Performance monitoring of location-based service in a mobile telecommunications network

1. A method for monitoring the performance of a location-based service in a mobile telecommunications network including nodes providing both positioning and location-based service information relating to a subscriber, the method comprising:

performing passive monitoring of the location-based service by a monitoring device connected to interfaces of the network;

capturing both location-based service and positioning related information by the monitoring device;

processing the captured information in the monitoring device;

calculating, by the monitoring device, key performance indicators and/or measures of service usage information relating to the combination of positioning information and location-based service response time.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein positioning related information is captured at an interface of a node responsible for authorizing the positioning request for the requested subscriber, and returning the position information obtained from a radio access network.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein location-based service information is captured at an interface of a node responsible for transfer procedures between the mobile telecommunications network and an external network.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein location-based service information is captured at a further interface of a node using Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the mobile telecommunications network is a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the mobile telecommunications network is a CDMA2000 network.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the positioning information includes data for coordinates, status and duration time of a subscriber.

8. The method of any claim 1 , wherein the service information includes data for type and response time belonging to a subscriber.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the calculation of key performance indicators comprises the steps of

reading the next LBS-record from a traffic database;

checking whether this request is of the type, which the KPI is about;

calculating the quantity defined by the key performance indicator for the particular call;

updating the statistical function with the value, and increasing the counter calculating the number of eligible calls for the KPI;

deciding if all the requests are processed , and if not, reading the next LBS-record from a traffic database is repeated ;

calculating the value of the key performance indicator by evaluating the statistical function that is relevant for the KPI.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the calculation of key performance indicators comprises the further steps of filtering records by additional constraints to focus on a subset of the subscribers.

11. A device for monitoring the performance of a location-based service in a mobile telecommunications network including nodes providing both positioning and location-based service information relating to a subscriber, the monitoring device connected to interfaces of the network, and the monitoring device comprising:

a flow demultiplexer receiving traffic trace and configuration parameters;

a set of analyzers connected to the demultiplexer;

a traffic database storing records of the analyzers ;

a correlator performing the reconstruction of local based-service requests from the different transactions; and

a calculator sending queries to the correlator and calculating Key Performance Indicators based on the local based-service request records received.

12. The device of claim 11 , wherein the flow demultiplexer is arranged to recognize packet types based on the protocol type, and on the specified port numbers.

13. The device of claim 11 , wherein the set of analyzers comprises a RADIUS analyzer interpreting RADIUS packets for PDP-context establishment procedure and finding IP addresses for the newly appearing subscribers.

14. The device of claim 11 , wherein the set of analyzers comprises a WTP/WSP analyzer decoding WTP and WSP protocols.

15. The device of claim 11 , wherein the set of analyzers comprises a HTTP analyzer decoding HTTP requests in a TCP connection.

16. The system of claim 15 , wherein the interface carrying location-based service information is the Gi interface and an LBS-GW interface.

17. The device of claim 11 , wherein the set of analyzers comprises an MLP analyzer extracting subscriber and positioning information from the MLP requests conveyed in HTTP protocol.

18. The device of claim 11 , wherein the set of analyzers comprises an LBS-DB analyzer decoding database query information coupled with an MLP or LBS request.

19. A system for monitoring the performance of a location-based service in a mobile telecommunications network including nodes providing both positioning and location-based service information relating to a subscriber, the system comprising:

a monitoring device connected to interfaces of the network carrying the positioning and the location-based service information relating to the location of the subscriber;

wherein the monitoring device is arranged to:

passively monitor the location-based service;

capture both location-based service and positioning related information;

process the captured information; and

calculate key performance indicators and/or measures of service usage information relating to the combination of positioning and location-based service response time.

20. The system of claim 19 , wherein the interface carrying positioning information is an Le interface of a 3GPP GPRS network.

21. The system of claim 19 , wherein the interface carrying location-based service information is a Gi interface of a 3GPP GPRS network.

22. The system of claim 19 , wherein the key performance indicator is a ratio of the successfully submitted requests and the total number of service requests.

23. The system of claim 19 , wherein the key performance indicator is a ratio of the successfully delivered responses and the total number of successfully submitted requests.

24. The system of claim 19 , wherein the key performance indicator is a ratio of the successfully delivered responses and the total number of service requests.

25. The system of claim 19 , wherein the key performance indicator is a time between sending the WAP or HTTP request and reception of the response if it contains valid information.

26. The system of claim 19 , wherein the key performance indicator is a time between sending the WAP or HTTP request and reception of the response if it contains valid information.

27. The system of claim 19 , wherein the key performance indicator is a time between sending the MLP request and reception of the response if it contains valid information.

28. The system of claim 19 , wherein the key performance indicator is a time between sending the MLP request and reception of the response if it contains valid information.

29. The system of claim 19 , wherein the measure of service usage is a volume ratio of the LBS traffic volume to the total GPRS traffic volume at the Gi interface.

30. The system of claim 19 , wherein the measure of service usage is a ratio of the number of LBS enabled subscribers and the active GPRS subscribers, who were activating at least one PDP-context during the measurement period.

31. The system of claim 19 , wherein the measure of service usage is an average amount of time between two successive location-based service requests from the same subscriber.