FACILITATING METHOD FOR HANDOVER OF A MOBILE COMMUNICATION DEVICE

• US 20120163342A1
• Filed: 03/06/2012
• Published: 06/28/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 08/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NEC Corporation
• Original Assignee: NEC Corporation
• Inventors: Ahluwalia, Jagdeep Singh
• Granted Patent: US 8,891,484 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/331
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1664 the supervisory signal being transmitted together with payload signals; piggybacking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1874 Buffer management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1887 Scheduling and prioritising arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/0005 Control or signalling for completing the hand-off
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/0016 Hand-off preparation specially adapted for end-to-end data sessions
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/02 Buffering or recovering information during reselection ; Modification of the traffic flow during hand-off

Abstract

A method, performed in a long term evolution (LTE) communications network, of facilitating handover of a mobile communication device from a source node to a target node includes receiving, in the target node, downlink user data packets forwarded from the source node via a first interface, receiving, in the target node, downlink user packets from an external source via a second interface, buffering the received user data packets during handover prior to sending to the mobile communication device, ordering the downlink data packets in the target node based on the interface from which the data packets are received, and sending the ordered downlink data packets from the target node to the mobile communication device after completion of handover from the source node to the target node.

Claims

1. A method, performed in a long term evolution (LTE) communications network, of facilitating handover of a mobile communication device from a source node to a target node, the method comprising:

receiving, in the target node, downlink user data packets forwarded from the source node via a first interface;

receiving, in the target node, downlink user packets from an external source via a second interface;

buffering the received user data packets during handover prior to sending to the mobile communication device;

ordering the downlink data packets in the target node based on the interface from which the data packets are received; and

sending the ordered downlink data packets from the target node to the mobile communication device after completion of handover from the source node to the target node.

2. A method according to claim 1, wherein the ordering is performed such that the data packets received from the first interface are sent to the mobile communication device by the target node before data packets received from the second interface.

3. A method according to claim 1, wherein said receiving data packets from an external source via a second interface receives the data packets from a core network.

4. A method according to any of claim 1, performed by a base station of a mobile telecommunication network.

5. A method according to claim 4 performed by an eNodeB of a 3GPP-type network.

6. A method according to claim 1, further comprising receiving a handover request and sending a handover response,

wherein said buffering is performed between sending said handover response and a handover completion.

7. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium encoded with a computer program, comprising instructions which, when executed by one or more processors of a telecommunications network, cause the one or more processors to perform a method according to claim 1.

8. A method according to claim 1, wherein the second interface is different from the first interface.

9. A method according to claim 1, wherein the downlink user data packets forwarded from the source node are transmitted to the mobile communication device before the downlink user data packets are received from a core network.

10. A method according to claim 1, wherein said buffering the received user data packets, said ordering the downlink data packets, and said sending the ordered downlink data packets are performed in the LTE communications network.

11. A method, performed in a long term evolution (LTE) communications network, of facilitating handover of a mobile communication device from a source node to a target node during which handover user data packets are forwarded from the source node to the target node, the method comprising:

receiving forwarded data packets at the target node from the source node via a first interface and receiving data packets from an external source via a second interface; and

ordering the data packets for transmission to the mobile communication device based on the interface from which the data packets are received.

12. A method according to claim 11, wherein the ordering is performed such that the data packets received from the first interface are sent to the mobile communication device by the target node before data packets received from the second interface.

13. A method according to claim 11, wherein said receiving data packets from an external source via a second interface receives the data packets from a core network.

14. A method according to claim 11, performed by a base station of a mobile telecommunication network.

15. A method according to claim 11, wherein said receiving forwarded data packets and said ordering the data packets are performed in the LTE communications network.

16. A target node of a long term evolution (LTE) communications network, the target node comprising:

a first interface for receiving, during a handover of a mobile device from a source node to the target node, downlink user data packets from the source node;

a second interface for receiving user data packets for the mobile device from an external source;

a buffer for buffering the received user data packets during the handover, prior to sending to the mobile device;

a controller arranged to order the downlink user data packets based on the interface from which the data packets are received; and

a transmitter arranged to send the ordered downlink user data packets to the mobile device after a completion of the handover from the source node to the target node.

17. A target node according to claim 16, wherein said buffering the received user data packets, said send of the ordered downlink user data packets, and said sending the ordered downlink user data packets are performed in the LTE communications network.

18. A method according to claim 16, wherein the second interface is different from the first interface.