In this thesis the Policy and Charging Control system of the fourth generation mobile network is presented. The introductory part gives an overview of the fourth generation mobile network architecture, that is, all the network elements and interfaces between them. Also, it deals with the operation of individual components and processes as well as the basic registration to the network. The remainder of the section concentrates on the service network architecture, dubbed IP Multimedia Subsystem. IP Multimedia Subsystem is a standardised architecture (3GPP) which makes use of the underlying packet switched mobile data services for the provision of other multimedia services, mostly multimedia telephony.
The Policy and Charging Control system controls the quality and charging parameters of a given subscriber, based on subscription and service used. By means of that system we can design various services using different Quality of Service parameters and charging models. As such it represents one of the most important innovations of the fourth generation mobile network. Hence, the Quality of Service parameters, the individual components and the procedures of this system are described in more detail.
The advantages and practical overview of the system and its components are demonstrated by an example of new services introduction. These services are voice services, streaming video services, Internet access and classic telephony services, which are also described to some degree. They all use the packet-switched mobile network as a bearer service.
The work concludes with an example of the streaming video service and provides a practical overview of the mechanisms for the provision of the optimal Quality of Service. The streaming video service was provided through a heavily loaded base station, which served also other mobile users. The experiment had two parts. In the first part, an active default bearer with the default Quality of Service parameters was set up, that is in exactly the same way as assigned to a typical mobile Internet user. In the second part, a dedicated bearer with Quality of Service parameters customised for streaming video service was set up. As expected, in the first part of the experiment, the sharpness of the reproduced image was noticeably reduced, and in the second case the sharpness and quality of the image remained at the highest possible level. This experiment demonstrated the desired effectiveness of the Policy and Charging Control system of the fourth generation mobile network.
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