information object. The content items may include text content (e.g., "< element > content item </element >"), attributes (e.g., "< element attribute =" attributeValue ">") and other elements referred to as "sub-elements" (e.g., "< element1> < element2> content item </element2> </element1 >"). An "attribute" may refer to a tag structure that includes name-value pairs that exist within a start tag or a null element tag. Attributes contain data related to their elements and/or control the behavior of the elements.

The term "channel" as used herein refers to any transmission medium, whether tangible or intangible, used to convey data or data streams. The term "channel" may be synonymous and/or equivalent to "communication channel," "data communication channel," "transmission channel," "data transmission channel," "access channel," "data access channel," "link," "data link," "carrier wave," "radio frequency carrier wave," and/or any other similar term that refers to a channel or medium through which data is communicated. Furthermore, the term "link" as used herein refers to a connection that occurs between two devices via a RAT in order to send and receive information. As used herein, the term "radio technology" refers to a technology for wireless transmission and/or reception of electromagnetic radiation for information transfer. The term "radio access technology" or "RAT" refers to a technology for underlying physical connection with a radio-based communication network. As used herein, the term "communication protocol" (wired or wireless) refers to a standardized set of rules or instructions implemented by a communication device and/or system for communicating with other devices and/or systems, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, modulating/demodulating signals, implementing a protocol stack, and the like.

As used herein, the term "radio technology" refers to a technology for wireless transmission and/or reception of electromagnetic radiation for information transfer. The term "radio access technology" or "RAT" refers to a technology for underlying physical connection with a radio-based communication network. As used herein, the term "communication protocol" (wired or wireless) refers to a standardized set of rules or instructions implemented by a communication device and/or system for communicating with other devices and/or systems, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, modulating/demodulating signals, implementing a protocol stack, and the like. Examples of wireless communication protocols that may be used in various embodiments include global system for mobile communications (Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM) Radio communication technology, general packet Radio service (General Packet Radio Service, GPRS) Radio communication technology, enhanced data rates for GSM evolution (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution, EDGE) Radio communication technology, and/or third Generation partnership project (Third Generation Partnership Project,3 GPP) Radio communication technology, including, for example, 3GPP Fifth Generation (5G) or New Radio (New Radio, NR), universal mobile telecommunications system (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, UMTS), multimedia access free (Freedom of Multimedia Access, FOMA), long term evolution (Long Term Evolution, LTE), LTE Advanced (LTE Advanced), LTE extral, LTE-a Pro, cdmaOne (2G), code division multiple access 2000 (Code Division Multiple Access, cd2000), cellular digital packet data (Cellular Digital Packet Data, CDPD), mobitex, circuit switched data (Circuit Switched Data, CSD), High Speed CSD (HSCSD), universal mobile telecommunications system (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, UMTS), wideband code Division multiple access (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, W-CDM), high Speed packet access (High Speed Packet Access, HSPA), HSPA enhancements (HSPA+), time Division-code Division multiple access (TD-CDMA), time Division-synchronization code Division multiple access (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access, TD-SCDMA), LTE LAA, muLTEfire, UMTS terrestrial radio access (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access, UTRA), evolved UTRA (E-UTRA), evolved Data optimization or Evolved Data Only (Evolution-Data Optimized or Evolution-Data on, EV-DO), advanced mobile phone system (Advanced Mobile Phone System, AMPS), digital AMPS (Digital AMPS, D-AMPS), full access communication system/extended full access communication system (Total Access Communication System/Extended Total Access Communication System, TACS/ETACS), push-to-talk (PTT), mobile phone system (Mobile Telephone System, MTS), modified mobile phone system (Improved Mobile Telephone System, IMTS), advanced mobile phone system (Advanced Mobile Telephone System, AMTS), cellular Digital packet Data (Cellular Digital Packet Data, CDPD), dataTAC, integrated Digital enhanced network (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network, iDEN), personal Digital cellular (Personal Digital Cellular, PDC), personal Handyphone System (PHS), broadband integrated digital enhanced network (Wideband Integrated Digital Enhanced Network, wiDEN), iBurst, unlicensed mobile access (Unlicensed Mobile Access, UMA) (also known as 3GPP generic access network, or standard GAN), Low energy bluetooth (Bluetooth Low Energy, BLE), IEEE 802.15.4 based protocols (e.g., IPv6 (IPv 6over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks,6 LoWPAN), wirelessHART, miWi, thread,802.11a, etc.) based on low power wireless personal area networks, wiFi direct, ANT/ant+, zigBee, Z-Wave,3GPP device-to-device (device)to-device, D2D) or proximity services (Proximity Service, proSe), universal plug and play (Universal Plug and Play, UPnP), low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), long Cheng Anyu networks (Long Range Wide Area Network, loRa) or the lorawan, sigfox, wireless gigabit alliance (Wireless Gigabit Alliance, wiGig) standards developed by Semtech and the LoRa alliance, worldwide interoperability for microwave access (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, wiMAX), general mmWave standards (e.g., wireless Systems operating at 10-300GHz and above such as WiGig, IEEE 802.11ad, IEEE 802.11ay, etc.), V2X communication technologies (including 3GPP C-V2X), dedicated short-range communication (Dedicated Short Range Communications, DSRC) communication Systems such as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), including european ITS-G5, ITS-G5-B, ITS-G5C, etc. In addition to the standards listed above, any number of satellite uplink technologies may be used for purposes of this disclosure, including, for example, radios conforming to standards promulgated by the international telecommunications union (International Telecommunication Union, ITU) or the european telecommunications standards institute (European Telecommunications Standards Institute, ETSI), among other organizations. The examples provided herein are thus understood to apply to various other communication techniques, both existing and yet to be established.

The term "access network" refers to any network for connecting user equipment and service providers using any combination of radio technologies, RATs, and/or communication protocols. In the context of a WLAN, an "access network" refers to an IEEE802 local area network (local area network, LAN) or metropolitan area network (metropolitan area network, MAN) between a terminal and an access router connected to a provider service. The term "access router" refers to such routers: it terminates the medium access control (medium access control, MAC) service from the terminal and forwards the user traffic to the information server according to the internet protocol (Internet Protocol, IP) address.

The term "SMTC" refers to an SSB-based measurement timing configuration configured by SSB-measurementtiming configuration. The term "SSB" refers to a synchronization signal/physical broadcast channel (synchronization signal/Physical Broadcast Channel, SS/PBCH) block that includes a primary synchronization signal (Primary Syncrhonization Signal, PSS), a secondary synchronization signal (Secondary Syncrhonization Signal, SSs), and a PBCH. The term "primary cell" refers to an MCG cell operating on a primary frequency, wherein the UE either performs an initial connection establishment procedure or initiates a connection re-establishment procedure. The term "primary SCG cell" refers to an SCG cell in which a UE performs random access when performing a reconfiguration procedure with synchronization for DC operation. The term "secondary cell" refers to a cell that provides additional radio resources for a CA-configured UE over a special cell. The term "secondary cell group" refers to a subset of serving cells for a DC configured UE that includes PSCell and zero or more secondary cells. The term "serving cell" refers to a primary cell for a UE in rrc_connected that is not configured with CA/DC, and only one serving cell is composed of the primary cell. The term "serving cell" refers to a set of cells including special cell(s) and all secondary cells for a UE in rrc_connected configured with CA. The term "special cell" refers to a PCell of an MCG or a PSCell of an SCG for DC operation; otherwise, the term "special cell" refers to a Pcell.

The term "A1 policy" refers to a declarative policy expressed using formal statements that enables non-RT RIC functions in SMO to direct near RT RIC functions, thereby directing the RAN to better achieve RAN intent.

The term "A1 rich information" refers to information utilized by near RT RIC collected or derived at SMO/non-RT RIC from non-network data sources or from the network function itself.

The term "A1 policy based flow manipulation process mode" refers to one such mode of operation: in this mode, the near RT RIC is configured with an A1 policy to use traffic steering actions to ensure a more specific notion of network performance than it ensures in background traffic steering (e.g., applicable to a smaller group of E2 nodes and UEs in the RAN).

The term "background flow manipulation processing mode" refers to such an operation mode: in this mode, the near RT RIC is configured through O1 to use traffic steering actions to ensure general background network performance, which is widely applicable to E2 nodes and UEs in the RAN.

The term "baseline RAN behavior" refers to the default RAN behavior configured by SMO at the E2 node.

The term "E2" refers to an interface that connects a near RT RIC and one or more O-CU-CPs, one or more O-CU-UPs, one or more O-DUs and one or more O-eNBs.

The term "E2 node" refers to a logical node that terminates an E2 interface. In this version of the specification, the ora node terminating the E2 interface is: for NR access: O-CU-CP, O-CU-UP, O-DU or any combination thereof; for E-UTRA access: O-eNB.

In the context of an O-RAN system/implementation, the term "intent" refers to a declarative policy for manipulating or directing the behavior of RAN functions that allows the RAN functions to calculate optimal results to achieve a given goal.

The term "O-RAN non-real-time RAN intelligent controller" or "non-RT RIC" refers to a logic function that enables non-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources, AI/ML workflows including model training and updating, and policy-based guidance of applications/features in near RT RIC.

The term "near RT RIC" or "O-RAN near real time RAN intelligent controller" refers to a logic function that enables near real time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources via fine-grained (e.g., UE-based, cell-based) data collection and actions over the E2 interface.

The term "O-RAN central unit" or "O-CU" refers to a logical node hosting RRC, SDAP and PDCP protocols.

The term "O-RAN central unit-control plane" or "O-CU-CP" refers to a logical node that hosts the control plane portion of the RRC and PDCP protocols.

The term "O-RAN central unit-user plane" or "O-CU-UP" refers to the logical node hosting the user plane part of the PDCP protocol and the SDAP protocol.

The term "O-RAN distributed unit" or "O-DU" refers to a logical node hosting RLC/MAC/higher PHY layers based on lower layer functional segmentation.

The term "O-RAN eNB" or "O-eNB" refers to an eNB or a ng-eNB supporting an E2 interface.

The term "O-RAN radio unit" or "O-RU" refers to a logical node that hosts the lower PHY layer and RF processing based on underlying functional partitioning. This is similar to the "TRP" or "RRH" of 3GPP, but is more specific in terms of including low PHY layers (FFT/ift, PRACH extraction).

The term "O1" refers to the interface between the orchestration and management entity (orchestration/NMS) and the O-RAN managed elements for operation and management through which FCAPS management, software management, file management, and other similar functions should be implemented.

The term "RAN UE group" refers to an aggregation of UEs whose packets are also set in the E2 node by the E2 procedure based on the scope of the A1 policy. These groups may then be the targets of E2CONTROL or POLICY messages.

The term "traffic handling actions" refers to using a mechanism to alter RAN behavior. Such actions include E2 procedures such as CONTROL and POLICY.

The term "traffic handling inner loop" refers to the portion of the traffic handling process triggered by the arrival of periodic TS-related KPMs (key performance measures) from the E2 node, including UE grouping, setting up additional data collection from the RAN, and selecting and performing one or more optimization actions to implement the traffic handling policy.

The term "traffic handling outer loop" refers to the part of the traffic handling process triggered by the near RT RIC setting or updating the traffic handling aware resource optimization procedure based on information from A1 policy settings or updates, A1 rich information (Enrichment Information, EI) and/or the results of near RT RIC evaluation, including initial configuration (pre-conditions) and related A1 policy injection, TS changed trigger conditions.

The term "flow manipulation process mode" refers to such an operation mode: in this mode, the RAN or near RT RIC is configured to ensure specific network performance. Such performance includes aspects such as cell load and throughput, and may be applicable differently for different E2 nodes and UEs. Throughout this process, a "flow manipulation action" is used to meet the requirements of this configuration.

The term "traffic steering objective" refers to the expected performance result that is desired to be obtained from the network, which is configured to a near RT RIC by O1.

Furthermore, any of the embodiments and example implementations disclosed may be embodied in various types of hardware, software, firmware, middleware, or a combination thereof, including in the form of control logic, and the use of such hardware or software in a modular or integrated manner. Furthermore, any software components or functions described herein may be implemented as software, program code, scripts, instructions, etc. that are operable to be executed by processor circuitry. These components, functions, programs, etc. may be developed using any suitable computer language, e.g., python, pyTorch, numPy, ruby, ruby on Rails, scala, smalltalk, java ^TM C++, C#, "C", kotlin, swift, rust, go (or "Golang"), EMCAScript, javaScript, typeScript, jscript, actionScript, server-Side JavaScript (Server-Side JavaScript, SSJS), PHP, pearl, lua, torch/Lua with Just-In-Time compiler, luaJIT, accelerated Mobile Page Script (Accelerated Mobile Pages Script, AMPscript), VBScript, javaServer Page (JavaServer Page, JSP), active Server Page (Active Server Page, ASP), node. Js, ASP. NET, JAMscript, hypertext markup language (Hypertext Markup Language, HTML), extensible HTML (XHTML), extensible markup language (Extensible Markup Language, XML), user interface language (XML User Interface Language, XUL), scalable vector graphics (Scalable Vector Graphics, SVG), RESTful API modeling language (RESTful API Modeling Language, RAML), wikite, wireless markup language (Wireless Markup Language, WML), java Script object concept (Java Script Object Notion, JSON), MessagePack ^TM Cascading style sheets (Cascading Stylesheet, CSS), extensible style sheet language (extensible stylesheet language, XSL), musche template language, handlebars template language, guide template language (Guide Template Language, GTL), and->Thread, abstract syntax notation one (Abstract Syntax Notation One, ASN.1),/>Protocol Buffer (Protocol Buffer), bitcoin script, </i >>Byte code, resolution ^TM Vyper (Python derivative), bamroo, lisp-like language (Lisp Like Language, LLL), blockstream ^TM Simplicity, rholang, michelson, counterfactual, plasma, plutus, sophia, & gt, provided>And/or any other programming language or development tool, including proprietary programming languages and/or development tools. The software code may be stored as computer or processor executable instructions or commands on a physical non-transitory computer readable medium. Examples of suitable media include RAM, ROM, magnetic media (e.g., hard or floppy disks) or optical media (e.g., compact Discs (CDs) or DVDs (digital versatile disk, digital versatile discs)), flash memory, etc., or any combination of such storage or transmission devices.

Abbreviations (abbreviations)

Unless used differently herein, terms, definitions, and abbreviations may be consistent with terms, definitions, and abbreviations defined in 3GPP TR 21.905v16.0.0 (2019-06). For purposes of this document, the following abbreviations may apply to the examples and embodiments discussed herein.

Table 1 abbreviation:

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the foregoing description provides illustration and description of various example embodiments, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of the embodiments to the precise form disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various embodiments. Where specific details are set forth in order to describe example embodiments of the disclosure, it should be apparent to one skilled in the art that the disclosure can be practiced without, or with variation of, these specific details. It should be understood, however, that there is no intention to limit the concepts of the present disclosure to the specific forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the disclosure and the appended claims.

Claims

1. An apparatus for a service producer in a 5G system (5 GS), comprising:

a memory for storing performance measurement data; and

A processor configured to:

decoding a service request received from a management service (MnS) consumer of the 5G system (5 GS), wherein the service request is associated with a performance measurement collection service related to a Policy Control Function (PCF) to be delivered to the consumer by the service producer;

detecting performance measurement data received from the PCF;

decoding a measurement tag associated with the performance measurement data from the performance measurement data based on the MnS service; and is also provided with

A service response is encoded based on performance measurement data received from the PCF.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein decoding the service request triggers the PCF to initiate generation and delivery of the performance measurement data.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the service producer is in a separate management system external to the PCF or internal to the PCF.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein generating a first performance measurement comprises: the processor is further configured to initiate an accumulation counter for the measurements during the collection period.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the performance measure is a number of event exposure subscription requests, a number of successful event exposure subscriptions, a number of failed event exposure subscriptions, a number of event exposure unsubscribe requests, a number of successful event exposure unsubscribes, a number of failed event exposure unsubscribes, or a number of event exposure notifications.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the performance measure is based on a number of Access and Mobility (AM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the AM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_ampoulichiometrization_create request message, an npcf_ampouletrization_create response message, an npcf_ampouletrization_update request message, an npcf_ampoulitization_update response message, an npcf_ampoulitization_delta request message, or an npcf_ampoulitization_delta response message.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the performance measure is based on a number of Session Management (SM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the SM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_policy authorization_create request message, an npcf_policy authorization_create response message, an npcf_policy authorization_update request message, an npcf_policy authorization_update response message, an npcf_policy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_policy authorization_delete response message.

10. The apparatus of any of claims 1-9, wherein an initial value of the accumulation counter is set to zero at the beginning of each collection period.

11. A computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a service producer in a 5G system (5 GS), cause performance of operations comprising:

detecting performance measurement data received from the PCF;

Service responses are encoded based on performance measurement data received from the PCF.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein decoding the service request triggers the PCF to initiate the generation and delivery of the performance measurement data.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the service producer is in a separate management system external to the PCF or internal to the PCF.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein generating a first performance measurement comprises: the processor is further configured to initiate an accumulation counter for the measurements during the collection period.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the performance measure is a number of event exposure subscription requests, a number of successful event exposure subscriptions, a number of failed event exposure subscriptions, a number of event exposure unsubscribe requests, a number of successful event exposure unsubscribes, a number of failed event exposure unsubscribes, or a number of event exposure notifications.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the performance measure is based on a number of Access and Mobility (AM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the AM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_ampoulicyputhentication_create request message, an npcf_ampoulicyputhentication_update request message, an npcf_ampiicacy authentication_update response message, an npcf_ampoulicyputhentication_update response message, an npcf_ampiicacy authentication_delete request message, or an npcf_ampiicacy authentication_delete response message.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the performance measure is based on a number of Session Management (SM) policy authorization requests, updates, or deletions.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein the SM policy authorization request, update, or Delete is accumulated separately using an accumulation counter (CC) based on receipt or transmission of predefined messages by the PCF, wherein the predefined messages include an npcf_policy authorization_create request message, an npcf_policy authorization_create response message, an npcf_policy authorization_update request message, an npcf_policy authorization_update response message, an npcf_policy authorization_delete request message, or an npcf_policy authorization_delete response message.

20. The computer readable medium of any of claims 11-19, wherein an initial value of the accumulation counter is set to zero at the beginning of each collection period.

21. An apparatus for a service producer in a 5G system (5 GS), comprising:

means for decoding a service request received from a management service (MnS) consumer of the 5G system (5 GS), wherein the service request is associated with a performance measurement collection service related to a Policy Control Function (PCF) to be delivered to the consumer by the service producer;

Means for detecting performance measurement data received from the PCF;

means for decoding a measurement tag associated with the performance measurement data from the performance measurement data based on the MnS service; and

means for encoding a service response based on performance measurement data received from the PCF.

22. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the means for decoding the service request triggers the PCF to initiate generation and delivery of the performance measurement data.

23. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the service producer is in a separate management system external to the PCF or internal to the PCF.

24. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein generating a first performance measurement comprises: the processor is further configured to initiate an accumulation counter for the measurements during the collection period.

25. The apparatus of any of claims 21-24, wherein the performance measure is a number of event exposure subscription requests, a number of successful event exposure subscriptions, a number of failed event exposure subscriptions, a number of event exposure unsubscribe requests, a number of successful event exposure unsubscribes, a number of failed event exposure unsubscribes, or a number of event exposure notifications.