Nokia Telecommunications Oy

Juho Laatu

Sanna Maenpaa

Elina Durchman

An arrangement and method for carrying out a handover between first and second base station controllers in a telecommunications system that includes a local exchange of a fixed network; mobile stations; base station systems providing the mobile stations with a wireless access network to the local exchange, each base station system having a base station controller and a plurality of base stations; transmission circuits for connecting the local exchange to the base station controllers; the control of the handover between the base station controllers being located in the base station controllers so that the first base station controller of the call functions as the anchor point at which the original connection established via the local exchange is maintained, and from which a further connection is established to a second base station controller in a handover. The base station controllers are arranged to maintain the local call connection between base station controllers at the end of the call, and keep it in reserve for the following handover between base station controllers, and the first or second base station controller is arranged to make the decision on using the reserved local call connection as a further connection in a new handover between base station controllers and to communicate the decision to the other one of the base station controllers.

Method and arrangement for a handover between base station controllers

The invention relates to a cellular radio network and a method for performing location updating in a cellular radio system. The cellular radio network does not employ fixed location areas, as prior cellular radio networks do, but it employs a location area configuration which is subscriber station specific and dynamically adaptive. In connection with each location updating, it is therefore possible to select an optimal location area for the subscriber station at that particular moment, the selected location area being preferably of an arbitrary size and form. It is thus possible to define the location area subscriber station specifically in such a manner that, on one hand, it is sufficiently large so that the subscriber station does not have to perform location updating frequently but, on the other hand, sufficiently small so that the paging of the subscriber station does not load the cellular radio network too much. The network and method also allow the use of completely subscriber station specific location areas.

Location updating in a cellular radio system

In mobile radio systems, it may be necessary to support multiple radio interfaces within a single mobile radio network. To support these multiple radio interfaces, it may be necessary to support even multiple signalling protocols within a single interface between a base station controller and a mobile switch, when base stations supporting different radio interfaces are connected via a common base station controller to the mobile switch. The mobile switch and the base station controller must be capable of recognizing to which signalling protocol a message transfer in the single interface belongs to. The messages transferred in the single interface are provided with a discrimination parameter which can be used to discriminate between the messages belonging to different radio interfaces and signalling protocols.

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Helsinki, Finland

Juho Laatu