KR20210050200A - Method and apparatus for managing session in communication network - Google Patents

Abstract

A session managing method in a communication network and a device thereof are disclosed. The session managing method performed by an SMF device comprises the following steps of: receiving a request message including information about a user terminal, which has transmitted a session creation request, from the AMF device; and transmitting a response message including PDU session ID information to the AMF device and transmitting a request message including ID information of PCC rule set information to a UPF device in response to the reception.

Description

Session management method and device in communication network {METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MANAGING SESSION IN COMMUNICATION NETWORK}

The embodiments relate to communication technology, and in particular, to a session management technology in a communication network.

When a 5G (5th Generation Mobile Telecommunication) single standard terminal requests session creation to receive a service, when a 4G terminal creates a session to receive a service, a PCC (Policy applied to a Serving Packet Data Network Gateway (SPGW) device) and Charging Control) rules and PCC filter information and the same information must be transferred from a session management function (SMF) device to a user plane function (UPF) device.

In one example, the number of rules is 49, and the number of filters included in the rule is 4227. Therefore, if the message is included in the message that transmits PCC rule information from the SMF device to the UPF device, the total size of the message becomes about 170,000 bytes (the average size of the PCC filter information is 40 bytes). Since the maximum size of a message carrying rule information and PCC filter information is 65,535 bytes, all PCC rule information and PCC filter information cannot be transmitted in one message, and must be divided into three messages and transmitted. In this case, not only the time it takes for a procedure for creating a session for a 5G-only standard terminal to receive a service, but also an unnecessary call processing signaling load may be generated between the SMF device and the UPF device.

A session management method performed by an apparatus according to an embodiment includes the steps of: receiving a request message including information on a user terminal that has transmitted a session creation request from an AMF apparatus; And in response to the reception, transmitting a response message including PDU session ID information to the AMF device, and transmitting a request message including ID information of PCC rule set information to the UPF device.

The PCC rule set information includes PCC filter information, and the PCC filter information may include information on at least one of a source IP, a source port, a destination IP, a destination port, and a protocol of a data packet.

The PCC rule set information may be information defined by grouping PCC rule information and PCC filter information in advance.

The PCC rule set information may include information on a plurality of PCC filters belonging to each PCC rule.

The UPF device has the PCC rule set information, and may extract PCC rule information and PCC filter information from the PCC rule set information based on ID information of the request message received from the SMF device.

The SMF device may transmit a session creation request message including the ID information to the UPF device at one time.

In the SMF apparatus for performing a session management method according to an embodiment, comprising a memory and a processor, the memory stores instructions executable by the processor, and when the instructions are executed by the processor, the processor is , A request message including information on the user terminal that has transmitted the session creation request is received from the AMF device, and in response to the reception, a response message including PDU session ID information is transmitted to the AMF device, and the UPF device A request message including ID information of PCC rule set information may be transmitted.

The PCC rule set information includes PCC filter information, and the PCC filter information may include information on at least one of a source IP, a source port, a destination IP, a destination port, and a protocol of a data packet.

The PCC rule set information may be information defined by grouping PCC rule information and PCC filter information in advance.

The PCC rule set information may include information on a plurality of PCC filters belonging to each PCC rule.

The SMF device may transmit a session creation request message including the ID information to the UPF device at one time.

According to an embodiment, a procedure for creating a session may be simplified.

According to an embodiment, in the process of creating a session, it is possible to reduce a call processing signaling load between the SMF and the UPF.

According to an embodiment, in the process of creating a session, the inefficient operation of transmitting the PCC rule information from the SMF to the UPF may be improved by dividing the PCC rule information into three messages.

According to an embodiment, in the process of creating a session, instead of PCC rule and filter information, only the identification (ID) of the PCC rule set is transmitted, thereby reducing the number of messages to be transmitted from the SMF to the UPF from three to one. have.

1 is a diagram for explaining an outline of a session management system according to an embodiment.
2 is a flowchart illustrating an operation of a session management method according to an embodiment.
3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a session management method in a communication network according to an embodiment.
4 is a diagram for describing an example of a PCC rule set according to an embodiment.
5 is a diagram showing a detailed configuration of an SMF device according to an embodiment.

Hereinafter, embodiments will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. The same reference numerals shown in each drawing indicate the same members.

Various changes may be made to the embodiments described below. The embodiments described below are not intended to be limited to the embodiments, and should be understood to include all changes, equivalents, and substitutes thereto.

The terms used in the examples are used only to describe specific embodiments, and are not intended to limit the embodiments. Singular expressions include plural expressions unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. In the present specification, terms such as "comprise" or "have" are intended to designate the presence of features, numbers, steps, actions, components, parts, or combinations thereof described in the specification, but one or more other features. It is to be understood that the presence or addition of elements or numbers, steps, actions, components, parts, or combinations thereof does not preclude in advance.

Unless otherwise defined, all terms used herein, including technical or scientific terms, have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which the embodiment belongs. Terms as defined in a commonly used dictionary should be interpreted as having a meaning consistent with the meaning in the context of the related technology, and should not be interpreted as an ideal or excessively formal meaning unless explicitly defined in the present application. Does not.

In addition, in the description with reference to the accompanying drawings, the same reference numerals are assigned to the same components regardless of the reference numerals, and redundant descriptions thereof will be omitted. In describing the embodiments, when it is determined that a detailed description of related known technologies may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the embodiments, the detailed description thereof will be omitted.

1 is a diagram for explaining an outline of a session management system according to an embodiment.

The session management system creates a session by replacing the PCC rule information and PCC filter information to be transmitted from the SMF device 130 to the UPF device 140 with ID information of PCC rule set information including PCC rule information and PCC filter information. Simplify the procedure.

Referring to FIG. 1, the user terminal 110 may transmit a session creation request for requesting session creation to the AMF device 120. The AMF device 120 may transmit a request message including information on the user terminal 110 to the SMF device 130 in response to the session creation request. The SMF device 130 may transmit the PCC rule information to be transmitted to the UPF device 140 and ID information of the PCC rule set information corresponding to the PCC filter information to the UPF device 140 based on the received request message. . The UPF device 140 may extract PCC rule information and PCC filter information corresponding to the ID information from existing PCC rule set information based on the received ID information.

In one example, the SMF device 130 may be referred to as a session management function device or a call processing signaling device, and the UPF device 140 may also be referred to as a data packet processing device. The SMF device 130 and the UPF device 140 may perform a session management method in the 5G Stand Alone (SA) standard (3GPP Rel.15). The SMF device 130 and the UPF device 140 may perform a function that the SPGW device in the 4G communication network performed in the 5G communication network, and may perform a function of processing call processing signaling. In addition, the user terminal 110 may be a 5G SA terminal. In the 5G SA standard, when the 5G SA terminal requests session creation, the PCC rule information to be transmitted from the SMF device 130 to the UPF device 140 is each information in units of PCC rule information regardless of the number of PCC rule information. May have to include.

The session management system described herein may correspond to a mobile communication technology. In addition, the SMF device 130, the UPF device 140, and the AMF device 120, which are entities of the session management system described in this specification, have been described as physical devices, but these are not limited to physical devices, and are logical configurations. It can also be implemented as

2 is a flowchart illustrating an operation of a session management method according to an embodiment.

Referring to FIG. 2, in step 210, the SMF device may receive a request message including information on the user terminal that has transmitted the session creation request from the Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) device. In one embodiment, the user terminal may transmit a session creation request to the AMF device. The AMF device may transmit a request message including information on the user terminal to the SMF device based on the session creation request received from the user terminal. Here, the information on the user terminal may include at least one of location information and an access type of the user terminal.

In step 220, the SMF device may transmit a response message including protocol data unit (PDU) session identification (ID) information to the AMF device. In addition, the SMF device may transmit a request message including ID information of PCC rule set information to the UPF device in step 230. The SMF device may transmit an N4 session creation request message including ID information to the UPF device at one time. Instead of directly transmitting the PCC rule information and PCC filter information to the UPF device, the SMF device transmits an N4 session creation request message including ID information to the UPF device, thereby simplifying the procedure of creating a session. It is possible to reduce the call processing signaling load between UPF devices. In an embodiment, steps 220 and 230 may be performed in parallel or may be performed sequentially.

The PCC rule set information may include PCC filter information. PCC filter information includes 5-tuple information including the source IP, source port, destination IP, destination port and protocol of the data packet. It may include at least one of.

The PCC rule set information may be information defined by grouping PCC rule information and PCC filter information in advance. The PCC rule information may include at least one of QoS (Quality of Service) control and billing processing policies for data packets. The PCC rule set information may include information on a plurality of PCC filters belonging to each PCC rule.

The UPF device may have PCC rule set information, and may extract PCC rule information and PCC filter information from the PCC rule set information based on the ID information of the request message received from the SMF device. The UPF device may extract PCC rule information and PCC filter information corresponding to the ID information of the request message received from the SMF device based on the PCC rule set information possessed by the UPF device.

3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a session management method in a communication network according to an embodiment.

Referring to FIG. 3, in step 330, the user terminal 305 may transmit a session creation request to the AMF device 315. In one embodiment, the user terminal 305 may transmit a session creation request by transmitting a "PDU session establishment request" message to the AMF device 315. In response to the session creation request, the AMF device 315 may transmit a request message including information on the user terminal 305 that transmitted the session creation request to the SMF device 325 in step 335. The AMF device 315 may transmit a "Namf_PDUSession_CreateSMContext Request" message to the SMF device 325 to transmit a request message including information on the user terminal 305 that has transmitted the session creation request. The SMF device 325 may transmit a "Namf_PDUSession_CreateSMContext Response" message to the AMF device 315 to respond to reception of the request message in step 340.

The SMF device 325 may transmit a "N4 Session Establishment Request" message and ID information of PCC rule set information to the UPF device 320 in step 345. In step 350, the UPF device 320 may respond to reception by transmitting a "N4 Session Establishment Response" message to the SMF device 325. The UPF device 320 may extract PCC rule information and PCC filter information from the PCC rule set information based on the ID information of the request message received from the SMF device 325. The SMF device 325 may transmit a "Namf_Communication_N1N2Message Transfer" message to the AMF device 315 in step 355, and receive a response message to the "Namf_Communication_N1N2Message Transfer" message from the AMF device 315 in step 360. have.

The AMF device 315 may transmit a "N2 PDU Session Request (NAS msg)" message to the access network (AN) 310 in step 365 to request a PDU session. The access network 310 may also be referred to as a radio access network (RAN) according to an embodiment. In response to receiving the message, the access network 310 may activate the connection with the user terminal 305 through "AN-specific resource setup" by accepting the request for session creation from the user terminal 305 in step 370. have.

4 is a diagram for describing an example of a PCC rule set according to an embodiment.

Referring to FIG. 4, the PCC rule set may include PCC rule information and PCC filter information. The PCC rule information and the PCC filter information may be grouped based on a predetermined criterion. The PCC rule information and PCC filter information grouped based on a predetermined criterion may be given PCC rule information and ID information corresponding to the PCC filter information. Accordingly, the SMF device may transmit PCC rule information and ID information corresponding to PCC filter information to the UPF device, and the UPF device may transmit PCC rule information and PCC rule information corresponding to the ID information from the PCC rule set information based on the received ID information. Filter information can be extracted.

5 is a diagram showing a detailed configuration of an SMF device according to an embodiment.

Referring to FIG. 5, the SMF device may correspond to the SMF device described in this specification. The SMF device may include a communication interface 510, a processor 520 and a memory 530.

The memory 530 is connected to the processor 520 and may store instructions executable by the processor 520, data to be calculated by the processor 520, or data processed by the processor 520. The memory 530 may be, for example, a non-transitory computer-readable medium, such as a high-speed random access memory and/or a non-volatile computer-readable storage medium (e.g., one or more disk storage devices, flash memory devices, or other non-volatile solid state Memory device).

The communication interface 510 provides an interface for communicating with an external device (eg, a UPF device and an AMF device). The communication interface 510 may communicate with an external device through a fifth generation mobile communication network.

The processor 520 executes functions and instructions for execution in the SMF device, and controls the overall operation of the SMF device. The processor 520 may perform one or more operations related to the operation of the SMF device described in FIGS. 2 and 3.

For example, the processor 520 may receive a request message including information on the user terminal that has transmitted the session creation request from the AMF device. In addition, in response to reception, the processor 520 may transmit a response message including PDU session ID information to the AMF device, and may transmit a request message including ID information of PCC rule set information to the UPF device.

The method according to an embodiment may be implemented in the form of program instructions that can be executed through various computer means and recorded in a computer-readable medium. The computer-readable medium may include program instructions, data files, data structures, etc. alone or in combination. The program instructions recorded on the medium may be specially designed and configured for the present invention, or may be known and usable to those skilled in computer software. Examples of computer-readable recording media include magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tapes, optical media such as CD-ROMs and DVDs, and magnetic media such as floptical disks. -A hardware device specially configured to store and execute program instructions such as magneto-optical media, and ROM, RAM, flash memory, and the like. Examples of program instructions include not only machine language codes such as those produced by a compiler, but also high-level language codes that can be executed by a computer using an interpreter or the like. The hardware device described above may be configured to operate as one or more software modules to perform the operation of the present invention, and vice versa.

As described above, although the present invention has been described by limited embodiments and drawings, the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments, and various modifications and variations from these descriptions are those of ordinary skill in the field to which the present invention pertains. This is possible.

Therefore, the scope of the present invention is limited to the described embodiments and should not be defined, but should be defined by the claims and equivalents as well as the claims to be described later.

110, 305: user terminal 120, 315: AMF device
130, 325: SMF device 140, 320: UPF device
310: access network 510: communication interface
520: processor 530: memory

Claims (12)

In the session management method performed by the SMF (Session Management Function) device,
Receiving a request message including information on a user terminal that has transmitted a session creation request from an Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) device; And
In response to the reception, a response message including protocol data unit (PDU) session ID (identification) information is transmitted to the AMF device, and policy and charging control (PCC) rule set information is transmitted to a user plane function (UPF) device. Transmitting a request message including ID information
Containing,
Session management method. The method of claim 1,
The PCC rule set information,
Contains PCC filter information,
The PCC filter information,
Including information on at least one of a source IP, a source port, a destination IP, a destination port, and a protocol of the data packet,
Session management method. The method of claim 1,
The PCC rule set information,
PCC rule information and PCC filter information are grouped and defined in advance,
Session management method. The method of claim 3,
The PCC rule set information,
Including information on a plurality of PCC filters belonging to each PCC rule,
Session management method. The method of claim 1,
The UPF device,
Has the PCC rule set information,
Extracting PCC rule information and PCC filter information from the PCC rule set information, based on the ID information of the request message received from the SMF device,
Session management method. The method of claim 1,
The SMF device,
Transmitting a session creation request message including the ID information to the UPF device at one time,
Session management method. A computer-readable storage medium storing instructions for executing the method of claim 1. In the SMF (Session Management Function) device for performing a session management method,
Including memory and processor,
The memory stores instructions executable by the processor,
When the instructions are executed by the processor, the processor,
Receiving a request message including information on the user terminal that transmitted the session creation request from the AMF (Access and Mobility Management Function) device,
In response to the reception, a response message including protocol data unit (PDU) session ID (identification) information is transmitted to the AMF device, and policy and charging control (PCC) rule set information is transmitted to a user plane function (UPF) device. To transmit a request message including ID information,
SMF device. The method of claim 8,
The PCC rule set information,
Contains PCC filter information,
The PCC filter information,
Including information on at least one of a source IP, a source port, a destination IP, a destination port, and a protocol of the data packet,
SMF device. The method of claim 8,
The PCC rule set information,
PCC rule information and PCC filter information are grouped and defined in advance,
SMF device. The method of claim 10,
The PCC rule set information,
Including information on a plurality of PCC filters belonging to each PCC rule,
SMF device. The method of claim 8,
The SMF device,
Transmitting a session creation request message including the ID information to the UPF device at one time,
SMF device.

Images