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Multi-Operator Cellular Support
Multi-Operator Cellular Support

Overview of multi-operator architecture; View status of multi-operator operation and metrics

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Written by Jyotin Basrur
Updated over a week ago

This feature enables Celona APs to simultaneously serve more than one public mobile operator’s customers/subscribers. In other words, commercial handsets that enter or are in the coverage area of a Celona AP serving multiple operators will be able to seamlessly connect, authenticate and be served by the respective operator’s core networks.

This feature is delivered as a service to the customer. This means that the Celona support team configures MOXN instances, commissions the sites for cellular service, monitors the sites for operations and KPIs for the customer.

Feature Description

This is implemented via the following high-level capabilities:

  1. Customers have the ability to purchase a subscription to one or more mobile operator’s public cellular service.

  2. The Celona system is configured with parameters for each operator’s core network parameters and is specific to every site that the service is commissioned for.

  3. Each instance of MOXN creates a separate connection on the control plane and data plane towards multiple operators.

  4. APs establish multiple S1 connections, one each per operator enabled for the customer account.

  5. Each AP broadcasts multiple operator’s PLMN IDs.

  6. KPIs are tracked, stored and displayed on a per site per operator basis.

Enabling a customer deployment with multiple operator service

The Celona support team receives subscription information via the SFDC activation code

  • types of SKUs, type and number of APs, number of operators

  • which operators to set up for the customer

The Celona support team creates a MOXN instance for each site that requires a mobile operator service. Each instance supports multiple operators. The support team then configures the MOXN instance for each operator. The configuration of MOXN instances is required to establish a connection (signaling as well as user data) to each operator’s core network. The Celona support team takes this information from the Customer Information Questionnaire (CIQ) populated by each operator’s network teams.

Once the support team has created the MOXN instances, mapped the instances to specific sites, established the connection to operator, and turned on the operator’s PLMN on all of the APs at the site, the status of each of these will be visible on the Celona Orchestrator user interface.

The Orchestrator UI will show the list and status of the MOXN instance and the operator configuration.

Configuring per-site MNO parameters

In order for the site APs to function well and cooperate well with surrounding macro sites deployed by the operator, specific per-site parameters are required to be provisioned.

  1. The eNB IDs for the site must be provisioned.

  2. The Tracking area code (TAC) must be provisioned.

  3. IPsec certificates

  4. IPSec G/W, MME IPs

  5. RAN config (channel info and neighbor list)

The above information is available as part of the CIQ form provided by each operator per site.

Status of Operator Service

When a site and an AP is enabled with operator service, the following is initiated:

  1. MOXN instances are created to connect to the operator core

  2. IPSec is established from MOXN instance to operator core

  3. APs are provisioned with MOXN connection parameters

  4. IPSec is established from AP to the MOXN ipsec proxy

The status of which APs have multi-operator service enabled is displayed on the Access Point screen as shown below.

The status of each operator’s service broadcast per AP can be viewed in the Access Point Detail page as shown below. You can navigate to this page by clicking on any Access Point row in the Access Point list page.

Performance Dashboard

The performance of each operator’s network is reported on the dashboards on Orchestrator. The MOXN section on the Orchestrator dashboard provides details of the statistics of the specific site for each operator.

The following metrics are reported and graphed:

  1. Number of neutral host sessions

  2. Throughput of the totality of traffic from that particular site from all the APs

  3. Tonnage: Total traffic in Bytes delivered per site per 15 minute and 1 hour intervals

  4. Handset attach success rate as a percentage

  5. Retainability

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