1 Introduction

This chapter describes the Oracle Communications DSR Service Capability Exposure Function (SCEF) product, which interacts with, and implements controls on, Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Machine Type Communication (MTC) is the communication between wired and wireless devices. It can enable a sensor or meter to communicate data (such as temperature, inventory level, etc.) to software at another location for its use. For example, sending the number of kilowatts of power used by an individual's home to the billing software at a utility company; or a refrigerator sending a user's smart phone information about what may be needed at the grocery store. The expansion of IP networks around the world has made machine-to-machine communication quicker and easier and it uses less power. These networks also allow new business opportunities for consumers and suppliers.

The end-to-end communications (between the user's equipment and the network), uses services provided by a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) system, and optionally services provided by a Services Capability Server (SCS). The MTC application in the external network is typically hosted by an Application Server (AS) and may make use of an SCS for additional value-added services. The 3GPP system provides transport, subscriber management, and other communication services including various architectural enhancements motivated by, but not restricted to, MTC (for example, control plane device triggering).

The SCS connects to the 3GPP network to communicate with user equipment (UE) used for MTC and the MTC Interworking Function (MTC-IWF) and/or SCEF in the Home Public Land Mobility Network (HPLMN). The SCS offers capabilities for use by one or multiple MTC applications and the UE can host one or multiple MTC applications. The corresponding MTC applications in the external network are hosted on one or multiple ASs.

The SCEF is the key entity within the 3GPP architecture for service capability exposure that provides a means to securely expose the services and capabilities provided by 3GPP network interfaces. In certain deployments, the MTC-IWF may be co-located with SCEF in which case MTC-IWF functionality is exposed to the SCS/AS through the T8 interface (that is, the REST API). In deployments where MTC-IWF is not co-located with SCEF, interactions between MTC-IWF and SCEF are left up to the implementation.

SCEF allows services and capabilities to be securely used on 3GPP network interfaces by:

• providing a way to discover the exposed services and capabilities;
• providing access to network capabilities through homogenous network application programming interfaces (for example, network APIs) defined over the T8 interface; and
• abstracting the services from the underlying 3GPP network interfaces and protocols.

This document describes the how the configuration and administration of SCEF through a machine-to-machine interface (MMI) affects works with DSR and how various screens within DSR provide you with SCEF information.