Patent Application
20140169289
1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to the PDP (Packet Data Protocol) context activation procedure, and more particularly, to reducing the default timer value of the PDP context activation procedure in mobile communications devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various telecommunications services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcast. Typical wireless communications systems may employ multiple-access technologies capable of supporting communications with multiple users by sharing available system resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmitting power). Examples of such multiple-access technologies include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency divisional multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, and time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) systems.
A packet data protocol (PDP) context may be established to carry traffic flows over the communications system. A PDP context typically includes a radio access bearer provided between the user equipment, the radio network and the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN), and switched packet data channels provided between the SGSN and the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN). A session between the user equipment and other party would then be carried on the established PDP context. A PDP context can carry more than one traffic flow, but all traffic flows within one particular PDP context are treated the same way as regards their transmission across the network. This requirement regarding the similar treatment is based on PDP context-treatment attributes associated with the traffic flows. These attributes may comprise, for example, quality of service and/or charging attributes. The PDP context specifies different data transmission parameters, such as the PDP type (e.g. X.25 or IP), PDP address (e.g. X.121 address), Quality of Service (QoS), Transaction Identifier (TI), and Network Service Access Point Identifier (NSAPI).
For example, in GPRS networks, the user equipment may optionally indicate, in a message requesting activation of a PDP context in the network, an access point name (APN) for selection of a reference point to a certain external network. A SGSN may authenticate the user equipment and send a PDP context-creation request to a selected GGSN e.g. according to the access point name given by the user equipment, or to default GGSN known by the SGSN.
When the user equipment transmits “Activate PDP Context Request” to a service network and cannot get a response from the network, a default timer value of a timer may be activated. However, the waiting time of the current timer, such as T3380, is too long. For example, T3380 is a 30-second timer in a PDP context activation procedure. If the user equipment transmits “Activate PDP Context Request” to the service network through a Session Management (SM) layer and gets no response from the service network, the user equipment may need to wait 30 seconds before retransmitting the next “Activate PDP Context Request” to the service network. The waiting time associated with the T3380 is too long, causing some tests to fails and users to feel bad.
Apparatus and methods for accelerating connection establishment in a mobile communications system are provided to overcome the above-mentioned problems.
An embodiment of the invention provides a method for accelerating connection establishment in a mobile communications system, comprising: transmitting, by a user equipment, an Activate PDP Context Request to a network; determining whether the user equipment can be confirmed that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request by an lower layer (ex. RLC, LLC . . . ); shortening a default timer value and retransmitting the Activate PDP Context Request to the network after the shortened default value if the lower layer does not confirm that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request; and preserving the default timer value if the lower layer confirms that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request. In this embodiment, the method further comprises that determining whether the user equipment received a response from an RRC layer after determining whether it can be confirmed that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request from the lower layer, wherein the response of the RRC layer indicates that the network cannot respond to the Activate PDP Context Request.
An embodiment of the invention provides an apparatus for accelerating connection establishment in a mobile communications system, operating as a user equipment (UE), comprising: a transceiver, configured to transmit an Activate PDP Context Request to a network; and a processing unit, configured to determine whether it can be confirmed that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request by an lower layer, wherein if the lower layer does not confirm that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request, a default timer value is shortened by the processing unit and the Activate PDP Context Request is retransmitted to the network by the transceiver after the shortened default value; and wherein if the lower layer confirms that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request, the default timer value is preserved. In this embodiment, the processing unit further determines whether the user equipment received a response from an RRC layer after determining whether it can be confirmed that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request from the lower layer, wherein the response of the RRC layer indicates that the network cannot respond to the Activate PDP Context Request.
Other aspects and features of the invention will become apparent to those with ordinary skill in the art upon review of the following descriptions of specific embodiments of apparatus and methods for accelerating connection establishment.
The invention will become more fully understood by referring to the following detailed description with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein:
The following description is of the best-contemplated mode of carrying out the invention. This description is made for the purpose of illustrating the general principles of the invention and should not be taken in a limiting sense. The scope of the invention is best determined by reference to the appended claims.
The UE 110 may comprise at least a baseband signal processing device 111, a radio frequency (RF) signal processing device 112, a processor 113, a memory device 114, and an antenna module comprising at least one antenna. Note that, in order to clarify the concept of the invention,
The RF signal processing device 112 may receive RF signals via the antenna and process the received RF signals to convert the received RF signals to baseband signals to be processed by the baseband signal processing device 111, or receive baseband signals from the baseband signal processing device 111 and convert the received baseband signals to RF signals to be transmitted to a peer communications apparatus. The RF signal processing device 112 may comprise a plurality of hardware elements to perform radio frequency conversion. For example, the RF signal processing device 112 may comprise a power amplifier, a mixer, or others.
The baseband signal processing device 111 may further process the baseband signals to obtain information or data transmitted by the peer communications apparatus. The baseband signal processing device 111 may also comprise a plurality of hardware elements to perform baseband signal processing. The baseband signal processing may comprise analog-to-digital conversion (ADC)/digital-to-analog conversion (DAC), gain adjustment, modulation/demodulation, encoding/decoding, and so on.
The processor 113 may control the operations of the baseband signal processing device 111 and the RF signal processing device 112. According to an embodiment of the invention, the processor 113 may also be arranged to execute the program codes of the software module(s) of the corresponding baseband signal processing device 111 and/or the RF signal processing device 112. The program codes accompanied with specific data in a data structure may also be referred to as a processor logic unit or a stack instance when being executed. Therefore, the processor 113 may be regarded as being comprised of a plurality of processor logic units, each for executing one or more specific functions or tasks of the corresponding software module(s). In addition, the processing unit 113 further comprises a detection module (not present in
According to an embodiment of the invention, the RF signal processing device 112 and the baseband signal processing device 111 may be collectively regarded as a radio module capable of communicating with a wireless network to provide wireless communications services in compliance with a predetermined Radio Access Technology (RAT). Note that, in some embodiments of the invention, the UE 110 may further be extended to comprise more than one antenna and/or more than one radio module, and the invention should not be limited to what is shown in
In addition, in some embodiments of the invention, the processor 113 may be configured inside of the baseband signal processing device 111, or the UE 110 may comprise another processor configured inside of the baseband signal processing device 111. Thus the invention should not be limited to the architecture as shown in
The service network 120 may comprise a GSM EDGE Radio Access Network (GERAN) 121, a Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) 122, a core network 123. The GERAN 121 and UTRAN 122 may be in communications with the core network 123, wherein the GERAN 121 and UTRAN 122 allow connectivity between the UE 110 and the core network 123 by providing the functionality of wireless transmission and reception to and from the UE 110 for the core network 123, and the core network 123 signals the required operation to the GERAN 121 and UTRAN 122 for providing wireless services to the UE 110. The GERAN 121 and UTRAN 122 may contain one or more base stations (or called NodeBs or eNodeBs) and Radio Network Controllers (RNCs). Specifically, the core network 123 comprises a Mobile Switching Center/Visitor Location Register (MSC/VLR) 124 and a Home Location Register (HLR) 125 belonging to a circuit-switched (CS) service domain, and a Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) 126 and a Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) 127 belonging to a packet-switched (PS) service domain, wherein the SGSN 126 is the key control node for packet routing and transfer, mobility management (e.g., attach/detach and location management), session management, logical link management, and authentication and charging functions, etc., and the GGSN 127 is responsible for Packet Data Protocol (PDP) address assignments and inter-working with external networks. The MSC/VLR 124 is responsible for connection setup for the circuit-switched services and for routing such services to the correct addresses. The HLR 125 is a central database storing user-related and subscription-related information, and the invention is not limited thereto.
In some embodiments, if the lower layer confirms that the service network 120 received the Activate PDP Context Request and the UE 110 has not received the response of the RRC layer, the UE 110 may preserve the default timer value. Because in this situation, the service network 120 can receive the Activate PDP Context Request and respond to the Activate PDP Context Request normally, the UE 110 doesn't retransmit the Activate PDP Context Request to the service network 120. Therefore, the UE 110 does not need to shorten the default timer value.
In the above embodiments, a default timer may mean a T3380 timer with a 30-second default timer value. When the UE 110 transmits the Activate PDP Context Request to the service network 120 and there is no response from the service network 120 (according to the information of the lower layer and the RRC layer), the timer may be activated and the UE 110 may retransmit the Activate PDP Context Request to the service network 120 again after the default timer value ends. However the original default timer value is too long. Therefore, when the UE 110 needs to retransmit the Activate PDP Context Request, the UE 110 may shorten the default timer value to a smaller timer value, such as 5-8 seconds. The first timer value, second timer value and third timer value are only for illustrating the embodiments, they may be set to the same timer values or different timer values and the invention is not limited thereto.
Note that, in 2G communications systems such as General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) there is no RRC layer. Therefore, in the embodiments, the UE 110 only needs to be concerned with the response of the lower layer for determining whether to shorten the default timer value in the 2G communications system.
In some embodiments, a Transaction ID (TI) and/or a NSAPI may be changed if the default timer value is shortened. In the 3GPP standard, a T3380 timer is with a 30-second default timer value, it means that the service network 120 may respond to the Activate PDP Context Request from the UE 110 during 30-second default timer value. The UE 110 may retransmit the Activate PDP Context Request to the service network 120 again after the default timer value ends. However, when the default timer value is shortened, the UE110 may receive the Activate PDP Context Accept corresponding to the first Activate PDP Context Request after the Activate PDP Context Request retransmitted again. The side effect may occur because the PDP Context between the UE 110 and the service network 120 is not synchronized (e.g. IP of the PDP Context is different). Therefore, some solutions for the side effect are provided as follow.
At the PDP context activation procedures, the UE 110 may request PDP context with a TI and a NSAPI. At the service network 120, if the NSAPI from the Activate PDP Context Request matches the existing one, the service network 120 should deactivate the original one locally and proceed to the new request, then send a PDP Context Accept. If the service network 120 sends the PDP Context Accept to the UE 110 after the UE 110 retransmits the next Activate PDP Context Request, the side effect may occur. For example, in
If the lower layer does not confirm that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request and the user equipment has not received the response from the RRC layer, the default timer value is shortened to a first timer value and the Activate PDP Context Request is retransmitted to the network after the first timer value (step S850). If the lower layer does not confirm that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request and the user equipment received the response of the RRC layer, the default timer value is shortened to a second timer value and the Activate PDP Context Request is retransmitted to the network after the second timer value (step S860). If the lower layer confirms that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request and the user equipment has not received the response of the RRC layer, the default timer value is preserved (step S870). If the lower layer confirms that the network received the Activate PDP Context Request and the user equipment received the response of the RRC layer, the default timer value is shortened to a third timer value and the Activate PDP Context Request is retransmitted to the network after the third timer value (step S880).
In this embodiment, a Transaction ID (TI) may be changed if the default timer value is shortened by the user equipment. In this embodiment, a Transaction ID (TI) and a NASPI may be changed if the default timer value is shortened by the user equipment. In this embodiment, user equipment only needs to determine the response of the lower layer if it is in the 2G communications system.
In the method, the user equipment can reduce the waiting time of default timer value and retransmit the next Activate PDP Context Request again earlier according to the lower layer and the RRC layer information. In addition, in the method, the side effect can be avoided. Therefore, the method can avoid test cases failing and bad feelings on the part of the user.
The steps of the method described in connection with the aspects disclosed herein may be embodied directly in hardware, in a software module executed by a processor, or in a combination of the two. A software module (e.g., one including executable instructions and related data) and other data may reside in data memory such as RAM memory, flash memory, ROM memory, EPROM memory, EEPROM memory, registers, a hard disk, a removable disk, a CD-ROM, or any other form of computer-readable storage medium known in the art. A sample storage medium may be coupled to a machine such as, for example, a computer/processor (which may be referred to herein, for convenience, as a “processor”) such the processor can read information (e.g., code) from and write information to the storage medium. A sample storage medium may be integral to the processor. The processor and the storage medium may reside in an ASIC. The ASIC may reside in user equipment. In the alternative, the processor and the storage medium may reside as discrete components in user equipment. Moreover, in some aspects any suitable computer-program product may comprise a computer-readable medium comprising codes relating to one or more of the aspects of the disclosure. In some aspects, a computer program product may comprise packaging materials.
The above paragraphs describe many aspects. Obviously, the teaching of the invention can be accomplished by many methods, and any specific configurations or functions in the disclosed embodiments only present a representative condition. Those who are skilled in this technology can understand that all of the disclosed aspects in the invention can be applied independently or be incorporated.
While the invention has been described by way of example and in terms of preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited thereto. Those who are skilled in this technology can still make various alterations and modifications without departing from the scope and spirit of this invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention shall be defined and protected by the following claims and their equivalents.
This application claims priority of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/739,194, filed on Dec. 19, 2012, the entirety of which is incorporated by reference herein.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61739194 | Dec 2012 | US |
