F.1 QoS monitoring for assurance

22.2613GPPRelease 18Service requirements for the 5G systemTS

This Clause discusses how QoS monitoring information can be used for assurance purposes. For background information on assurance see [19] and appendix A.3 in [20].

Assurance consists of four major steps (see Figure F.1-1 and [18]):

  • Customer’s QoS requirements

These state the level of quality required by the customer of a service. This information is divulged to the provider.

  • Service provider’s offerings of QoS (or planned/targeted QoS)

This is a statement of the level of quality expected to be offered to the customer by the service provider.

  • QoS achieved/delivered

This is the level of quality achieved and delivered to the customer. Monitoring information is divulged to the customer.

  • Customer rating of QoS

The customer can compare the QoS achieved by the provider with the QoS requirements (see above) and its own experience of the QoS. This is a crucial step for establishing assurance about the fulfillment of the customer’s requirements.

Figure F.1-1: QoS assurance by use of QoS monitoring information

NOTE: This Figure is based on the trust model in reference [18].

The start time and the duration of the QoS monitoring is specified in the parameter observation time interval, which is exchanged between the customer, for instance an application consuming a communication service, and the provider (for instance a private 5G network providing a communication service). The observation time interval is the time interval during which a series of measurements is conducted. In the context of QoS monitoring, these are the measurements necessary for assessing the QoS of communication services, for instance the measurement of end-to-end latencies.

Examples of parameters to be monitored by the provider are given in annex C in reference [36].