Patent Application
20070086384
The present application claims priority from Japanese application serial No. 2005-257458, filed on Sep. 6, 2005, the content of which is hereby incorporated by reference into this application.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of setting up a Quality of Service in a wireless communication network and a wireless communication apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
In a wireless communication network, full-fledged data communication is lately becoming widely used and a variety of services such as stream video and VoIP are provided. To provide communication services with a high regard for quality of communication such as real-time operability and delay in wireless communication network, it is needed to assure a Quality of Service (hereinafter referred to as QoS).
3GPP2 C.R1001-Draft (Non-Patent Document 1), CS0024-A (Non-Patent Document 2), and X.P0011-4 (Non-Patent Document 3) which relate to standards for mobile communication networks describe a method of assigning resources of a network comprising a base station (base transmission subsystems: BTS), a base station controller (BSC), and a gateway (GW) connected to a public network or the Internet, based on QoS information that is exchanged between a mobile terminal and an Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) station.
Further, for example, Published Japanese Translation of PCT International Publication for Patent Application No. 2003-509983 (WO 01/020946: Patent Document 1) has proposed a method and apparatus for setting up a QoS depending on an application to be executed on a mobile terminal in a mobile communication network.
QoS information required for a voice application 510, a data application 520, and a multimedia application 530 to be executed in the application layer over the UDP layer 540 of the terminal equipment TE is notified to the ERANAP 580 via the QoS application 550 and ORB 560. The ERANAP 580 converts the QoS information into an EGPRS parameter request to be transmitted onto a radio access network (RAN) for EGPRS. According to Patent Document 1, however, the QoS information required for the applications 510-530 is specified manually by the user of the terminal equipment TE through a user interface.
In a mobile communication network adopting a protocol prescribed in the above Non-Patent Documents 1, 2, and 3, QoS can be controlled by cooperation between a mobile terminal, BTC, BSC, and GW. However, these documents provide no specification about applications to be executed on terminal equipment, for example, a personal computer (PC) connected to a mobile terminal. Thus, each PC has to be equipped with a special application for connecting to a mobile terminal, and when one application being run on the PC in cooperation with the above special application, for example, it would become impossible to make other applications cooperate with the special application.
In Patent Document 1, the terminal user is required to specify a QoS in advance of the execution of an application. Accordingly, for example, as illustrated in
In this case, upon completion of the QoS setting procedure, a connection complete notification is sent from the mobile station 50 to the terminal equipment (SQ14). After receiving the connection complete notification, the active application 31 transmits an IP packet (data request) addressed to a server 13 (SQ21) and receives desired data from the server (SQ22). Patent Document 1 has no disclosure regarding QoS control when making parallel connection of a plurality of applications to the radio access network (RAN).
It is an object of the invention is to provide a method of setting up a QoS in a wireless communication network and a wireless communication apparatus, adapted to enable automatic setting of a QoS required for any application to be executed on the wireless communication apparatus (mobile terminal) or any application to be executed on terminal equipment connected to the wireless communication apparatus.
It is another object of the invention is to provide a method of setting up a QoS in a wireless communication network and a wireless communication apparatus, adapted to enable assuring a QoS suitable for each application on a radio access network (RAN) without altering the function of individual application and the function of terminal equipment connected to the wireless communication apparatus.
It is a further object of the invention is to provide a method of setting up a QoS in a wireless communication network and a wireless communication apparatus, adapted to enable concurrently assuring QoS levels for a plurality of applications to be executed in parallel.
To achieve the above objects, in the present invention, a wireless communication apparatus (wireless terminal) communicating with a base station specifies the type of the application from header information of an IP packet issued by an application, searches for a set of radio parameters for assuring a Quality of Service (QoS) required by the application from a conversion table having been prepared beforehand, and automatically setup a new session based on the set of radio parameters.
More specifically, a wireless communication apparatus according to the present invention is comprised of a conversion table including a plurality of entries, each defining a set of radio parameters for assuring a Quality of Service (QoS) in association with the value of at least one header item of an IP packet, and a controller for searching the conversion table based on header information of an IP packet issued from an application, for a set of radio parameters appropriate to the received packet, and executing a specific communication procedure for setting up a new session between the apparatus and its associated base station based on the set of radio parameters, wherein a QoS required by the application is assured on the session.
The conversion table may be divided into, for example, a QoS type table including a plurality of entries, each defining a QoS type number in association with the value of at least one header item of an IP packet, and a radio parameter table including a plurality of entries, each defining a set of radio parameters for assuring a QoS in association with the QoS type number. The application may be executed on another terminal equipment independent from the wireless communication apparatus.
According to the present invention, a method of setting up a Quality of Service in a wireless communication network including a wireless communication apparatus and wireless base stations connected to the Internet network via a base station controller is comprises of:
a step of searching a conversion table having been prepared beforehand, by the wireless communication apparatus based on header information of an IP packet issued from an application, for a set of radio parameters for assuring a Quality of Service (QoS) appropriate to the received packet; and
a step of executing a specific communication procedure for setting up a new session between the wireless communication apparatus and its associated base station based on the set of radio parameters searched from the conversion table.
According to the present invention, it is possible to automatically assure a QoS required by each application being executed without QoS specification by the terminal user. Even if a plurality of applications are executed in parallel, a QoS for each application can be assured.
Embodiments of the present invention will be described hereinafter with reference to the drawings.
The wireless communication network shown here comprises a wireless terminal (Access Terminal: AT) 40, a wireless base station (Base-station Transceiver Subsystem: BTS) 10, a base station controller (BSC) 11 connected to the BTS 10, and a gateway (GW) 12 for connecting the BSC 11 to an external communication network, e.g., an Internet network 20.
To the Internet network 20, a plurality of servers 13 (13A, 13B, etc.) are connected. Although only a single BTS 10 is shown in
To the AT 40, terminal equipment for executing application programs (hereinafter referred to as simply applications) 31 (31A, 31B, etc.), for example, a personal computer (PC) 30 is connected. The PC 30 and the AT 40 may be connected via, for example, a general Local Area Network (LAN), Universal Serial Bus (USB), or an infrared/serial interface.
The terminal user communicates with an server 13 or another terminal equipment on the Internet network 20 by executing an application 31 on its terminal equipment 30. A feature of the present invention resides in that the AT 40 has capability of automatically setting up a QoS appropriate to the application 31 upon receiving a packet passed from the application 31, without requiring the terminal user to specify QoS information.
The wireless communication apparatus (AT) 40 of the present invention may have connections with plural pieces of terminal equipment (PCs) 30-1 and 30-2, for example, as illustrated in
In the radio section between the AT 40 and the BTS 10, a radio channel 100 with a predetermined communication bandwidth BWmax is formed. On the radio channel 100, a plurality of logical sessions (101A, 101B, 10c, etc.) having individual QoS levels are multiplexed. The number of sessions that can be multiplexed on a single radio channel 100 is prescribed by a 3GPP2 standard. For each of the sessions multiplexed on the radio channel 100, an individual QoS level can be set, unless a total of QoS bandwidths does not exceed the communication bandwidth BWmax.
Packets passed from the applications 31 (31A, 31B, 31C, etc.) to the AT 40 are transmitted from the AT 30 to the BST 10 through the appropriate sessions with QoS levels adaptive for each application. Thereby, it is possible to ensure, on the radio channel, QoS levels different depending on application type, such as File Transport Protocol (FTP), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and Stream Data.
For instance, suppose that an IP packet for a server access request has now been issued from an application (APL) 31A (SQ20A). In the present invention, the AT 40 having received the IP packet determines a QoS type suitable for the APL 31A based on the header information of the received packet and a QoS type table which will be described later (SQ30). The AT 40 searches for a radio parameter set corresponding to the above QoS type from a radio parameter table which will be described later and begins QoS setup according to the retrieved radio parameter set (SQ31). The QoS setup is achieved by exchanging control messages between the AT 40 and its associated BTS 10 (and BSC 11) in accordance with a Session Configuration Protocol and other protocols, such as Protocol Negotiation and Protocol Configuration, specified in Non-Patent Documents 2 and 3 (SQ32), and performing a predetermined QoS setup procedure (SQ33) between the BSC 11 and GW 12.
Upon completion of the QoS setup, the AT 40 transmits the packet (server access request) having been received from the APL 31A and waiting for transmission to the BTS 10 (SQ 21). The packet received at the BTS 10 is sent out to the internet 20 via the BSC 11 and GW 12 and forwarded to the destination server 13A according to the destination IP address. Then, QoS-assured data communication is commenced between the APL 31A and the server 13A (SQ22).
When an IP packet (server access request) is issued from another application (APL) 31B (SQ20B), the AT 40 performs the same operation steps (SQ30-SQ32, SQ21) as described above when having received the IP packet from the APL 31A, thereby automatically setting up a session with a QoS that is optimum for the APL 31B.
The AT 40 comprises a transceiver 41 equipped with an antenna for wireless communication with BTS 10, a signal processing unit 42, a controller (processor) 43, an external interface 44 for connecting to PC 30, a program memory 45, a data memory 46, and an I/O control unit 47. These components are connected by an internal bus 48. To the I/O control unit 47, for example, a display unit 471, an input unit 472 including a set of input buttons, a microphone, etc., and an output unit 473 such as a speaker are connected.
In the program memory 45, as programs to be executed by the controller (processor) 43, a main control routine 400, a user interface control routine 402 for controlling data output to the display 471, an external interface control routine 404 for controlling data exchange with the PC 30 via the external interface 44, a QoS processing routine 410 which will be detailed later, and various application programs 440 are installed. Here, the main control routine 400 is provided with an overall control function to selectively activate any of other routines 402, 404, 410, 440 according to user action and a call control function required when carrying out VoIP.
In the data memory 46, user definition data 460, conversion tables for use in QoS setup including a QoS type table 470 and a radio parameter table 480, and a QoS control table 490 are installed. Further, a buffer memory space 500 in which a plurality of queues by QoS type are created is allocated in the data memory 46.
The PC 30 comprises a controller (processor) 31, an external interface 32 for connecting to the wireless communication apparatus (AT) 40, a program memory 33, a data memory 34, and an I/O control unit 35. These components are connected by an internal bus. To the I/O control unit 35, for example, a display unit 351, an input unit 352 including a set of input keys, a mouse, etc., an output unit 353 such as a printer, and an external memory 354 of a relatively large capacity which serves as an auxiliary memory are connected.
In the program memory 33, as programs to be executed by the controller (processor) 31, a main control routine 300, a user interface control routine 310 for controlling data output to the display unit 351, an external interface control routine 320 for controlling data exchange with the AT 40 via the external interface 44, and various application programs 330 are installed. The APLs 31A and 31B as mentioned in
The QoS type table 470 comprises a plurality of entries 4700-1, 4700-2, etc., each corresponding to application type 471.
Each entry specifies a QoS type (QoS identifier number) 474 specific to the application type and a session setup flag 475. An IP address 472 and a TCP/UDP port number 473 are included as information to identify the application type. The session setup flag 475 indicates whether a session appropriate to the QoS type 474 has been assured, that is, whether or not a session with a radio parameter set appropriate to the QoS type 474 has been set up.
The above QoS type table 470 is referred to in a search for a QoS type (QoS identifier number) 474 and a session setup flag 475, based on a search key of the destination IP address and the destination port number extracted from the header of a received packet. Here, an asterisk (*) mark denotes a “don't care” value in the marked field. A QoS type may be determined only by a port number 473 value, as is shown for entries 4700-1 to 4700-4, or determined only by a destination IP address value 472, as is shown for an entry 4700-5. The latter corresponds to the case where a server with the destination IP address 472 provides an information service with a specific QoS.
The radio parameter table 480 comprises a plurality of entries 4800-1 to 4800-n, each defining the correspondence of a QoS type (QoS identifier number) 481 with a set of radio parameters 482. Each radio parameter set 482 is comprised of a plurality of parameter values (482A, 482B, 482C, etc.) such as, for example, Max Num MAC Flows Rate 1M8 Supported, as prescribed in Non-Patent Document 2.
After starting the QoS processing routine 410, the controller 43 first extracts the destination IP address and the destination port number from the IP header and the TCP/UDP header of the received packet (step 412) and searches the QoS type table 470 for a QoS type 474 and a session setup flag 475 corresponding to the above destination IP address and destination port number (414).
Depending on the search result (416), if the QoS type 474 has been found successfully, the controller 43 judges whether a session for the above QoS type has been set up based on the state of the session setup flag 475 (418). If the session has been set up, the controller 43 stores the received packet into a queue by QoS type prepared in the buffer memory 500 according to the QoS control table 490 (434) and terminates this routine.
If the session has not been set up, the controller 43 searches the radio parameter table 480 for a set of radio parameters 482 corresponding to the above QoS type 474 (420) and sets up a session according to the retrieved set of radio parameters (422). The session setup means to establish a new session appropriate to the QoS type by carrying out a specific communication procedure according to the Session Configuration Protocol and other protocols between the terminal and the BTS 10 under the control of the main control routine 400. At this time, a negotiation with regard to the radio parameters is performed between the BTS and its BSC and a flow number is assigned as information to identify the IP packet QoS and the application.
Depending on the result of the session setup (424), if the session appropriate to the QoS type has been set up successfully, the controller 43 changes the value of the session setup flag 475 to the setup done state (“1”) in the QoS type table 470 (430). Then, the controller 43 registers a new control entry into the QoS control table 490 (432) in order to perform QoS control on received packets corresponding to the above QoS type (flow number), stores the received packet into the queue by QoS (434) and terminates this routine.
In the case of an unsuccessful search for QoS type, as judged at step 416, or in the case of an unsuccessful session setup, as judged at step 424, the controller 43 judges whether a session of a default QoS has been set up (426) by referring to a session setup flag in an entry for default QoS registered in the QoS type table 470. If the session of a default QoS has been set up, the controller 43 stores the received packet into a queue for default QoS (434) and terminates this routine. If the session of a default QoS has not been setup, the controller 43 sets up a new session appropriate to QoS type according to a set of radio parameters for a default QoS prepared in the radio parameter table 490 (428) in a similar way as in step 422 and executes step 430.
In the flowchart shown in
As shown in
The transmission IP packet is stored into the appropriate queue by QoS type in the buffer memory space 500 through the QoS processing routine 410. After that, the transmission IP packet is read out by the signal processing unit 42 according to a priority control algorithm corresponding to the QoS. The signal processing unit 42 divides the IP packet into multiple blocks and outputs them to a transmission queue TxQ in the form of the RLP packets as described in
An application (APL) 30A outputs an IP packet for FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access addressed to a server 13A to the wireless terminal (AT) 40 (SQ101). Then, the AT 40 automatically sets up a session with a QoS suitable for FTP traffic in cooperation with the associated BTS/BSC. Through this session, the APL 30A starts FTP communication with the server 13A. After the elapse of a period T1, the APL 30A terminates the communication with the server 13A (SQ102).
Next, when an application (APL) 30B sends the AT 40 a packet for VoIP addressed to another terminal 40B which is omitted from
This sequence illustrates an instance where, during a period T1 of FTP communication being continued between the APL 30A and the server 13A, the APL 30B starts VoIP communication with the terminal 40B (SQ201) and terminates the VoIP communication (SQ202). According to the invention, since the AT 40 automatically sets up a QoS appropriate for each application at the time of reception of the first packet from each of applications 30A and 30B, it is possible to set up a plurality of sessions with different QoS levels during the same time period, as illustrated by this example.
Although the QoS type table 470 and the radio parameter table 480 are prepared in the wireless terminal (AT) 40 as separate ones in the foregoing embodiments, these tables may be integrated into a single conversion table. That is, in the QoS type table 470, the radio parameter set 482 shown in
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005-257458 | Sep 2005 | JP | national |
