KR20140023774A - Method and apparatus for servicing location information of subscriber - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for servicing the location information of a subscriber includes the steps of: checking a network to require the location information of a specific terminal; extracting LAI-based location information from a subscriber information DB and supplying the extracted information to a legacy network if the required network is the legacy network; and extracting ECGI location information from the subscriber information DB and supplying the extracted information to an LTE network if the required network is the LTE network. [Reference numerals] (202) Network analyzer; (204) First position search unit; (206) Second position search unit; (208) Protocol conversion unit; (AA) To 123; (BB) Location information request; (CC) To 135

Description

[0001] METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SERVICE LOCATION INFORMATION OF SUBSCRIBER [0002]

The present invention relates to a subscriber location information service method, and more particularly, to a subscriber location information service method in which location information based on Location Area Identifier (LAI) and location information based on Enhanced Cell Global Identifier (ECGI) ≪ / RTI >

As is well known, in the 3GPP (3 ^rd Generation Partnership Project), a WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) method and an EUTRAN (Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network) access method including a UTRAN (Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network) (LTE) access method including a long term evolution (LTE) access method including a base station and a base station, has been studied, and development studies for service technologies such as location registration technology and billing processing technology have been actively conducted.

In general, zone services based on a Location Area Identifier (LAI) are already provided in a synchronous network (e.g., a CDMA network) and an asynchronous network (e.g., a WCDMA network) using an intelligent network system. (Service Control Point) and an SDP (Service Data Point).

That is, in the intelligent network system providing the zone service, a zone service is provided to the legacy terminals based on LAI using the established subscriber information DB. In the LTE network, the Enhanced Cell Global Identifier (ECGI) And provides a zone service to LTE terminals in a manner separately managed in the subscriber information DB.

Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2003-0020173, published on Mar. 08, 2003. Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2008-0041093, published on May 09, 2008.

However, the conventional method of separately managing the location-based information of the legacy network and the LTE network for the zone service has a fundamental problem in that the management complexity of the location-based information increases and the service complexity increases due to the dual management.

The method includes the steps of identifying a network requesting location information of a specific terminal according to one aspect, extracting location information based on a location area identifier (LAI) from the subscriber information DB when the requested network is a legacy network, And extracting location information based on enhanced cell global identifiers (ECGI) from the subscriber information DB when the requested network is an LTE network, and providing the extracted location information to the LTE network .

According to another aspect of the present invention, subscriber information of an LTE network including subscriber information of a legacy network including location information based on Location Area Identifier (LAI) and location information based on Enhanced Cell Global Identifier (ECGI) is stored A subscriber information DB; a network analyzer for checking a network requesting the location information inquiry when a location information inquiry for location confirmation of a specific terminal is requested; and a network analyzing unit for, when the requested network is a legacy network, Based location information for the specific terminal from the subscriber information DB when the requested network is the LTE network and extracts location information of the LTE based on the LTE And a second location searching unit for providing the location information to the network.

The present invention integrates LAI-based location information and ECGI-based location information, extracts LAI-based location information from a subscriber information DB when a network requesting location information of a specific terminal is a legacy network, When the requested network is in the LTE network, it is possible to extract ECGI based location information from the subscriber information DB and provide it to the LTE network, thereby suppressing the increase in location-based service complexity. Management complexity can be solved.

1 is a block diagram of a mobile communication system suitable for applying a subscriber location information service and a call processing service according to the present invention;
2 is a block diagram of a subscriber location information service apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.
3 is a flowchart illustrating a main procedure for providing a subscriber location information service through integrated management of location information based on LAI and location information based on ECGI according to the present invention.

First, the advantages and features of the present invention, and how to accomplish them, will be made clear with reference to the embodiments to be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. While the present invention has been described with reference to exemplary embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed exemplary embodiments, but, on the contrary, It will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.

In the following description of the present invention, detailed description of known functions and configurations incorporated herein will be omitted when it may make the subject matter of the present invention rather unclear. It is to be understood that the following terms are defined in consideration of the functions of the present invention, and may be changed according to intentions or customs of a user, an operator, and the like. Therefore, the definition should be based on the technical idea described throughout this specification.

Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is a block diagram of a mobile communication system suitable for applying a subscriber location information service and a call processing service according to the present invention. The mobile communication system includes a user equipment (UE) 110, (Or legacy network) 120, an LTE mobile communication system (or LTE network) 130, and the like.

Referring to FIG. 1, the user terminal 110 may be a subscriber terminal such as a legacy terminal, an LTE terminal, and the like, and may be provided with a subscriber location information service or subscriber location based call processing service performed according to the present invention.

Here, the user terminal 110 is not limited to a communication terminal that performs voice communication or data services, and may include a multimedia device group capable of providing various multimedia functions, or a plurality of multimedia terminal devices And a multimedia terminal device group. For example, the user terminal 110 may include various types of multimedia terminal devices or groups of multimedia terminal devices such as a smart phone, a smart pad, a notepad, a tablet computer, .

The user terminal 110 can provide a broadband communication service to the subscriber by interfacing with the broadband connection through the NB 121 of the legacy mobile communication system 120 or the eNB 131 of the LTE mobile communication system 130 At this time, the broadband communication service may include, for example, a communication environment supporting a second generation based on CDMA, a synchronous type, a third generation based on WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), or an asynchronous generation. For example, the user terminal 110 may be a broadband communication service including both a communication environment such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) or mobile WIMAX (Mobile World Interoperability for Microwave Access) and an IP (Internet Protocol) And the like.

The legacy mobile communication system 120 includes an NB (Node B) 121, a SGSN (Serving GPRS) Support Node 122, an SCP (Service Control Point) 123, an SDP A data point 124, a subscriber information DB 125, and the like.

The NB 121 is a base station equipment of a synchronous or asynchronous type, for example, a base station equipment of a CDMA or WCDMA system. The NB 121 is used for RF transmission and reception of a transmission signal, And so on.

The SGSN 122 is a WCDMA mobile communication switching center for determining where to route incoming data from the user terminal 10 and for managing the subscriber information and the mobility management of the user terminal 110 , Session management, idle subscriber management, paging, subscriber authentication, and the like. In this case, the SGSN 122 exemplifies an asynchronous mobile communication switching center. In the case of a synchronous scheme, for example, a CDMA scheme, an MSC (Mobile Switching Center) can be applied.

The SCP 123 and the SDP 124 may be defined as an intelligent network (or intelligent network device) in an existing network (e.g., a CDMA network or a WCDMA network). The SCP 123 and the SDP 124 may manage subscriber information And provides the subscriber location based service according to the present invention in cooperation with the legacy terminal and the LTE terminal.

To this end, the subscriber information DB 125 includes a first subscriber information storage unit 125a for storing subscriber information for users of the legacy terminal, and a second subscriber information storage unit 125a for storing subscriber information for users of the LTE terminal. (125b) may be provided.

In addition, the SCP 123 informs the users of the legacy terminal based on the location information of the legacy terminal (LAI-based location information) transmitted from the SDP 124 in response to the location information confirmation request of the legacy terminal, Providing additional services, and the like. Here, the preset location zone is a discount zone for providing a discount service for various additional services, for example, a call request in the zone, a non-billing zone for providing a non-billing service for a call request in the zone, A guide zone for providing free or paid automatic guidance service in the zone, and the like.

Meanwhile, the SDP 124 stores subscriber information for users of the legacy terminal stored in the first subscriber information storage unit 125a, that is, location information based on the Location Area Identifier (LAI) and the location information of the second subscriber information storage unit 125b The subscriber location information service is provided to the legacy mobile communication system and the LTE mobile communication system 130 using the subscriber information for the users of the stored LTE terminals, i.e., the location information based on ECCI (Enhanced Cell Global Identifier) The subscriber station 124 may include a subscriber location information service apparatus of the present invention having a configuration as shown in FIG. Specific functions performed by the subscriber location information service apparatus will be described later in detail with reference to FIG.

1, an LTE mobile communication system (LTE network) 130 includes an eNode B 131, an MME 132, a Serving Gateway (SGW) 133, a PGW A Data Network Gateway) 134, and an Online Charging System (OCS) 135.

First, the eNB 131 is a base station equipment of an EUTRAN access method, for example, an LTE network, and can perform functions such as RF transmission and transmission and reception of signals, signal strength and quality measurement, baseband signal processing, and channel card resource management .

The MME 132 may refer to a mobile communication switching center of an EUTRAN access method for controlling a signal between the eNB 131 and an SGW 133 described later. And manage subscriber information and mobility of the user terminal 110, session management, idle subscriber management, paging, subscriber authentication functions, and the like.

Next, the SGW 133 represents a serving gateway device that manages the mobility of the user terminal 110 between the eNB 132 and the second eNB, between the 3GPP network and the EUTRAN. The SGW 133 manages the payload traffic The SGW 133 interworks with the eNB 132 and supports handover between the LTE and the 3GPP and includes a PGW 134 and an EPS bearer 134, ), And can perform functions such as transferring a PDU (Packet Data Unit) using tunneling. In addition, the SGW 133 can request a session with the PGW 134, and can control a session according to a session response from the PGW 134. [

The PGW 134 is a packet data network gateway device that assigns an IP address of the user terminal 110 and is responsible for session control such as a PDN (Packet Data Network) 140 and a non-3GPP network, The SGW 133 and the PDN 140 and can perform tunneling and IP routing functions and transfer the PDU to the SGW 133 and the PDN 140 .

The PDN 140 may include, for example, the Internet as a packet data network, and the Internet may include various services existing in the TCP / IP protocol and its upper layers such as HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), Telnet , Open File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Domain Name System (DNS), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Network File Service (NFS) It can mean a computer network structure.

On the other hand, the OCS 135, as an on-line charging processing device, receives the location information of the LTE terminal from the LTE terminal 124 based on the location information (ECGI-based location information) of the LTE terminal, And providing additional services based on a preset location zone to users of the mobile terminal. Here, the preset location zone is a discount zone for providing a discount service for various additional services, for example, a call request in the zone, a non-billing zone for providing a non-billing service for a call request in the zone, A guide zone for providing free or paid automatic guidance service in the zone, and the like.

Here, the OCS 135 may convert a message for requesting location information confirmation into a communication protocol message applied to the legacy network 120 and transmit the message. The communication protocol of the legacy network 120 is CAP (CAMEL Application Protocol) The communication protocol of the LTE network 130 may be a diameter protocol.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a subscriber location information service apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention. The network analysis unit 202, the first location search unit 204, the second location search unit 206, and the protocol conversion unit 208), and the like.

2, the network analyzer 202 determines whether a position information inquiry for the location confirmation of a specific UE is requested, that is, the SCP 123 of the legacy mobile communication system 120 or the OCS of the LTE mobile communication system 130 135, a location information confirmation request message is analyzed to check whether the network requesting the location information inquiry is a legacy network or an LTE network, and the network requesting the location information check is a legacy network And generates a first position search signal corresponding to the first position search signal and transmits the first position search signal to the first position search unit 204. When the network requesting confirmation of the position information is an LTE network, To the search unit 206, and the like.

Next, the first position search unit 204 searches the first subscriber information storage unit 125a of the subscriber information DB 125 when the first position search signal is transmitted from the network analyzer 202, (Location information of LAI-based location information) of the terminal (legacy terminal) and providing the extracted location information of the corresponding terminal to the SCP 123, for example.

The second location search unit 206 searches the second subscriber information storage unit 125b of the subscriber information DB 125 when the second location search signal is transmitted from the network analyzer 202, (Positional information based on ECGI) of the terminal (LTE terminal) and transmitting the extracted location information of the corresponding terminal to the protocol conversion unit 208. [

The protocol conversion unit 208 converts the CAP protocol message into a DIA meta-protocol message for interoperability with the LTE network, that is, converts the location information of the LTE terminal (ECGI-based location Information to the OCS 135 of the LTE mobile communication system 130 into a communication protocol message applied to the LTE network.

Next, a series of processes for providing a subscriber location information service using the subscriber location information service apparatus of the present invention having the above-described configuration will be described.

3 is a flowchart illustrating a main process of providing a subscriber location information service through integrated management of location information based on LAI and location information based on ECGI according to the present invention.

3, while the legacy mobile communication system 120 is executing the communication service mode, the network analyzer 202 monitors whether a location information inquiry for location confirmation of a specific terminal is requested (step 302) .

Upon receiving the request for confirming the location information as a result of the monitoring in step 302, the network analyzer 202 confirms (analyzes) the location information check request message (step 304) It is determined whether the network requesting the inquiry is the legacy network 120 or the LTE network 130 (steps 306 and 308).

As a result of the determination in step 306, when the network requesting the location information inquiry for the terminal is the legacy network 120, the network analyzer 202 generates a first location search signal corresponding to the first location search signal, And transmits it to the search unit 204.

As a result, the first location search unit 204 searches the first subscriber information storage unit 125a of the subscriber information DB 125 to find location information (LAI-based location information) of the corresponding terminal (legacy terminal) (Step 310), and transmits the extracted location information of the corresponding terminal to the SCP 123 (step 312).

Therefore, in the SCP 123 of FIG. 1, based on the location information of the legacy terminal (LAI-based location information) transmitted from the first location search unit 204, the location- . Here, the location zone-based supplementary service provided to the user of the legacy terminal may be, for example, a discount service for the call, a non-billing service for the call, a free or charged automatic guidance service To provide location-based services.

As a result of the determination in step 308, when the network requesting the location information inquiry to the terminal is the LTE network 130, the network analyzer 202 generates a second location search signal corresponding thereto, 2 position search unit 206 as shown in FIG.

As a result, the second location search unit 206 searches the second subscriber information storage unit 125b of the subscriber information DB 125 for location information (ECGI-based location information) of the corresponding terminal (LTE terminal) (Step 314), and transfers the extracted location information of the corresponding terminal to the protocol conversion unit 208.

In response, the protocol conversion unit 208 converts the location information (ECGI-based location information) of the corresponding LTE terminal transmitted from the second location search unit 206 into a communication protocol message applied to the LTE network (step 316) , And transmits the converted location information message of the corresponding terminal to the OCS 135 side of the LTE mobile communication system 130 (step 318).

Accordingly, the OCS 135 in FIG. 1 provides a location zone-based supplementary service to the user of the corresponding LTE terminal based on the location information (ECGI-based location information) of the LTE terminal provided from the legacy network 120 Will be. Here, the location zone-based supplementary service provided to the user of the LTE terminal may be, for example, providing a discount service for the call, providing a non-charging service for the call, or providing a free or charged automatic guidance service Or a location-based service such as providing the service.

In the meantime, each block of the accompanying block diagrams and combinations of steps of the flowchart may be performed by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be loaded into a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus so that the instructions, which may be executed by a processor of a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, And means for performing the functions described in each step are created. These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer usable or computer readable memory capable of directing a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to implement the functionality in a particular manner, It is also possible for the instructions stored in the block diagram to produce a manufacturing item containing instruction means for performing the functions described in each block or flowchart of the block diagram. Computer program instructions may also be stored on a computer or other programmable data processing equipment so that a series of operating steps may be performed on a computer or other programmable data processing equipment to create a computer- It is also possible that the instructions that perform the processing equipment provide the steps for executing the functions described in each block of the block diagram and at each step of the flowchart.

Also, each block or each step may represent a module, segment, or portion of code that includes at least one or more executable instructions for executing the specified logical function (s). It should also be noted that in some alternative embodiments, the functions mentioned in the blocks or steps may occur out of order. For example, two blocks or steps shown in succession may in fact be performed substantially concurrently, or the blocks or steps may sometimes be performed in reverse order according to the corresponding function.

It will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the following claims. It is easy to see that this is possible. That is, the embodiments disclosed in the present invention are not intended to limit the scope of the present invention but to limit the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the scope of protection of the present invention should be construed in accordance with the following claims, and all technical ideas within the scope of equivalents should be interpreted as being included in the scope of the present invention.

125a: first subscriber information storage unit 125b: second subscriber information storage unit
202: Network analysis unit 204: First location search unit
206: second position search unit 208: protocol conversion unit

Claims (6)

Identifying a network requesting location information of a specific terminal;
Extracting a Location Area Identifier (LAI) based location information from the subscriber information DB when the requested network is a legacy network, and providing the location information to the legacy network;
Extracting ECCI (Enhanced Cell Global Identifier) based location information from the subscriber information DB when the requested network is an LTE network, and providing the extracted location information to the LTE network
The subscriber location information service method comprising: The method according to claim 1,
The method comprises:
A step of converting the extracted ECGI-based location information into a communication protocol message applied to the LTE network before the provision to the LTE network
The subscriber location information service method further comprising: 3. The method of claim 2,
The communication protocol of the legacy network is CAP (CAMEL Application Protocol), and the communication protocol of the LTE network is a diameter protocol
Subscriber location information service method. A subscriber information DB for storing subscriber information of an LTE network including subscriber information of a legacy network including position information based on a Location Area Identifier (LAI) and location information based on ECGI (Enhanced Cell Global Identifier)
A network analyzer for checking a network requesting the location information inquiry when location information inquiry for location confirmation of a specific terminal is requested;
A first location search unit for extracting LAI based location information for the specific terminal from the subscriber information DB when the requested network is a legacy network and providing the extracted location information to the legacy network,
A second location search unit for extracting ECGI-based location information for the specific terminal from the subscriber information DB when the requested network is an LTE network,
The subscriber location information service apparatus comprising: 5. The method of claim 4,
The apparatus comprises:
A protocol conversion unit for converting the extracted ECGI-based location information into a communication protocol message applied to the LTE network,
The subscriber location information service apparatus further comprising: 6. The method of claim 5,
The communication protocol of the legacy network is CAP (CAMEL Application Protocol), and the communication protocol of the LTE network is a diameter protocol
Subscriber location information service device.

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