Qualcomm Incorporated

Telefonaktiebolaget Lm Ericsson (publ)

Jen Mei Chen

Manoj Madhukar Deshpande

Sanjiv Nanda

Srinivasan Balasubramanian

Damanjit Singh

Gavin Bernard Horn

Mehmet Yavuz

Francesco Pica

Andrei Dragos Radulescu

Peerapol Tinnakornsrisuphap

Parag Arun Agashe

Young Cheul Yoon

Farhad Meshkati

Vinay Chande

Osok Song

Manoj M Deshpande

Fatih Ulupinar

Peter Hans Rauber

Gavin B Horn

Anand Palanigounder

Rajarshi Gupta

Parag A Agashe

Sumeeth Nagaraja

Chandrasekhar Therazhandur Sundarraman

Rajat Prakash

Stephen William Edge

Nathan Edward Tenny

Aziz Gholmieh

Yan Zhou

George Cherian

Jun Wang

Tao Chen

Samir Salib Soliman

Reza Shahidi

Soumya Das

Gene Wesley Marsh

Mark Maggenti

Christophe Chevallier

Long Duan

Jiang Zhang

Wentao Zhang

Octavio Jose De Franca Lima

Lijun Zhao

Rahul Anand

Jin Guo

Faith Ulupinar

Brad Lee Vaughn

Tom Sesnic

Joseph Doroba

Navrina B Singh

Fracesco Pica

Andrei Dragos Radeluscu

Brad L Vaughn

Mehemet Yavuz

Gupta Rajarshi

Methods and apparatuses are provided for causing active hand-in of a device from a macrocell base station to a femto node, which can be an inter-frequency hand-in. The femto node can broadcast a beacon, which can be received and reported by a device to a source base station along with one or more parameters. The source base station can communicate a handover message to the femto node or a related femto gateway along with the one or more parameters. The femto node or femto gateway can disambiguate the intended target femto node based in part on the one or more parameters, which can include applying one or more filters. Applying the one or more filters may include applying an UL RSSI filter to the one or more femto nodes to determine whether presence of the device causes a rise in UL RSSI measured at the one or more femto nodes.

Apparatus and methods for hand-in to a femto node

Systems, apparatus and methods for facilitating identification and/or acquisition of an access point are provided. Methods can include transmitting or receiving access point information ('API') indicative of an identification of the access point ('AP'). The API can be provided at the AP through hardwiring or receipt of configuration information input by a user or transmitted to the AP by a network operator through Over-The-Air (&#x201c;OTA&#x201d;) signaling. The API can be computer-readable and, in some embodiments, the API can also be human-readable. The API can be transmitted on a paging channel from which user equipment (&#x201c;UE&#x201d;) can receive information. The frequency at which the API is transmitted can be fixed, dynamic and/or configurable. Upon receipt of the API, acquisition of the AP is attempted if the AP is determined to be a permitted AP.

Systems, methods and apparatus to facilitate identification and acquisition of access points

Methods and apparatuses are provided for causing active hand-in of a device from a macrocell base station to a femto node, which can be an inter-frequency hand-in. The femto node can broadcast a beacon over an operating frequency of the macrocell base station, and the macrocell base station, and/or one or more network components, can identify the femto node based on one or more parameters reported by the device from receiving the beacon. The beacon can be transmitted at varying powers to ensure active hand-in triggering, mitigate interference and/or can be powered on and off for such purposes. In addition, a macrocell base station can regulate compressed mode periods during which a device can measure the femto node based on receiving information regarding device proximity to the femto node, or a device can generate proximity indication messages base on measuring the beacon signals, etc.

Apparatus and methods of hand-in to a femto node

Efficient frequency assignment for mobile terminals in coexisting wireless communication systems is described herein. The coexisting wireless communication systems comprise a macro communication system and a localized communication system. Two prioritized lists are defined, a first list comprising a first entry relating to the macro communication system and the second entry relating to the localized communication system, the first and second entries each listing at least one common frequency. Based on the first list, a mobile terminal uses communication protocols associated with the localized communication system.

Efficient frequency assignment for mobile devices in coexisting wireless communication systems

Provisioning and access control for communication nodes involves assigning identifiers to sets of nodes where the identifiers may be used to control access to restricted access nodes that provide certain services only to certain defined sets of nodes. In some aspects provisioning a node may involve providing a unique identifier for sets of one or more nodes such as restricted access points and access terminals that are authorized to receive service from the restricted access points. Access control may be provided by operation of a restricted access point and/or a network node. In some aspects, provisioning a node involves providing a preferred roaming list for the node. In some aspects, a node may be provisioned with a preferred roaming list through the use of a bootstrap beacon.

Access terminal configuration and access control

Methods and apparatuses are provided for avoiding membership verification for a non-closed subscriber group (CSG) user equipment (UE) communicating with a femto node advertising restricted access. A femto node or femto gateway can receive configuration information specifying to refrain from performing membership verification for UEs communicating with a femto node. Based on such information, the femto node or femto gateway can communicate registration information for a registration request received from a non-CSG UE without performing membership verification. Additionally or alternatively, femto nodes can register non-CSG UEs as CSG UEs to mitigate membership verification at femto gateways, request that femto gateways refrain from performing membership verification, and/or the like. In this regard, the femto node can use restricted access parameters for purposes other than restricting access.

Methods and apparatus for advertising restricted access in wireless networks

Systems and methodologies are described that facilitate communicating PSC split information regarding neighboring cells. The PSC split information can be transmitted in one or more overhead messages selected based on network deployment. Where macro cells and femto cells provide PSC split information, which can be a PSC range for related cells, PSC list, etc., the information can be transmitted in a low priority overhead message since it can be obtained at a source cell. Where only femto cells or closed subscriber group (CSG) cells provide PSC split information, the information can be transmitted in a higher priority more frequently transmitted message. In this regard, the information is available at target cells since not all devices can access CSG cells. Thus, by providing the PSC split information in a more frequently transmitted message, devices can retrieve the PSC split information early on in communications to lower power consumption.

Optimized signaling of primary scrambling codes and frequency lists in wireless communications

Techniques for supporting location services for a home Node B (HNB) and its user equipments (UEs) are disclosed. In an aspect, location services may be supported for a UE by having an HNB inter-work between user plane and control plane location solutions. In one design, the HNB receives a request for a location service for the UE and communicates (i) with a location server via the user plane location solution and (ii) with the UE via the control plane location solution to support the location service for the UE. The HNB inter-works between the user plane and control plane location solutions. In another aspect, a location server may be used to support assisted GNSS (A-GNSS) for HNBs and UEs. In one design, an HNB exchanges PCAP messages with the location server via an HNB GW and exchanges RRC messages with a UE to support a location service for the UE.

Method and apparatus for supporting location services via a home node B (HNB)

Systems and methodologies are described that facilitate providing neighbor lists to devices comprising pilot frequencies of access points in a specific geographic region. Using the neighbor list, the devices can discover the access points based on scanning the frequencies for the pilot and can determine additional communication parameters from the discovery or based on a subsequent request resulting from discovery. In this regard, access point information need not be provisioned to the devices for locating the access points, selecting/reselecting the access points, providing the access points in a list to an interface, locating the device using triangulation based on GPS position of the access points, and/or the like.

Cell selection using enhanced general neighbor list methods

Methods and apparatuses are provided that facilitate providing access point measurements to restricted access points. Restricted access points can lessen restrictions to allow devices to register with the restricted access point for providing measurements thereto. Additionally or alternatively, access point measurements can be provided to a minimization of drive tests (MDT) server for providing to the restricted access points. Thus, restricted access points can obtain the access point measurements for performing enhanced interference management or other functionality based at least in part on the measurements.

Method and apparatus for providing enhanced interference management at restricted access points

In a handover operation an access terminal is handed over from a source access point to a target access point. To facilitate efficient identification of a target access point, a handover operation may be initiated by the target access point. A candidate frequency search also may be invoked to confirm that an access terminal identified by a target access point for a handover is in the vicinity of the target access point. A source access point may verify whether an access terminal is in a vicinity of a target access point to determine whether to perform a handover operation. A source access point may handle potential ambiguity between several target access points by sending handover commands to each of these target access points. An access terminal also may assist in the determination of whether to perform a handover operation.

Target access point initiated communication handover

According to some wireless network standards the size of a neighbor cell list is restricted to a maximum size. The limited size of a neighbor cell list may not reflect the realities of a wireless network deployment, especially for deployments including numerous femto cells clustered in close proximity. Accordingly, as the concentration of macro cells and/or femto cells in an area increases, there lies a challenge to identify and communicate neighbor lists to user devices that reflect the arrangement of a particular portion of the deployment and the needs of the user devices. Various systems, methods and apparatus described herein are configured to provide a user device or a group of user devices a neighbor cell list that includes neighbor cell identifiers chosen from a candidate list.

Systems, methods and apparatus configured to manage neighbor cell lists

A femto cell neighbor list message for a wireless communication system that includes the frequencies and pseudonoise offsets reserved for macro cells and femto cells is disclosed. When the user equipment discovers the femto cell, the user equipment can read the Femto Cell Identification Message and present the identification information to the subscriber. In absence of this knowledge, a manual femto cell search must search all frequencies and all pseudonoise offsets resulting in lengthy search times.

Method and apparatus for femto cell deployment using neighbor list messages and its use in femto cell system selection

Systems and methodologies are described that facilitate distributing and/or utilizing a Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) Identifier (ID) that identifies a CSG corresponding to a base station and a CSG indication that distinguishes between the base station permitting access to members of the CSG and permitting access to members and non-members of the CSG. For instance, the CSG ID can uniquely identify the CSG corresponding to the base station. A mobile device can receive the CSG ID and the CSG indication from the base station. Further, the received CSG ID can be compared to CSG IDs included in an allowed CSG list to recognize whether the mobile device is a member or a non-member of the CSG. Moreover, a preference for selecting the base station as compared to a disparate base station can be generated as a function of the received CSG ID and CSG indication.

Registration and access control in femto cell deployments

Systems, methods, and devices for inter-network service selection are described herein. Through the use of one or more of device identifiers and device classes, information including a randomization metric can be transmitted to networked devices indicating which devices and/or device classes are permitted or denied to access a given network service. Equipment seeking access may alter the selection based on this information. Equipment providing access may enforce access request based on this information. As an example, selection between eHRPD and LTE may be load balanced based on device class or identifiers.

Systems and methods for inter-network service selection

Growing community of inventors

San Diego, CA, United States of America

Jen Mei Chen