AN OVERVIEW OF 3GPP EXPOSED SERVICES FOR IoT SERVICE PLATFORMS

Abstract

Besides providing IP-based data pipes to cellular devices, the 3GPP Core Network consists of a rich set of network services and capabilities, such as charging, mobility management, session management, policy enforcement, control plane messaging, reachability management, and control of deep sleep modes. This article presents an overview the 3GPP SCEF Northbound API Interface (T8) standard, which has been specified in 3GPP Release 15 to expose some of the internal network services and capabilities. We first give an overview of the history of the Service Capability Exposure Function (SCEF) API exposing function, then provide an overview of the services and capabilities that are exposed by the Northbound APIs along with examples of how the APIs may be used by a services platform.