Online charging in the roaming EPC/LTE network

The evolved packet core/long term evolution (EPC/LTE) architecture will become successful only when efficient charging solutions are supported in both the home public land mobile network (H-PLMN) and the visited public land mobile network (V-PLMN). Existing home network-based online charging architecture is impracticable to realize full real-time credit monitoring and control for a subscriber roaming in a visited network and solve the signaling security and delay issues. This paper presents, for the first time, an online charging architecture and multiple charging scenarios for different EPC/LTE network configurations, with flexible policy and charging rule executions for different LTE accesses, and access type based charging and rating.