Patent Application
20230327790
The present disclosure relates generally to a User Equipment (UE) of a wireless communications network and a method performed by the UE.
In Long Term Evolution (LTE) and the Fifth Generation (5G) New Radio (NR), a mobility function may benefit from measurement reports that are configured by the serving network node where the UE is connected to. The serving network node may be referred to as a source network node. The serving network node configures the UE to detect cells in a given frequency e.g. Primary Cell (PCell) frequency, for intra-frequency handover), without providing a list of cells to the UE. To assist intra-frequency handovers, the network configures either periodic measurement reports or configures an A3 event, e.g. in a reportConfig associated to a measurement object and associated to a measurement identity, that is triggered when one of the neighbour cells in the frequency associated to the indicated measurement object, e.g. the same PCell frequency in case of intra-frequency handovers, becomes an offset better than the PCell. When the event is triggered for at least one cell, a measurement report is transmitted, and the serving network node may request a handover preparation via Xn, where resources are reserved in the target cell for an incoming UE. In summary, the UE may be configured by the network to perform Radio Resource Management (RRM) measurements, typically called RRM/L3 measurements, and report them periodically or based on the triggering of configured events, e.g. A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, B1, B2. More specifically, these events are defined as follows:
Event A1: An event A1 is configured in reportConfig and associated to a measObject, e.g. for a serving frequency, and a measId. The entry condition or first condition is considered fulfilled for the serving cell if all measurements after layer 3 filtering taken during the configured time to trigger fulfil the entry condition i.e. serving cell is better than a threshold.
Event A2: An event A2 is configured in reportConfig and associated to a measObject, e.g. for a serving frequency, and a measId. The entry condition is considered fulfilled for the serving cell if all measurements after layer 3 filtering taken during the configured time to trigger fulfil the entry condition i.e. serving cell is worse than a threshold.
Event A3: An event A3 is configured in reportConfig and associated to a measObject, e.g. for a serving frequency, and a measId. The entry condition is considered fulfilled for a neighbour cell if all measurements after layer 3 filtering taken during the configured time to trigger fulfil the entry condition i.e. neighbour cell becomes offset better than SpCell, as shown below:
Event A4: An event A4 is configured in reportConfig and associated to a measObject, e.g. for a serving frequency, and a measId. The entry condition is considered fulfilled for a neighbour cell if all measurements after layer 3 filtering taken during the configured time to trigger fulfil the entry condition i.e. neighbour cell is better than a threshold.
Event A5: An event A5 is configured in reportConfig and associated to a measObject, e.g. for a serving frequency, and a measId. The entry condition is considered fulfilled if all measurements after layer 3 filtering taken during the configured time to trigger fulfil the entry condition, i.e., SpCell becomes worse than threshold1 and a neighbour cell becomes better than threshold2.
Event A6: An event A6 is configured in reportConfig and associated to a measObject, e.g. for a serving frequency, and a measId. The entry condition is considered fulfilled if all measurements after layer 3 filtering taken during the configured time to trigger fulfil the entry condition i.e. neighbour cell becomes offset better than SCell.
In the case of NR, the network may configure an RRC_CONNECTED UE to perform measurements and report them in accordance with the measurement configuration. The measurement configuration is provided by means of dedicated signaling i.e. using the RRCReconfiguration or RRCResume. The network may configure the UE to perform the following types of measurements: NR measurements; Inter-Radio Access Technology (Inter-RAT) measurements of Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Access (E-UTRA) frequencies.
The network may configure the UE to report the following measurement information based on Synchronization Signals/Physical Broadcast Channel (SS/PBCH) block(s): Measurement results per SS/PBCH block; Measurement results per cell based on SS/PBCH block(s); SS/PBCH block(s) indexes.
The network may configure the UE to report the following measurement information based on Channel State Information-Reference Signal (CSI-RS) resources: Measurement results per CSI-RS resource; Measurement results per cell based on CSI-RS resource(s); CSI-RS resource measurement identifiers.
In legacy handovers, the serving network node contacts a target network node only when it is certain that a handover needs to be performed. Until then, there is no contact with neighbour node to configure measurements, at least for LTE measurements based on cell-specific reference signals and NR measurements based on SS/PBCH Blocks (SSBs), which can only be detected once at least the frequency location is known.
In the case of an A3 event being configured, the network expects the UE to report when it finds a neighbour cell that is better than its Special Cell (SpCell). Upon receiving these measurements, the network takes a decision whether it should handover the UE to that neighbour cell or not. If all goes fine, the network decides to keep the UE connected to the serving cell, or to hand it over.
However, things may go wrong, e.g. due to mistuned parameters, like the time to trigger or thresholds, and the UE may not trigger the report of measurements associated to an A3 event before the connection becomes so poor that it is not even possible to properly decode a downlink control channel e.g. Physical Downlink Control Channel/Configurable Control Resource Set (PDCCH/CORESET). In that case, as it may also not be possible to notify the network, e.g. if the Uplink (UL) is also degraded so that measurement reports are not properly received at the network, that a problem is happening, 3GPP has defined in LTE and NR a procedure called RLF declaration that consists of letting the UE perform an assessment of connection quality and, if the connection becomes bad, e.g. as an indication that the UE may not be able to contact the network or as an indication that the UE may not be able to be contacted by the network, the UE performs autonomous actions, such as the triggering of an RRC re-establishment procedure. In other words, in traditional handovers, until Release 15 (Rel-15) of NR or LTE, measurement reports are configured so that the network can detect when a cell in a particular frequency is better than the SpCell. Then, upon the reception of a measurement report the network may trigger a handover. Radio conditions may drop while the UE is sending measurement reports and/or the serving node in the network is trying to transmit a handover command, e.g. an RRCConnectionReconfiguration with MobilityControlInfo in LTE or an RRCReconfiguration containing a reconfigurationWithSync in NR.
Upon detecting a radio problem, the UE starts a timer T1, e.g. timer T310 in RRC. If there is no recovery while the timer is running, that timer expires, and the UE declares RLF and starts a second timer T2, e.g. timer T311 in RRC, while it tries to perform cell selection and initiates further actions, such as reestablishment, if the UE is in single connectivity i.e. not operating in Multi-RAT-Dual Connectivity (MR-DC).
Some sort of RLF predictor is known to be placed at the network and fed with real time information reported by the UE, e.g. UE location, so that it can predict if an RLF is likely to occur or not. In that paper, the RLF prediction at the network side is used as input to another function that produces as an outcome thresholds for an A3 event i.e. the RLF predictions performed at the network is used as input to a Self-Organizing Network (SON) function, e.g. Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO), in this specific case. When the RLF predictor is placed at the network side, based on real time information reported by the UE, e.g. UE location, a disadvantage is that a lot of information is required to be reported by the UE. In addition, a network-based model cannot consider internal features at the UE that are not reported e.g. sensor information.
It is also known to use Machine Learning (ML) to predict session drops, which may be driven by RLF, well before the end of session. The known model has higher accuracy than using traditional models and has been applied and tested on live LTE data offline, where the model is placed at the network side, e.g. in an Operation and Maintenance (OAM) node. It is also known that the high accuracy predictor can be part of a SON function in order to eliminate the session drops or mitigate their effects. Using ML has similar disadvantages as described above for placing an RLF predictor at the network.
An autonomous cell or beam handover with support from network is known. This relies on UEs predicting signal condition of serving and neighbour BSs and using these predictions as input to classify, in advance, if a Handover (HO) will fail or succeed. Based on this, the UE indicates to its serving Base Station (BS) to which neighbour BS it wants to handover. A limitation of this is that the UE uses the RLF predictions to perform UE-based mobility, which is not something desirable for an RRC_CONNECTED UE that has not detected a failure, but just predicted that a failure may happen.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,826,419 B2 discloses that a UE stores in a cell information database cells related information, e.g., cell configuration information and RLF occurrences. Then, a UE should continuously check in the database if an RLF is predicted to happen using its current state as an entry in the database. If the UE determines that an RLF is predicted to happen, the UE will try to acquire a new cell, where acquiring a new cell is defined as a result of one of the following procedures: initialization, handover, selection or reselection.
Therefore, there is a need to at least mitigate or solve this issue.
An objective of embodiments herein is therefore to obviate at least one of the above disadvantages and to reduce the risk for failures in a wireless communications network.
According to a first aspect, the object is achieved by a method performed by a UE in connected state of a wireless communications network. The UE predicts information related to at least one of the following failures:
The UE determines that a condition for triggering a procedure is fulfilled. The condition is based on the predicted information. In response to the determining, the UE initiates the procedure.
According to a second aspect, the object is achieved by a UE in connected state of a wireless communications network. The UE is adapted to predict information related to at least one of the following failures:
The UE is adapted to determine that a condition for triggering a procedure is fulfilled. The condition is based on the predicted information. The UE is adapted to, in response to the determined, initiate the procedure.
Since the prediction of the information related to a failure is performed by the UE in connected state, it uses information which is locally available in the UE in the prediction. Use of the local available information provides accurate information which, when received by the network node, reduces the risk of failures in the wireless communications network.
The present disclosure herein affords many advantages, of which a non-exhaustive list of examples follows:
An advantage of the present disclosure is that by initiating a procedure, e.g. initiating transmission of a message to the network node, based on predictions of information related to failure, instead of waiting that only filtered measurements initiates the procedure, the network node may figure out earlier that a failure is expected to happen, e.g., due to a physical layer problem, such as the expiry of timer T310 or occurrence of Out-of-Sync (OSS) events reaching the maximum value of a counter N310; or due to a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol problem such as the reaching of the maximum number of preamble transmission attempts; or due to a Radio Link Control (RLC) problem such as the reaching of the maximum number of RLC retransmissions.
Another advantage of the present disclosure is that it covers cases of failure prediction report that state-of-the-art solutions, do not, since known measurement reports are only reported if the serving and/or neighbour cell Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP), Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) and/or Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) fulfill certain criteria, which may not be fulfilled even if a failure is predicted. In other words, some failure cases, e.g., reaching the maximum number of random-access attempts, may not necessarily be translated into values of RSRP/RSRQ/SINR that would initiate a procedure, e.g. initiating transmission of a message such as a measurement report. Hence, in these cases the network would be warned of a predicted failure with the present disclosure, and not by known solutions.
Another advantage of the present disclosure is the triggering of UE autonomous actions, e.g. RRC-reestablishment, Resume, before the radio conditions become poor to a point where quality of service is compromised.
Another advantage of the present disclosure is that the UE may readjust certain parameters, such as timeToTrigger, Hysteresis, etc., to optimize mobility based on the prediction of failure related information, which can speed up the time a report is available at the network node.
Another advantage of the present disclosure is that the UE may further enhance the capability of the s-measure framework. When a UE is configured with an s-measure, it does not measure any other object rather than its serving cell(s). The reason is to disable measurements when the UE has a very good link quality with its serving cell(s) to enable an energy efficient measurement framework. Based on the predictions of information related to failure the UE can ignore the s-measure configuration and perform measurement of neighbouring cell, even if the current link quality of serving cell(s) is good, e.g., to find potential candidate cells to perform handover. The present disclosure is not limited to the features and advantages mentioned above. A person skilled in the art will recognize additional features and advantages upon reading the following detailed description.
The present disclosure will now be described in more detail by way of example only in the following detailed description by reference to the appended drawings illustrating the embodiments and in which:
The drawings are not necessarily to scale and the dimensions of certain features may have been exaggerated for the sake of clarity. Emphasis is instead placed upon illustrating the principle.
The wireless communications network 100 comprises one or a plurality of network nodes, whereof a network node 101 is depicted in
The wireless communications network 100 covers a geographical area which may be divided into cell areas, wherein each cell area may be served by a network node, although, one network node may serve one or several cells. In
One or a plurality of UEs 103 is located in the wireless communication network 100. Only one UE 103 is exemplified in
The UE 103 is enabled to communicate wirelessly within the wireless communication network 100. The communication may be performed e.g. between two UEs 103, between the UE 103 and a regular telephone, between the UE 103 and the network node 101, between network nodes, and/or between the UEs 103 and a server via the radio access network and possibly one or more core networks and possibly the internet.
The network node 101 may be configured to communicate in the wireless communication network 100 with the UE 103 over a communication link 108, e.g., a radio link
It should be noted that the communication links in the wireless communications network 100 may be of any suitable kind comprising either a wired or wireless link The link may use any suitable protocol depending on type and level of layer, e.g. as indicated by the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, as understood by the person skilled in the art.
The method of the present disclosure will now be described with reference to the signaling diagram in
The network node 101 may transmit information indicating a prediction model to the UE 103. The UE 103 may receive information indicating the prediction model from the network node 101. The UE 103 is in connected state.
The UE 103 predicts information related to at least one of the following failures:
The predicted information may comprise at least one of:
The predicted information may be related to at least one of the serving cell and the neighbour cell of the UE 103.
The predicting the information may comprise that the UE 103 may:
The UE 103 determines that a condition for triggering a procedure is fulfilled. The condition is based on the predicted information from step 201.
The condition for triggering the procedure may be fulfilled when at least one of the following occurs for a serving cell or a neighbour cell:
The conditions in the list above may be combined with other conditions, not necessarily prediction based, for example actual measurements performed by the UE 103.
The condition may be referred to as an entry condition or a first condition herein.
The UE 103 initiates the procedure in response to the determining in step 202.
The procedure may be a transmission of a message to the network node 101. The message may indicate the predicted information. The message may be a measurement report.
The procedure may be a transmission of measurement reports to the network node 101. The measurement reports may indicate actual measurement results, i.e. actual measurement results from measurements previously performed by the UE 103.
The procedure may be a UE autonomous procedure comprising at least one of:
The procedure may be a preparation for a re-establishment procedure.
The UE 103 may determine that a condition for stopping the procedure is fulfilled based on the predicted information. Note that this condition in step 204 is for stopping the procedure, as contrary to the condition in step 202 which is for triggering the procedure. The condition in step 204 may be referred to as a leaving condition or a second condition.
The UE 103 may, in response to the determining in step 204, stop the procedure.
Some of the steps above will now be described in more detail.
In step 201, the UE 103 predicts information related to at least one failure. The failure may be at least one of a failure during operation with the serving cell, and a failure accessing a neighbour cell. The failure may be an RLF or a handover failure.
The information related to at least one failure may be at least one of the following:
As mentioned above, the failure may be a handover failure, which may be referred to as a failure related to a reconfiguration with sync procedure. For example, there may be an indication that a reconfiguration with sync failure may be declared, indication of the reason why a reconfiguration with sync failure may be declared, such as due to potential expiry of timer T304, potential MAC protocol problems due to a possibly reach of the maximum number of preamble transmission attempts, etc., predictions of further details concerning reconfiguration with sync failure declaration such as predictions of beam-specific measurements, e.g. Synchronization Signal Block (SSB) specific measurements, used for random access resource selection as defined in the MAC specifications. In that case, when a handover failure is predicted, the triggering of a report based on that information may indicate to the network node 101 that a given neighbour cell may not be a good candidate for handover, if a failure is predicted by the UE 103. Hence, network may refrain to request a handover for the neighbour cells for which the UE 103 has reported predictions that handover failure may occur with certain probability.
Predictions of failure related information (or simply failure predictions) may be performed by the UE 103 according to configurations, i.e. fields and associated IEs containing further fields/parameters, included in a measConfig of IE MeasConfig. Alternatively, the predictions of failure related information may be configured by a new field, e.g. called rlfPredConfig of IE RlfPredConfig, comprising the configurations of predictions to be performed. The UE 103 may receive prediction reporting configuration(s), e.g., new configuration in ReportConfigNR or a new IE for that RLF-PredictionReportConfig, and, based on which the UE 103 may evaluate a triggering criteria based on predictions of failure related information.
The UE 103 may receive and process an RRC message comprising configurations for predictions of RLF related information even if security has not been activated.
The predicted information related to failure may be one or more of the following, or any combination of them:
The predictions of information related to at least one failure may be performed for a serving cell, such as a SpCell, like the PCell or like a Primary Secondary Cell (PSCell), if the UE 103 is operating in MR-DC.
The predictions of information related to at least one failure may be performed for a neighbour cell, e.g. in a serving frequency or in a neighbour frequency. Note that this may be useful when predictions of information related to at least one failure are comprised in a message, e.g. a measurement report, that comprise measurements associated to a neighbour cell that may be a candidate for handover, dual connectivity, SCell addition/Activation/removal/deactivation, etc.
The predictions of information related to at least one failure may be performed for a best neighbour in serving frequencies, e.g. if configured.
The UE 103 may derive predictions of information related to at least one failure in different ways, e.g. which inputs are used, which models, etc. Below some ways to derive predictions of information related to at least one failure. Then, in the following, some parameters possibly used by the prediction model will be described.
It is known that the UE 103 may declare the failure at the time t0+4T after expiry of the T310 timer. Thanks to the time series prediction at t0, the N310* which represent the number of consecutive OOS prediction is required to predict starting the T310 timer. Therefore, the UE 103 may predict that the T310 timer will start at t0+3T by utilizing the time series prediction at t0. It is predicted herein that there will not be any IS event from t0+3T to t0+4T, where T310*=T. Hence, the UE 103 may predict the failure declaration 4T in advance. If a message, e.g. a measurement report, is transmitted, that information may be comprised in the message so that it may be helpful to the network node 101 to decide whether a handover shall be performed or not.
In the case of NR, measurements for Radio Link Monitoring (RLM) may be based on SSB or CSI-RS, or a mix of SSB and CSI-RS resources. The UE 103 may perform predictions of information related to at least one failure based on measurements performed either on the SSBs and/or CSI-RS resources.
The UE 103 may perform the prediction of a handover failure or a reconfiguration with sync failure, or it may perform predictions related to RLF.
When predicting the information related to at least one failure in step 201, the UE 103 may apply or use a prediction model. The prediction model may be referred to as a prediction function. The UE 103 may receive a prediction model/function from the network node 101. The prediction model may be implemented as a software function that may be provided from the network node 101 to the UE 103, for example, in a procedure where the UE 103 downloads this software function. An alternative may rely on Application Protocol Interfaces (APIs) that may be exposed by the UE 103 to the network node 101, so an entity at the network node side is able to configure a prediction model at the UE 103. In that case, there may be a procedure where the UE 103 may indicate to the network node 101 a capability related information i.e. the UE 103 may indicate to the network node 101 that it can download or receive a prediction model from the network node 101, for example, for mobility prediction information. This capability may be related to the software and hardware aspects at the UE 103, availability of sensors, etc. Once the UE 103 has the function available, it may be further configured by the network node 101 o use it e.g. in a measurement configuration like reporting configuration, measurement object configuration, RLF configuration, RLM configuration, etc.
The network node 101 may take different input from the UE 103 to take a decision concerning the prediction model to provide the UE 103 and/or its configurations. For example, a network node 101, e.g., a BS or a cloud node, may receive the UEs' measurement reports and use them to train a Neural Network (NN), or the network node 101 may use failure reports and information within, indicating that failure, e.g. RLF, has occurred at some point in time. To train the NN, the network node 101 may use as input to the NN signal measurements, e.g., RSRP, RSRQ or SINR, at instant “t”, and/or failure reports, and as output, the indication of whether a failure occurs or not at instant “t+X”. Thus, the NN may be able to predict if a failure occurs or not, “X” instants of time in advance. Since a NN may be characterized by the number of layers, number of nodes per layer and the nodes' weights, after the training process, the network node 101 may broadcast to the UE 103 the NN parameters in order to allow the UE 103 to reconstruct the NN and use it to predict future occurrences of failure, e.g. RLF. Since this is an example of supervised learning, from time to time, the network node 101 may update the NN weights based on new UEs' measurement reports and/or failure reports. The predicted values at instant “t” may be compared to the actual failure occasions at instant “t+X” (if any) in order to validate if the NN accuracy and to force, if necessary, the NN weights update.
The prediction model may be based on Federated Learning (FL). A group of UEs 103, i.e. a plurality of UEs 103, may download the model and train, e.g., SGD, the prediction model with their local data, RSRP, etc., on device. After a certain time, the UEs 103 may send their trained prediction models to the network node 101 and then network node 101 can take the average of all models.
The UE 103 may store a prediction model, e.g., UE proprietary prediction model, to perform the prediction of information related to failure. In that case, there may be a procedure where the UE 103 indicates to the network node 101 a capability related to that i.e. indicate that it can perform a certain prediction as described herein, e.g. prediction of information related to failure. A capability may be reported from the UE 103 to the network node 101 in different levels of granularity such as:
It may be standardized to have at least one prediction model to be implemented at the UE 103 and configured by the network node 101, with a set of parameters. Many possibilities may be considered, for example: a NN, the UE 103 may already know that it will implement a NN of “L” layers, where each layer “i” has “Ni” nodes, and each node “j” has a set of weights “Wj”, but the values of “L”, “Ni” and “Wj” are set by the network node 101. Another possible model may be a Random Forest, where the network node 101 may set the number of estimators, corresponding to trees in the forest, the depth of each tree and the threshold of each leaf. A capability may be reported to the network node 101 in different levels of granularity such as
When it comes to the prediction model, it may be noted that a radio link may usually have less chances of being in a failure condition than of being in good conditions. So, this may be considered when preparing the data to be used to train a model, if a supervised learning method is going to be used. Otherwise, if there is not a good balance between failure and success, the model might be biased for one of the radio link states.
If the expected output is fail or success, traditional prediction models and also classification ones may be used. Regarding the prediction model, it may be a feed-forward NN, where the inputs may be, but are not restrict to, current and/or predicted signal quality, e.g., RSRP, RSRQ, SINR, of serving and/or neighbour BSs/SSBs, current and/or predicted value of T310 and OOS, etc. Regarding classification models, e.g., Support Vector Machines (SVM) and K-nearest neighbour (KNN) may be used. These models may cluster data based on similar features into groups and then map new data to these formed groups.
The different prediction models may be based on different set of parameters known at the UE 103. For example, real or current measurements may be used as input parameters for the prediction model, e.g., RSRP, RSRQ, SINR at a certain point in time TO for the same cells the UE 103 which perform predictions, based on an RS type like SSB and/or CSI-RS and/or DRMS, either instantaneous values or filtered values, e.g. with L3 filter parameters configured by RRC, from the serving and/or neighbour cells and/or serving or neighbour beams.
The prediction models may use parameters from sensors, such as UE positioning information, e.g. GPS coordinates, barometric sensor information or other indicators of height, rotation sensors, proximity sensors, and mobility such as, location information, previous connected BSs history, speed and mobility direction, information from mapping/guiding applications.
The prediction models may use metrics related to UE connection, such as average package delay. The UE 103 may also use input from sensors such as rotation, movement, etc. The UE 103 may use some route information as input, e.g. current location, final destination and route.
The prediction models may use of UE mobility history information such as last visited beams, last visited cells, last visited tracking areas, last visited registration areas, last visited RAN areas, last visited PLMNs, last visited countries, last visited cities, last visited states, etc.
The prediction models may use time information such as the current time, e.g. 10:15 am, and associated time zone, e.g. 10:15 GMT. That may be relevant if the UE 103 has a predictable trajectory and it is typical that at a certain time the UE 103 is in a certain location.
The prediction models may use any failure related variable at time instance t0 to predict the possible occurrence of a failure at time instance t0+kT such as at least one of the following, or any combination:
Predicted values of any of the previously mentioned parameters may be used, e.g., predicted value of a measurement, e.g., instantaneous and/or filtered RSRP/RSRQ/SINR based on SSB/CSI-RS, predicted UE position, predicted UE package delay, predicted number of OOS events to be used as input for predictions of RLF related information.
The UE 103 may be configured, e.g. by the network node 101, via an RRC message, to utilize at least one of the above parameters as input to the prediction models. The availability of these parameters, e.g. in case of sensors, the availability at the UE 103 of a sensor, like barometric sensor, may depend on a capability information indicated to the network node 101. If the network node 101 is aware that the UE 103 is capable of performing certain predictions, like based on sensors, and, if the network node 101 is aware that a UE 103 may benefit in using a parameter in a prediction model, the UE 103 may be configured to use at least one of these input parameters in the prediction model for which the network node 101 is configuring the UE 103 to report. In that case, there may be a procedure where the UE 103 indicates to the network node 101 a capability related information i.e. the UE 103 may indicate to the network node 101 that it may download or receive a prediction model from the network node 101, for example, for prediction of information related to failure, as described herein. This capability may be related to the software and hardware aspects at the UE 103, availability of sensors, etc. Once the UE 103 has the function available, it may be configured by the network node 101 to use it e.g. in a measurement configuration like reporting configuration, measurement object configuration, RLF configuration, RLM configuration, etc.
The predictions of information related to failure may be configured in various ways, regardless of the way the UE 103 may implement the prediction model i.e. there may still be some configuration parameters from the network node 101.
The UE 103 may receive a prediction configuration in an RRC message, e.g. RRCResume, RRCReconfiguration, comprising per prediction to be performed a prediction identifier, a reporting configuration identifier, e.g. associated to a reporting configuration, and an object identifier (associated to an object configuration). This prediction identifier may to be included in a message when the conditions are fulfilled, and predictions may be transmitted to the network node 101, e.g. as a result of step 203 in
The prediction configuration may be received in a predConfig field of IE PredConfig in an RRC message, e.g. RRCResume, RRCReconfiguration, comprising per prediction to be performed a prediction identifier represented by a predId of IE PredId, and a reporting configuration. The prediction configuration may indicate parameters indicating what exactly is to be predicted, e.g. any of the predictions of information related to failure, as listed earlier. The reporting configuration may indicate what is to be comprised in the report e.g. information related to failure for a serving cell, like the SpCell of the MCG, SpCell of the SCG, or neighbour cell(s), such as information related to failure for the triggered cell associated to the event for the message, e.g. a measurement report, to be transmitted to the network node 101. In other words, it may be configurable what to include as prediction of information related to failure.
The prediction of information related to failure may be included in a message, e.g. a measurement report, when it is triggered, e.g. when an entry condition for an event is fulfilled for all measurements for a given cell. As a message such as a measurement report is associated to a measId, measObject, reportConfig triplet configured via measConfig, the predictions to be comprised in the message for a given measId may also be associated to that measId. For example, the configurations for what to be predicted and/or what to be comprised in the measurement report may be indicated in the same reportConfig of IE ReportConfigNR for example, or in the measObject of MeasObjectNR, or both, depending on the exact configuration. In this mixed case, for example, reportConfig may indicate the exact information related to failure to be comprised, e.g. T310 related information, cause value, while in measObject the exact cell type for which information related to failure is to be reported e.g. if only for SpCell or neighbour cells in the frequency of the associated measurement object e.g. comprise predictions of information related to failure for the SpCell and/or neighbour cells in the frequency associated to the measurement object associated to that measId and reportConfig. An alternative may be to define a mapping/binding between the measId and the predId, so that both may be associated to the same reportConfig and measObject.
Configurations for the predictions of information may also be provided via broadcasted signaling e.g. in a system information block.
The UE 103 may performing predictions of information related to failure in step 201 for at least one serving cell the UE 103 has been configured. That may be based on different criteria, depending on the presence or absence of various fields within the message. That may comprise at least one of the cell types:
The UE may perform predictions of information related to failure for at least one neighbour cell, e.g. in a neighbour frequency for which the UE 103 may have a measurement object configured.
That may be based on different criteria, depending on the presence or absence of various fields within the message. That may comprise at least one of the cell types:
The present disclosure may be applicable if the UE 103 operates in single connectivity i.e. the UE 103 is only configured with an MCG.
In step 202 in
At least one indication that a failure may be declared;
At least one indication of the reason a failure may possibly be declared according to the prediction;
Predictions of further details concerning failure declaration such as at least one of the following, for a particular possible problem:
Information concerning an ongoing failure declaration procedure, not necessarily a prediction, but rather a state information, such as:
One or multiple criteria, e.g. reporting criteria, may be evaluated according to one or multiple conditions, e.g. an entry condition or combination of entry conditions, whose input may be based on predictions of information related to failure, as performed in step 201.
Predictions of information related to failure may be used as input to entry condition(s) for event-triggered procedures, such as the reporting of a message to the network node 101 when the failure predictions fulfill one or more entry condition(s).
The UE 103 may predict that a failure may occur in a given time instance or after a period of time duration, and reports to the UE 103 the prediction of the occurrence of a failure and the time duration or the time instance to the failure occurrence being predicted.
The UE 103 may be configured by the network node 101 with Ax/Bx-like event configurations, e.g., A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, with something like in a reporting configuration, where it is indicated that predictions of failure are to be used as input to entry condition(s) for a configured event. Based on the failure predictions, the UE 103 may determine whether a condition, e.g. an entry condition, is fulfilled or not for one or more applicable cells.
The UE 103 may evaluate one or multiple criteria, e.g. reporting criteria, according to one or multiple conditions, e.g. an entry condition or combination of entry conditions, whose input may at least be based on predictions of information related to failure. The criteria may define as input predictions of information related to failure, which may comprise at least the ones defined herein, for example under the heading “Predicting information related to failure” above. The criteria may define as input predictions of information related to failure, which may comprise at least one of the ones defined herein, for example under the heading “Predicting information related to failure”, possibly in combination with other criteria having as input measurements. The criteria may define as input predictions of information related to failure, which may comprise at least one of the ones defined herein, for example under the heading “Predicting information related to failure” above, possibly in combination with other criteria having as input predictions of measurements.
Below, some examples of how these criteria may be defined will be provided:
A1a Entry Condition: The entry condition of a legacy A1 event for NR may be considered to be fulfilled if the serving cell becomes better than a threshold. In more details, a given message, e.g. a measurement report, that is configured for A1 has a measId associated to a measurement object, e.g. measObject of IE MeasObjectNR for NR SSB frequencies, and associated to a reportConfig of IE ReportConfig IE, whose A1 related configuration is the following, among other fields:
That entry condition may be defined as illustrated in
The entry condition for an A1-like event, in the sense that it tries to detect that a serving cell is recovering or predictions show some chance of recovery, may be defined as the Serving Cell, e.g. 1—probability of failure within a pre-defined time interval, according to predictions of information related to failure, becomes better than a level, which may be defined as a threshold or a threshold+Hysteresis, etc. In one example a prediction of RLF related information is 1—the probability a UE 103 connected to a Serving Cell would experience failure for that serving cell.
An example of an entry condition based on predictions of information related to failure may be defined as follows:
The entry condition may be triggered or fulfilled if the legacy A1 condition is triggered or fulfilled AND is predicted that the serving cell is not expected to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval.
Upon fulfillment of this event condition, an A1 report may be triggered, possibly also including predictions of failure for the serving cell. Hence, the network node 101 may be aware that the serving cell is recovering and that it is not expected to face a failure. Based on this information, one possible action may be to deactivate possibly configured inter-frequency measurements at the UE 103 that consume UE power and reduces throughput as they may require measurement gaps. Another possible action based on this triggered report may be that the network node 101 may route traffic via the triggered serving cell instead of via any other cell.
The procedure may be initiated, e.g. measurement reporting procedure, Conditional Handover execution, if the multiple condition(s) are fulfilled, where at least one of the multiple conditions may be based on predictions of information related to failure.
A2a Entry Condition: The entry condition of a legacy A2 event for NR may be considered to be fulfilled if the Serving cell becomes worse than a threshold. In more details, a given measurement report that may be configured for A2 has a measId associated to a measurement object, e.g. measObject of IE MeasObjectNR for NR SSB frequencies, and associated to a reportConfig of IE ReportConfig IE, whose A2 related configuration is the following among other fields:
The entry condition for an A2-like event, in the sense that it tries to detect that a serving cell is recovering or predictions show some chance of recovery, may be defined as the Serving Cell, e.g. 1—probability of a failure within a pre-defined time interval, according to predictions of information related to failure, becomes worse than a level, which may be defined as a threshold or a threshold+/−Hysteresis, etc. A prediction of information related to failure may be is 1—the probability a UE 103 connected to a Serving Cell would experience failure for that serving cell.
The entry condition may be triggered or fulfilled if the legacy A2 condition is triggered or fulfilled AND is predicted that the serving cell may be expected to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval.
Upon fulfillment of this event condition, an A2 report may be triggered, possibly also including predictions of failure for the serving cell. Then, the network node 101 may become aware that the reported serving cell is likely to suffer a failure within a certain time, which may indicate how worse it is getting and/or if there is a trend of that cell getting worse to the point of declaring failure. And, if network node 101 has not received any A3 report, possibly including predictions of information related to failure for that frequency, the network node 101 may decide whether it should configure inter-frequency measurements to possibly trigger an inter-frequency handover and reduce the chances of the failure, e.g. RLF. The network node may also balance the risks with the consequences of early inter-frequency measurement configurations, such as the earlier need for measurement gaps, which may reduce throughput, and the higher power needed for inter-frequency measurements. The network node 101 may also use the predictions of information related to failure based on A2 to deactivate an active SCell or remove it, also depending on traffic demands. Another possibility may be to give the UE 103 higher priority in scheduling.
The procedure in step 203 in
A2b Entry Condition: This entry condition may be triggered if the serving cell is predicted to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval. Upon fulfillment of this event condition, a specific report of predicted failure information OR an A2 report may be triggered, possibly also including predictions of failure for the serving cell.
A3a Entry Condition: The entry condition of a legacy A3 event for NR may be considered to be fulfilled if the neighbour becomes amount of offset better than PCell/PSCell. In more details, a given measurement report that is configured for A3 has a measId associated to a measurement object, e.g. measObject of IE MeasObjectNR for NR SSB frequencies, and associated to a reportConfig of IE ReportConfig IE, whose A3 related configuration is the following, among other fields:
The entry condition for an A3-like event, in the sense that it tries to detect that a serving cell is recovering or predictions show some chance of recovery, may be defined as neighbour becomes less likely to experience failure compared to the PCell/PSCell. In other words, the comparison between serving and neighbour cells that trigger an A3 event is made using predictions of information related to failure, instead of or in addition to measurements, e.g. RSRP, RSRQ, SINR, comparisons of serving and neighbour cells.
The entry condition may be triggered if the legacy A3 condition is triggered AND the serving cell is predicted to face a failure during at least a given time interval and it is also predicted that a neighbour cell is not expected to face a failure during the considered time instants.
The entry condition may be triggered if the legacy A3 condition is triggered AND the likelihood of a serving cell face a failure during at least a given time interval is higher than the likelihood of a neighbour cell to face a failure during the considered time instants.
Upon fulfillment of this event condition, an A3 report may be triggered possibly also including predictions of failure for serving and neighbour cells. Then, the network node 101 may be able to understand how critical it is to trigger a handover. And/or upon the reception of A3 reports triggered by this condition and also including predictions of information related to failure, e.g. indicating the likelihood of failure in the upcoming time instances, for the triggered cells, the network node 101 may be able to understand how likely failures are to happen in a potential target cell if a handover is to be triggered and how likely a handover is to succeed.
The procedure may be initiated in step 203, e.g. measurement reporting procedure, Conditional Handover execution, if the multiple condition(s) are fulfilled, where at least one of the multiple conditions is based on predictions of failure related information.
A3b Entry Condition: This entry condition may be triggered if the serving cell is predicted to face a failure during at least a given time interval and it is also predicted that a neighbour cell is not expected to face a failure during the considered time instants. Upon fulfillment of this event condition, a specific report of predicted failure information OR an A3 report may be triggered possibly also including predictions of failure for the serving cell)
A4a Entry Condition: This entry condition may be triggered if the legacy A4 condition is triggered AND is predicted that the neighbour cell is not expected to face an RLF during at least a given time interval.
Upon fulfillment of this A4a entry event condition, an A4 report may be triggered possibly also including predictions of failure for the triggered neighbour cell. Then, the network node 101 may be able to understand the likelihood of failure in the future or perhaps the likelihood of a handover failure and/or reconfiguration with sync failure. One possible action may be to deactivate inter-frequency measurements or configure less frequent inter-frequency measurements. Furthermore, the network node 101 may configure the UE 103 to conditional handover to that cell, upon the occurrence of an A2 and/or an A3 event. Moreover, in CA, if supported by UE 103, this A4 triggered event may also be used in SCells mobility decisions. When it is triggered by a neighbour cell, e.g. on a different carrier component than the SpCell, then network node 101 may choose to add the triggering cell as SCell. If the UE 103 is already configured with CA, this A4 triggered report can be used for SCell change where the current SCell is removed and triggering neighbour cell is added as SCell. Adding or changing SCells may require signaling from PCell and may introduce signaling overheads. This A4 triggered report may help to prevent unnecessary or wrong modifications of SCells. In general, this triggered event based on failure predictions may help the network node 101 to take SCell mobility decisions, e.g. addition, release, activation, deactivation, more efficiently. Similar advantages may be identified for SCG addition, modification, release and change in case of MR-DC.
A5a Entry Condition: This A5a entry condition may be triggered if the legacy A5 condition is triggered AND the SpCell cell is predicted to face a failure during at least a given time-to-trigger and it is also predicted that a neighbour cell is not expected to face a failure during the considered time instants.
Upon fulfillment of this event condition, an A5 report may be triggered possibly also including predictions of failure for serving and neighbour cells. Based on this, the network node 101 may change measurement configuration, e.g., induce more frequent measurements, in order to confirm if the predictions are going to happen; change A3 parameters, e.g. lower values of TTT, threshold, . . . , if a failure is predicted to happen to SpCell and neighbour cell is predicted to not suffer from failure, in order to identify as soon as possible when neighbour cell becomes better than SpCell; configure a conditional handover.
A5b Entry Condition: This A5b entry condition may be triggered if the SpCell cell is predicted to face a failure during at least a given time-to-trigger and it is also predicted that a neighbour cell is not expected to face a failure during the considered time instants. Upon fulfillment of this A5b entry event condition, a specific report of predicted failure information OR an A5 report may be triggered possibly also including predictions of failure for the serving cell.
A6a Entry Condition: This A6a entry condition may be triggered if the legacy A6 condition is triggered AND it is predicted that the triggered SCell is expected to face a failure during at least a given time-to-trigger and it is also predicted that a neighbour cell is not expected to face a failure during the considered time instants.
Upon fulfillment of this event condition, an A6 report may be triggered possibly also including predictions of failure for serving and neighbour cells. Upon the reception of A6 reports triggered by this condition, the network node 101 may be able to understand how likely it is to perform a successful changing of SCells.
A6b Entry Condition: This A6b entry condition may be triggered if it is predicted that a SCell is expected to face a failure during at least a given time-to-trigger and it is also predicted that a neighbour cell is not expected to face a failure during the considered time instants.
Inter-RAT entry conditions associated to events like B1 and B2 may follow the same principles as described above.
The condition in step 202, e.g. the entry condition, may comprises one or multiple conditions, each condition may be linked by a logical AND/OR. The condition may be associated to any entry condition such as A1a, A1b, A2a, A2b, etc., where the conditions here may be distinguished by the fact that the predictions of failure related information can be caused by different reasons, e.g., PHY problem, RLC problem , MAC problem, etc. For example A2b AND/OR A2b, e.g. the first A2b (predicted RLF due to MAC problem) AND/OR the second A2b, due to PHY problem; or any other combination of predicted RLF reasons.
This may be formulated as follows:
In step 204, the UE 103 may determine that a condition for stopping the procedure is fulfilled based on the predicted information. This condition may be referred to as a leaving condition or the second condition. Similar to the condition for triggering a procedure, also referred to as the entry condition, the prediction of information related to failure may also be used as input to a condition for stopping the procedure. Or to consider a given condition as non-fulfilled for Conditional reconfiguration execution, e.g. conditional handover execution. Below some examples are shown.
A1a leaving condition: The leaving condition may be satisfied if the legacy A1 leaving condition is satisfied OR the serving cell is expected to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval.
A2a leaving condition: The leaving condition may be satisfied if the legacy A2 leaving condition is satisfied AND the serving cell is expected not to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval.
A3a leaving condition: The leaving condition may be satisfied if the legacy A3 leaving condition is satisfied AND/OR the serving cell is expected not to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval.
A3b leaving condition: The leaving condition is satisfied if the neighbour cell triggering the event A3 is predicted to face failure during at least a predefined time interval.
A3c leaving condition: The leaving condition may be satisfied if the legacy A3 leaving condition is satisfied AND/OR the serving cell is expected not to face a failure AND the neighbour cell is expected to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval.
In MeasConfig by configuring s-MeasureConfig, the performing of measurements on UE side may be controlled e.g., for an energy efficient operation. More specifically if the RSRP of the serving cell RSRP is above an RSRP threshold as dictated by s-MeasureConfig, then the UE 103 may not perform neighbour cell measurements. This way the UE 103 may save energy because the serving cell is very good and there is no need to look for alternative cells for example. However, even if the RSRP of the serving cell is still good the UE 103 may experience a sudden failure if the signal quality of serving cell drops very fast or other types of failure happens in a future period which may not be represented by RSRP only. This may be improved by defining a criterion that is at least based on prediction of failure related information for the serving cell, so that when the criterion is fulfilled the UE 103 is required to perform neighbour cell measurements.
The UE 103 may perform neighbour cell measurements if the prediction of information related to failure for the serving cell fulfills a condition. For example:
The usage of the prediction of information related to failure as an s-Measure criterion or together with an s-Measure criterion may be configuration e.g. via a Boolean variable that when set to TRUE may indicate to the UE 103 that the UE 103 may prediction of failure related information as an s-Measure criterion. Below is an example of that:
The UE 103 may:
In other words, the UE 103 may only be required to perform neighbour cell measurements when the likelihood of failure for the serving cell starts to increase.
The fulfillment of an entry condition, whose input is based on predictions of failure related information, may initiate a procedure in step 203, e.g. triggering a measurement reporting, possibly including failure predictions and/or measurements.
The fulfillment of an entry condition, whose input is based on predictions of failure related information, may initiate a procedure for reporting predicted failure related information via a new message called predictedFailureInformation.
The prediction of failure related information may be used to adjust the report configuration parameters such as TTT.
Other procedures that may be initiated as the following:
The present disclosure is not limited to these examples of UE actions initiated by the fulfillment of entry conditions based on predictions of failure related information.
The UE 103 may be configured by the network node 101 to send event triggered measurement reports, possibly including failure predictions, upon the fulfilment of an entry condition whose input is based on failure predictions. In the following, it is described how these events could work.
A1 event triggered by A1a entry condition: The UE 103 may be configured with an A1 event triggered by A1a entry condition, as describe earlier. The event may be configured as part of a reportConfig field of IE ReportConfigNR with a reportConfigId, with an associated object, e.g. measObject of MeasObjectNR IE for NR frequencies, and a predId to indicate to the network node 101 in a prediction report, e.g. a measurement report, that serving cell became better than a configured threshold AND that it is predicted that the triggered serving cell is not expected to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval.
A2 event triggered by A2a or A2b entry conditions: The UE 103 may be configured with an A2 event triggered by A2a or A2b entry conditions, as described earlier. The event may be configured as part of a reportConfig field of IE ReportConfigNR, with a reportConfigId, with an associated object, e.g. measObject of MeasObjectNR IE for NR frequencies, and a predId to indicate to the network node 101 in a prediction report, e.g. a measurement report:
A3 event triggered by A3a or A3b entry conditions: The UE 103 may be configured with an A3 event triggered by A3a or A3b entry conditions, as described earlier. The event may be configured as part of a reportConfig field of IE ReportConfigNR, with a reportConfigId, with an associated object, e.g. measObject of MeasObjectNR IE for NR frequencies, and a predId to indicate to the network in a prediction report, e.g. a measurement report):
A4 event triggered by A4a entry condition: The UE 103 may be configured with an A4 event triggered by A4a entry condition, as described earlier. The event may be configured as part of a reportConfig field of IE ReportConfigNR, with a reportConfigId, with an associated object, e.g. measObject of MeasObjectNR IE for NR frequencies, and a predId to indicate to the network node 101 in a prediction report, e.g. a measurement report, that a neighbour cell became better than a configured threshold AND that it is predicted that the triggered neighbour cell is not expected to face a failure during at least a predefined time interval.
A5 event triggered by A5a or A5b entry conditions: The UE 103 may be configured with an A5 event triggered by A5a or A5b entry conditions, as described earlier. The event may be configured as part of a reportConfig field of IE ReportConfigNR, with a reportConfigId, with an associated object, e.g. measObject of MeasObjectNR IE for NR frequencies, and a predId to indicate to the network in a prediction report, e.g. a measurement report:
A6 event triggered by A6a and A6b entry condition: The UE 103 may be configured with an A6 event triggered by A6a entry condition, as described above. The event may be configured as part of a reportConfig field of IE ReportConfigNR, with a reportConfigId, with an associated object, e.g. measObject of MeasObjectNR IE for NR frequencies, and a predId to indicate to the network node 101 in a prediction report, e.g. a measurement report:
Inter-RAT events like B1 and B2 may follow the same principles as described above.
A first example of how triggering based on failure predictions could be captured in RRC is shown below, starting from the ASN.1 encoding of messages, fields and IE and procedure text:
The IE ReportConfigNR specifies criteria for triggering of an NR measurement reporting event or an NR prediction reporting event. Measurement reporting events are based on cell measurement results, which can either be derived based on SS/PBCH block or CSI-RS. These events are labelled AN with N equal to 1, 2 and so on. Measurement prediction reporting events are based on current cell measurement (based on SS/PBCH blocks or CSI-RS) and predictions of RLF or based only on predictions of RLF.
[. . . ]
According to the example above of ASN.1 code for the ReportConfigIE, if the parameter triggerBasedOnRLFPredictions is set to TRUE or other equivalent parameter, the UE 103 may perform failure predictions and may use predictions as input to entry conditions associated to each event being configured. That may be according to the associated measurement object and measId or any other type of report identifier e.g. a prediction identifier defined by a new field called predId or IE PredId.
If the UE 103 is also expected to include failure predictions on the measurement reports triggered by failure predictions, changes could be introduced in RRC specifications to enable the feature, as follows:
The purpose of this procedure is to transfer measurement results, possibly including predictions of failure related information, from the UE 103 to the network node 101. The UE 103 may initiate this procedure only after successful AS security activation.
For the measId for which the measurement reporting procedure was triggered, the UE 103 may set the measResults within the MeasurementReport message as follows:
The IE MeasResults covers measured results for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, and inter-RAT mobility.
The UE 103 may be configured by the network node 101 to send a predictedFailureInformation message upon the fulfilment of triggering condition, whose input may be based on failure predictions, e.g., triggering event conditions A2b, A3b and A5b as described earlier. As an example, if changes were to be introduced in RRC specifications to enable this message, it may be added as a new option of UL-DCCH-Message, as follows:
The PredictedFailureInformation may be defined as follows:
The PredictedFailureInformation message is used to inform the network about a predicted failure detected by the UE.
Furthermore, the procedure to report the predictedFailureInformation message may be defined as follows:
A UE initiates the procedure when there is a need to inform the network about a future failure predicted by the UE. In particular, the UE shall:
Actions related to transmission of PredictedFailureInformation message
The UE shall set the contents of the PredictedFailureInformation message as follows:
The UE may include current measurements in the PredictedFailureInformation message:
The UE shall submit the PredictedFailureInformation message to lower layers for transmission:
The UE 103 may adjust the parameters of the report configuration, e.g., timeToTrigger, hysteresis, etc., in ReportConfigNR based on the predictions of the failure related information. As an example, the UE 103 may choose to shorten the TTT if a failure is predicted. This is beneficial when the prediction is not very accurate. As opposed to the case when the report is instantly triggered based on the failure prediction described earlier, in this case, by adjusting the TTT with respect to the accuracy of prediction unnecessary actions, e.g., ping pong HO, may be avoided. This may be accomplished by providing a scaleTTTBasedOnRLFPredictions parameter in ReportConfigNR parameter which is a vector. Each element of the vector corresponds to certain prediction accuracy. If the prediction accuracy corresponds to the i-th element of scaleTTTBasedOnRLFPredictions, then the UE 103 may apply scaleTTTBasedOnRLFPredictions[i]*TTT instead of TTT in evaluating the entry conditions for reporting.
The network node 101 may configure the UE 103 with conditional measurement and report configuration that is initiated only when a certain condition is satisfied. For example, assume that the UE 103 is only configured with A2. In legacy, as illustrated in
The method described above will now be described seen from the perspective of the UE 103.
This step corresponds to step 200 in
This step corresponds to step 201 in
The predicted information may comprise at least one of:
The predicted information may be related to at least one of the serving cell and the neighbour cell of the UE 103.
This step 1001 may comprise that the UE 103 may determine UE parameter values comprising at least one of: current measurement values, sensor values, connection parameter values, mobility history parameter values, current time values, and that the UE 103 may use the determined UE parameter values as input for a prediction model to use for predicting the information.
This step corresponds to step 202 in
The condition for triggering the procedure may be fulfilled when at least one of the following occurs for a serving cell or a neighbour cell:
The conditions may be combined with other conditions, not necessarily prediction based, e.g. actual measurements, legacy conditions etc. This has been described in more detail earlier.
The condition may be referred to as an entry condition or a first condition.
This step corresponds to step 203 in
The procedure may be a transmission of a message to a network node 101. The message may indicate the predicted information.
The procedure may be a transmission of measurement reports to a network node 101. The measurement reports may indicate actual measurement results.
The procedure may be a UE 103 autonomous procedure comprising at least one of: RRC connection re-establishment, RRC connection resume and a RRC connection release.
The procedure may be preparation for a re-establishment procedure, e.g. synchronization with a neighbour cell.
This step corresponds to step 204 in
This step corresponds to step 205 in
To perform the method steps shown in
The UE 103 is adapted to, e.g. by means of a predicting unit 1101, predict information related to at least one of the following failures:
The predicted information may comprise at least one of:
The predicted information may be related to at least one of the serving cell and the neighbour cell of the UE 103.
The UE 103 is adapted to, e.g. by means of a determining unit 1103, determine that a condition for triggering a procedure is fulfilled. The condition is based on the predicted information. The condition for triggering the procedure may fulfilled when at least one of the following occurs for the serving cell or the neighbour cell:
The UE 103 is adapted to, e.g. by means of an initiating unit 1105, in response to the determined, initiate the procedure. The procedure may be a transmission of a message to a network node 101. The message may indicate the predicted information. The procedure may be a transmission of measurement reports to a network node 101. The measurement reports may indicate actual measurement results. The procedure may be a UE 103 autonomous procedure comprising at least one of: RRC connection re-establishment, RRC connection resume and RRC connection release. The procedure may be preparation for a re-establishment procedure.
The UE 103 may be adapted to, e.g. by means of the determining unit 1103, determine that a condition for stopping the procedure is fulfilled based on the predicted information.
The UE 103 may be adapted to, e.g. by means of a stopping unit 1108, in response to the determined, stop the procedure.
The UE 103 may be adapted to, e.g. by means of a receiving unit 1110, receive information indicating the prediction model from a network node 101.
The UE 103 may be adapted to, e.g. by means of the determining unit 1103, predict the information by determining UE parameter values comprising at least one of: current measurement values, sensor values, connection parameter values, mobility history parameter values, current time values.
The UE 103 may be adapted to, e.g. by means of the determining unit 1103, predict the information by using the determined UE parameter values as input for a prediction model to use for predicting the information.
The present disclosure related to the UE 103 may be implemented through one or more processors, such as a processor 1120 in the UE 103 depicted in
The UE 103 may comprise a memory 1123 comprising one or more memory units. The memory 1003 is arranged to be used to store obtained information, store data, configurations, schedulings, and applications etc. to perform the methods herein when being executed in the UE 103.
The UE 103 may receive information from, e.g. the network node 101, through a receiving port 1125. The receiving port 1125 may be, for example, connected to one or more antennas in UE 103. The UE 103 may receive information from another structure in the wireless communications network 100 through the receiving port 1125. Since the receiving port 1125 may be in communication with the processor 1120, the receiving port 1125 may then send the received information to the processor 1120. The receiving port 1125 may also be configured to receive other information.
The processor 1120 in the UE 103 may be configured to transmit or send information to e.g. network node 101 or another structure in the wireless communications network 100, through a sending port 1128, which may be in communication with the processor 1120, and the memory 1123.
Those skilled in the art will also appreciate that the predicting unit 1101, the determining unit 1103, the initiating unit 1105, the stopping unit 1108, the receiving unit 1110 and other unit(s) 1115 described above may refer to a combination of analog and digital circuits, and/or one or more processors configured with software and/or firmware, e.g., stored in memory, that, when executed by the one or more processors such as the processor 1120, perform as described above. One or more of these processors, as well as the other digital hardware, may be comprised in a single Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), or several processors and various digital hardware may be distributed among several separate components, whether individually packaged or assembled into a System-on-a-Chip (SoC).
The different units 1101-1115 described above may be implemented as one or more applications running on one or more processors such as the processor 1120.
Thus, the methods described herein for the UE 103 may be respectively implemented by means of a computer program 1130 product, comprising instructions, i.e., software code portions, which, when executed on at least one processor 1120, cause the at least one processor 1120 to carry out the actions described herein, as performed by the UE 103. The computer program 1120 product may be stored on a computer-readable storage medium 1133. The computer-readable storage medium 1133, having stored thereon the computer program 1130, may comprise instructions which, when executed on at least one processor 1120, cause the at least one processor 1120 to carry out the actions described herein, as performed by the UE 103. The computer-readable storage medium 1133 may be a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, such as a CD ROM disc, or a memory stick. The computer program 1130 product may be stored on a carrier containing the computer program 1130 just described. The carrier is one of an electronic signal, optical signal, radio signal, or the first computer-readable storage medium 1133, as described above.
The UE 103 may comprise a communication interface configured to facilitate communications between the UE 103 and other nodes or devices, e.g., the network node 101, or another structure. The interface may comprise a transceiver configured to transmit and receive radio signals over an air interface in accordance with a suitable standard.
The UE 103 may comprise the following arrangement depicted in
Hence, the present disclosure also relate to the UE 103 operative to operate in the communications system 100. The UE 103 may comprise the processing circuitry 1135 and the memory 1123. The memory 1123 comprises instructions executable by the processing circuitry 1135. The UE 103 is operative to perform the actions described herein in relation to the UE 103, e.g.
A telecommunication network may be connected via an intermediate network to a host computer.
With reference to
Telecommunication network 3210 is itself connected to host computer 3230, which may be embodied in the hardware and/or software of a standalone server, a cloud-implemented server, a distributed server or as processing resources in a server farm. Host computer 3230 may be under the ownership or control of a service provider, or may be operated by the service provider or on behalf of the service provider. Connections 3221 and 3222 between telecommunication network 3210 and host computer 3230 may extend directly from core network 3214 to host computer 3230 or may go via an optional intermediate network 3220. Intermediate network 3220 may be one of, or a combination of more than one of, a public, private or hosted network; intermediate network 3220, if any, may be a backbone network or the Internet; in particular, intermediate network 3220 may comprise two or more sub-networks (not shown).
The communication system of
In relation to
The UE 103 and the network node 101, e.g., a base station and host computer discussed in the preceding paragraphs will now be described with reference to
The communication system 3300 comprises the network node 101 exemplified in
Communication system 3300 comprises the UE 3330 already referred to. It's hardware 3335 may comprise radio interface 3337 configured to set up and maintain wireless connection 3370 with a base station serving a coverage area in which UE 3330 is currently located. Hardware 3335 of UE 3330 comprises processing circuitry 3338, which may comprise one or more programmable processors, application-specific integrated circuits, field programmable gate arrays or combinations of these (not shown) adapted to execute instructions. UE 3330 comprises software 3331, which is stored in or accessible by UE 3330 and executable by processing circuitry 3338. Software 3331 comprises client application 3332. Client application 3332 may be operable to provide a service to a human or non-human user via UE 3330, with the support of host computer 3310. In host computer 3310, an executing host application 3312 may communicate with the executing client application 3332 via OTT connection 3350 terminating at UE 3330 and host computer 3310. In providing the service to the user, client application 3332 may receive request data from host application 3312 and provide user data in response to the request data. OTT connection 3350 may transfer both the request data and the user data. Client application 3332 may interact with the user to generate the user data that it provides.
It is noted that host computer 3310, base station 3320 and UE 3330 illustrated in
In
There may be a wireless connection 3370 between UE 3330 and base station 3320. The present disclosure improve the performance of OTT services provided to UE 3330 using OTT connection 3350, in which wireless connection 3370 forms the last segment. The present disclosure may improve the spectrum efficiency, and latency, and thereby provide benefits such as reduced user waiting time, better responsiveness and extended battery lifetime.
A measurement procedure may be provided for the purpose of monitoring data rate, latency and other factors on which the present disclosure improve. There may be an optional network functionality for reconfiguring OTT connection 3350 between host computer 3310 and UE 3330, in response to variations in the measurement results. The measurement procedure and/or the network functionality for reconfiguring OTT connection 3350 may be implemented in software 3311 and hardware 3315 of host computer 3310 or in software 3331 and hardware 3335 of UE 3330, or both. Sensors (not shown) may be deployed in or in association with communication devices through which OTT connection 3350 passes; the sensors may participate in the measurement procedure by supplying values of the monitored quantities exemplified above, or supplying values of other physical quantities from which software 3311, 3331 may compute or estimate the monitored quantities. The reconfiguring of OTT connection 3350 may comprise message format, retransmission settings, preferred routing etc.; the reconfiguring need not affect base station 3320, and it may be unknown or imperceptible to base station 3320. Such procedures and functionalities may be known and practiced in the art. Measurements may involve proprietary UE signaling facilitating host computer 3310's measurements of throughput, propagation times, latency and the like. The measurements may be implemented in that software 3311 and 3331 causes messages to be transmitted, in particular empty or ‘dummy’ messages, using OTT connection 3350 while it monitors propagation times, errors etc.
The present disclosure may be summarized as follows:
A base station configured to communicate with a UE 13, the base station comprising a radio interface and processing circuitry configured to perform one or more of the actions described herein as performed by the network node 101.
A wireless communications network 100 comprising a host computer comprising:
The wireless communications network 100 may comprise the network node 101.
The wireless communications network 100 may comprise the UE 103, wherein the UE 103 is configured to communicate with the network node 101.
The wireless communications network 100, wherein:
A method implemented in a network node 101, comprising one or more of the actions described herein as performed by the network node 101.
A method implemented in a wireless communications network 100 comprising a host computer, a base station and a UE 103, the method comprising:
The method may comprise:
The user data may be provided at the host computer by executing a host application, and the method may comprise:
A UE 103 configured to communicate with a network node 101, the UE 103 comprising a radio interface and processing circuitry configured to perform one or more of the actions described herein as performed by the UE 103.
A wireless communications network 100 comprising a host computer comprising:
The wireless communications network 100 may comprise the UE 103.
The wireless communications network 100, wherein the cellular network comprises a network node 101 configured to communicate with the UE 103.
The wireless communications network 100, wherein:
A method implemented in a UE 103, comprising one or more of the actions described herein as performed by the UE 103.
A method implemented in a wireless communications network 100 comprising a host computer, a network node 101 and a UE 103, the method comprising:
The method may comprise:
A UE 103 configured to communicate with a network node 101, the UE 103 comprising a radio interface and processing circuitry configured to perform one or more of the actions described herein as performed by the UE 103.
A wireless communications network 100 comprising a host computer comprising:
The wireless communications network 100 may comprise the UE 103.
The wireless communications network 100 may comprise the network node 101, wherein the network node 101 comprises a radio interface configured to communicate with the UE 103 and a communication interface configured to forward to the host computer the user data carried by a transmission from the UE 103 to the base station.
The wireless communications network 100, wherein:
The wireless communications network 100, wherein:
A method implemented in a UE 103, comprising one or more of the actions described herein as performed by the UE 103.
The method may comprise:
A method implemented in a wireless communications network 100 comprising a host computer, a network node 10 and a UE 103, the method comprising:
The method may comprise:
The method may comprise:
The method may comprise:
A network node 101 configured to communicate with a UE 103, the network node 101 comprising a radio interface and processing circuitry configured to perform one or more of the actions described herein as performed by the network node 101.
A wireless communications network 100 comprising a host computer comprising a communication interface configured to receive user data originating from a transmission from a UE 103 to a base station, wherein the network node 101 comprises a radio interface and processing circuitry, the base station's processing circuitry configured to perform one or more of the actions described herein as performed by the network node 101.
The wireless communications network 100 may comprise the network node 101.
The wireless communications network 100 may comprise the UE 103, wherein the UE 103 is configured to communicate with the network node 101.
The wireless communications network 100 wherein:
A method implemented in a network node 101, comprising one or more of the actions described herein as performed by any of the network node 101.
A method implemented in a communication system comprising a host computer, a network node 101 and a UE 103, the method comprising:
The method may comprise:
The method may comprise:
Even if most of the examples referred herein are for NR, the present disclosure may be applied to any system, e.g. in the 6G context, where Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning is envisioned to play a more impactful role when it comes to the design of protocols.
The present disclosure relates to failure predictions which initiate UE procedures.
In the present disclosure, predictions of information related to failure is performed by the UE 103, such as predictions of occurrence of failure at a given instant in time, e.g. indication that a failure may occur at a given instant in time, or predictions related to any other intermediate variable or parameter affecting the declaration of failure, such as predictions for the counters N310, N311, etc. The UE 103 is enabled to initiate procedure(s) based on predictions of information related to failure. The procedure may be transmission of a measurement report based on predictions of failure related information. In that case one may say that a prediction of failure information may be used as input to an entry condition of an event trigger configuration e.g. like an A3 even in reportConfig of IE ReportConfigNR.
The present disclosure triggers measurement reports based on predictions of failure related information, where the predictions of failure related information are used as input to the entry conditions of a measurement report. Upon reception of these measurement reports, network node 101 may perform actions such as reconfiguring the UE 103 and/or handover and/or configuration of conditional handover and/or setup of a Secondary Cell Group, switching of bandwidth parts, etc.
Generally, all terms used herein are to be interpreted according to their ordinary meaning in the relevant technical field, unless a different meaning is clearly given and/or is implied from the context in which it is used. All references to a/an/the element, apparatus, component, means, step, etc. are to be interpreted openly as referring to at least one instance of the element, apparatus, component, means, step, etc., unless explicitly stated otherwise. The steps of any methods disclosed herein do not have to be performed in the exact order disclosed, unless a step is explicitly described as following or preceding another step and/or where it is implicit that a step must follow or precede another step.
In general, the usage of “first”, “second”, “third”, “fourth”, and/or “fifth” herein may be understood to be an arbitrary way to denote different elements or entities, and may be understood to not confer a cumulative or chronological character to the nouns they modify, unless otherwise noted, based on context.
The present disclosure is not limited to the above. Various alternatives, modifications and equivalents may be used. Therefore, disclosure herein should not be taken as limiting the scope. A feature may be combined with one or more other features.
The term “at least one of A and B” should be understood to mean “only A, only B, or both A and B.”, where A and B are any parameter, number, indication used herein etc.
It should be emphasized that the term “comprises/comprising” when used in this specification is taken to specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps or components, but does not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, components or groups thereof. It should also be noted that the words “a” or “an” preceding an element do not exclude the presence of a plurality of such elements.
The term “configured to” used herein may also be referred to as “arranged to”, “adapted to”, “capable of” or “operative to”.
The steps of the methods may be performed in another order than the order in which they appear herein.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20404005.9 | Jul 2020 | EP | regional |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/SE2020/050817 | 8/25/2020 | WO |
