Telefonaktiebolaget Lm Ericsson (Publ)

Ibtissam El Khayat

Thorsten Lohmar

Jie Ling

Heiko Perkuhn

Pierre Lepropre

Qi Xia

Tingyu Zhang

Prabaharan Kanesalingam

Peter Werner

Michael John Slssingar

Stephan Baucke

Björn Knuthammar

Tobias Ljungström

Joerg Aelken

Ryan Fitzgerald

To control content distribution to plural mobile entities, a device for managing the distribution of the content may determine mobile entities which participate in sharing the same content and which are located in the same region. The mobile entities respectively have a first interface for communication with a mobile communication network and a second interface for forming an ad-hoc network with another mobile entity. A message indicating at least one peer address of a peer mobile entity may be selectively transmitted to a mobile entity. The peer address allows the mobile entity to retrieve at least a piece of the content over the second interface from another mobile entity.

Methods and devices for content distribution

Methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture are disclosed to trigger a scaling action for scaling an application having a set of one or more virtual machines (VMs). Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) are scaled by adding or removing resources to/from existing VMs. In an example method for triggering a scaling action for scaling an application having a set of one or more VMs, a threshold value is adapted based on an evaluation of a monitored system key performance indicator and a monitored external key performance indicator. The threshold value is used for triggering the scaling action. The scaling action is validated based on the monitored external key performance indicator.

Technique for optimizing the scaling of an application having a set of virtual machines

For managing multicast transmissions in a cellular network, a control plane module () of a gateway node () of the cellular network establishes one or more control plane sessions associated with the multicast transmissions. Further, a user plane module () of the gateway node () establishes one or more user plane sessions associated with the multicast transmissions. The control plane module () of the gateway node () indicates context information of the control plane session(s) to an external storage (). During a failure of the control plane module () of the gateway node (), the user plane module () of the gateway node () maintains the user plane session(s). After recovery from the failure of the control plane module () of the gateway node (), the control plane module () of the gateway node receives the context information from the external storage () and re-establishes at least one of the more control plane session(s) on the basis of the received context information.

Maintaining user plane session and restoring control plane session in case of control plane module failure of gateway for multicast transmissions

A technique for detecting an encoder functionality issue in a media distribution system is presented. In the media distribution system consecutive media segments generated by an encoder are transmitted to a media client, and media descriptions describe expected availability times of media segments for the media client. A method implementation of the technique comprises the step of monitoring an availability time of a media segment compared to an expected availability time of the media segment, wherein the expected availability time is described by, or derived from, a media description. The method further comprises determining whether a deviation of the monitored availability time of the media segment from the expected availability time of the media segment is present, and detecting the encoder functionality issue based on a result of the determination. The encoder functionality issue may comprise one or more of an encoder restart, an encoder malfunction and an encoder time drift.

Technique for detecting an encoder functionality issue

In general, it is proposed to define a new expiry mechanism for a data file being received at the client. In the following it is proposed that the expiry time on the receiver side should be 'shortly' after a possible reception of all packets. It is proposed that the receiver should know as precisely as possible that no additional packets for that data file are expected anymore. As soon as the receiver can safely regard the reception of the file, the receiver could either move on to the next segment (delay optimization) or try to make use of the received information.

Processing of data files

A first peer device receives distinct first and second metadata. The first metadata includes a common identifier having a one-to-one relationship with a common data piece of a data entity. The common data piece is common to the first peer device, a second peer device, and a third peer device. The second metadata includes one or more non-common identifiers. Each of the one or more non-common identifiers has a one-to-one relationship with a non-common data piece of the data entity that is common to a group of peer devices including the first peer device and excluding the third peer device. The first peer device also receives a third identifier from the second peer device. The first peer device determines whether the second peer device is in the group of peer devices based on whether the third identifier is included in the one or more non-common identifiers.

Peer-to-peer communication of non-common data

Providing media content in a broadcast scenario to a streaming player. In order to compensate a problem of variable segment sizes, which leads to the variation in the reception intervals of the media segments, it is proposed to estimate the segment availability time. In some embodiments, the estimation considers a correction value compensating the variation in a reception intervals of media segments so that the streaming player receives the media segments at a constant time interval.

Processing of multimedia data

A control node () of a cellular network establishes one or more control plane sessions with a gateway node (). On the basis of these one or more control plane sessions with the gateway node (), the control node () also establishes one or more control plane sessions with one or more radio access network nodes () to control multicast transmissions by the one or more radio access network nodes (). Further, the control node () detects a connection failure to the gateway node (). When detecting the connection failure, the control node () starts a first timer. Further, also the gateway node () detects the connection failure. When detecting the connection failure, the gateway node () starts a second timer. The second timer is configured with a longer duration than the first timer. In response to expiry of the first timer, the control node () locally deletes the one or more control plane sessions with the gateway node () and with the one or more control plane sessions with the one or more radio access network nodes (). In response to expiry of the second timer, the gateway node () triggers a reaction to the connection failure by the gateway node (), e.g., selection of an alternative control node.

Handling of control interface failure in multicast transmissions via a cellular network

A node () of a cellular network node sends data units to a group of base stations (). Each data unit is configured for conveying multicast data to be sent by the base stations () in a synchronized manner at a starting time indicated in the data unit. For each of the data units, the node () determines the starting time as the sum of the time of sending the data unit from the node and an offset value. Further, the node () obtains feedback information from the base stations () of the group. The feedback information indicates a deviation of the starting time indicated in one of the data units () from an earliest possible time of sending the multicast data from the data unit () by the base stations () of the group. Depending on the feedback information, the node () adapts the offset value.

Feedback based adaptation of multicast transmission offset

The invention relates to techniques for providing media content in a broadcast scenario to a streaming player, like a DASH player. In order to compensate a problem of variable segment sizes, which leads to the variation in the reception intervals of the media segments, it is proposed to estimate the segment availability time for requesting sub-sequent media segments. The estimation considers a correction value compensating the variation in a reception intervals of media segments so that the streaming player receives the media segments at a constant time interval, namely at the segment duration. In one embodiment it is proposed to use the value of the minBufferTime from the MPDfile, The min BufferTime is namely an indication of the varying segment size of the media content. The minBufferTime indicates the time needed for buffering a media content before starting playing out said media content. The estimation may be done on the client, user equipment UEor on the server device side. If the US is correcting the segment availability, then the UE uses the time of a first segment reception as base. If the serveris correcting the segment availability then it uses the original segment avail-ability time at the server as base plus end-to-end delay.

To control content distribution to plural mobile entities (-), a device () for managing the distribution of the content may determine mobile entities (-) which participate in sharing the same content and which are located in the same region. The mobile entities (-) respectively have a first interface for communication with a mobile communication network () and a second interface for forming an ad-hoc network with another mobile entity (-). A message indicating at least one peer address of a peer mobile entity (-) may be selectively transmitted to a mobile entity (). The peer address allows the mobile entity () to retrieve at least a piece of the content over the second interface from another mobile entity (-).

A method and system of providing trustworthiness of communication among a plurality of communication nodes is described. This comprises arranging each of said communication nodes to perform a trustworthiness judging operation on received data elements for judging a received packet to be trustworthy or not, grouping said plurality of communication nodes into a plurality of distinguishable clusters, each cluster comprising at least two of said communication nodes, implementing in each respective cluster an intro-cluster trust mechanism such that trustworthiness of data elements sent by any member node of said respective cluster is judgable within said respective cluster, arranging said clusters such that each of said clusters comprises one or more multi-cluster-member nodes that belong to at least two different of said clusters, and muting inter-cluster traffic through said multi-cluster-member nodes.

Method and system for providing trustworthiness of communication

For individualized data communication of a data entity () to at least a first recipient and a second recipient, a descriptive file () is provided, which is supplemented by at least one identifier of a placeholder type. The descriptive file () also includes at least one identifier of a direct type, which is associated with a corresponding data piece () of the data entity (). The identifier of the placeholder type is in turn associated with descriptive data () of an individualized data piece (). By providing different types of the descriptive data () for different recipients, the identifier of the placeholder type may be used as a reference to different types of personalized content in the individualized data piece (). This individualization may be obtained without modifying an identifier section () of the descriptive file ().

Individualized data communication on the basis of a descriptive file

The present disclosure relates to a technique for scheduling a point-to-multipoint (PTM) transmission of content data, provided by a content provider node, to a plurality of mobile terminals in a PTM-enabled network. A method embodiment comprises the steps of: receiving, by a PTM transmission control node, delivery schedule information from the content provider node, the delivery schedule information indicating a delivery time at which at least a portion of the content data is to be receivable by the plurality of mobile terminals; and determining, by the PTM transmission control node, a transmission start time for starting the transmission of the content data to one or more of the plurality of mobile terminals located in a service area of the PTM transmission control node, wherein the transmission start time is determined based on the delivery time and one or more system delay parameters.

File scheduling in BM-SC

In individualized data communication of a data entity () between peers of a group, the data entity () includes at least one common data piece () and at least one non-common data piece (). The at least one common data piece () is shared by all peers of the group, whereas the at least one non-common data piece () is shared by a subgroup of the group. A non-common data identifier () is used to identify the at least one non-common data piece (). By receiving the non-common data identifier (), one peer of the group may determine whether another peer of the group is sharing the same non-common data piece ().

Growing community of inventors

Glons, Belgium

Ibtissam El Khayat