At&t Intellectual Property I, LP

At&t Mobility II LLC

Alcatel Lucent

Agere Systems Inc.

Sterlite Technologies Limited

At&t Mibility II LLC

Shyam Parekh

Mostafa Tofighbakhsh

Cagatay Buyukkoc

Gaviphat Lekutai

Arvind Ramachandran Raghavan

Ravishankar Ravindran

Roy Thomas Myers, Jr

Ramesh Nagarajan

Jean C Walrand

Paul Gausman

Gary Weldon Atkinson

Kevin Tang

John T Musacchio

Jeonghoon Mo

Gaurav Agarwal

Milap V Majmundar

Xiang Liu

David R Wolter

Yonatan Aharon Levy

Doru Calin

Catagay Buyukkoc

Ehsan Haghani

The present invention discloses a method and apparatus for identifying handover requirement by a Radio access network (RAN) controller in open RAN (O-RAN) environment. The O-RAN environment has a virtualized network architecture having at least one RAN controller that is able to control, via an E2 node, a plurality of user equipments (UEs) positioned in a serving cell, a cell covering a location for serving a UE, the serving cell is adjacent to a plurality of neighbour cells. The method includes parallel execution of the operations performed by the RAN controller for each serving cell and each of the neighbor cell and updating CIOs in stepwise i.e., gradually with repeated comparing of the serving cell load parameter with each of the plurality of neighbour cell load parameters and updating the serving cell handover parameter and the plurality of neighbour cell handover parameters based on the comparison.

Method and apparatus for updating handover parameters in open-radio access network (O-RAN) environment

A method and radio access network (RAN) controller () for providing real-time target cell recommendation for handover in an open-RAN (O-RAN) environment () is disclosed. The O-RAN environment has a virtualized network architecture having at least one RAN controller, the RAN controller is connected with a plurality of E2 nodes, the plurality of E2 nodes are connected to a plurality of user equipment (UEs) (and) positioned in a serving cell () adjacent to a plurality of neighbour cells (). The method comprising executing a first handover process to enable checking, at the atleast one UE, if triggering of handover is required and a second handover process to identify a target neighbour cell () for handover of the atleast one UE from the serving cell to the target neighbour cell and recommending the handover of the atleast one UE from the serving cell to the identified target neighbour cell based on the first handover process and the second handover process. The first handover process and the second handover process are triggered simultaneously.

Method and apparatus for recommending real-time handover to a target cell in open-radio access network (O-RAN) environment

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, performing steps including monitoring a plurality of data packets in a data pipeline of a network, such as a User Plane Function of a 5G Core, where the monitoring can include analyzing header information associated with the plurality of data packets, identifying a first data object in the plurality of data packets according to the monitoring of the plurality of data packets, where the identifying the first data object in the plurality of data packets can further comprise identifying metadata associated with the first data object, switching a first set of data packets of the plurality of data packets associated with the first data object to an intelligent router for extracting the first data object from the first set of data packets to generate an extracted first data object responsive to the identifying the first data object in the plurality of data packets, and transmitting the extracted first data object to a client device via the data pipeline of the network. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and apparatus for an enhanced data pipeline

Concepts and technologies are disclosed herein for controlling network traffic using acceleration policies. According to various embodiments of the concepts and technologies disclosed herein, an acceleration application can be executed by a device for analyzing data requests, determining if the data communications requested by way of the request can be delayed, accelerated, or otherwise modified ('shifted') based upon policies and/or network operating conditions. In some embodiments, the acceleration application can be configured to access acceleration policies that can define how certain traffic is to be shifted. The acceleration application also can be configured to obtain and analyze network data to determine network operating conditions and determine, based upon the determined conditions, if traffic is to be shifted based upon the network operating conditions.

Controlling network traffic using acceleration policies

Application states of applications associated with a communication device can be network controlled. An application agent, associated with an application used by the communication device, controls transitioning the application between application states based on network indicators received or network events detected from a communication network. The application states include active state or doze state. An application management component associated with the communication network at least partially controls transitioning the application between application states to facilitate controlling network traffic or reducing network congestion. The application agent or application management component can map application states to various factors, including radio states, congestion level, application performance indicators, network policies, or user policies, to facilitate determining which application state to apply to an application at a given time. The application agent can be in a centralized location, or at a same or different location as the application source.

Network control of applications using application states

An application programming interface request is guided to an application server. The application programming interface request is received from a communication device via a communication network. Data indicating a context of the communication network in relation to the communication device is obtained. An application server to which to send the application programming interface request is determined based on the data indicating the context of the communication network in relation to the communication device.

Methods, devices and computer readable storage devices for guiding an application programming interface request

Concepts and technologies are disclosed herein for controlling data access and rate in a network. An enforcement application can detect a request for a data session and determine how and when the requested data session is to be established. The enforcement application can consider various data, input obtained at the user device, and/or other considerations including subscriber data and network data. Based upon these data, the enforcement application can determine network congestion, available resources, available bandwidth, an allocation rate of congestion credits ('credits') for the user, a flow rate of the credits from an account to a credit pool, and a usage rate of the credits from the credit pool. The enforcement application can be configured to enforce the usage rate against a data session and to issue one or more commands to control the data session.

Controlling data access and rate in a network

Techniques for network control of application states of applications associated with a communication device are presented herein. An application agent, associated with an application used by the communication device, controls transitioning the application between application states based on network indicators received or network events detected from a communication network. The application states include active state or doze state. An application management component associated with the communication network at least partially controls transitioning the application between application states to facilitate controlling network traffic or reducing network congestion. The application agent or application management component can map application states to various factors, including radio states, congestion level, application performance indicators, network policies, or user policies, to facilitate determining which application state to apply to an application at a given time. The application agent can be in a centralized location, or at a same or different location as the application source.

The invention comprises a method and apparatus that prevents the activation of a congestion controlling process that would otherwise be activated in response any packet loss condition. The congestion controlling process is inhibited when a congestion parameter associated indicates that the packet loss condition is not caused by congestion.

Method and apparatus for preventing activation of a congestion control process

Performance of a mobile device can be regulated base on the performance zone in which the mobile device is located. Applications can be executed via the mobile device in accordance with locally imposed rules and policies associated with the performance zone. The rules and policies can be stored on the mobile device. The rules and policies can be associated with a color codes that are associated with respective performance zones.

Performance zones

The invention comprises a method and apparatus for determining a network connectivity in a network having a plurality of nodes. In particular, one embodiment of the method includes generating a candidate link for each of a plurality of node pairs, predicting a performance of each candidate link by evaluating an expected impact of at least one condition on each candidate link, and determining the network topology using the predicted performances of the candidate links. The performance of each candidate link may be predicted by identifying at least one condition, determining the expected impact of the at least one condition on the candidate link, and predicting the performance of the candidate link by adjusting an expected performance of the candidate link using the expected impact of the at least one condition on the candidate link.

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Orinda, CA, United States of America

Shyam Parekh