KR20050080880A - Apparatus for collecting and transmission charging data in a mobile communication system - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to an apparatus for managing billing data in a mobile communication system having a dual structure of an active processor and a standby processor, wherein when billing data is detected, the billing data is converted into billing data records according to a preset format. A billing data record generator for generating and outputting the billing data record; a billing disk for storing billing data records output from the billing data record generator; and a first queue and a second queue and outputting the billing data record generator; Storing the charge data records in the first queue and transmitting the charge data records to the charging gateway according to the storage order, and then transferring the active processor, the third queue, and the fourth queue to the standby processor when the failure occurs. The billing data record corresponding to the transfer Stores the billing data records output from the billing queue in the third queue, stores the billing data records not transmitted among the billing data records stored in the billing disk in the fourth queue, and stores the billing data records in the fourth queue. And a standby processor for transmitting the charging data records to the charging gateway in the order of the charging data records stored in the third queue.

Description

A device for collecting and transmitting billing data in a mobile communication system {APPARATUS FOR COLLECTING AND TRANSMISSION CHARGING DATA IN A MOBILE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM}

The present invention relates to a mobile communication system, and more particularly to an apparatus for collecting and transmitting billing data.

In general, a mobile communication system generates charging data record (CDR) information for each call. The charging board transmits the generated CDR information to a charging gateway (hereinafter, referred to as 'CG'), and the CG transmits it to a billing center. Here, the CG receives the CDR information from the buffer queue implemented as a linked list through TCP / IP communication. The reason for the above implementation is that the CDR information is transmitted to the CG after being encoded by GTP ', which is a charging transmission protocol, because the CDR information collection speed and the speed transmitted to the CG are inconsistent. When CDR information is collected, the memory including the buffer queue is added to the connection list one by one and output to the CG in the order of the added CDR information.

Meanwhile, the buffer queue uses a stack area that is a memory area inside a process. The stack area is used when a process is running on memory, and when the process ends, the stack area itself is destroyed. In addition, since the stack area is a unique area inside a process, data sharing between different processes, that is, between an active process and a standby process is not possible.

Next, a structure for performing collection and transmission of charging data according to the prior art will be described with reference to FIG. 1.

1 is a view schematically showing a structure for performing charging data collection and transmission according to the prior art.

Referring to FIG. 1, the charging data collection and transmission structure according to the related art detects the charging data 102 when it is generated and generates a CDR in the form of CDR information. There is an active process 104 and a standby process 116 that operate for collection. The active process 104 is implemented with CDR queues 106, 108, and 110 and a transmission queue 312 in a linked list structure, and the standby process 116 is implemented with the same structure.

First, when one call is generated, billing data 102 is generated accordingly. The CDR generation unit 103 detects the generated charging data to generate CDR information. The active process 104 collects the CDR information, which means that whenever the charging data 102 is added to the linked list structure, the CDR information is stored in the CDR queue 106 of the active process 104. 108, 110). The stored CDR information is encoded by the GTP 'protocol, moved to the transmission queue 112, and transmitted to the CG 126. If the charging data 102 collected by the active process 104 exceeds the capacity of the transmission queue 112, the active process 104 stores CDR information up to the CDR queue capacity limit. At this time, when the active process 104 is terminated due to an unexpected error, the active process 104 performs the switching to the standby process 116 according to the redundancy structure. In this case, the active process 104 fails to transmit the temporarily stored CDR information to the standby process 116. Thereafter, the standby process 116 collects new charging data generated after the transfer and transmits the data from the transmission queue 124 to the CG 126. The CDR information transmitted by the transmission queue 124 to the CG 126 is deleted from the CDR queue embodied in a linked list structure.

Next, the CDR information format used in the prior art will be described.

2 illustrates a CDR format according to the prior art.

Referring to FIG. 2, first, the CDR has sequence 202 information in order to be sequentially transmitted to the CG. The sequence information has a unique value for each CDR format. In addition, the CDR length is recorded in the CDR size field 204, and charging data is recorded in the CDR data field 206.

As described above, the active process collects the CDR information and sends it to the CG. At this time, the active process temporarily stores CDR information of a predetermined capacity in the buffer queue and sequentially transmits the CDR information to the CG. If the main process is terminated due to an unexpected error, a switchover to a standby process occurs. At this time, there is a problem that CDR information stored in the active process internal buffer queue is not preserved and loss occurs.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for effectively collecting charging data in a mobile communication system.

Another object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for transmitting charging data without loss in a mobile communication system.

The apparatus of the present invention for achieving the above objects; In an apparatus for managing charging data in a mobile communication system having a dual structure of an active processor and a standby processor, when the charging data is detected, the charging data is generated into charging data records according to a preset format. A billing data record generating unit for outputting, a billing disc for storing billing data records output from the billing data record generating unit, a billing data record for outputting from the billing data record generation unit having a first queue and a second queue; Storing the data in the first queue and transmitting the same to the charging gateway according to the storage order, and then switching to the standby processor when the failure occurs, and having a third queue and a fourth queue. Output from the billing data record generator in accordance with the transfer Storing charging data records stored in the fourth queue after storing the charging data records stored in the third queue, and storing the untransmitted marked charging data records among the charging data records stored in the charging disk in the fourth queue. And a standby processor for transmitting the data records to the charging gateway in the order of the charging data records stored in the third queue.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be noted that in the following description, only parts necessary for understanding the operation according to the present invention will be described, and descriptions of other parts will be omitted so as not to distract from the gist of the present invention.

The present invention proposes an apparatus for effectively collecting and transmitting charging data in a mobile communication system without loss. In particular, the Charging Data Record (CDR) information is newly defined and temporarily stored in a buffer queue, and the CDR is also stored in a billing disk, which is a kind of auxiliary memory. By recording, even when switching between processes, the CDRs stored in the charging disk are sequentially transmitted so that no data loss occurs.

Next, the charging data collection and transmission structure according to the embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. 3.

3 is a diagram schematically illustrating a structure for performing charging data collection and transmission according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 3, the billing data collection and transmission structure according to an embodiment of the present invention detects the billing data 302 when it is generated and generates a CDR and a CDR generating unit 303 to generate the CDR. And an active process 304 for operating, a standby process 320, and a charging disk 315, which is an auxiliary storage memory (e.g., a hard disk). The active process 304 has CDR queues 306, 308, 310 in a linked list structure, and temporary CDR queues 314, 316, 318 that read CDR information from the charging disk 315. ) And a transmission queue 312, and the standby process 320 is implemented in the same structure. On the other hand, the charging disk 315 is recorded at the same time when the CDR is recorded in the active process 304 or the standby process 320 in the CDR format newly defined in the present invention. The description of the new CDR format will be described with reference to FIG. 4 and will be omitted here.

First, when a call is made, billing data 302 is generated. The CDR generation unit 303 detects this and generates a CDR in a newly defined CDR format according to the present invention. The active process 304 collects and records the generated CDRs. At the same time, the charging disk 315, which is an auxiliary storage memory, also records the generated CDR. In the present invention, as in the prior art, the data structures of the CDR queue and the temporary CDR queue, which are the main process 304 internal memory, are implemented as a linked list. The active process 304 encodes the charging data, that is, CDR information, using the GTP 'protocol and transmits the data to the transmission queue 312. The transmission queue 312 sequentially transmits the encoded CDR information to a charging gateway (hereinafter, referred to as 'CG') 336. Receiving the CDR, the CG 336 sends an acknowledgment to the active process 304. The active process 304 writes 'S' to the send flag of the corresponding CDR of the charging disk 315.

In this case, it is assumed that the transfer process is performed to the standby process 320 due to an unexpected error while the active process 304 collects and records the CDRs in the CDR queue. In this case, the CDR information previously stored temporarily by the active process 304 is lost and transferred to the standby process 320 (319). However, in the present invention, not only the CDR information is recorded in the active process 304, but also the CDR information is recorded in the charging disk 315 at the same time. Of course, the charging disk 315 may also share CDR information with the standby process (320). Accordingly, when the transfer is performed to another process as described above, the standby process cannot transfer the CDRs recorded as 'N' in the transmission flag from the stored CDR information to the CG 336 until the standby process ( Read and store the temporary CDR queues 330, 332, 334 of 320. This will be described in more detail with reference to FIG. 4.

4 illustrates a CDR format according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 4, first, the CDR generation unit 303 implements the CDR information form with the following fields. The CDR format is composed of a sequence 402, a transport flag 404, a process identifier 406, a CDR size 408 and a CDR data 410 field. The sequence field 402 denotes a unique value corresponding to the order in which CDR information is generated. The CDR information is sequentially delivered to the transmission queues 312 and 328 according to the eigenvalues indicated in the sequence field 402. Next, in the transmission flag field 404, 'N' may be indicated for CDRs that the transmission queues 312 and 328 did not transmit, and the CG 336 received an acknowledgment for the transmitted CDR. 'S' may be indicated. For example, when the transmission queues 312 and 328 sequentially transmit CDR information to the CG 336 according to the sequence information, the transmitted CDR information is deleted and the corresponding CDR field of the charging disk 315 is deleted. 'N' is indicated in the transmission flag 404.

Next, in the process identifier 406 field, a unique identifier of the process in which the CDR information is recorded is recorded. For example, when the process identifier value of the active process 304 is '0' and the transfer process is performed to the standby process 320 due to an unintended error occurrence, the charging disk 315 may be configured to perform the standby process 320. By the control, the temporary CDR queues 330, 332, and 334 of the standby process 320 are transmitted to the CDR information recorded as 'N' in the transmission flag of the stored CDR information. Accordingly, a process identifier '0' of the active process 304 is recorded in the process identifier field of the CDR format stored in the temporary CDR queues 330, 332, and 334 of the standby process 320.

Thereafter, the standby process 320 collects the newly generated charging data into the CDR queues 322, 324, and 326. In this case, when the unique process identifier value of the process is '1', the standby process 320 displays the value of '1' in the process identifier field of the CDR information. As a result, the collected CDR information for each process may be distinguished by a value indicated in the process identifier field, which may prevent a case of transmitting duplicate CDR information to the CG 336. Next, the CDR size field 408 indicates the length of the collected CDR information. The CDR information has a variable length whose length is not constant, which is information required when the process after performing the transfer reads the CDR from the charging disk 315. Next, CDR information is recorded in the CDR data field 410.

3 illustrates a schematic structure for collecting and transmitting charging data, and FIG. 4 illustrates a CDR format newly defined in the present invention. 5, the procedure in which the charging data is collected, recorded and transmitted in the CDR format will be described.

Hereinafter, for convenience of description, it will be assumed that the active process 304 performs the transfer to the standby process 320 due to an error during operation. Of course, the same process is also applied to the case where the transfer from the standby process 320 to the active process 304 is performed.

5 is a flowchart illustrating a process of collecting and transmitting charging data according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 5, first, in step 502, the CDR generation unit 303 detects the charging data, and proceeds to step 504. In step 504, the CDR generation unit 303 generates a CDR in a CDR format newly defined in the present invention, and proceeds to step 506. In step 506, the active process 304 collects the generated CDRs and records them in a CDR queue. At the same time, the active process 304 controls to collect and store the CDRs in the charging disk 315 and proceeds to step 508. In step 508, the active process 304 encodes the CDR using the GTP 'protocol and proceeds to step 510. In step 510, the active process 304 moves the encoded CDRs to the transmission queue 312 and proceeds to step 512. In step 512, the transmission queue 312 transmits the CDR to the CG 336 and proceeds to step 514. When the CG 336 receives the CDR in step 514, it transmits an acknowledgment to the active process 304, and the active process 304 receives it and proceeds to step 516. In step 516, the charging disk 315 marks 'S' in the transmission flag of the corresponding CDR transmitted to the CG 336 under the control of the active process 304.

 FIG. 5 has described a case in which a process is normally operated without a switching, and FIG. 6 will be described below in the case of switching.

6 is a flowchart illustrating a processing procedure after a transfer is generated according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 6, first, in step 602, the charging disk 315 transmits CDRs indicated by 'N' in a transmission flag to a temporary CDR queue under the control of an auxiliary process 320 when performing a transfer between the processes. Proceed to step 604. In step 604, the standby process 320 stores newly generated CDRs in a CDR queue in the process. At the same time, the charging disk 315 also stores the newly generated CDRs in step 606. In step 606, the standby process 320 encodes the CDRs stored in the temporary CDR queue using the GTP 'protocol, and then moves to the transmission queue 328 and proceeds to step 608. In step 608, the transmission queue 328 transmits the CDR to the CG 336 and proceeds to step 610. In step 610, the standby process 320 determines whether the CG 336 receives an affirmative response. If the result of the determination is an acknowledgment, the flow proceeds to step 612 and if not, retransmits to the CG 336. In step 612, the standby process 320 marks 'S' in the transmission flag of the transmission CDR of the charging disk 314 and proceeds to step 614. In step 614, the standby process 320 moves the newly stored CDRs to the transmission queue 328 and performs the operation again from step 608.

Meanwhile, in the detailed description of the present invention, specific embodiments have been described, but various modifications are possible without departing from the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention should not be limited to the described embodiments, but should be determined not only by the scope of the following claims, but also by those equivalent to the scope of the claims.

As described above, the billing data record information newly defined in the present invention is stored in a queue of a running process, and at the same time, it is also stored in a billing disk which is an auxiliary storage memory. By implementing as described above, it is possible to back up the billing data in the queue safely and more efficiently after the changeover is performed in another process, thereby preventing the loss of the billing data.

1 is a view schematically showing a structure for performing charging data collection and transmission according to the prior art

2 illustrates a CDR format according to the prior art.

3 is a diagram schematically showing a structure for performing charging data collection and transmission according to an embodiment of the present invention;

4 illustrates a CDR format according to an embodiment of the present invention.

5 is a flowchart illustrating a process in which charging data is collected and transmitted according to an embodiment of the present invention.

6 is a flowchart illustrating a processing procedure after a transfer is generated according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Claims (6)

An apparatus for managing charging data in a mobile communication system having a dual structure of an active processor and a standby processor, A billing data record generation unit for generating billing data records according to a preset format and then outputting billing data when detecting that billing data is generated; A billing disc for storing billing data records output from the billing data record generator; Having a first queue and a second queue, storing the billing data records output from the billing data record generator in the first queue and transmitting the billing data records to the billing gateway in the order of storage. The active processor switching to the standby processor; The third queue has a third queue and a fourth queue, and stores charging data records output from the charging data record generation unit in the third queue according to the switching, and is not transmitted among the charging data records stored in the charging disk. After storing the marked billing data records in the fourth queue, the billing gateway in the order of the billing data records stored in the fourth queue from the billing data records stored in the third queue according to the storage order. The standby processor for transmitting to the standby processor. The method of claim 1, And the accounting data record generator generates at least one of a process identifier field and a transmission flag field in a billing data record format. The method of claim 2, And the process identifier field includes an identifier for distinguishing between an active processor and a standby processor. The method of claim 2, The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the transmission flag field includes an identifier for distinguishing whether or not the charging data record has been transmitted. The method of claim 1, The billing data record generator is characterized in that for outputting the billing data record generated by marking the untransmitted. The method of claim 1, The charging data record of the charging disk is characterized in that the device is marked as untransmitted or transmitted in the transmission flag field under the control of the active or standby processor.