Patent Application
20100214969
The present invention relates to wireless communication between a base station and a mobile terminal in a communications network such as WiMAX. In particular, the invention relates to reducing the power consumption of the terminals in such a network.
WiMAX, which is an abbreviation of World-wide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is an implementation of the IEEE standard 802.16, for providing wireless network access. In particular, the development of IEEE 802.16e provides the specifications of WiMAX services to mobile terminals in a cellular environment. WiMAX is intended for use in wireless Metropolitan Access Networks, MAN, and is described as a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL.
When directing an incoming call to a mobile station in a cellular environment, paging must be first performed to locate the receiving mobile terminal and to establish an active radio connection with it for the following traffic. Due to the limited capacity of batteries, it is not practical for the mobile terminal to maintain a persistent radio connection to the base station. During the idle state, the mobile terminal only wakes up periodically to check base station paging signals. To maximize the stand-by time, the wake-up duty cycle should be kept as low as possible with an acceptable paging delay. Meanwhile, the power consumption during the wake-up period should also be kept as low as possible.
One technique generally used to save mobile power during the wake-up period is to insert a simple energy signal in advance to indicate that a paging message will soon be sent to the mobile terminal. Instead of demodulating and decoding the entire downlink paging message during every wake-up period, the mobile terminal only detects if there is a simple energy signal directing to it before activating its entire demodulation and decoding device. Such a signaling mechanism based on simple energy detection before triggering entire paging process is called paging indicator, as in WCDMA, or quick paging, as in CDMA. By turning off demodulators for regular paging message during most wake-up periods and by only monitoring a simple energy signal, significant power saving and stand-by time extension is achieved.
In the current WiMAX system, there is no paging indicator or quick paging signal. The mobile terminal, during stand-by mode, needs to wake up periodically and turn on the demodulator and decoder to read the Base Station Broadcast Paging (MOB_PAG-ADV) message. When waking up in paging intervals, the mobile terminal first reads the FCH and the DL-MAP to look for the location and the format of the broadcast CID. Then, the mobile terminal will demodulate the broadcast burst that contains the MAC PDU of MOB_PAG-ADV message. Most of the time, there is no paging information for the mobile terminal or only a dedicated Action Code 0b00 (meaning no action required). The processing of reading FCH, DL-MAP, and the MAC PDU burst will invoke the entire baseband modem function, hence drains mobile's battery over time. During each paging interval, the mobile terminal has to be awake and demodulate the broadcast messages for 2 to 5 frames. In addition, a change in the downlink or uplink channel descriptor (DCD or UCD) also triggers a paging broadcast to wake up all mobile terminals to update the system parameters, although there is no dedicated page message to every one of them.
It is an object of the invention to reduce the power consumption during idle time in mobile terminals according to the 802.16 standard. The person skilled in the art can easily generalize this invention to OFDM-based systems with similar frame structure.
This object is achieved according to the present invention by a base station for use in a WiMAX system for communicating with a number of mobile terminals, said base station comprising communication means for sending a paging signal to a mobile terminal, the base station being characterized in that the communication means is arranged to send a wake-up signal to the mobile station, to indicate to the mobile terminal concerned that it should prepare itself for a paging signal, before sending the paging signal to the mobile terminal.
The object is also achieved by a mobile terminal arranged to communicate with a base station in a WiMAX system, said mobile terminal being arranged to go into idle mode when it is not communicating with the base station and comprising a receiving unit for receiving a paging signal when it should go into active mode, said mobile terminal being characterized in that the receiving unit is also arranged, when in idle mode, to receive a wake-up signal from the base station and upon receiving the wake-up signal, prepare itself to receive a paging signal.
The object is also achieved by a method for use in a base station in a WiMAX system, comprising the following steps:
The invention also relates to a method for use in a mobile terminal in a WiMAX system, comprising the following steps:
Hence, according to the invention a wake-up signal is achieved, which may be used to alarm a particular mobile terminal when a paging message is about to be sent to it. The wake-up signal is a physical signal that is easy to demodulate and detect, which means that the mobile station in stand-by mode does not need to turn on the whole baseband circuit and look for paging message, which requires demodulating and decoding the FCH, the DL-MAP, and the data burst. The wake-up signal is sent to the to-be-paged user at one or a few frames before the actual MOB_PAG-ADV message. A DCD/UCD change in the system may also trigger a wake-up signal to alarm idle mobile stations to look for the new DCD/UCD.
Preferably, the wake-up signal is sent as a simple signal that can be received by the mobile terminal by simple energy detection.
The wake-up signal may be placed in one of the transition gaps, TTG or RTG in a frame or, alternatively, at the end of the downlink subframe. A third option would be to place the wake-up signal immediately following the FCH in the DL subframe. In yet another embodiment the wake-up signal is placed by fixed block allocation.
The wake-up signal can be embedded at a specific location in the DL data region without ambiguity. In TDD mode, the wake-up signal can be located in the TTG, where the active users are transitioning from the receive mode to the transmit mode, while the standby users are not required to transmit. Alternatively, the wake-up signal can be located in the RTG.
In one embodiment the wake-up signal may be sent as a set of evenly spaced tones with fractional symbol duration. The wake-up signal may also be sent as a set of single or multiple tones in the downlink subframe data region as the wake-up signal, or as single-carrier pulses.
The terminal that is to wake up may be identified in the wake-up signal by means of an address based on the terminal's MAC address. Alternatively, a sector specific address assigned to the terminal may be included in the wake-up signal to identify the terminal.
The wake-up signal may be comprised of a number of consecutive wake-up signals, for example, in consecutive frames, to the same mobile terminal.
With the method and apparatus of the invention the idle mode power consumption is reduced and the stand-by time for the mobile terminals is improved. The invention enables flexible allocation of frequency-time resources in WiMAX systems while reducing the DL overhead
BS Base station
DCD Downlink channel descriptor
FCH Frame control header
OFDMA Orthogonal frequency division multiple access
PS Physical slot=4 OFDM time samples
UCD Uplink channel descriptor
WiMAX Worldwide interoperability for microwave access
The invention will be described in more detail in the following, by way of example and with reference to the appended drawings in which:
a illustrates a WiMAX TDD frame structure and
a, 7b and 7c illustrate possible formats of the quick paging signal.
According to the invention, before sending the paging signal, the communication means 9 of the base station sends a wake-up signal to indicate to the mobile terminal concerned that it should prepare itself for a paging signal. The wake-up signal is a simple signal that can be received by the mobile terminal by simple energy detection. Since the wake-up signal can be detected by the mobile terminal using less battery resources, this saves battery power in the mobile terminals. As long as no such wake-up signal has been received, the mobile terminal does not have to prepare itself for receiving a paging signal. The format and location of the wake-up signal will be discussed in more detail in the following.
In step S1 the base station 1 determines that a paging signal should be sent to an identified one of the mobile terminals 3, 5, 7.
In step S2 the base station 1 first sends a wake-up signal, or quick paging signal, to the identified mobile terminal.
In step S3 the mobile terminal receives the wake-up signal.
In step S4 the mobile terminal prepares itself to receive the proper paging signal.
This includes turning on the demodulator and decoder to read the paging message.
In step S5 the base station 1 sends a paging signal according to the prior art to the mobile terminal. The time between the transmission of the wake-up signal and the paging message, that is, the time between steps S3 and S5, should be equal to or slightly longer than the propagation plus mobile processing delay.
In step S6 the mobile terminal receives the paging signal and goes into active mode to start communicating with network through the base station 1.
Steps S1, S2 and S5 are performed by the communication means 9 in the base station, whereas steps S3, S4 and S6 are performed by the receiving unit 11 in the mobile terminal 3, 5, 7 concerned.
The WiMAX TDD frame structure is shown in
The paging process currently done in WiMAX is illustrated in
The wake-up signal according to the invention, that is sent to a mobile terminal to indicate that it should prepare for receiving a paging signal, should be located in a fixed position of the frame, so that the terminal would know what part of the frame to consider. To this end, the wake-up signal may be located in different parts of the frame shown in
In a preferred embodiment, which is currently considered to be the best mode of the invention, the wake-up signal is inserted in one of the transition gaps, that is, the TTG or the RTG, that is, when the base station is turning off its transmitter and turning on its receiver or vice versa. Therefore, some of this time could be used by the base station to transmit a wake-up signal while there would still be time to perform the transmit to receive transition.
In the current WiMAX frame, TTG serves two purposes: the first is to reduce the interference in the beginning of a UL subframe caused by long propagation of the DL subframe from other cells, and the second is to allow far users to advance their timing for synchronized UL transmission. The typical TTG specified in the system profile is on the order of 100 μsec. Most DL signals from other cells become negligible after such a long propagation.
The far users, in addition to time needed to switch between receiving and transmitting, also need to compensate their UL propagation delays by advancing their transmit timing. This illustrated in
The actual available switching gap between transmitting and receiving in each case is represented by a solid arrow. As can be seen, for the first mobile terminal, illustrated in b) which is located near the base station, the available switching gap is shortened by the propagation delay of one time unit in the downlink, and the timing advance of one time unit in the uplink to align with the base station's uplink subframe timing. For the second mobile terminal, as illustrated in c) with no timing advance, the available switching gap is shortened by the propagation delay in the downlink, but not in the uplink. The second mobile terminal will then have the same length of available switching gap as the first terminal, but will lose its synchronization with base station's uplink subframe timing by two time units. With timing advance of two time units, as shown in d), the transition gap will be further shortened by the propagation delay in the downlink and the timing advance in the uplink will be in sync with the uplink subframe timing.
From each mobile terminal, the TTG should be larger than the sum of its receive-transmit switching time and DL/UL propagation delays seen at its location. But for idle mode terminals waiting for paging, there is no need to prepare for uplink transmission right after the TTG. Therefore, the DL subframe can be prolonged into the TTG to include wake-up signals, which only the idle users listen to and the active users treat as non-existent, as long as the interference to other cells is maintained below an acceptable level.
As mentioned above, the wake-up signal could also be located in the RTG. In the current WiMAX, RTG allows the UL signal to fade before the next DL subframe takes place such that strong interference from near-by mobile terminals to the DL reception can be avoided. In the WiMAX system profile, the RTG value is either 60 μs or 74.4 μs, which roughly corresponds to 18 km or 22 km in distance. In many deployment scenarios, the signal from a mobile terminal is not likely to interfere with far users after long propagation and there will be room at the end of RTG with negligible amount of UL interference. Therefore, the base station can insert the wake-up signal right before the next preamble without it being severely corrupted by the residual UL propagation. There could be some degradation in the preamble acquisition when compared with an empty RTG, but with properly designed wake-up signal waveform, the impact can be reduced.
The three possible locations of the wake-up signal discussed above have the advantage of being backwards compatible, that is, they can be implemented without any impact to the legacy mobile terminals.
A fourth possible location of the quick paging signal would be a fixed block allocation. The allocation is similar to the block allocation of ranging, fast-feedback, and PAPR-reduction/Safety/Sounding zones currently used on the uplink for other purposes. Hence, it does not introduce any new resource allocation scheme. Through adding new fields in the DCD, the new mobile terminals can be assigned to this new DL block allocation for quick paging. This embodiment may not be backward compatible. Meanwhile, the base station can organize the DL MAP for the existing mobile terminals being consistently excluded from the new wake-up signal region. In this way, existing, or legacy, mobile terminals will not benefit from the wake-up signal but can still be used.
A fifth possible location of the quick paging signal would be immediately following the FCH, as illustrated in
A series of consecutive wake-up signals for the same terminal may be sent in consecutive frames. In this case the mobile terminal will be arranged to monitor for a specified number of consecutive wake-up signals before it will prepare itself for receiving the proper paging signal. The number of wake-up signals needed should be predetermined and may be selected arbitrarily. For example, two, three or four consecutive wake-up signals may be required.
The format of wake-up signal shall satisfy the fundamental requirement of being received by simple energy detection. Formats of wake-up signal include the following options:
A set of evenly spaced tones with fractional symbol duration can be used if the wake-up signal is located in the TTG or the RTG. Wake-up signal of one OFDMA symbol may be too long for the TTG. As shown in Table 1 below, in the first release of WiMAX system profile, which is the most typical implementation of the 802.16 OFDMA mode, the OFDMA symbol duration is chosen to be 102 μs and the TTG 105 μs. If the wake-up signal occupies one OFDMA symbol duration, it leaves only 3 μs before the base stations start receiving UL signals. As a result, wake-up signals from other base stations will interfere with the UL signal. One solution is to transmit only some of the tones. This is illustrated in
Single-carrier pulses: Single-carrier pulses can be introduced to carry the wake-up energy signal in the TTG or RTG, outside the normal data region of an OFDMA frame. These pulses can be modulated by a user-dependent signature sequence to improve detection performance. The signature sequence can be mutually orthogonal or lowly cross correlated among different users. In the general sense, signature sequence modulation also includes time multiplexed pulses, since each individual one can be viewed as modulated by a sequence with non-zero values only at time instances the pulse is sent.
The wake-up signal should ideally be directed at one particular mobile terminal, which should be woken up in order to receive a proper paging signal. This will be optimal for saving battery time in the mobile terminals. On the other hand it may be easier to implement embodiments in which a wake-up signal can indicate a group comprising more than one mobile terminal. The mobile terminals in the group will all interpret the wake-up signal as intended for them and will start listening for a paging signal. Hence, for the mobile terminals of the group that are not about to receive a paging signal, some battery power will be wasted compared to the embodiments where a wake-up signal only indicates one mobile terminal. On the other hand an improvement will still be achieved compared to the prior art.
In a WiMAX system, the mobile terminal is recognized by its 48-bit MAC address. In the BS broadcast paging message, the mobile terminal identifies its paging instruction by the “MS MAC Address hash” field. This 24-bit field has 224=16769024 possible values. Hence, the wake-up signal cannot be mapped to one particular MS MAC Address hash. There are several ways to reduce the required wake-up signal space for mapping the identities of mobile terminals.
One option is to group hashed MAC addresses by frame number: In each frame, only a subset of MAC address will be mapped to the wake-up signal. For example, if there are 27=128 signals in the wake-up signal space for one frame, then 217=131072 frames will be needed to complete the mapping to all possible 24-bit hashed MAC addresses. As can be understood, the drawback of this method is that it causes a delay in the paging response from the mobile terminal.
Alternatively the hashed MAC addresses can be divided into subsets by wake-up groups: One wake-up signal can be mapped to multiple MAC addresses. The set of MAC addresses being mapped to the same wake-up signal, that is, the addresses of all mobile terminals that will be woken up by the same energy signal, is a wake-up group. The drawback of this method is that other users in the same group that are not being paged may also be alarmed by the wake-up signal.
A third option would be to assign a sector-specific wake-up number to each mobile terminal that is actually in the relevant area, This wake-up number should be cancelled when the mobile terminal leaves the area, so that it can be reassigned to another mobile terminal. Some sector will not accommodate more than some thousands of mobile terminals. In reality a sector specific number can be assigned to each mobile terminal for wake-up during network entry. The set of such wake-up numbers should be much smaller than the set of hashed MAC addresses.
A specific embodiment of the third option would be to use an identification number already used in the 802.16 standard to identify mobile terminals, such as the Connection ID (CID), as a wake-up number. The CID, which is 16-bit long, or its reduced format, which can be 11-, 7- or 3-bit long, may be used for the wake-up number purpose. That is, before a mobile terminal completely de-register from the paging zone, one of its CID, e.g., basic CID, is still maintained in a network paging logic entity. There will be some additional constraints for a sector to coordinate its CID assignment with other sectors in the paging zone. In another embodiment, a dedicated segment of the 216 CID space can be created for each paging zone as the wake-up identifier. The grouping techniques mentioned above is also applicable to CID-based wake-up identifier to reduce the number of signals in the space of wake-up signalling.
Any of the methods listed above for identifying the mobile terminal that is to receive a paging message may be used alone or in combinations of two or more. For example, different sectors may use different approaches.
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/SE07/50300 | 5/3/2007 | WO | 00 | 4/30/2010 |
