DEVICE TRIGGERING AND APN-BASED CONGESTION CONTROL

• US 20140341041A1
• Filed: 11/26/2012
• Published: 11/20/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation of America (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Velev, Genadi, Bachmann, Jens, Aso, Keigo
• Granted Patent: US 9,648,515 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/236
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 3/0045 involving hybrid, i.e. a mixture of public and private, or multi-vendor systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/0289 Congestion control load shedding arrangements in network planning H04W16/08; performing reselection for handling the traffic H04W36/22; wireless traffic scheduling H04W72/12
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/12 using signalling between network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/70 Services for machine-to-machine communication [M2M] or machine type communication [MTC]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/10 Connection setup

Abstract

The present invention relates to device triggering in case of a congestion control. A triggering server transmits a device trigger request to a terminal over a communication network including a serving network node. The network node evaluates whether the connection can be established from the terminal to the server, including determining whether the network is congested and/or whether a back-off timer is running and/or the remaining time of the back-off timer at the terminal. Then the network node transmits a delivery delay indication to a device triggering control server to provide it with the delivery delay indication indicating at least one of impossibility of establishing the connection to the server after the trigger or a data transmission delay.

Claims

1-34. -34. (canceled)

35. A method for triggering a terminal to establish a connection or transmit data to a triggering server in a communication network including a network node, the method being for executing at the network node and comprising the steps of:

evaluating whether or not the connection can be established from the terminal to the server, including determining whether the network is congested and/or whether a back-off timer is running and/or the remaining time of the back-off timer at the terminal; and

transmitting a delivery delay indication to a device triggering control server for informing the triggering server, the delivery delay indication indicating at least one of impossibility of establishing the connection to the server after the trigger or a data transmission delay.

36. The method according to claim 35, further comprising the step of transmitting the trigger request to the terminal for triggering establishment of a connection or transmission of data from the terminal to the server.

37. The method according to claim 35, further comprising the steps of

storing a state of a trigger request including at least the terminal ID and/or the ID of the device which sent the triggering request and/or other transaction ID,

generating and transmitting a delivery delay indication wherein the indication includes the terminal ID and/or the ID of the device which sent the triggering request message.

43. The method according to claim 35, wherein

the evaluation step includes evaluating of the back-off timer running at the terminal side and/or evaluating validity period of the data to be transmitted by the terminal in order to determine whether the data shall be transmitted from the terminal to the server and/or to determine delay of the transmission of the data from the terminal to the server.

38. A method for triggering a terminal in a communication network including a network node, the method being for executing at a triggering server and comprising the steps of:

transmitting over the communication network to the terminal a trigger request for triggering connection establishment or transmission of data from the terminal to the server;

receiving from the network node or the terminal a delivery delay indicator for indicating at least one of impossibility of establishment of a connection or transmitting the data after the trigger or a corresponding delay; and

processing the delivery delay indicator to determine whether to retransmit the trigger request at later point, or to retransmit the trigger request with higher priority or to omit transmission of the trigger request for the same network to another terminal.

39. A method for triggering by a server a terminal in a communication network including a network node, the method being for executing at the terminal and comprising the steps of:

receiving a trigger request for triggering establishment of a connection from the terminal to the server, the trigger request being sent by the server over the communication network to the terminal;

evaluating whether the connection can be established or not including determining whether the network is congested and/or whether data to be transmitted are ready; and

transmitting a delivery delay indicator to the server for indicating at least one of impossibility of establishing the connection to the server after the trigger or a data transmission delay in accordance with the evaluation results due to the congestion situation.

40. The method according to claim 39, wherein the step of transmission is performed over the control plane.

41. The method according to claim 39, further comprising a step of receiving from the network node a congestion indicator including at least one of:

a command for the terminal to immediately set-up a user plane connection to the network;

or

device trigger validity time indicating how long the network tries to deliver same device trigger request to the terminal.

42. The method according to claim 39, further comprising the steps of:

determining, after the trigger request has been received, a data validity time as either a time period necessary for gathering the data to be transmitted over the network to the server or as a device trigger validity time indicating how long the network tries to deliver same device trigger request to the terminal;

in case a back-off timer is running at the terminal and the data validity time is smaller than the remaining back-off time, indicating to the server the delivery delay indication indicating that the data will be outdated and/or that no data shall be sent in response to the trigger request.

44. A method for triggering by a server a terminal in a communication network including a serving network node, the method being for executing at the serving network node and comprising the steps of:

determining information related to device triggering capabilities of the terminal from a message received from the terminal, the server or another network node;

receiving a trigger request for triggering establishment of a connection from the terminal to the server, the trigger request being sent by the server over the communication network to the terminal;

judging based on the information related to device triggering capabilities of the terminal and based on the current congestion state whether to transmit the trigger request to the terminal or not; and

transmitting or not transmitting the trigger request to the terminal according to the result of the judging step.

45. The method according to claim 44, wherein the information related to device triggering capabilities of the terminal is at least one of:

a priority or service quality of the terminal indicated by radio resource control protocol of a radio access network in which the terminal is located;

whether the message is received over a predefined interface or a predefined network entity;

a capability determined from a message received from a subscriber server;

a port number determined from the message, wherein a predetermined port number is used for device triggering;

a protocol discriminator determined from a header of the message carrying the trigger request, the protocol discriminator indicating the content type of the payload.

terminal device triggering capability or status determined from a message received from the terminal;

whether the message is a device triggering message determined from the trigger request message header.

46. The method according to claim 44, further comprising the steps of:

determining an external network to which the terminal may establish connection when receiving the trigger request message;

store the determined external network for the terminal in the serving network node; and

determining according to the current congestion state whether said external network is under congestion or not.

47. The method according to claim 46, wherein the external network to which the terminal is to establish connection when triggered is determined by at least one of the steps of:

determining the external networks to which the terminal is subscribed from a message received from a subscriber server;

determining the external networks to which the terminal may establish connection after being triggered from a message received from the subscriber server;

determining the external networks to which the terminal may establish connection after being triggered from a message received from the terminal;

determining whether the serving network node has a bearer context established for the terminal and whether the bearer context is for a bearer to a congested network and/or determining a maximum number of bearers allowed for the congested network and/or connection types allowed for the congested external network;

determining the external networks to which the terminal may establish connection based on the identity of the server which initiated the terminal triggering.

48. The method according to claim 46, further comprising the step of

transmitting to a server a message including a report regarding the delivery of the device trigger request and a time-period in which a server should not transmit or retransmit a trigger request to the terminal.

49. The method according to claim 46, wherein when deciding to transmit the device trigger request to the terminal, further comprising the step of

transmitting to the terminal an information indicating the congested external network and/or a back-off timer, and/or

upon transmitting to the terminal the information indicating the congested external network and/or a back-off timer, setting in the serving network entity a timer during which the serving network entity does not transmit a delivery report regarding a device trigger response from the terminal and/or

receiving from the terminal an information indicating that the terminal is unable to establish data connection to an external network and the identity of the external network, and/or the remaining back-off timer, and/or the identity of a device trigger response which could not be transmitted.

50. A method for triggering by a server a terminal in a communication network including a serving network node, the method being for executing at the terminal and comprising the steps of:

determining terminal capabilities related to device triggering;

transmitting an information including the determined terminal capabilities to a serving network node.

51. The method according to claim 50, further comprising the step of:

receiving from the serving network node an information indicating the congested external network;

storing the received information;

judging based on the stored information whether to transmit or not non access stratum signaling or data to the external network.

52. An apparatus for triggering a terminal to establish a connection or transmit data to a triggering server in a communication network including a network node, the apparatus being a network node comprising:

an evaluation unit for evaluating whether or not the connection can be established from the terminal to the server, including determining whether the network is congested and/or whether a back-off timer is running and/or the remaining time of the back-off timer at the terminal; and

a second transmitting unit for transmitting a delivery delay indication to a device triggering control server for informing the triggering server, the delivery delay indication indicating at least one of impossibility of establishing the connection to the server after the trigger or a data transmission delay.

53. An apparatus for triggering a terminal in a communication network including a network node, the apparatus being a triggering server comprising:

a transmission unit for transmitting over the communication network to the terminal a trigger request for triggering connection establishment or transmission of data from the terminal to the server;

a receiving unit for receiving from the network node or the terminal a delivery delay indicator for indicating at least one of impossibility of establishment of a connection or transmitting the data after the trigger or a corresponding delay; and

a processing unit for processing the delivery delay indicator to determine whether to retransmit the trigger request at later point, or to retransmit the trigger request with higher priority or to omit a transmission of trigger request for the same network to another terminal.

54. An apparatus for a communication network including a network node, the apparatus being a terminal comprising:

a receiving unit for receiving a trigger request for triggering establishment of a connection from the terminal to a server, the trigger request being sent by the server over the communication network to the terminal;

an evaluation unit for evaluating whether the connection can be established or not including determining whether the network is congested and/or whether data to be transmitted are ready; and

a transmission unit for transmitting a delivery delay indicator to the server for indicating at least one of impossibility of establishing the connection to the server after the trigger or a data transmission delay in accordance with the evaluation results due to the congestion situation.

55. An apparatus for triggering by a server a terminal in a communication network including a serving network node, the apparatus being the serving network node and comprising:

a capability determining unit for determining information related to device triggering capabilities of the terminal from a message received from the terminal, the server or another network node;

a receiving unit for receiving a trigger request for triggering establishment of a connection from the terminal to the server, the trigger request being sent by the server over the communication network to the terminal;

a judging unit for judging based on the information related to device triggering capabilities of the terminal and based on the current congestion state whether to transmit the trigger request to the terminal or not; and

a transmitting unit for transmitting or not transmitting the trigger request to the terminal according to the judgment of the judging unit.