Process-efficient generation of data records for data communications involving groups or aggregates of IoT devices

A method performed by one or more nodes of a control plane (CP) entity for data transfer charging, wherein the one or more nodes include a charging trigger function (CTF), a charging aggregation function (CAF), and a charging data function (CDF), the method comprising:

• for each one of a plurality of user equipments (UEs) associated with a group or aggregation identifier (ID), sending, by the CTF to the CDF or the CAF, a charging data request which includes charging data indicative of a network resource usage event of a user equipment (UE), wherein generating the charging data request includes processing attribute-value pairs indicating a group report of successes that includes a list of particular UE IDs of the plurality of UEs that received data for the group and a group report of failures that includes a list of UE IDs of the plurality of UEs that did not receive the data for the group;
• for each one of the plurality of UEs associated with the group or aggregation ID, receiving from the CTF, by the CDF or the CAF, the charging data request which includes the charging data indicative of the network resource usage event and store the charging data in association with the group or aggregation ID;
• and
• in response to identifying a predetermined condition, aggregating, by the CAF, the charging data indicative of the network resource usage events associated with the group or the aggregation ID for producing aggregated data, and providing to the CDF a charging data record generation request for generating a charging data record (CDR) based on the aggregated data.

One or more computer program products each including a non-transitory computer readable medium and instructions stored in the computer readable medium where the instructions are executable on one or more processors of one or more network nodes of a control plane (CP) entity for data transfer charging, wherein the one or more nodes include a charging trigger function (CTF), a charging aggregation function (CAF), and a charging data function (CDF), the instructions causing the one or more processors to:

• for each one of a plurality of user equipments (UEs) associated with a group or aggregation identifier (ID), send, by the CTF to the CDF or the CAF, a charging data request which includes charging data indicative of a network resource usage event of a user equipment (UE), wherein generating the charging data request includes processing attribute-value pairs indicating a group report of successes that includes a list of particular UE IDs of the plurality of UEs that received data for the group and a group report of failures that includes a list of UE IDs of the plurality of UEs that did not receive the data for the group;
• for each one of the plurality of UEs associated with the group or aggregation ID, receive from the CTF, by the CDF or the CAF, the charging data request which includes the charging data indicative of the network resource usage event and store the charging data in association with the group or aggregation ID;
• and
• in response to identifying a predetermined condition, aggregate, by the CAF, the charging data indicative of the network resource usage events associated with the group or the aggregation ID for producing aggregated data, and provide to the CDF a charging data record generation request for generating a charging data record (CDR) based on the aggregated data.