Adaptive group paging for a communication network

• US 9,843,923 B2
• Filed: 07/08/2015
• Issued: 12/12/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 07/08/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.), University of Utah (State of Utah)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.), University of Utah (State of Utah)
• Inventors: Gopalakrishnan, Vijay, Lee, Seungjoon, Van der Merwe, Jacobus Erasmus, Banerjee, Arijit, Kasera, Sneha Kumar
• Primary Examiner(s): Thompson, Jr., Otis L
• Application Number:
  US14/794,583
• Publication Number:
  US 20170013443A1
• Time in Patent Office: 888 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 68/02 Arrangements for increasing efficiency of notification or paging channel
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/27 Transitions between radio resource control [RRC] states
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/186 Processing of subscriber group data
• CPC Class Codes: Y04S 40/00 Systems for electrical power generation, transmission, distribution or end-user application management characterised by the use of communication or information technologies, or communication or information technology specific aspects supporting them

Abstract

When traffic arrives from the network for an idle mobile device, the network executes device activation procedures to awaken the device, which can result in a significant amount of signaling to complete. Adaptive device activation mechanisms are provided that adapt to network conditions and potentially to machine-to-machine device application requests to realize scalable device activation without increasing the resources used for this purpose and without negatively impacting existing human-to-human or human-to-machine traffic.

Claims

1. A device, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising;

determining network load data representing utilization of a network resource for network devices of a communication network associated with the device;

generating a paging message data structure comprising a first data structure and a second data structure, wherein the first data structure is associated with activation data that instructs a group of user equipment devices to switch from an idle state to an active state and the second data structure is associated with group size data indicative of a size of the group of user equipment devices;

determining failure rate data indicative of a proportion of user equipment devices of the group that failed to establish a connection;

determining the group size data as a function of the network load data and the failure rate data; and

storing the group size data in the paging message data structure.

2. The device of claim 1, wherein the device is a mobility management entity device associated with the communication network that manages idle mode paging of the group of user equipment devices.

3. The device of claim 1, wherein the network load data represents utilization of a control plane resource associated with the communication network.

4. The device of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise determining membership of the group of user equipment devices based on defined characteristic data associated with potential members of the group.

5. The device of claim 4, wherein the defined characteristic data comprises at least one of:

type data indicative of a type of a user equipment device, type size data indicative of a number of user equipment devices of the type in the group, an indication of location of the user equipment device, or frequency data indicative of an estimated frequency the user equipment device is paged.

6. The device of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise transmitting the paging message data structure to an evolved Node B device that is identified by a tracking area data structure associated with a user equipment device of the group of user equipment devices.

7. The device of claim 6, wherein the operations further comprise receiving from the evolved Node B device connection setup requests associated with the group of user equipment devices and determining the failure rate data in response to the transmitting the paging message data structure.

8. The device of claim 7, wherein the determining the group size data as a function of the failure rate data is determined to reduce the proportion of the user equipment devices of the group that failed to establish the connection.

9. A device, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising;

receiving a paging message data structure comprising a first data structure and a second data structure, wherein the first data structure comprises activation data that instructs a group of user equipment devices to switch from an idle state to an active state and the second data structure comprises group size data indicative of a size of the group of user equipment devices;

determining capacity data indicative of a first number of user equipment device connections supported by the device;

determining random access channel backoff data as a function of a ratio of the group size data and the capacity data;

updating the random access channel backoff data as a function of random access channel completion rates of random access channel procedures performed by the group of user equipment devices; and

facilitating transmission of a paging message comprising the activation data and the random access channel backoff data to the group of user equipment devices.

10. The device of claim 9, wherein the device is an evolved Node B device associated with the communication network that operates as an access point device for the group of user equipment devices.

11. The device of claim 9, wherein the determining the capacity data comprises determining the capacity data as a function of a second number of user equipment device connections that exist for the device.

12. The device of claim 9, wherein the random access channel backoff data represents a time window during which user equipment devices of the group are to initiate a random access channel procedure to attach to the device.

13. The device of claim 12, wherein the random access channel backoff data comprises an instruction for the user equipment devices of the group to delay initiation of the random access channel procedure by a random amount of time that ranges from zero to a maximum value of the time window.

14. The device of claim 9, wherein the operations further comprise determining a non-overlap delay parameter as a function of random access channel completion times associated with random access channel procedures by the group of user equipment devices.

15. The device of claim 9, wherein the operations further comprise updating time window data indicative of temporal bounds of a delay described by the random access channel backoff data as a function of the capacity data.

16. A method, comprising:

determining, by a device comprising a processor, network load data representing a utilization parameter for network devices of a communication network associated with the device;

determining, by the device, failure rate data indicative of a proportion of user equipment devices of that are paged together as a group that failed to establish a connection;

determining, by the device, group size data based on the network load data and the failure rate data, wherein the group size data represents a first number of user equipment devices that are paged as the group; and

creating, by the device, a paging message comprising activation data that instructs the user equipment devices to switch from an idle state to an active state and the group size data.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising determining, by the device, group membership data that identifies the user equipment devices that are paged as the group.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the determining the group membership data comprises determining the group membership data as a function of type data indicative of a type of a user equipment device of the user equipment devices, type size data indicative of number of user equipment devices of the type, or frequency data indicative of an estimated frequency by which the user equipment device is paged.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising determining, by the device, capacity data indicative of a number of user equipment device connections supported by an access point device.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising determining, by the device, random access channel backoff data as a function of a ratio of the group size data and the capacity data.