Connection failure detection mechanism of UMTS charging protocol

Abstract

In Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), the extension of GPRS tunneling protocol called GTP' is utilized to transfer the charging data records (CDRs) from GPRS support nodes (GSNs) to charging gateways (CGs). To ensure that the mobile operator receives the charging information, availability for the GTP' transmission is essential. One important issue on GTP' availability is connection failure detection. It is desirable to select appropriate parameter values to avoid false failure detections (e.g., temporary network congestions) while to detect the true failures quickly. We propose an analytic model to compute the false failure detection probability and the expected true failure detection time. Based on our study, the network operator can select the appropriate parameter values for various traffic conditions to reduce the probability of false failure detection and/or true failure detection time.