WO2003063522A1

WO2003063522A1 - Standby mobile switching center

Info

Publication number: WO2003063522A1
Application number: PCT/CN2003/000059
Authority: WO
Inventors: Tao Peng; Lian Yang
Original assignee: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd
Priority date: 2002-01-24
Filing date: 2003-01-23
Publication date: 2003-07-31
Also published as: CN1434574A; CN1219360C

Abstract

The present invention relates to a standby mobile switching center. The operation of the standby mobile switching center is as follow: using the 14-bit A-interface signaling point of the primary MSC to configure the 14-bit A-interface signaling point of the standby MSC; judging whether the primary MSC is in failure state, if being in failure state, switching the primary MSC to the standby MSC in order that the service of the primary MSC is taken in charge by the standby MSC; judging whether the primary MSC is recovered, if recovered, deactivating the message transferring part (MTP), the signaling connection control part (SCCP) and the relay circuit of the standby MSC, informing the primary MSC to take in charge. According to this technical solution, one standby MSC could support a plurality of primary MSCs. The technical solution could be applied to any kind of MSC, and wouldn't affect other cells, so that the cost and the resource requirement of the standby MSC are reduced, and it is easy to implement this technical solution.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention relates to a backup method in mobile exchange in a mobile communication system. Background technique

Due to the uncertainty of natural disasters, the impact on the mobile communication system is also random. Therefore, it is necessary to back up the mobile switching center (MSC) in the mobile communication system, so that when the MSC equipment in the system due to a serious natural disaster or other For reasons such as earthquakes, floods, equipment failures, power supply damage, etc., the function is paralyzed. If it cannot be repaired within a short period of time, its function is quickly taken over by another backup MSC device. The current MSC backup method is mainly a one-to-one hot backup solution, which provides each operating MSC with a backup MSC. The base station control center (BSC) and the active MSC are connected through a relay, but the active MSC When the MSC fails, the relay connection between the BSC and the active MSC is cut over to the standby MSC. In the above scheme, the primary MSC and the backup MSC communicate through internal interfaces defined by each MSC manufacturer. During the operation of the switch, the primary MSC uses this interface to exchange office configuration data, user data in real time, and the backup MSC. Synchronization is performed to ensure the consistency of the configuration data and user data of the active and standby MSCs. The main disadvantage of the above solution is that since it is necessary to provide a backup for each MSC, for operators, such a 1 + 1 backup in order to deal with a small probability event such as a severe natural disaster causes a huge waste of investment and communication resources. At the same time, because the current MSC can only support backup with the MSC of the same manufacturer, it cannot back up different models, which also brings trouble to the actual backup; In addition, the hot backup method increases the processing load of the active MSC, and its processing capacity is lower than that of the switch in the normal case without backup. Summary of the Invention

An object of the present invention is to provide a backup method for a mobile switching center, which uses MSC for backup with less cost and resource occupation, and is easy to implement.

To achieve the foregoing objective, a backup method of a mobile switching center provided by the present invention includes:

(01) adopting a 14-bit A interface multi-signaling point technology to perform a backup MSC 14-bit A interface signaling point configuration on the backup mobile switching center (MSC);

(2) Determine whether the backup MSC is in a fault state, and if it is in a fault state, perform a switchover between the primary and backup MSCs, so that the backup MSC takes over the services of the faulty MSC;

(3) Determine whether the faulty MSC is back to normal, and if it is back to normal, inactivate the signaling status (MTP), signaling connection control part (SCCP) of the backup MSC and the signaling status and the relay circuit, and notify the restoration of the normal status. The MSC switches to the normal state.

The method further includes: establishing a 14-bit A interface multi-signaling point configuration table in the backup MSC, the table including the local 14-bit A interface signaling point of the backup MSC and its peer office 14-bit

A interface signaling point.

The step of performing the switching between the primary and backup MSCs in the above step (2) further includes: (al) cutting off the circuit and the signaling link between the failed MSC and its opposite base station controller (BSC);

(a2) Adjusting the transmission of the A interface so that the Inter-circuit and signaling links are connected at the physical layer;

(a 3) Activate the 14-bit A interface signaling point of the failed MSC in the backup MSC and its peer office signaling point on the standby MSC, and start the corresponding 14-bit A interface signaling point operation;

(a4) Adjust the cell data so that the standby MSC takes over the data of the cell originally managed by the faulty MSC.

The above step (a4) further includes:

(bl) Activate the circuits and signaling links between the backup MSC and the peer BSCs of all the backup MSCs, and place the circuits and signaling links between the backup MSC and the peer BSCs of all the backup MSCs at the MTP and SCCP layers Shanghai Unicom

(b2) Check whether the circuits and signaling links from the backup MSC to other network elements in the system are available. If they are not available, perform the circuit activation operation and continue to make corresponding judgments until the above circuits and signaling links enter a normal state.

The above step (3) further includes: checking whether the status of the MTP signaling link is in a deactivated state, checking whether the status of the signaling point and subsystem of the SCCP layer is in a deactivated state, and checking whether the corresponding relay circuit is in an unavailable state Only after the above checks are passed, the normal MSC is notified to switch to the normal state.

It can be seen from the technical solution adopted by the present invention that the present invention has the advantages of being able to support a one-to-many MSC backup method. Since the one-to-one backup problem of the MSC is solved, only one backup MSC is required in the local network. Backing up all MSCs of this local network saves the operator's investment and improves the security of the network; 2. Supports backup of heterogeneous models with no modification requirements for MSCs of different manufacturers; the process of backup switching to other Network elements, such as base station controller (BSC), MSC, home location register (HLR) There is almost no impact, no special cooperation is required, and the switching process is fast; therefore, the cost and resource occupation of MSC backup using the present invention are less, and it is easy to implement. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a flowchart of an embodiment of a method of the present invention;

Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of the method of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is an example diagram of a networking environment to which the present invention is applied.

detailed description

The invention is described in further detail below with reference to the drawings.

The MSC backup method according to the present invention can implement N + 1 backup of the MSC, that is, one backup MSC backs up N MSCs in the local network. When one or more MSCs fail, the backup MSC can quickly take over. Their business. In order to identify each MSC's unique position in the network, each MSC must have its own signaling point code (0PC) on the A interface side and the network side. In China's GSM standard, the A interface side uses 14 bits of signaling. The point attribute is a domestic backup signaling point code.

For MSC equipment that does not use the multiple signaling point technology, the MSC has only one unique signaling point code on both the A interface side and the network side. For MSC equipment using multiple signaling point technology, the MSC can virtualize multiple signaling points on the A interface side or the network side. Each signaling point is considered to be its own 0PC. For other network elements, each The signaling points still correspond to one MSC entity, and it is not known whether the physical entities corresponding to these signaling points are the same MSC. Therefore, if the backup MSC can simulate multiple 14-bit A interface signaling points of its backed MSC and complete the A interface circuits, links, and location area cells within the jurisdiction of the simulated A interface signaling points Management, the 14-bit A interface signaling point technology needs to be used in the backup MSC to make it have multiple signaling point functions.

The principle of the method according to the invention is referred to FIG. 2. The system described in the figure has three MSCs, MSC1, MSC2, and backup MSC. The BSCs connected to the above MSCs are BSC1, BSC2, and small-capacity BSC. To enable the backup MSC to take over its services when MSC1 and MSC2 fail, configure the following signaling point data in the backup MSC:

The backup MSC can simulate multiple 14-bit A interface signaling points, which respectively represent the multiple 14-bit A interface signaling points of its backup. For Figure 2, the backup MSC simulates three 14-bit A interface signaling points, where OxCl simulates the A interface signaling point of MSC1, 0xc2 simulates the A interface signaling point of MSC2, and 0xC3 is the normal operation of the backup MSC, that is, it does not take over other Signaling point of own A interface when MSC fails.

When a certain MSC fails, the backup MSC can activate the 14-bit A interface signaling point owned by the faulty MSC in the local office. As a 14-bit A interface signaling point actually operated by the local office, multiple MSCs fail. Then, corresponding multiple 14-bit A interface signaling points can be activated, so that the backup MSC can completely simulate the function of the failed MSC on the A interface side and assume the services of the failed MSC without the need for the BSC to modify the office configuration data. In this way, the backup MSC can have the correspondence between the N 14-bit A interface signaling points and the connected BSC signaling points simulated by the local office, as well as all the backup location information of multiple MSCs.

FIG. 1 is a flowchart of an embodiment of the method of the present invention. The present invention is implemented according to FIG. 1 and its networking Environmental reference Figure 3. Step 1: Establish a 14-bit A interface multi-signaling point configuration table in the backup MSC to configure and manage the data of the signaling point. In the second step, the 14-bit A interface signaling point technology is used to configure the 14-bit A interface signaling point of the backup MSC for the backup MSC through the configuration table. In this way, the configuration table of the backup MSC includes the local office's 14-bit A interface signaling point of the backup MSC and its peer office signaling point, and the backup MSC's local 14-bit A interface signaling point and its peer office's signaling point. . Step 3: Activate the backup MSC's 14-bit A interface signaling point and its corresponding counterpart's 14-bit A interface signaling point. As shown in FIG. 3, the backup MSC performs backup protection on MSC1 and MSC2, and the backup MSC itself is also connected to the small-capacity BSC, and remains in the normal working state, and the backup MSC is also in the working state. The 14-bit A interface signaling point data of the network configuration is as follows:

The signaling point configuration of the backup MSC's 14-bit A interface signaling point configuration table is configured as follows:

It should be noted that, under normal circumstances, that is, when no other MSC fails, the backup MSC does not have real activation data although it has configuration data for multiple signaling points on the A interface. In this example, although the backup MSC is configured with the local office A interface signaling point of Oxa 1, but on the mobile network, The MSC with the Oxal signaling point is actually MSC1. Only when the MSC1 fails and the backup MSC takes over its network location, the backup MSC activates the Oxal signaling point as a 14-bit A interface signaling point in use by itself.

Step 4. Determine whether the backup MSC is in a fault state. If it is in a fault state, perform a switchover between the primary and backup MSCs so that the backup MSC can take over the services of the faulty MSC. In other words, during operation, if MSC1 fails, the backup MSC takes over MSC1. The specific takeover steps are as follows:

(al) cut off the circuit and signaling link between the faulty MSC and its opposite base station controller (BSC), that is, cut off the circuit and signaling link between MSC 1 and BSC 1;

2) Adjust the transmission of the A interface, and connect the circuit and signaling link between the BSC of the faulty MSC and the backup MSC on the physical layer, that is, the circuit and signaling link between BSC1 and the backup MSC on the physical layer. China Unicom

(a 3) Activate the failed MSC on the standby MSC, that is, MSC 1 activates the 14-bit A interface signaling point and its peer office signaling point in the backup MSC, and starts the corresponding 14-bit A interface signaling point operation;

4) Adjust the cell data so that the standby MSC takes over the failed MSC, that is, the cell data originally managed by MSC1. In this step, the circuits and signaling links between the backup MSC and all backup MSC peer BSCs, that is, BSC2, are also activated, and the backup MSC and all backup MSC peer BSCs, that is, between BSC2 The circuits and signaling links are connected at the MTP layer and the SCCP layer. Then check whether the circuits and signaling links backing up the MSC to other network elements in the system are available. If they are not available, perform the circuit activation operation and continue to make corresponding judgments until The above circuits and signaling links enter a normal state. At this time, the backup MSC has two 14-bit A interface signaling points, as shown in the following table: Whether the signaling point corresponding to the BSC of the local 14-bit A interface signaling point is active

Oxa l Oxbl

0xa2 0xb2 No

0xa 3 0xb3 Yes

At this time, the backup MSC considers that this office has two 14-bit domestic backup signaling points on the A interface side: Oxal 1 (simulated MSC1) and Oxa 3 (originally allocated). However, for the BSC1 connected to the failed MSC, the switching process is not noticeable. The original information flow interaction between BSC1 and MSC1 is now transferred to the backup MSC. The backup MSC takes over the location and responsibility of the failed MSC on the network. Business, the switching process is complete.

Since the present invention can perform one-to-many backup, when the MSC2 also fails, the above steps can be repeated. At this time, the backup MSC has three 14-bit A interface signaling points: Oxa 1, 0xa2, 0xa 3, as shown in the following table. As shown:

In this way, the backup MSC will simultaneously assume the services of the original MSC1 and MSC2.

It should be noted that because how to quickly switch the transmission (relay circuit, signaling link) between the BSC1 and the backup MSC in the present invention, completing the physical layer communication is the key to whether the transmission dispatch process can be completed quickly. This relationship Can the backup MSC quickly take over the business of the failed MSC? In the implementation process of the present invention, in step 2) above, the circuit and signaling link between the BSC at the opposite end of the faulty MSC and the backup MSC are connected at the physical layer. When the BSC and the MSC share the local transmission network equipment By executing the transmission equipment jumper batch command through the transmission maintenance terminal, the relay of the faulty MSC 14-bit A interface is directly switched to the backup MSC; when the BSC and the MSC are directly interconnected, the time slot crossover device performs automatic exchange time slot adjustment, Thus, the communication on the physical layer is completed.

Step 5: Determine whether the faulty MSC is back to normal. If the faulty MSC is back to normal, deactivate the signaling status (MTP) and signaling connection control (SCCP) of the backup MSC. MSC switched to normal state. In this step, it is also necessary to check whether the state of the MTP signaling link is in a deactivated state, whether the state of the signaling point and subsystem of the SCCP layer is in a deactivated state, and whether the corresponding relay circuit is in an unavailable state. Only when all the above checks pass, the normal MSC is notified to switch to the normal state.

The key of the present invention is to adopt the 14-bit A interface multi-signaling point technology in the backup MSC, thereby achieving one-to-many backup of the MSC. In the process of the main and backup switchover when the MSC fails, no BSC modification of the existing network is required. Configuration data, so that fast switching during backup can be achieved.

Claims

Rights request

1. A backup method for a mobile switching center, including:

(1) the 14-bit A interface multi-signaling point technology is used to configure the 14-bit A-interface signalling point configuration of the backup mobile switching center (MSC);

(2) Determine whether the backup MSC is in a fault state, and if it is in a fault state, perform a switchover of the primary and backup MSCs, so that the backup MSC0 takes over the services of the faulty MSC;

(3) Determine whether the faulty MSC is back to normal, and if it is back to normal, inactivate the signaling status (MTP), signaling connection control part (SCCP) of the backup MSC and the signaling status and the relay circuit, and notify it to return to normal. The MSC switches to the normal state.

2. The backup method of a mobile switching center according to claim 1, further comprising: establishing a 14-bit A interface multi-signaling point configuration table in the backup MSC, the table including the local office 14 of the backup MSC. Bit A interface signaling point and its peer office's 14-bit A interface signaling point.

3. The backup method of the mobile switching center according to claim 2, wherein the 14-bit A interface multi-signaling point configuration table further comprises: a backup MSC's local 14-bit A interface signaling point and its pair End office 14-bit A interface signaling point.

4. The backup method of a mobile switching center according to claim 3, characterized in that the method further comprises: before step (2), activating a backup MSC local 14-bit A interface signaling point of the MSC and its opposite office 14 Bit A interface signaling point.

5. The backup method of a mobile switching center according to claim 1, wherein said step (2) the step of performing a switchover of the primary and backup MSCs further comprises:

(al) Cut off the circuit and information between the faulty MSC and its opposite base station controller (BSC) 令链接； Order link;

(a2) Adjust the transmission of the A interface, and connect the circuit and signaling link between the BSC of the faulty MSC and the backup MSC at the physical layer; its peer office signaling point is activated, and the corresponding 14-bit A interface signal is activated. Order operation

4) Adjust the cell data so that the standby MSC takes over the data of the cell originally managed by the faulty MSC.

6, only Gen backup method according to claim 5 mobile switching center as claimed in claim, wherein said step (a ⁴⁾ further comprises:

(b2) Check whether the circuits and signaling links from the backup MSC to other network elements in the system are available. If they are not available, perform a circuit activation operation and continue to make corresponding judgments until the above circuits and signaling links enter a normal state.

7. The backup method of a mobile switching center according to claim 5, characterized in that in the step (a2), the circuit and signaling link between the BSC at the opposite end of the failed MSC and the backup MSC are connected at the physical layer, When the BSC and MSC share the local transmission network equipment, the transmission maintenance terminal executes the transmission equipment jumper batch command to directly switch the relay of the faulty MSC 14-bit A interface to the backup MSC.

8. The backup method of a mobile switching center according to claim 5, characterized in that in the step (a20), the circuit and signaling between the BSC of the failed MSC peer and the backup MSC are The link is connected at the physical layer. When the BSC and the MSC are directly interconnected, the time slot crossover device performs automatic exchange slot adjustment to complete the connection at the physical layer.

9. The backup method of a mobile switching center according to claim 1, wherein the step (3) further comprises: checking whether the state of the MTP signaling link is in a deactivated state, and checking the destination signaling point and subsystem of the SCCP layer Whether the state is in a deactivated state and whether the corresponding relay circuit is in an unavailable state. Only after the above checks are passed, the normal MSC is notified to switch to the normal state.