Other

Nokia Siemens Networks Gmbh & Co Kg

Cellular Communications Equipment LLC

Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy

Siemens Information & Communication Networks, Inc.

Nokia Siemens Networks S.p.a.

Sergio Parolari

Leonardo Provvedi

Carlo Masseroni

Thomas Stockhammer

Riccardo Trivisonno

A mobile station operating in EGPRS mode needs to the early establishment of an uplink TBF although has not data to send, at the only precautionary purpose of preventing an intolerable latency negatively affecting the subsequent delay-sensitive transmissions. To this aim, the mobile sends a Packet Channel Request message in one phase access mode including a new establishment cause called 'Early TBF establishment.' The network establishes an uplink TBF indicating the requester and assigns a radio resource on one PDCH channel or more. Then the network schedules the transmission from the mobile station also when it does not have data to transmit other than dummy packets. This is performed through the USF flags in the usual manner. As soon as actual data become available for transmission, the mobile send them instead of dummy packets. In an alternative embodiment the mobile sends the Packet Channel Request message in two phase access mode. As soon as the Packet Uplink Assignment message is received by the mobile station, it sends a Packet resource Request message including an extended Uplink TBF information. The network behaves as in the previous case.

Method for the early establishment of uplink TBFs

When a new connection needs to be established in a mobile radio network between the core network and the radio access network to terminate a local circuit switched (CS) call, i.e. a CS call for which another connection has already been established between the core network and the same radio access network, the core network includes an optional information element containing 'Other party information' in the messages that establish the new connection, allowing the radio access network to correlate the two connections, put them in direct communication and exclude the core network from the user plane data flow.

Enabling local switching in mobile radio networks

A mobile station operating in EGPRS mode needs to the early establishment of an uplink TBF although has not data to send, at the only precautionary purpose of preventing an intolerable latency negatively affecting the subsequent delay-sensitive transmissions. To this aim, the mobile sends a Packet Channel Request message in one phase access mode including a new establishment cause called 'Early TBF establishment'. The network establishes an uplink TBF indicating the requester and assigns a radio resource on one PDCH channel or more. Then the network schedules the transmission from the mobile station also when it does not have data to transmit other than dummy packets. This is performed through the USF flags in the usual manner. As soon as actual data become available for transmission, the mobile send them instead of dummy packets. In an alternative embodiment the mobile sends the Packet Channel Request message in two phase access mode. As soon as the Packet Uplink Assignment message is received by the mobile station, it sends a Packet resource Request message including an extended Uplink TBF information. The network behaves as in the previous case.

A method of allocating uplink radio resources to a mobile device, in which uplink and downlink timeslots are allocated, and the sum of the allocated uplink timeslots and the allocated downlink timeslots within a predetermined period is less than the total number of assigned time slots and does not exceed a predetermined maximum. The resources are allocated in a reduced transmission time interval configuration, in which an indication of the uplink timeslot allocation is received from the network in a downlink timeslot, or downlink timeslot pair, directing the mobile device to transmit only in one uplink timeslot pair.

Method of allocating uplink radio resources

An application encoder generates independently accessible symbols and these symbols are aggregated by symbol aggregation means into a packet payload. The aggregated symbols in the packet payload are transported in a defined packet structure. These packets are transported over a channel by a packet transmitter that segments the packets into different segments by segmentation means. A segment receiver included in a first entity has the ability to detect whether a certain segment is lost and also knows the length of the lost segment. The segments are aggregated in the first entity to form at least one packet conforming to the packet stream. A symbol parser entity recovers the symbols and passes the individual symbols to an application decoder. The symbol parser in the second entity recovers, from the recovered non-lost information of each received packet, individual symbols.

Method for indicating lost segments

A fast ARQ mechanism operated inside 3GPP GERAN mobile radio systems uses short bitmaps, spanning only few octets, in the header of a RLC/MAC block conveying relevant ACK/NACK signalling that is transmitted either in the uplink or downlink direction, indifferently. This short bitmap which may request synchronization between transmitting and receiving frames, is encoded together with the header using coding which is more robust than that used for payload. Correct retransmission of badly received radio blocks is based on the number of RLC/MAC block periods between the instant of transmission of a radio block and the instant of reception of the short bitmap. In addition, the short bitmap is allocated in a new zone placed immediately after the header of the RLC/MAC blocks, and encoded independently of the payload using a more robust coding against the errors than the robustness of the MCS used in the payload data part.

Method for safely transmitting short ACK/NACK bitmaps in ARQ process inside edge compliant systems

A transmitting peer transmits radio blocks over a radio interface from within a transmit window. A receiving peer receives the radio blocks within a receive window, and in case of a not correctly received radio block, sending back a NACK (Not Acknowledged) signaling message to inform the transmitting peer of reception failure. Upon reception of the NACK signaling message, the transmitting peer retransmits, until expiration of the transmit window, the not correctly received RLC/MAC radio block. The radio blocks are re-assembling in sequence at the receiving peer. Each radio block is considered as being permanently lost if not correctly received within the receive window. All correctly received radio blocks are delivered to a higher protocol layer. The network transmits a notification message to both the transmitting peer and the receiving peer to select a size of the transmit and receive windows inside a range of predetermined values including values less than 64 radio blocks.

Method to reduce the transmission latency in GSM/EDGE delay-sensitive applications

To perform link adaptation at radio interfaces of an enhanced packet data cellular network the system behavior is simulated for different C/I conditions. Two sets of tables are obtained, each table including upgrade and downgrade thresholds expressed in terms of Block Error Rate (BLER). The tables are specialized for taking into account EGPRS type II hybrid ARQ, Incremental Redundancy (IR). Transmitted blocks are checked for FEC and results are sent to the network that continuously updates BLER. A reliability filter output is used to decide the weight between new and old measurements. IR efficiency is tested for each incoming block and an indicative variable IR_status is filtered. Each threshold of BLER to be used is obtained by linear interpolation between the tabulated threshold without IR and with perfect IR, both weighed with filtered IR_status. Filtered BLER is compared with interpolated thresholds for testing the incoming of a MCS switching condition.

Method of link adaptation in enhanced cellular systems to discriminate between high and low variability

The invention discloses a method to perform downlink Power Control in packet switching cellular systems with dynamic allocation of the RF channel, such as GPRS/EGPRS. The performances concern a scenario in which a radio block transmitted from the Base Station (BTS) on a downlink channel has to be received from at least two MSs simultaneously, a first MS being the addressee of the data/control packet on the downlink TBF while the second MS being the addressee of the Uplink State Flag (USF) for scheduling transmission of the next data/control packet from an uplink TBF to an uplink shared channel. First MS transmits to the BTS a first measurement report including measures of BCCH level and interference level on all the timeslots, while the second MS transmits a NC report including measures of BCCH level only, that because detailed interference measure on the downlink channel are prevented due the absence of a concurrent downlink TBF. The measures are averaged in as many running average filters and the averages compared with target thresholds to find a first and a second power reduction intended for USF and packet transmission respectively. A final power reduction is selected from the two for the next PC execution step. Target threshold for the first MS's averaged measures is a C/I value which provides maximum achievable net throughput independently of Coding Scheme. Target threshold for the second MS depends on CS of the USF flag in a way that when the mean value of the level measures is equal to the threshold a fixed probability takes place that the USF flag is decoded with success. The network, in the capacity of the BSC and PCU, counts successfully and unsuccessfully blocks received uplink upon transmission of the scheduled USFs for that uplink TBF, being the lack of a scheduled block noticed by the network. If successfully counting reaches a fixed maximum counting before, then an increment of the first power reduction is decided, while in case the maximum unsuccessfully counting is reached before a decrement of the first power reduction is instead decided (FIG.).

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Milan, Italy

Sergio Parolari