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Advanced EPC
MBB enabling services and improving user experience
1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................1
2 EPC standards timeline ........................................................................................................2
3 Challenges and opportunities for the Advanced EPC ............................................................3
4 Advanced EPC Key Features ................................................................................................4
4.1 Signaling congestion control ............................................................................................4
4.2 User plane congestion control ..........................................................................................4
4.3 Carried grade WiFi integration .........................................................................................5
4.4 Voice service for LTE users ...............................................................................................6
4.5 Video enhancement .........................................................................................................7
4.6 Proximity based services ..................................................................................................8
4.7 Group communication system enabler .............................................................................9
4.8 Machine type communications ........................................................................................9
4.9 Architecture enhancement for application interworking ................................................11
4.10 XML based access to PCRF .............................................................................................12
4.11 SGi traffic steering .........................................................................................................12
5 Conclusions .......................................................................................................................14
6 Annex: Abbreviation ..........................................................................................................15
1 Introduction
3GPP s 4G mobile system LTE/EPC has been developed by the mobile
industry in the last few years during 3GPP releases 8 and release 9 to meet
the continuously growing service requirements of MBB. The overall system
consists of the radio system LTE and the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). A
further evolution of the LTE radio system has been done in the time frame of
3GPP release 10 and is called LTE-Advanced. The corresponding overall
system has been selected as an ITU 4G technology option. It should be
noted that LTE denotes the radio system, but is also the official terminology
for marketing the overall mobile system of LTE and EPC.
During the following 3GPP releases on the network side the further evolution
of the EPC is targeting at enabling of more profitable services and improving
user experience, both bringing added value for the whole mobile market.
Service enabling has thus become an important topic after basic EPC
features have been specified during initial 3GPP releases. In this whitepaper
it focuses on the current phase of EPC, which is denoted as Advanced EPC.
It takes advantage of the excellent radio capability of LTE and LTEAdvanced.
The current phase of the Advanced EPC is facing the following challenges:
High penetration of smart phones with a variety of applications causing
traffic of virtually any pattern and volume.
Fast traffic growth with growth of revenues not keeping pace.
Increasing diversity of service types and their related Quality of Experience.
To address those challenges, the following areas of improvement have been
identified:
Enhancements that mitigate or prevent system overload.
Capacity boosting by WiFi integration and offloading.
Enhancements for enabling key services and other new business opportunities.
Introduction of new service enablers.
In this whitepaper it provides an overview on how the EPC timeline developed, considers the specific challenges and opportunities for the Advanced
EPC and describes the different key features of the Advanced EPC that are
intended to address the challenges and opportunities.
2007
2008
Release 8
2009
Release 9
LTE
EPC: basic
2010
Release 10
2011
2012
Release 11
LTE-Advanced
2013
2014
Release 12
2015
2016
2017
After the basic EPC features, i.e. providing high performance IP bearer
services for MBB, had been completed within 3GPP release 8 and release 9,
work started on enabling voice, multimedia and machine type communications services, like emergency call, CSFB/SRVCC enhancements, M2M
related features. The currently ongoing phase of advancing the EPC targets
at improving or creating business opportunities for operators by enhancing
existing or developing new EPC services and features. The timeline of the
Advanced EPC is shown in the figure 2a.
In the last few years the Telco industry experienced significant changes.
One significant trend is the move of Internet services from personal computers to mobile devices. This trend got accelerated especially with the explosive penetration of smart phone.
Another trend is that in many developed markets the penetration rate of
mobile subscribers is reaching some saturation. This increases the interest
of looking for new revenue opportunities and extending mobile services to
other potential markets (Enterprise, government, machine communications,
etc).
The whole mobile industry eco-system started to change when smart phone
begun to dominate the terminal market. One significant change is that
traditional telecom services like voice and message get more and more
challenged by the so-called Over-The-Top (OTT) applications using the
mobile system as a transparent bit-pipe. However, there is more and more
interest in offering better services to the users by making the mobile system
application-aware and providing added value, like QoS, for OTT applications.
The following activities have been identified for Advanced EPC to proactively
cope with the above trends and challenges:
Make the mobile system more robust and efficient, in order to manage the
increasing amount of connected devices, but also the increasing variance
of connection types, e.g. from M2M, and save OPEX and CAPEX.
Enlarging the system capacity, in order to meet the requirements from
huge traffic volume, which is still in a process of growing fast.
Support new services and further improve the Quality of Experience for
key services like voice and video.
Offer network capabilities to applications for better supporting the diversity
of Internet services and facilitating an expansion of the mobile ecosystem
towards including applications.
3
Sv
SGs
MSC
MME
LTE
IMS and SRVCC (including video SRVCC and its enhancements) are the
long term voice solutions for voice over LTE/EPC and are supposed to
support both voice (including HD voice) and video services in Advanced
EPC. With CSFB and IMS deployed, two voice service options are available
that may complement each other.
West Europe
1.01%
0.96%
2.85%
4.36%
1.50%
2.08%
1.87%
13.31%
1.25%
18.77%
10.81%
58.20%
SouthEast Asia
0.34%
1.39%
8.44%
7.45%
0.92%
0.91%
Web browsing
Streaming
File transfer
9.06%
35.95%
47.83%
37.89%
55.62%
China
0.33%
0.19% 1.87%
1.73%
3.03%
27.66%
40.72%
1.71%
0.82% 0.60%
7.96%
4.07%
34.74%
4.67%
Latin America
2.22%
0.91%
IM
SNS
VOIP
43.97%
Email
Gaming
Client 1
Client 2
Advertisement
Client N
HTTP Adaptive
Proxy
HTTP Cache
10
Service Layer
AS
AIF
PCRF
HSS
MME
UE
eNodeB
RAN
SGW/
PGW
EPC
A new function called AIF is introduced between the service layer and the
mobile network to abstract the network capabilities in a systematic way and
thus unifying and opening the network capabilities towards application
service providers.
11
Diameter
based Rx
PCRF
MME
eNodeB
Converter
Gx (Diameter)
XML based Rx AF
SGW/PGW
12
VAS 1
VAS 2
VAS 3
SP Server
MME
UE
eNodeB
RAN
EPC
SGW/
PGW
SBR
Internet
VAS 1
VAS 2
SDN
Controller
VAS 3
SP Server
MME
UE
eNodeB
RAN
EPC
SGW/
PGW SBR
Switch
Internet
13
5 Conclusions
LTE/LTE-Advanced and the Advanced EPC are continuously developing for
meeting new or extended challenges and expectations arising from the
mobile system usage penetrating virtually any area of life and work.
The Advanced EPC delivers new key features for enhancing efficiency and
business for already deployed MBB services and applications. But the
Advanced EPC is also opening for new usages by improving system
efficiency and cost position for scenarios that are not typically broad band,
e.g. massive usage of M2M with a small amount of data, or by offering
specific features from the mobile system towards applications or service
platforms for creation of a multitude of innovative services and applications.
A main aim is always maintaining stability and robustness of the mobile
system also with the growth of volume and variety of the traffic managed by
the mobile system.
14
6 Annex: Abbreviation
CNO
CSFB
CS Fallback
DASH
EPC
LTE
M2M
Machine-to-Machine
MBMS
M2M
SAPP
SBR
SDN
SIRIG
SRVCC
UPCON
VAS
XML
15