Multiplex communications – Pathfinding or routing – Through a circuit switch
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-14
2001-11-13
Chin, Wellington (Department: 2664)
Multiplex communications
Pathfinding or routing
Through a circuit switch
C370S352000, C370S386000, C379S207030, C379S230000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06317428
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The invention concerns a method for providing a service for users of a telecommunication network, a method for provisioning the execution of a service logic function within a service control facility of a telecommunication system, a service control facility for connecting to one or several service switching exchanges of a telecommunication network and a processing node for a service control facility connected to one or several service switching exchanges of a telecommunication network.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Telecommunication services can be provided according to the Intelligent Network Architecture.
A user of a telecommunication network requests a service by dialing the number dedicated to the service. The call with this number is routed through the telecommunication network to a service switching exchange which recognizes this call as a call requesting the service. Then, this service switching exchange communicates via a data network with a service control facility, the so called service control point. This service control point contains a service logic which contains a description of the method that has to be executed to provide the service to the calling user. By a request of the service switching exchange the execution of this method by the service logic is initiated and the requested service is provided to the requesting user.
This service logic is realized as a single process handling all calls one after the other. Each of them going through a single queue. Each call is associated with a context allowing the state of the call not to be lost between user interaction. The service is executed through a finite state machine, taking as input the TCAP message and the context of the call.
The disadvantage of this approach is that this architecture of provisioning services is that within the service control facility an incoming request for a service has to wait for execution until the current one has been processed out. Therefore, the rate of service requests that can be handled by the service control facility is strictly limited.
SUMMARY OF INVENTION
Accordingly, it is a primary objective of the present invention to increase the number of service requests that can be handled by a processing node that is involved in the execution of services for users of a telecommunication network.
According to a first aspect of the invention, a method for providing a service for users of a telecommunication network, in which method service calls requesting the execution of the service for an respective one of the users are routed to a service switching exchange of the telecommunication network or are respectively routed to one of several service switching exchanges of the telecommunication network and in which method a corresponding service request is sent by the respective service switching exchange, that has received the respective service call, to a service control facility or to one of several possible service control facilities, is characterized in that for each such service request received from the or each service switching exchange a service session object, which is able to interact and communicate via an object infrastructure with other objects in a object oriented computing environment, is created within the or each service control facility and the respective service session object controls the execution of the service for the respective service call.
According to a second aspect of the invention, a method for provisioning the execution of a service logic function within a service control facility of a telecommunication systems, where service requests, that request the execution of the service logic function, are received by the service control facility from at least one service switching exchange of the telecommunication system, is characterized in that for each such service request received from the at least one service switching exchange a service session object, which is able to interact and communicate via an object infrastructure with other objects in a object oriented computing environment, is created within the service control facility and the respective service session object handles the execution of the service logic function for the respective service request.
According to a third aspect of the invention, a service control facility for connecting to one or several service switching exchanges of a telecommunication network, where the service control facility contains means for receiving service requests, that request the execution of a service for a user of the telecommunication network, from at least one of the service switching exchanges of the telecommunication network, is characterized by containing means for creating for each such service request received from the at least one service switching exchange a service session object within the service control facility, means for enabling each service session object to interact and communicate via an object infrastructure with other objects in an object oriented computing environment, and means for executing under control of the respective service session object a service logic function for the respective service request.
According to a fourth aspect of the invention, a processing node for a service control facility connected to one or several service switching exchanges of a telecommunication network, where the processing node contains means for receiving service requests, that request the execution of a service for a user of the telecommunication network, from at least one of the service switching exchanges of the telecommunication network, is characterized by containing means for creating for each such service request received from the at least one service switching exchange a service session object, means for enabling each service session object to interact and communicate via an object infrastructure with other objects in an object oriented computing environment, and means for executing under control of the respective service session object a service logic function for the respective service request.
The underlying idea of this invention is that for each service request received from a service switching exchange a service session object, which is able to interact and communicate via an object infrastructure with other objects in an object oriented computing environment, is created within the control facility and the respective service session object controls the execution of the service for the respective service call. Therefore, the service architecture is no longer based on a functional design and technologies like multithreading or multi processing can be applied.
Due to the introduction of an object oriented computing environment and the special object design described above, the processing of the service requests can be distributed and this proved high scalability and IT platform independence. The redesign of the service logic according to this approach allows for easy service interworking personalization, distribution and maintainability of the software. The design pattern allows for taking all benefits from object oriented programming.
Furthermore, it allows introduction of multithreading. The direct benefit is that a service session, that means the processing of a service request, is not blocked by the execution of another one.
The use of a factory allows implementation of several life cycle policies for the service session objects.
It is further advantageous
to implement each service by a dedicated CORBA server. Each call to the service is handled then by a single CORBA object;
to manage the creation of a service session object by a service dedicated factory;
to set the interface definition of a service session object as TCAP mapped over IDL.
By the use of CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) servers the service control facility implementation is simplified and scalability is ensured.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5754546 (1998-05-01), Viot et al.
patent: 6205212 (2001-03-01), Swale
patent: 9534175 (1995-12-01), None
“Distributed Control Node Architect
Couturier Alban
Mercouroff Nicolas
Alcatel
Chin Wellington
Tran Maikhanh
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