Method and apparatus for controlling a handover between UTRA R6 cells and R7 cells

• US 8,320,327 B2
• Filed: 02/01/2008
• Issued: 11/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/02/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Interdigital Technology Corporation (InterDigital, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: InterDigital Patent Holdings, Inc. (InterDigital, Inc.)
• Inventors: Pani, Diana, Cave, Christopher R., Terry, Stephen E., Marinier, Paul
• Primary Examiner(s): Pham, Chi
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ng, Fan
• Application Number:
  US12/024,539
• Publication Number:
  US 20080188224A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,761 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 370/331
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1822 involving configuration of automatic repeat request [ARQ] with parallel processes
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/065 using assembly or disassembly of packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/0005 Control or signalling for completing the hand-off
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/02 Buffering or recovering information during reselection ; Modification of the traffic flow during hand-off
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/04 Reselecting a cell layer in multi-layered cells
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/14 Reselecting a network or an air interface
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/22 Manipulation of transport tunnels
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/27 Transitions between radio resource control [RRC] states

Abstract

A method and apparatus for controlling an optimization of handover procedures between universal terrestrial radio access (UTRA) release 6 (R6) cells and UTRA release 7 (R7) cells are disclosed. When a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) is moving between an R6 cell and an R7 cell, or between R7 cells, a handover is initiated from a source Node-B to a target Node-B. In the R7 cell, the enhanced medium access control (MAC) functionality including flexible radio link control (RLC) protocol data unit (PDU) size and high speed MAC (MAC-hs) segmentation and multiplexing of different priority queues are supported. After the handover, a MAC layer and/or an RLC layer are reconfigured or reset based on functionality supported by the target Node-B.

Claims

1. A method of resetting a medium access control (MAC) unit, the method comprising:

receiving an enhanced high speed MAC (MAC-ehs) reset message from a radio resource control (RRC) unit;

flushing a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) soft buffer in the MAC unit for all configured HARQ processes;

stopping a re-ordering release timer and a MAC-ehs re-ordering timer located in a re-ordering queue of the MAC unit, wherein the re-ordering queue performs re-ordering of received MAC-ehs protocol data units (PDUs) using at least one variable;

setting the timers and the variable to their initial values;

delivering all re-ordering PDUs in the re-ordering queue to a reassembly unit located in the MAC unit;

the reassembly unit performing reassembly of segmented MAC-ehs service data units (SDUs) and delivering successfully reassembled MAC-ehs SDUs to a logical channel identifier (LCH-ID) demultiplexing unit located in the MAC unit;

the LCH-ID demultiplexing unit delivering the complete MAC SDUs to the correct logical channel or MAC flow;

discarding stored MAC-ehs SDU segments from the reassembly unit; and

flushing the re-ordering queue.

2. A method of performing a high speed medium access control (MAC-hs) or enhanced MAC-hs (MAC-ehs) reconfiguration in a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU), the method comprising:

receiving a radio resource control (RRC) handover message indicating a new downlink (DL) MAC-hs or MAC-ehs configuration value.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the WTRU determines from the RRC message that a MAC reconfiguration has occurred when the MAC changes from MAC-hs to MAC-ehs or from MAC-ehs to MAC-hs.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein a MAC-hs/ehs reset indicator is set in the RRC handover message.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the WTRU performs a MAC-hs or MAC-ehs reset prior to the MAC-hs/ehs reconfiguration if the MAC-ehs or MAC-hs reset indicator is present.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein an unspecified behavior of the WTRU occurs if the MAC-hs or MAC-ehs reset is not set in the RRC handover message and a MAC-hs/ehs reconfiguration has occurred.