WO2006035332A1

WO2006035332A1 - A method and system for billing in seamless roaming between wireless networks

Info

Publication number: WO2006035332A1
Application number: PCT/IB2005/052968
Authority: WO
Inventors: Xiaoling Shao; Bo Liu; Xiaohui Jin; Lei Feng
Original assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
Priority date: 2004-09-28
Filing date: 2005-09-12
Publication date: 2006-04-06

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for billing communication of a mobile terminal that is seamlessly roaming between two different wireless networks. The system provided by the invention collects billing information incurred by the communication of the mobile terminal via the second wireless network, and receive the billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network, and then produces a corresponding bill record based on the billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via both the first and the second wireless networks. Using the system and method as described above, a network operator can accurately and conveniently record the fees incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via different networks respectively and the total fees. The terminal subscriber can also get a more economical and reasonable account bill.

Description

A METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR BILLING IN SEAMLESS ROAMING BETWEEN WIRELESS NETWORKS

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a wireless communication network system, and more particularly, to a system for billing in seamless roaming between different wireless networks.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Today, many mobile terminals can access a variety of wireless networks by being equipped with a number of different network interface cards or a multi-mode network interface card. Access to different wireless networks is for different purposes, for example, a mobile terminal with a dual-mode card for both Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), such as a personal digital assistant (PDA), a smart mobile phone, and etc., can have voice communication by accessing GSM networks, and can access Internet via WLAN in the overlap area of Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) and WLAN.

Generally, a subscriber needs to manually select a corresponding radio interface before accessing different networks. In another Chinese patent application No. 03122389.3 by the same applicant, filed on May 9, 2003, a scheme for performing automatic seamless roaming between WWAN and WLAN is provided, what it discloses is incorporated herein by reference. Utilizing the scheme provided by the patent application, a Subscriber can automatically use WLAN for voice communication in the case that WWAN service area and WLAN service area are overlapped, thus resulting in a relatively low communication fee. At the same time, it is possible for the network operator to transfer a part of load of WWAN network to WLAN in densely populated areas, and the cost of network installation and maintenance can be reduced for the network operator, because WLAN is relatively cheap and can provide more applications of point-to-point communication. However, the technique of roaming between WWAN and WLAN has not been developed widely, because the technique still faces many problems currently, especially the problem of lacking an efficient management scheme, such as billing during roaming between WWAN and WLAN, and so on. Therefore, there is a need to provide an efficient solution for the billing of communication during roaming between WWAN and WLAN.

OBJECT AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides a method and system for billing communication of a mobile terminal roaming seamlessly between two different wireless networks.

To achieve the above object, according to an embodiment of the present invention, the billing system provided by the present invention comprises: collecting billing information incurred by communication of a mobile terminal via a first wireless network; collecting billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via a second wireless network if the communication connection is seamlessly handed over from the first wireless network to the second wireless network; and generating a corresponding bill record based on the billing information collected from communication via both the first and the second wireless networks. In accordance with another embodiment of the present invention, the billing system provided by the present invention further comprises : collecting billing information incurred by communication of a mobile terminal via a first wireless network; reporting the collected billing information aforementioned to the second wireless network to generate a corresponding bill record if the communication connection is seamlessly handed over from the first wireless network to the second wireless network.

Utilizing the system and method as described above, a network operator can accurately and conveniently record the cost incurred by communication via different networks respectively and the total cost, and also the terminal subscriber can get a more economical and reasonable account bill. Other objects and attainments together with a fuller understanding of the invention will become apparent and appreciated by referring to the following description and claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS The present invention is explained in further detail, and by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings wherein:

Figure 1 shows typical service areas in which mobile terminals are used; Figure 2 shows a flowchart of the billing system for seamless roaming between WWAN and WLAN, according to an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 3 shows a partial flowchart of offline billing employed when the system is handed over to WLAN connection, according to an embodiment of the present invention; Figure 4 shows a partial flowchart of online billing employed when the system is handed over to WLAN connection, according to another embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 5 is a block diagram of portions of the modules in the billing system according to the present invention. Throughout the drawings, the same reference numerals indicate similar or corresponding features or functions.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Figure 1 shows typical service areas in which mobile terminals such as mobile phones are used. Within these service areas, a WWAN service area (e.g. GSM, GPRS,

CDMA and 3G) and a WLAN service area might or might not overlap (as shown in fig.l). In the case that the WWAN service area and the WLAN service area overlap, both the WWAN service and WLAN service can be provided. These areas are also called hot spots, including some airports, hotels, and the like. When a mobile terminal having capability of accessing heterogeneous wireless networks and held by a subscriber is powered on, the mobile terminal will search for all the available networks by means of the particular method defined by the corresponding network. For example in 3 G network, the mobile terminal can search signals from UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) through a broadcast control channel. The vertical hand-over is a service allowing a mobile terminal to hand over to another wireless network during communication and hold on the communication at the same time. Assuming that a subscriber has subscribed for such a vertical hand-over service, the subscriber can preset the priority order of the wireless networks and set the operation mode of the vertical hand-over service as either a default mode or a prompt mode. In the default mode, the vertical hand-over is automatically performed when the mobile terminal in communication detects the presence of the preferred wireless network. Inversely, in prompt mode, the mobile terminal will prompt the subscriber whether to take a vertical hand-over or not when the mobile terminal in communication detects the presence of the preferred wireless network.

Assuming that a subscriber hasn't subscribed for the vertical hand-over service, the mobile terminal will provide, in appropriate instance, the subscriber a prompt that can contain favor information, sales promotion information, or the like, so that the subscriber can select the predetermined vertical hand-over service.

Referring to figure 2, the system for billing during seamless roaming between

WWAN and WLAN and the method performed thereby proposed by the present invention, will be described in detail below, wherein the billing system comprises the components resident in WWAN and those resident in WLAN, which perform the associated operations respectively.

First, the mobile terminal initiates a call, and detects whether WLAN is present and acts as the preferred interface for communication or not, so as to decide whether to establish a call connection via WLAN (step S 106). When only WWAN is available or WLAN is not the preferred one, communication connection will be established via WWAN, at this point WWAN transmits the call request to the receiving party (step S 156). Then the system can determine whether the WWAN connection is established successfully or not (step S 162). If yes, the WWAN will start to account the billing information (step S 166). If both wireless networks of WWAN and WLAN are available and the WLAN is preset as the preferred one in advance by the subscriber, the mobile terminal will communicate via WLAN using Internet Protocol (IP), now the call request is transmitted to the receiving party by WLAN (step Sl 12). Thereafter WLAN will determine whether the WLAN connection is established successfully or not (step Sl 16), at this step WLAN may transmit the network address of the receiving party to the calling mobile terminal via the call, so that the call connection will be established via WWAN if the WLAN connection can't be established for the reason that the receiving party isn't within the service area of WLAN or other reasons. The above process performed by WWAN and WLAN systems as well as some process below involving the network hand-over operation is described in brief here, since another Chinese patent application No.03122389.3 by the same applicant, filed on May 9, 2003, has detailed the process.

The receiving party can decide to accept or reject the request for WLAN call from the calling party (which can be set as the default mode or the prompt mode) after receiving the request, if it is within the service area of WLAN. The WLAN connection can't be established successfully if the receiving party rejects the request, in this case the communication connection tries to be established via WWAN. The WLAN connection can be established if the receiving party accepts the request for WLAN connection, and WLAN starts to account the billing information (step S 122).

Because the possible movement of the subscriber during communication simultaneously results in changes of the available wireless networks, after WLAN connection is established, WLAN will decide whether to hand over vertically to WWAN or not based on changes of the network environment under which the mobile terminal is located (step S 126). If the calling party and the receiving party are in the WLAN communication connection, meanwhile the calling party and/or the receiving party leave the WLAN service area, WLAN reports to WWAN the billing information incurred by the communication in WLAN (step S 152). The communication connection may be handed over to WWAN and the step S 156 start to be performed in order to hold on the communication continuously without subscriber's intervention, namely seamless roaming, and at the same time the subscriber is notified by means of beeping, vibrating, or the like.

If communication connection hasn't been handed over to WWAN, herein possibly because the subscriber didn't leave the WLAN service area or hand-over to WWAN isn't successful though he left the WLAN service area, then WLAN will determine whether the WLAN connection is disconnected or released or not (step S 132). The steps S 122, S 126 and S 132 are performed repeatedly if the WLAN connection isn't disconnected or released; WLAN reports the collected billing information to WWAN if the WLAN connection is disconnected or released (step S 136). Based on the elements, like traffic, connection duration, contents, or their combination, etc., contained in the WLAN billing information, the WWAN network operator can generate the bill information for the WLAN connection, and the billing information incurred by the WWAN connection is added to generate an overall bill record for this communication (step S 142). Then some reward information concerned can be sent to the subscribers of both parties of the communication (step S 146), in order to promote them to use WLAN. The relevant reward information above is information in form of discount, rake-off, voucher, and etc. And the discount rate can be calculated according to the overall benefit brought by the increment of the system capacity or to the necessary cost for establishing the WLAN connection, because in some case, WLAN or parts of WLAN connections belong to the third party. Moreover, the discount rate can change with actual traffic and/or service quality of WLAN. For example, the discount rate may be lower and the communication fees via WLAN may even exceed the communication fees via WWAN when traffic load of WLAN is heavy, such as when a video communication has been established between the calling and the receiving party. When the number of subscribers in

WLAN is large, discount rate is high, because the network resource allocated to each connection is relatively little, namely utilization ratio of network resource is high and the necessary cost for establishing each connection is low.

After the calling party transmits a request for call to the receiving party via WWAN (step S 156), WWAN will determine whether the WWAN connection is established successfully or not (step S 162). If the WWAN connection can't be established successfully, the communication will terminate and the system will perform the step S 142, so that a bill record is generated by WWAN; if the WWAN connection is established, the WWAN starts to account the billing information (step S 166). During the WWAN connection, the WWAN will detect network state periodically, which comprises dynamic recording and updating of the network environment under which the calling and the receiving mobile terminals are located to detect whether hand-over to the WLAN connection is necessary or not (step S 172).

The calling mobile terminal will check the WWAN network operator to see whether the subscriber has subscribed for a vertical hand-over service, if during the

WWAN communication connection the subscriber of the calling party enters or reenters the WLAN service area that can be either the one in which the subscriber is located previously or other WLAN service area. The mobile terminal will maintain the WWAN connection if the subscriber has not subscribed for such a service, otherwise, in the prompt mode it will prompt the subscriber to give him a chance of selecting whether to hand-over to WLAN for communication or noto At this time, a request for vertical hand-over is transmitted to the receiving mobile terminal by WLAN (step S 182) if the subscriber selects to hand-over to WLAN or if the mobile terminal is in the default mode and WLAN is the preferred network interface. Upon receiving the request for vertical hand-over, WLAN will determine whether the WLAN connection is established successfully or not (step S 186), where the receiving mobile terminal will first detect whether WLAN is present in the vicinity thereof, if not present, the request for hand-over will be rejected and WWAN will maintain the WWAN connection, returning to the step S 166 and performing the steps S 166 and S 172 repeatedly. If WLAN is present and the receiving mobile terminal is in the prompt mode, the mobile terminal will prompt the subscriber of the receiving party to make a selection, simultaneously accompanied with some additional reward information for reference by the subscriber. After the subscriber of the receiving party makes a selection, or if the receiving terminal is in the default mode and WLAN is the preferred network interface, the receiving mobile terminal will transmit the acceptance information for the hand-over request to the call hand-over initiator to establish the WLAN connection between each other. Thereafter WLAN starts to perform the step S 122, namely WLAN starts to account the billing information.

If the subscriber doesn't enter the WLAN service area during the WWAN communication connection, WWAN will determine whether the WWAN connection is disconnected or released or not, if not, the system performs the steps of S 166, S 172 and S 176 repeatedly; if yes, the communication terminates and WWAN performs the step S 142 to generate a bill record.

Billing for communication via the WLAN connection can be carried out by means of offline billing, as shown in fig.3, that is, WLAN can account the billing information (step S 122) after the WLAN connection is established (step Sl 16), and report the billing information to WWAN after the WLAN connection is disconnected or released (step S 132) or after the communication is handed over back to WWAN again (step S 126). The embodiment in fig.2 shows such a manner of billing.

In addition, billing for communication via the WLAN can be carried out by means of online billing, as shown in fig.4, that is, during the communication after WLAN connection is established (step Sl 16), WLAN will account the billing information (step S 122) and then report it to WWAN periodically (step S 136'), until the WLAN connection is disconnected or released (step S 132), or until the communication is handed over back to WWAN again (step S 126). Alternatively, WLAN can also report the billing information to WWAN by means of event trigger at step S 136', for example when strength of signals changes, or there is no voice signals or data transmission for a period of time, WLAN can report the billing information to WWAN.

Referring to figure 5, in which the blocks of portions of the modules in the billing system according to the present invention are shown, which comprises: the WLAN billing module 10 and the billing information transmitting module 30 resident in WLAN, and the WWAN billing module 20 and the billing information receiving module 40, the bill producing module 50 and the information transmitting module 60 resident in WWAN.

The WLAN billing module 10 is designed to account the fees incurred by communication via WLAN. The billing information transmitting module 30 is designed to transmit the billing information accounted by the WLAN billing module 10 to the billing information receiving module 40 in WWAN.

The WWAN billing module 20 is designed to account the fees incurred by communication via WWAN. The billing information receiving module 40 is designed to accept the billing information from both the billing information transmitting module 30 and from the WWAN billing module 20 which are summed up and then transmitted to the bill producing module 50. The bill producing module 50 is designed to generate an overall bill record from both portions of the billing information above. The information transmitting module 60 is designed to transmit the reward information concerned after the communication terminates. Fig.5 shows only the primary modules associated with the billing system according to the present invention, while other modules in WLAN and WWAN, which are basically identical with the corresponding modules in typical WLAN and WWAN, are not illustrated and described in detail.

In the above description, the invention has been illustrated in conjunction with WLAN and WWAN. However, the invention can be used for billing in seamless roaming between any two different wireless communication networks.

While the invention has been described in conjunction with specific embodiments, it is evident that many alternatives, modifications and variations will be apparent to those skilled in the art in light of the foregoing description. According, it is intended to embrace all such alternatives, modifications and variations as fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1. A method for billing communication of a mobile terminal that is seamlessly roaming between a first wireless network and a second wireless network, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) collecting billing information incurred by the communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network;

(b) if the communication connection is seamlessly handed over from the first wireless network to the second wireless network, collecting the billing information incurred by the communication of the mobile terminal via the second wireless network; and

(c) generating a corresponding bill record based on said billing information collected from the communication via both the first and the second wireless networks.

2. The method as stated in claim 1, wherein, at the step (a), said billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network is collected in a manner of periodicity or event trigger.

3. The method as stated in claim 1, wherein, at the step (a), said billing information incurred by the communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network is collected after the connection via the first wireless network is disconnected or released.

4. The method as stated in claim 1, further comprising the step of, after step (c), transmitting reward information to said mobile terminal.

5. The method as stated in any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the first wireless network is

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), the second wireless network is Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN).

6. A method for billing communication of a mobile terminal that is seamlessly roaming between a first wireless network and a second wireless network, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) collecting billing information incurred by the communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network; and (b) if the communication connection is seamlessly handed over from the first wireless network to the second wireless network, reporting the billing information collected at the step (a) to the second wireless network to produce a corresponding bill record.

7. The method as stated in claim 6, wherein, at the step (b), if the communication connection retains in the first wireless network, said billing information collected at the step (a) is reported to the second wireless network in a manner of periodicity or event trigger.

8. The method as stated in claim 6, wherein, at the step (b), said billing information collected at the step (a) is reported to the second wireless network after the connection via the first wireless network is disconnected or released.

9. A billing system, for billing communication of a mobile terminal that is seamlessly roaming between a first wireless network and a second wireless network, the system comprising: a billing device, for collecting billing information incurred by the communication of the mobile terminal via the second wireless network; a billing information receiving device, for receiving the billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network when the communication connection is seamlessly handed over from the first wireless network to the second wireless network; and a bill producing device, for generating a corresponding bill record based on both the billing information collected by said billing device and received by said billing information receiving device.

10. The billing system as stated in claim 9, wherein, if the communication connection retains in the first wireless network, said billing information receiving device receives said billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network in a manner of periodicity or event trigger.

11. The billing system as stated in claim 9, wherein said billing information receiving device receives said billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network after the connection via the first wireless network is disconnected or released.

12. The billing system as stated in claim 9, further comprising a information transmitting device, for transmitting reward information to the mobile terminal after the bill record is produced.

13. A billing system, for billing communication of a mobile terminal that is seamlessly roaming between a first wireless network and a second wireless network, the system comprising: a billing device, for collecting the billing information incurred by the communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network; and a billing information transmitting device, for reporting said billing information collected by the billing device to the second wireless network to generate a corresponding bill record when the communication connection is seamlessly handed over from the first wireless network to the second wireless network.

14. The billing system as stated in claim 13, wherein, if the communication connection retains in the first wireless network, said billing information transmitting device reports the billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network to the second wireless network in a manner of periodicity or event trigger.

15. The billing system as stated in claim 13, wherein said billing information transmitting device reports the billing information incurred by communication of the mobile terminal via the first wireless network to the second wireless network after the connection via the first wireless network is disconnected or released.