JBoss.orgCommunity Documentation

Chapter 1. Introduction to Mobicents SS7 Stack

1.1. Time Division Multiplexing
1.2. The Basics
1.3. Design

Important

Spaces where introduced in in some tables and code listings to ensure proper page render.

Common Channel Signaling System No. 7 (i.e., SS7 or C7) is a global standard for telecommunications defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) . The standard defines the procedures and protocol by which network elements in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) ) exchange information over a digital signaling network to effect wireless (cellular) and wireline call setup, routing and control. The ITU definition of SS7 allows for national variants such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and Bell Communications Research (Telcordia Technologies) standards used in North America and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute ( ETSI ) standard used in Europe.

The hardware and software functions of the SS7 protocol are divided into functional abstractions called "levels". These levels map loosely to the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) 7-layer model defined by the International Standards Organization (ISO) .

SS7 Stack overview

Mobicents SS7 Stack is software based SS7 protocol implementation providing Level 2 and above. The Mobicents SS7 Stack is a platform in the sense that it does not provide the application itself but rather allows users to build the application

In circuit switched networks such as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) there exists the need to transmit multiple subscribers’ calls along the same transmission medium. To accomplish this, network designers make use of TDM. TDM allows switches to create channels, also known as tributaries, within a transmission stream. A standard DS0 voice signal has a data bit rate of 64 kbit/s, determined using Nyquist’s sampling criterion. TDM takes frames of the voice signals and multiplexes them into a TDM frame which runs at a higher bandwidth. So if the TDM frame consists of n voice frames, the bandwidth will be n*64 kbit/s. Each voice sample timeslot in the TDM frame is called a channel . In European systems, TDM frames contain 30 digital voice channels, and in American systems, they contain 24 channels. Both standards also contain extra bits (or bit timeslots) for signalling (SS7) and synchronisation bits. Multiplexing more than 24 or 30 digital voice channels is called higher order multiplexing. Higher order multiplexing is accomplished by multiplexing the standard TDM frames.For example, a European 120 channel TDM frame is formed by multiplexing four standard 30 channel TDM frames.At each higher order multiplex, four TDM frames from the immediate lower order are combined, creating multiplexes with a bandwidth of n x 64 kbit/s, where n = 120, 480, 1920, etc.

The Mobicents SS7 Stack is logically divided into two sections. The lower section includes SS7 Level 3 and below. The lower section is influenced by type of SS7 hardware (Level 1) used.

The upper section includes SS7 Level 4 and above. This logical division is widely based on flexibility of Mobicents SS7 Stack to allow usage of M3UA or any SS7 hardware available in the market and yet Mobicents SS7 Stack Level 4 and above remains the same.

Mobicents SS7 Stack also includes support for M3UA (SIGTRAN)

Mobicents SS7 Stack uses the abstraction layer at level 3, such that this abstraction layer exposes same API to layer 4 while it can be configured to interact with any SS7 cards via card specific module or Mobicents SS7 Stack M3UA layer.

Below diagram gives further detail on how this abstraction is achieved.

Mobicents SS7 Stack is designed such that it can be used in any container like JBoss Application Server or it can be also fired as standalone Java Application.