243
PERSONAL COMMUNICATION SERVICES ON A DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING ENVIRONMENT
J Huklamo and E Carrera
Alcatel Madrid Corporate Research Center, Spain
INTRODUCTION
The telecommunication world is continuously changing
as a reaction towards different technological, political
and economic factors. The current trends point out an
increasing demand for new sophisticated services such
as multimedia, personalized and mobile services; the
need for a rapid and cost effective provision of
customized services; the request of user service
management capabilities; the separation between
transport and service domains, that leads to network-
independent service design; and the globalization
which requests a universal access in a multi-operator,
multi-provider, multi-vendor environment.
The introduced scenario leads to conceive new network
architecture concepts taking into account the need for a
flexible service infrasuucture on top of the underlying
transport network. Moreover, due to the strong
influence of the computing technologies in the
telecommunication industry. the future service domain
will be based on a software infrastructure capable of
dealing with the introduction of new technologies,
services and their management. Thus, a mandatory step
in this evolution is V, define an open and consistent
architecture for telecommunication software
applications so that telecommunication services can be
described in a network-independent manner by
applying a "man description methodology covering
the whole service life cycle (design, construction,
deployment, operation and management, and
withdrawal).
Several consortia and standardization bodies such as
TINA-C (Telecommunication Information Networking
Architecture Consortium) [l] and DASH (Description
of Architecture and Service Harmonisation) working
group [2] in ETSI are currently working on these new
architectural concepts identifying some key
technologies for this evolution such distributed
processing and object-orientation with the target of
achieving software flexibility increase and cost
reduction by means of interoperability, portability and
reuse.
Personal telecommunication services are evolving from
normal telephony to advanced multimedia services
supported on wide range of network infrastructures,
from PSTN (Public Switched Telephony Network) to
'Telecommunications',26-29 March 1995, Conference Publication No. 404, 0 /E, 1995
BB-ISDN (Broadband Integrated Services Digital
Network).
Within the RACE (Research in Advanced
Communication in Europe) program, the PERCOM
(PERsonal COMmunication Space in Multilayer
Networks) project [3] is investigating on PCS concepts
applying the new trends in network architecture. A
distributed PCS architecture has been designed
adopting the ODP (Open Distributed Processing)
Reference Model and object oriented techniques. A
prototype providing advanced personal communication
services within an ATM network is being developed to
validate the new PCS concepts, the proposed
architecture and the methodology and applied TINA-C
results. This prototype will be available by the end of
1995.
PERSONAL COMMUNICATION SERVICES
In RACE, this type of services are termed PSCS
(Personal Service Communication Space) service. The
following definition has been given for the PSCS
concept [4]: Personal Communication offers to the end-
user, in their different roles, the ability to communicate,
and to control and organise communication according
to their own preferences, with respect to parameters
such as time and location, and helps the user to access
services offered by service providers.
The main characteristic of tbe PSCS concept is the
personal mobility that refers to the possibility of a user
to utilize any terminal (fixed or mobile) on tbe basis of
a unique personal identifier for tbe purposes of
addressing, routing and billing. It is important to stress
that the scope of PSCS is not limited to telephony since
it may be applied to other more sophisticated services.
PSCS services can be provided on both fvted and
wireless networks. The mobile network supports as well
the terminal mobility which is the ability of a user
terminal to be in motion whilst accessing and using
telecommunication services.
Within the PERCOM project, the following PSCS
features are being implemented: authentication,
registfation, service profile handling, PSCS - non PSCS
users interworking and session mobility.
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Authentication. The user must identify hidherself to
the servicc provider whenever hekhe wishes to start a
PSCS session, either to manage hislher personal
subscription or to use a personalized basic service.
Registration and deregistration. This feature allows
Ihc user to register or deregister on any terminal for
incoming and/or outgoing communications associated
with a particular Personalizable Basic Service (PBS).
The user can define hislher registration schedule
according to time of day, day in a week or date.
Furthermore, the user can register hidherself on-line
just for a session whenever helshe uses an adequate
terminal without a previous registration. That is named
session registration.
Transport Network (kTN). The kTN allows distributed
objects to interact to each other through their interfaces.
The principal mission of the DPE is to offer the
location transparency to the service and network
software applications.
In PERCOM demonstrator, the core of the service is
located in the so called PSCS service node which is the
only component supporting DPE as shown in figure 1.
PERCOM
Service Node

Service profile handling. The service profile defines

the personalizable service parameters for each Personal
Number in a Subscription. The user can interrogate and
modify hislher own service profile. Thus, users carry
out some management functions.

-
PSCS non PSCS users interworking. Although it
could be argued that interworking is not strictly a
feature, scssions between PSCS and non-PSCS users
are supported.

Session mobility. This feature facilitates that the

participation of a user in a session can bc suspended
and resumed in any terminal. A session means a
relation or an association between users/terminals in a
service. Each session must be identifiable using some
session identifier. It may be needed to invoke suitable
presentation mechanism to adapt the session to the
capabilities of the terminal used.
DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING ENVIRONMENT
The Distributed Processing Environment (DPE) is a
software platform built on the top of the basic operating
system and communication functionalities that provides
the cxecnkon environment to get location transparency
so hat distributed objects can interact to each other and
be executed through interfaces, regardless of their
location. The main components of the DPE are the
DPE kemel and DPE servers. The DPE kemel provides
basic mechanisms of communication to send and
reccive messages including request invocations and
replies. DPE servers provide a set of services that
complements the functions supported by the DPE
kemel. The computing nodes are the physical
componcnts where the DPE is installed.
It is distinguished between the physical transport
network underlying computing nodes called Transport
Network (TN), and the transport network
interconnecting the DPE kernels called kemel
kTN-. kernel Transport Network
TN -. "ranport Network
Figure 1: DPE-based PERCOM Service Node
DESIGN METHODOLOGY: ODP VIEWPOINTS
The design methodology used in PERCOM project is
based on Object Orientation and Reference Model-
Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP). The Rh4-ODP
[ 5 ] is an emerging ISO/ITU-T standard which proposes
to analyse and design the distributed system from five
viewpoints. These viewpoints can be embodied in
diverse models.
Enterprise Model
This model considers the overall environment in which
an open distributed system has to operate, identifying
the different agents or stakeholders involved in the
specification, development and provision of the
systems; defining the requirements of the diverse
stakeholders, their relationships and their roles, and the
service provision and management policies. A PSCS
enterprise model is depicted in figure 2 with the diverse
stakeholders and their relationships.
 245

Computational Model

The computational model is described in terms of

computational objects, which can interact each other by
.- means of operational interface. Computational objects
may be grouped in building blocks, which are the units
hice of placement and migration.
Resource

7
In the PERCOM computational model, operational
interfaces have been defined using OMG-IDL (Object
Management Group - Interface Definition Language).
The building blocks have been grouped in the following
segments: profile segment, agent segment, session
segment, and generic and DPE resources segment.
Sede
hiders Engineering Model

This model includes concepts to specify the abstract

Nelwwk infrastructure enabling the execution of distributed
Pronde applications. Therefore, it identifies DPE servers
needed to cany out the service application. It also
Figure 2: PSCS Enterprise Model describes how to structure or deploy the application
components in order to execute them on the DPE. The
Information Model PERCOM engineering model is shown in figure 4.

The information viewpoint deals with the semantic of

the system and identifies the information bearing
entities, their relationships, and the rules and
constraints to manipulate them. The information
elements are modeled as software objects composed of
attributes and methods defined as either public or
private. The most important relationships among
information objects are inheritance, association and
aggregation. The Object Modeling Technique (OMT)
notation 161 has been used in PERCOM for the
information model.

Several semantic fragments, such as registration,

session, service or subscription, have been identified to
group the information objects and their relationships.
The figure 3 shows the subscription fragment which is
based on the TINA-C results.
.urespoMibkiO..
Subscriber
Subscription
Figure 4: PERCOM engineering model

Subscription Technology Model

Portfolio
A
This viewpoint copes with the configuration,
Ead-User
Subscription installation and maintenance of the hardware
equipment and software pieces composing the system.
According to this model, in the PERCOM project it has
been already decided that an ATM network test-bed,
'aulhaiza to use.
PC-based terminals, a workstation based PSCS service
End-User node, a CORBA compliant DPE platform and an
object-oriented database are going to be used.
Figure 3: Subscription fragment
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UNIVERSAL PSCS REETERENCEMODEL
PSCS Administrative Domain Model
The universal telecommunication infrastructure is
achieved by means of the contribution and agreement of
a lot of organizations. The whole infrastructure can be
divided into pieces or sub-infrastructures formed by the
equipment or systems belonging to and being managed
by different service and network providers. These
systems may interwork when providing services to the
users, namely federation concept. A sub-infrastructure
under the control of. a stakeholder is called
Administrative Domain. The telecommunication
universe can be split into three types of spaces: private
domain space, service domain space and network
domain space; the two latest domains related to public
service and network infrastructure. In the figure 5, the
PSCS Administrative Domain Model (ADM) is
depicted showing the domains which are involved in
the PSCS service provision and their relationships.
In the service domain space, the following domains
have been identified: originating user's PSCS service
home domain, originating PSCS's PBS home domain,
terminating user's PSCS service home domain, and
originating user's PBS home domain. The term home
domain indicates the domain under the control of the
service provider selected by the subscriber to contract
the corresponding service. In some cases, several of
these service domains can be the Same ones. In the
network domain space, the following domains, have
been identified: originating network domain, transit
domain and terminating domain. In some cases, several
of these network domains can be the same ones. In the
private domain space, there can be: originating private
network domain and terminating private network
domain. In some cases, this private domains can be the
same ones.
The relationship between the service domain space and
the network domain space indicates that a service
domain requests the use of the functionality offered by a
set of network domains which depends on the location
of the service domain, the originating network domain
and the terminating network domain. If the originating
network domain and the terminating network domain
are not connected directly, they communicate each
other through one or several transit network domains.
Architectural alternative
The described ADM assumes that users receive the
required services from the service provider chosen by
the subscribers to subscribe the services and therefore,
no intermediate or delegated service provider
participates in the service provision. This is one of the
possible architectural solutions identified in this section
called home domain based architecture. The
altematives identified are: home domain based
architecture, nearest domain based architecture, hybrid
(nearest-home domains) architecture and PSCS access
via a generic broker. If the domain contains a DPE, this
separation between diverse locations can not be
necessary because the DPE provides the location
transparency. The interfaces between domains can be
more or less complex depending on the approaches
followed in each domain.
Home domain based architecture. In this
architectural solution, all the operation and
management of the services (PSCS and associated
PBSs) is done within the service domain where the
subscriber has contracted the PSCS service and
therefore, no intermediate or delegated service provider
participates in the service provision. The network
domain space is used to establish the communication
between the PSCS user or the PSCS subscriber and the
home PSCS service domain.
Nearest domain based architecture. Another
altemative is the possibility of receiving the services
from the service provider nearest to the originating
network or terminating network. These service provider
can be called visited service provider. This solution
implies that the home service provider and the possible
visited service providers have made a previous
agreement. The visited PSCS service provider should
receive the required information of the service profiles
to provide the PSCS service directly without the
participation of the home PSCS service provider.
Hybrid (nearest-home domains) architecture.
Accepting the fact that the nearest service domain
participates in the operation and management of the
service, a hybrid architecture can be considered where
the home service domain reserves some basic PSCS
functions and therefore both nearest domain and home
domain are involved in the service provision.
Depending on the number and type of PSCS functions
delegated to the visited service provider by the home
service provider several variations of this option can be
considered.
PSCS access via a generic broker. This architectural
option considers that a broker participates in the service
provision. In this case, the broker has reached an
agreement with the home PSCS service provider or
even with the visited PSCS service provider to offer to
their subscribers the possibility to access to the PSCS
service provided within the other service domains
following one of the above considered alternatives. The
broker is a stakeholder that can be a proper service
provider for some services and for other ones, it is a
service access provider acting as an intermediary.
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Figure 5: PSCS Administrative Domain Model
To evaluate the above presented architectural solutions,
several factors should be considered such as rapid and
economical new service deployment or existing service
modification, performance, survivability, privacy,
security, interfaces required, cooperative arrangements
required vs. autonomy of service providers, network
domains requirements, and accounting and billing.
The home domain based architecture allows a easier
way of achieving the privacy because the service
profiles are controlled by a single service provider. In
this case, the degree of autonomy of the service
provider is very high. In terms of performance, the
nearest domain based architecture can be more efficient
in order to achieve a rapid service provision, but it
requests to reach agreements between the PSCS service
providers and the information about the subscribers of
each PSCS service providers may be known by all of
them. In this case, the autonomy of the PSCS service
providers is reduced and the introduction of new
features may request some previous consensus. The
hybrid architecture may be the way to allow the
required privacy of some confidential information of
the PSCS users and PSCS subscribers, and the visited
service provider could only handle the non-confidential
information. The PSCS access via a generic broker
allows a simple billing for the PSCS subscriber because
the subscriber can contract a set of services to this
broker. The broker could negotiate the network access
facilities with the network providers.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper has shown part of the work carried out
within the PERCOM RACE project. The target is to
implement a prototype supporting PSCS services on an
ATM network using a distributed processing platform
to validate the ODP methodology and the used TINA-C
modeling concepts for the PSCS service applications.
The PERCOM demonstrator considers only one PSCS
service provider and one network provider. A universal
PSCS reference model including several architectural
solutions has also been presented to show the PSCS
concept in a global and more realistic scenario.
REFERENCES
1. Barr W J, Boyd T and Inoue Y, 1993, "The TINA
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Initiative", JEEE
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2. ETSI TCR-TR NA-003001, 1994,
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Architecture and Service Description Methodologies".
3. =OM -C , 1994, "Functionalities and
Architecture for PSCS", Deliverable W2,
CEC Identifier R2104/SELMTp2n>S/P/02/bl.
4. CFS specification, BBLIE B230, 1993, "General
Principles of Personal Telecommunication",issue D.
5. ISO/IEC 10746-2.2, 1993, Recommendation
X.901-905, "Basic Reference Model of Open
Distributed Processing".
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