Telecommunications – Radiotelephone system – Zoned or cellular telephone system
Reexamination Certificate
1997-05-08
2001-01-30
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2746)
Telecommunications
Radiotelephone system
Zoned or cellular telephone system
C455S432300, C455S445000, C455S461000, C455S462000, C455S554100, C455S555000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06181935
ABSTRACT:
The field of the invention relates to the use of a LAN, or other private wired network as an element of a wide-area wireless intelligent network
ACRONYMS
The written description uses a large number of acronyms to refer to various services and system components.
Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN): The architecture of the wireline switched network (fixed wired telephones) that allows enhanced and customized services to be provided by the carriers.
Wireless Intelligent Network (WIN): The architecture of the wireless network switched (mobile telephones) that allows enhanced and customized services to be provided by the carriers. The network automatically tracks the location of the mobile telephone. It includes all networks commonly referred to as cellular or PCS.
Home Location Register (HLR): The application that acts as the central repository of the profile of each mobile and maintains the current location and status of the mobile unit.
Service Control Point (SCP): Defined in the Bellcore definition of intelligent networks, this network element is defined to be the device where services are controlled. In practice, the SCP will run applications that provide the services. The HLR is a service application that executes on the SCP. SCP applications are involved in the routing of a call.
Intelligent Peripheral (IP): A generic term for any of a number of devices that provide services but are not involved in the routing of the call. They may use information available from SCP based applications, and they may send messages to these or update profile files in the mobile's data record, however, switching elements are not expected to launch inquiries to IP's in order to determine the correct routing of the calls.
Mobile Switching Center (MSC): Defined in the Bellcore definition of intelligent networks as the network element that is responsible for the actual circuit switched connection of the voice channels. In the general sense, the MSC makes very few routing decisions, obtaining all those from the SCP applications. In practice, there are may basic routing decisions that are made by the MSC and the practice reduces the network load and processing load to the SCP.
Private Branch Exchange (PBX): A telephone switching system located on the end user's premises that allows local intercommunication with all local telephone sets and with the public network.
Local Area Network (LAN): A communication system that interconnects a number of computer processing units when those units are some distance away from one another, but within the same contiguous property to allow private communications facilities to be installed. For the purposes of this document, LAN shall also include the facility to allow multiple computer processors to communicate with each other when some or all of those processors are within the same enclosure and connected by a common backplane.
Signaling Transfer Point (STP): A Bellcore defined network element that is responsible for the correct routing of network signaling messages.
Visitor Location Register (VLR): An application that executes on the MSC which contains a temporary copy of the mobile telephones profile obtained from the HLR. It is stored locally to improve performance.
Personal Communications Service (PCS): This term is used widely in the industry to mean a number of things. For the purposes of this document, it will refer to the latest set of cellular frequencies made available in North America in the 1.9 GHZ range. Therefore a PCS network is one where the 1.9 GHZ set of frequencies are being used. The document does not differentiate between PCS and cellular as a service and any difference between the two is not material to this invention.
Telephone Company (TELCO): The common carrier providing the wired service including the connection to the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
Mobile Identity Number (MIN): The telephone number of the mobile device. It is the primary identifier of the data profile contained in the HLR.
The Internet: An open, global network of interconnected commercial, educational and governmental computer networks which utilize a common communications protocol.
HDML: Hand-held Device Markup Language
SMS: Short Message Service
BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION
The current cellular, PCS or any public wireless telephony network is now based on a design model defined by the Wireless Intelligent Network (WIN) architecture. This section defines why this model is used and what it details. We then show how the subject invention is used to enhance the application delivery mechanism of new features and services in the WIN.
The concept of intelligent telephony networks was first implemented by the wired (wireline) networks. Under the model of Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) wireline networks provide centralized control of telephone services provided to subscribers through diversely located central office switching systems. In an AIN type system, central offices send and receive data messages from a SCP via a STP.
In recent years, a number of new services have been provided by the AIN, and other AIN-like networks to provide personalized services to individual subscribers when at home or away from home. It is important to note that any services provided to individuals while they were away from home required the individual to manually register or notify the network of his present location. The network did not, nor does the AIN model provide for, any mobility management based in the network.
Modifications of the AIN system allow a TELCO to customize the routing of telephone calls via a graphical programming language used on a specialized terminal by TELCO personnel.
Prior art AIN systems are exclusively land line communications systems, i.e. they provide telephone communication services via wired telephone lines.. The signaling protocol used for AIN allows only for control of telephone network switching elements in response to processes or software functions that are based on the calling number, called number and other relatively fixed items (time of day, congestion control and end user control, etc). Wired line communications, even those provided by the AIN, are necessarily limited by the fixed nature of installed lines. These systems make no provision for communications with any mobile link, except as taught by Emery et. al. in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,469,496, 5,506,887.
While AIN is the intelligent processing related to the wireline networks, WIN is the intelligent processing of the wireless networks. In many ways they are similar and have used similar technologies, however, the model for WIN has a significant additional element, that of mobility. In the AIN architecture, both the originating and terminating telephone are assumed to be fixed, while in the WIN architecture, the location of the mobiles must be tracked by the networks. The HLR is the data register that tracks the location of the mobile and contains the subscriber profiles. It is because of this mobility element in the WIN architecture that makes WIN much different from AIN.
The cellular telecommunications industry has developed roaming standards which allow automatic handoffs from one cellular network to another during an established call, and to allow roaming from one system to another while having incoming calls follow the customer to the visited system. A protocol which accomplishes this is set out in the EIA/TIA standard IS-41. The IS-41 protocol is an out-of-band signaling protocol which may be transported by either X.25 or SS7 links.
The link between the mobile cellular user and the appropriate base station uses particular radio frequencies mandated by appropriate regulatory bodies. Dedicated trunk lines serve as the link between the base station and the MSC, and the interface between MSCs within the same system (same cellular carrier) is generally provided by dedicated land lines. Data links connect the mobile switching center to a VLR, and HLR, which can be located at the mobile switching center or at a remote point. Only the HLR may serve more than one MSC, the VLR is dedicat
Gossman William E.
Hartmaier Peter J.
Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.
Sobutka Philip J.
Software.com, Inc.
Tsang Fan
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