AOTA advanced over the air

Abstract

A smart card contains many applications and files which are needed to be managed by the mobile network operators. Advanced OTA (Over the Air) is a solution to manage UICC remotely and in a short term other Secure Elements such as Embedded Secure Element or Secure Memory Card. UICC (Universal Integrated Circuit Card) is a telecom dedicated secure element (previously called smart card). This secure element is capable of executing security critical functions and contains authentication secrets for connecting to GSM/LTE networks. AOTA is first a solution based on RoH (Remote management over HTTP) based on Pull mode. The operations that can be performed on the cards are remote application management (RAM) and remote file management (RFM) through push and pull mode. The push mode sends APDU commands immediately to the card which are triggered by OTA and the pull mode is triggered by the card, where automatic request is sent from the card to the server on regular intervals for remote management of the card. Earlier, there was only OTA and now with the development of AOTA, all the telecom customers also need to migrate all of their data from OTA to AOTA which brings in the use of migration tool. The migration tool provides the application which enables the transfer of all the data of customer from OTA to AOTA. This data is huge and takes a lot of time to migrate, thus the performance and accuracy both are handled in this tool efficiently. AOTA has many components but the central component is RUM. It manages a lot of functionalities for card management such as provisioning of the card, activation and deactivation, active retry and network detection. RUM can also generate APDU commands for executing all the functions which may also include sending any update through different services. It also communicates with almost all of the components of AOTA. The MIOS services are added to provide the changing of IMSI. These services have the capability to change the IMSI when required. The Multi IMSI Applet is a UICC-based application that manages a set of two to ten IMSIs for the subscriber. There are three services added while the other were previously available.