CHF Design Document

Note

Author: Ian Chen, Andy Chen

If you're interested in a brief overview of the charging system, please refer to the previous tech blog: link.

The charging functionalities have been supported since free5GC v3.4.1.
We implement the converged charging system (CHF) and several changes:

• Add Billing Domain in webconsole
• PCF supports to generate charging info in SM Policy decision
• SMF supports PDU-Session level Online/Offline charging

Usage Report

Online and Offline charging rely on the usage report(s) reported from UPF to SMF via the PFCP Session Report (defined in 3GPP TS 29.244).
The feature of the usage report has been supported since v3.3.0; the key points of the design are listed below:

• URR's (Usage Reporting Rules) ID in the range of 1 ~ 6 is preserved for default settings:

  • ID 1 for MBQE (Measurement Before QoS Enforcement) of the single UPF.
  • ID 2 for MAQE (Measurement After QoS Enforcement) of the single UPF.
  • ID 3 for MBQE of the branching UPF (ULCL).
  • ID 4 for MAQE of the branching UPF (ULCL).
  • ID 5 for MBQE of the anchor UPF (ULCL).
  • ID 6 for MAQE of the anchor UPF (ULCL).

• Uplink and Downlink PDRs share the same URR.

• The URR ID of the charging URR will be 7 or greater number.

• If the charging method is Online Charging:

  • The URR has the Start of the SDF (Service Data Flow) trigger.

  • When the UPF receives the first packet of the data flow, then UPF will send the notification to SMF to get the transmission reservation quota/volume.

  • Once the usage reaches the threshold (a little below quota), UPF tries to renew the reservation quota/volume and updates the actual usage to SMF.

  • If the SMF finds out that the session is out of quota, the UPF will not get the quota, and the UPF will drop all of the data in the flow.

  • The related settings are in the SMF configuration file:

    • requestedUnit indicates how many byte doses one reservation is reserved.

    configuration:
        smfName: SMF
      requestedUnit: 1000 # The unit per quota reservation 
    

• If the charging method is Offline Charging:

  • The URR indicates the volume threshold and time period.
  • Offline charging only needs UPF to report the usage of the flow.

  • The related settings are in the SMF configuration file:

    • urrPeriod indicates how many seconds doses URR periods.
    • urrThreshold indicates how many bytes doses URR threshold.

    configuration:
        smfName: SMF
        urrPeriod: 10       # default usage report period in seconds
      urrThreshold: 1000  # default usage report threshold in bytes
    

    Main characters in the charging system

• Webconsole is a Billing Domain system, that can collect the CDR files from CHF via FTP protocol.
• PCF is responsible for allocating the rating group; the rating group generator is globally unique.
• SMF is CTF (Charging Trigger Function) in our use case.
  • SMF can find the rating group by using URR ID, which helps SMF grant the new quota from CHF by triggering the charging data request.

Charging on PDU Session

Although 3GPP defined the FBC (Flow-Based Charging) and QBC (QoS Flow-Based Charging),
But free5GC now only supports the FBC on the data usage of PDU Session(s), So we will focus on the FBC in this document.

2 levels of triggers can be supplied by the CHF:

• [ ] Triggers associated with the PDU session.
• [x] Triggers associated with a rating group within the PDU session.

PDU session establishment, described in 3GPP TS 32.255 clause 5.2.2.2.2

Charging on PDU Session is achieved by FBC charging, with specific rating group/service identifier:

• As we mentioned, the rating group will be allocated by PCF during the SM Policy Authorization (Step 6 in the figure above).
  • PCC Rule for charging additionally indicates the rating group, SDF template, and charging method.
• After the UPF selection, SMF sends the Charging Data Request to initiate the charging session and also applies the data plane rules to UPF via N4 Session Establishment/Modification.
• When the first uplink data comes to UPF, it will trigger the Charging Data Request [Update] to update the CDR file.

Others

• For ULCL deployment, only the data usage of the PSA-UPF will be charged (it avoids charging the same data packet twice).
• In our implementations, UPF is composed of the go-upf (Controller) and gtp5g (Executor).
  • gtp5g sends the usage report to go-upf via unix socket.
  • gtp5g is able to send multiple reports at once, which reduces the communication effort in UPF.