Extraction of desired data from flow

Details Extraction of desired data from flow Extraction of desired data from flow

1999-09-23

2003-04-22

Nguyen, Duc (Department: 2643)

Telephonic communications

With usage measurement

Call charge metering or monitoring

C379S126000, C379S133000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06553107

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention concerns extraction of desired data from a structured data flow, especially extraction of predetermined data from a continuous flow of Call Detail Records produced by a telephone exchange.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Billing in consequence of services is implementation of the agreement between the service producer and his customer. In principle, there are two kinds of billing: decentralised and centralised billing.
In decentralised billing, the customer pays to the seller for each time of using services provided by the seller. The payment is performed either with conventional money or with some equivalent means of payment, e.g. postage stamps are used when paying for delivery of letters. A more recent example of a means of payment used in decentralised billing is electronic money where each “coin” consists of a an encrypted binary sequence, which must be verified by a bank server.
In centralised billing, the use of services is monitored by the seller or by a third party. The customer is billed periodically, e.g. once a month. The bill is based on monitoring data collected for the preceding billing period. Examples of centralised billing are electricity, telephone and credit card billing. Centralised billing consists of three steps. The first step is an agreement between the parties on services and on related billing. The second step is monitoring (or measurement) of the use of services and saving of data concerning the use. The third step is formatting of the bill and sending the same to the customer. The bill is formed according to data saved in the billing system.
The centralised billing used in a telephone network is based on an agreement between subscribers and operator. The essential point of the agreement is that the subscriber gets access to telephone services, that is, he may make and receive calls, and as a compensation for the service provided he performs payments according to predetermined tariffs, as specified in bills sent to him by the operator. The bills typically include charging of two types: fixed charges and use charges. The fixed charges are independent of whether services are used or not. Use charges depend on how many calls the subscriber has made and possibly also on how many calls he has received. To be able to debit for use charges the operator must monitor made and received calls. Such monitoring is connection-based and it is performed by network switches.
FIG. 1
illustrates a known centralised billing method used in a telephone network by presenting a part of a public telephone network. For each call which is made the local exchange LE (the subscriber's Local Exchange) performs a call detailed data collection and formats a CDR (Call Detail Record). The record contains all the information required in billing for one call as well as any desired quantity of other information related to the call. Call detailed data collection is always used when specified detailed information on a call is required for billing or for monitoring of call details. The structure of the Call Detail Record is determined by a an operation control command before the call detailed data collection is introduced. The record structure must be determined as a uniform structure in all exchange elements controlled by the network management. Hereinafter the Call Detail Records will also be called by the name of CDR and the program formatting the Call Detail Records will be called the CDR generator. Formatted CDRs are sent to the BS (Billing Centre) for post processing.
Formatting of the Call Detail Record requires that the operator establish some basis for formatting of the Call Detail Record. Formatting may be based e.g. on call detailed data collection of all the calls of the subscriber or formatting may be based on the call type, that is, whether the call in question is a normal call, a facility call, such as call transfer etc., a call free of charge, , an IN call (intelligent network call) etc. In fixed network applications there are about 30 different formatting bases. The formatted Call Detail Records are first saved in the memory and are then sent to the centralised billing system, where they are saved in mass storage, e.g. on magnetic tape or on a hard disk.
Between the exchange and the billing system there may also be an additional processing step, wherein call detailed data collection records are “pre-processed” for the billing system. Such pre-processing may be formatting, where e.g. a tariff class field is converted from one format into another. Whether there is pre-processing or not, call detailed data collection will produce enormous data blocks containing even millions of records, and these may be saved in the billing system's mass storage. The records form the raw information which the billing system begins to process.
Thus, processing of call detailed data collection records takes place at a later moment as batch processing which is separate from the generation of call detailed data collection records. It should be noted that in practice billing may be even much more complicated than the example described above. E.g. in a mobile station network, each mobile services switching centre taking part in the call may generate call detailed data collection records. However, the billing principle is as described in the foregoing.
Processing of a CDR format in present fixed network telephone systems is described in the following referring to FIG.
2
. The figure shows functions of the telephone exchange which are essential from the viewpoint of the invention.
The call detailed data collection process obtains information related to the call as raw data in individual messages mainly from the call control. The call detailed data collection process saves the information in a record reserved for the call. On termination of the call or in connection with interim data collection, the data collection process sends the call record as a whole in messages of various types to the process for saving of Call Detail Records. The message has a call type number indicating the nature of its contents and a message sequence number. The structure of successive messages is always the same and the type will determine which fields in the message must be filled in. If the number of fields to be filled in is less than the number of fields in the message, then void fields are filled in with a filling code. The messages are thus always sent in their entirety.
The saving process goes to read the message structure in a separate format file and starts formatting of the record from a raw data flow which it receives. The structure of the call record and of the format file is fixedly structured in the code of the process for storing the call detailed data collection. Fixed coding is done, because the place of the field in the call record is not found out from the format file. The process for saving the call detailed data collection reads the formatting file successively and from the received call record it picks up a field for locating it in the CDR, if in the formatting file the said field is defined as one to be taken along. The manner in which the individual field is coded in the CDR is also fixedly established in the code of the process for saving the call detailed data collection.
If it is desired in some application to have a different processing for some field in a message, e.g. a time field format, then this must be done through control of the application switch.
When the process for saving the call detailed data collection has completed the CDR, it locates it in the RAM block. Normally, one block can accommodate 5-10 CDRs. When the block is completed, it is saved on the hard disk of the concerned telephone exchange or it is sent outside the exchange to some I/O equipment, e.g. to the hard disk of the operation control centre. It is also possible to send received blocks directly to the post processing process.
It is possible for the operator to output e.g. CDRs formatted of some subscriber's calls from a block saved on the hard disk of the operation co

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