AryaSmartPolicy - Identity/Policy Manager
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Overview
The EPC defined Policy and Charging Control (PCRF) is a very powerful functionary during subscriber call setup at various phases. This component is used for setting up flow level differentiated services using Gx interface. In addition it defines a very useful protocol to overlay session based applica- tions over EPC UE sessions using Rx interface. The Rx interface can be used by applications to get session-level, bearer-level and access-level pa- rameters for UE and also set application specific QOS requirements for the UE session.
Features supported by convergent billing using PCRF
- Zero charging services or promotions
- Quota/Time limit based charging and rate-limiting
- Real-time notifications for quota/time based limits
- Time window based charging
- Service/Device aware charging
- Location/Device based QOS override
- Emergency services or VOLTE services
- Prepaid OTT services
Key Features
- GUI based service flow definition
- GUI based policy definition
- Dynamic and real time response to subscriber usage behaviors
- Flexible plan bundles and enable QOS for premium services
- Enforce fair usage policy according to plan subscription and usage behavior
Interfaces Supported
- Diameter based
- Gx - PGW PCRF
- Gx - SGW PCRF
- Rx - AF PCRF
- Sy - OCS PCRF
- Rest APi
Features in EPC Network
The convergent billing uses PCRF for providing various features in EPC network. It builds sub- scription profile repository (SPR) using subscrip- tion provisioning information for PCRF compo- nent. The SPR is used by standard PCRF proto- col to set up QOS parameters, charging profiles etc. The following are the various features pro- vided by PCEF for PCRF to according to the standard.
All the above features can be controlled dynamically at flow level. The PCRF component is stateful, it maintains all session based parameters provided by the PCEF. The PCRF also maintains the current PCC rule state in case of dynamic rule provisioning. All the PCC rules required for the above features can also be pre-defined on PCEF and use PCRF for enabling and disabling control using predefined PCC rule-names. Similarly the rating profiles can be predefined on PCEF and referred by PCRF dur- ing Gx interaction using predefined rating profile-ids.
High Availability
The service flows can be configured in convergent billing using IP flow pa- rameters like source-IP, destination-IP, protocol, source-port and destina- tion port values. These service flows are used to specify rating profile and QOS parameters, for example provisioning any zero-charge services or dif- ferentiated services.
The event mechanism in PCRF is used for limit-based services. When us- age limits are reached or exceeded, users can be notified in real-time or provisioned according to the configured plan. Similarly, PCRF is used to override the default rating profiles for the service, for example any OTT ser- vice prepaid charging can be configured for postpaid subscribers or quota/ time based limit charging, promotional services etc. can be configured us- ing this feature. The same mechanism is used for any time-based services, for example peak and off-peak plan rates etc.
Integrated OCS
The QOS parameters like downlink and uplink bitrates can be config- ured for differentiated services during plan or flow specification configura- tion. For pre-defined rules on PCEF the configuration could be just PCC rule name. The QCI/ARP values can also be configured for any voice and emergency services etc.
The PCRF is also integrated with DPI for any high-level policy enforce- ments that cannot be achieved using the PCEF.
Integrated DPI