3P-AAA and 3P-C&B | FUTURE RESEARCH

• Extending 3P-AAA into the area of wireless Ad Hoc networks. This can yield significant 3P-AAA use cases influencing the 3P-C&B requirements. Typical Ad Hoc domain scenarios involving hot-zone wireless heterogeneous architectures are envisaged where mobile terminals use multi-hop techniques to get to a hot zone using intermediate mobile terminals (the latter should benefit from their role in such scenarios, i.e., be paid properly).
  
  
• Research to date has identified and established the basic charging scenarios in CBM-based UCWW by employing inter-3P-AAA-SP signalling. However, when the inter-3P-AAA-SP signalling involves Internet usage, then charging interactions can experience high network latency. To eliminate this problem either further optimization is needed in the 3P-AAA-SP signalling (i.e., compressing the messages where possible) or a new ‘charging agent’ concept should be developed. This new concept would result in the following: (1) the charging occurs in the metering domain (TSP/ANP), (2) the charging agent is downloaded from the 3P-AAA-SP to provide the charging function in the TSP/ANP domain, (3) the charging agent imports the charging rule set from the 3P-AAA-SP, (4) the charging agent imports segments of the consumer account into the metering domain.
  
  
• Elaboration of the C&B framework to support dynamic reconfiguration of applicable metering and pricing policies for specific service, specific user or combination of both, and to support various pricing models according to the service profile, user profile and location, and one-stop billing schemes.
  
  
• Implementation of a C&B system prototype as a discrete service that can be provided by a trusted third-party authentication, authorization and accounting service providers (3P-AAA-SPs).
  
  
• Running trial experiments with the designed prototype in a 4G testbed environment showing good interfacing with the 3P-AAA service, WBC&ADA services, and other (new) types of 4G services (e.g., consumer-oriented ICC service).