Diameter-based accounting management for wireless services

Accounting is an essential task for commercial service usage, determining the collection of metered data and correlating it into accounting records. The accounting data generated, describing the service usage of users, serves as input for the subsequent charging process. Because of the diversity of IP-based services and the variety of network technologies, a generic accounting management is required, specifically tailored to user and provider needs. A mobile and multi-domain environment determines additional challenges. This work defines a generic, technology-, and service-independent configuration management of accounting in a mobile, heterogeneous, and multi-provider environment. The proposed accounting process enables a user-and service-specific accounting configuration. It is based on the diameter protocol, specifying required extensions, which include new commands and attribute-value-pairs