Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04W—WIRELESS COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
  • H04W24/00—Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L41/00—Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L41/00—Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
  • H04L41/08—Configuration management of networks or network elements
  • H04L41/085—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history
  • H04L41/0853—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history by actively collecting configuration information or by backing up configuration information
  • H04L41/0856—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history by actively collecting configuration information or by backing up configuration information by backing up or archiving configuration information
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L41/00—Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
  • H04L41/02—Standardisation; Integration
  • H04L41/024—Standardisation; Integration using relational databases for representation of network management data, e.g. managing via structured query language [SQL]
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L41/00—Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
  • H04L41/22—Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI]

Definitions

• the invention relates to methods and devices for configuring a transmission device (NODE-B) of a cellular mobile radio network from an operating and monitoring device (OMC).
• NODE-B transmission device
• OMC operating and monitoring device
• OMC Operaation & Management Center
• An OMC communicates in particular with a multiplicity of base stations (called NodeB in UMTS networks) in one
• Mobile network (e.g. in a UMTS mobile network).
• the logical interface between an OMC and a NodeB. is described by a so-called information model.
• the entirety of all objects that can be controlled in the NodeB is referred to as the Management Information Base (MIB) and implements the possibility to create or remove certain object instances in the NodeB from an OMC, to set or query attributes of the objects and to trigger certain actions.
• MIB Management Information Base
• the OMC sets an operator a graphical user interface (GUI) and / or
• Command line interface available.
• An OMC and a NodeB communicate e.g. via a CORBA protocol in the sense of remote procedure calls.
• the semantics of remote calls i.e.
• the information model describes which classes and instances of Managed Objects (MO) can be called with which operations and which attributes.
• the information model defines a name tree for managed objects for different types of NodeB base stations.
• the mapping of the information model in software for NodeB base stations is realized in such a way that the interface for O&M is independent of the specific NodeB type and only one software package has to be kept.
• the instantiation or configuration can be implemented via individual, sequential commands of the CORBA interface mentioned above or the configuration Information is summarized in a file or database, transmitted and evaluated by the base station.
• the invention is intended to solve two important problems in communication between network elements:
• the logical interface referred to as the information model can be described in such a way that both software implementations and documentation can be derived or generated automatically from the description.
• a file or database for the configuration of a network element can be described in such a way that simple parsing is possible at runtime, versioning can be ensured and tools for manipulating the database are readily available to the operator can be put.
• GDMO / ASN.l has been developed and expanded over the years.
• tools tokits
• tokits were developed with which information models can be described in GDMO / ASN.l and which also allow the generation of software for implementing the protocol in a network element.
• Toolkits do not support a CORBA-based transport layer.
• the object-oriented transport model CORBA is gaining ground in the area of distributed data processing and increasingly in telecommunications.
• configuration files or databases have either been stored in binary format or formatted as text files, the format of which was very much based on the corresponding configuration commands.
• the object of the invention is to enable a configuration of transmission devices (air interface transmission devices such as NODE-B) of a cellular mobile radio network to be carried out efficiently and as ergonomically as possible.
• the object is achieved in each case by the subject matter of the independent claims.
• XML-based configuration databases enable very efficient configuration management.
• the representation in XML is relatively clear.
• XML documents can be configured relatively easily in the
• Transmission device NODE-B C ++ code to be executed (or another program code) are implemented. Furthermore, creating documentation is relatively easy.
• nbdatabase a database is used for the configuration, which is also referred to below as nbdatabase.
• the nbdatabase is transferred from the OMC to the NodeB base stations using a file transfer protocol (FTP).
• FTP file transfer protocol
• the nbdatabase allows persistent storage of a specific configuration of a NodeB type.
• Fig. 1 shows schematically the communication between one
• Operation and maintenance device OMC and a transmission device to be configured NODE-B, 2 schematically shows a configuration according to the invention of a transmission device NODE-B of a -
• name tree in XML
• FIG. 6 shows an example of a “containment tree” of a configuration database for a type of transmission device
• FIG. 9 shows an “nbatabase” file of a configuration database
• FIG. 10 shows a log file in ASCII format
• Fig. 1 shows schematically an operating
• GUI graphical user interface
• CLI Command line interface
• Transmission device 5 uses an information model in which the semantics of remote calls (which classes and instances of managed objects can be called and which operations and which attributes are possible) are defined.
• the entirety of all objects that can be controlled in NODE-B is referred to as the Management Information Base MIB and implements the possibility of creating and removing certain object instances in the operating and maintenance facility (NODE-B) from an operating and maintenance center OMC via remote maintenance,
• the information model describes the semantics of remote calls, ie which classes and instances of Managed Objects (MO) with which operations and which attributes can be called.
• the information model defines a name tree of
• Attributes are configured during commissioning and also during the runtime of a base station of a certain NodeB type by instantiating managed objects and assigning values to attributes.
• the instantiation or configuration can be implemented via individual, sequential commands of the above-mentioned CORBA interface or the configuration information is summarized in a file or database, transmitted and evaluated by the base station NodeB.
• nbdatabase a database is used for the configuration, which is also referred to below as nbdatabase.
• the nbdatabase is transferred from the OMC to the NodeB base stations using a file transfer protocol (FTP).
• FTP file transfer protocol
• FIG. 2 shows an operating and maintenance device 1 according to the invention, which uses a stored configuration database “nbdatabase” 6 according to the invention for configuring a transmission device 5 of a certain type (here a certain type of NODE-B with the type NODE-B type XYZ), a NODE-B to configure this type XYZ or to trigger actions there or to monitor it or to create or remove object instances in NODE-B or to set or query attributes of objects.
• OMC operating and maintenance facility
• the transport layer 3 can be formed in a conventional manner.
• the configuration database (6) specifies the configuration of a type of transmission device (NODE-B type XYZ 5) of the air interface of the mobile radio network XML-based, that is to say through data and structures in XML such as DTD tags etc.
• nbDatabase for each NodeB type, which contains a so-called “containment tree", which describes the instances of the Managed Objects (MOI) in a tree structure.
• MOI Managed Objects
• the nbdatabase allows persistent storage of a specific configuration of a NodeB type.
• the XML language is related to the markup languages SGML and HTML.
• the basic idea of all markup languages is to add information with the so-called "tags".
• the tags carry information that, for example, represents a document in special formatting (SGML) or presents it as a web page (HTML).
• SGML special formatting
• HTML web page
• XML allows -im
• tags can also be defined in a so-called document type definition (DTD) and thus carry any semantic information.
• DTD document type definition
• XML supports the storage of information in tree structures particularly well. Relationships of a tree structure (as descriptive: father-child or root-leaf) are typical both for the static structures of managed object classes and attributes in the information model and for the configuration information to be interpreted dynamically at runtime in the nbdatabase.
• an information model in a GDMO-like form can be specified for the problem mentioned at the beginning.
• a great advantage over a pure GDMO solution is, however, that information can also be inserted using tags that go beyond the description of the logical interface between OMC and NodeB.
• the DTD can be used to define tags that are used to automatically generate C ++ code in NodeB, that specify the persistence of certain attributes, or that are used to automatically convert the XML information into
• Text files such as Allow Microsoft WinWord files for (customer) documentation.
• FIG. 3 shows that from a configuration database according to the invention with an XML-based information model in XML from the files Infomodell .xml and Infomodell .dtd (reference symbol 8), a wide variety of others for the configuration or documentation or control of
• Files that can be used for transmission devices can be generated simply and efficiently, such as naming trees in GDMO / ASM.l for an operating and maintenance device OMC / LMT, C ++ code (10) to be executed in a transmission device NODE-B, and documentation (for example customer documentation) ) 11 for example in MS Winword.
• the concrete instantiation of Managed Object Instances (MOI) and the assignment of their attributes with certain values can also be represented very well by the tree structure of XML files.
• the information stored in the configuration database is not translated into C ++ code, but read in and evaluated by a parser at runtime. It is a great advantage that XML is very widespread and that third-party software can also be used, for example, to parse the XML files.
• the concrete implementation of a configuration database can consist of one XML file or of several XML files. Alternatively, the database can be divided into different, domain-specific parts. Different specialists, for example for domains such as equipment or transport management, can be independently controlled
• a fundamental feature of the invention is the novel use of principles of data or document processing in the field of telecommunications and in particular in problem areas of network management.
• a basic insight of the invention is that both the information contained in the information model and in the configuration database are based on tree structures which can be optimally specified using XML.
• parts of the NodeB C ++ code are generated from the information model specified in XML.
• images of the XML information in any language are conceivable.
• the nbdatabase is configured by operators at the OMC or by maintenance personnel using a Local Maintenance Terminal (LMT) and loaded onto a specific NodeB.
• LMT Local Maintenance Terminal
• the invention is used in the so-called Radio Access Network (RAN) for UMTS mobile radio.
• RAN Radio Access Network
• OMC also called RadioCommander
• NodeB base stations
• FIG. 5 shows an example of a namingtree that can be used for several types of NODE-B transmission devices.
• 6 shows an example of a “containment tree” of a stored configuration database.
• FIG. 7 shows an example of an “nbdatebase-header-file” of a configuration database.
• FIG. 8 shows an example of a “DTD” file of a configuration database (NB databäse).
• FIG. 10 shows an example of a log file which, during the maintenance of a transmission device (NODE-B etc) by an operating and maintenance device (OMC etc.), specifies further data on an error (CPU failure of basebendcard) in ASCII format.
• OMC operating and maintenance device

Landscapes

• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Computer Networks & Wireless Communication (AREA)
• Signal Processing (AREA)
• Mobile Radio Communication Systems (AREA)

Priority Applications (3)

Applications Claiming Priority (1)

Publications (1)

Family

ID=29797115

Family Applications (1)

Country Status (3)

Cited By (4)

Families Citing this family (3)

Citations (3)

• 2002
  • 2002-07-01 WO PCT/EP2002/007235 patent/WO2004004214A1/de not_active Application Discontinuation
  • 2002-07-01 CN CNB028292553A patent/CN100531042C/zh not_active Expired - Fee Related
  • 2002-07-01 AU AU2002321152A patent/AU2002321152A1/en not_active Abandoned

Patent Citations (3)

Non-Patent Citations (1)

Also Published As

Similar Documents

Legal Events