UE CONTROL OF DOWNLINK DATA

• US 20140301194A1
• Filed: 11/16/2011
• Published: 10/09/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Original Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Inventors: Mattsson, Ulf, Bodn, Bjrn
• Granted Patent: US 9,913,163 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/230
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/0247 based on conditions of the access network or the infrastructure network central resource management H04W28/16
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 68/005 Transmission of information for alerting of incoming communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/28 Discontinuous transmission [DTX]; Discontinuous reception [DRX]

Abstract

The present invention relates to control of downlink data in a packet based telecommunications network and in particular to UE control of downlink data. This is provided in devices and methods for handling such control, for instance a user equipment (101), UE, in a telecommunications network (100). The UE has an associated Internet Protocol, IP, address. The UE comprises at least one processing unit (201), at least one computer readable storage unit (202), at least one communications interface (203), and wherein the processing unit is arranged to execute instructions sets stored in the storage unit for determining that no downlink data is to be received on the communication interface and sending a message using the communication interface to an infrastructure node (103, 104) indicating that no downlink data is to be transferred to the UE.

Claims

1. A user equipment, UE, in a telecommunications network, with an associated Internet Protocol, IP, address, wherein the UE comprise:

at least one processing unit;

at least one computer readable storage unit;

at least one communications interface;

wherein the processing unit is arranged to execute instructions sets stored in the storage unit for;

determining that no downlink data is to be received on the communication interface;

sending a message using the communication interface to an infrastructure node indicating that no downlink data is to be transferred to the UE.

2. The user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the processing unit is further arranged to execute instruction sets for receiving a paging signal from the infrastructure node and in response to the paging signal sending a message indicating acceptance or no acceptance for receiving downlink data.

3. The user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the message indicating that no downlink data is to be transferred is part of a fast dormancy signal.

4. The user equipment according to claim 3, wherein the fast dormancy signal comprise a flag indicating that no downlink data is to be transferred.

5. The user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the message indicating that no downlink data is to be transferred comprise indicating that the UE will decline paging requests.

6. The user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the user equipment is roaming in an external network.

7. The user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the message is part of an IPv6 link-local channel message.

8. The user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the determination of receiving of downlink data is based on at least one of status of a tethered device, roaming charges, battery consumption, and network load.

9. The user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the communication interface is at least one of 2G, 3G, and LTE.

10. A method in a user equipment, UE, in a telecommunications network, wherein the UE has an associated Internet Protocol, IP, address, comprising steps of:

determining that no downlink data is to be received;

indicating to an infrastructure node that no downlink data is to be sent.

11. The method according to claim 10, further comprising a step of determining that a to the UE connected tethered device is in idle mode.

12. An infrastructure node in a telecommunications network, comprising:

at least one processing unit;

at least one computer readable storage unit;

at least one communications interface;

wherein the processing unit is arranged to execute instructions sets stored in the storage unit for;

receiving an indication from a user equipment, UE, associated with an Internet protocol, IP, address, indicating that no downlink data is to be sent to the UE;

stopping downlink data from being sent to the UE.

13. The node according to claim 12, wherein the node is one of a serving gateway, S-GW, a packet data network gateway, P-GW.

14. A method in an infrastructure node in a telecommunications network, comprising steps of:

receiving an indication, from a user equipment, UE, associated with an Internet Protocol address, indicating that no downlink data is to be sent to the UE;

stopping downlink from being sent to the UE.