Methods and arrangements for adapting random access allocation of resources to user equipments

Abstract

The present disclosure relates to User Equipments, UEs or Machine Type Communication, MTC (104, 202, 302, 304, 700) devices and base stations (102, 204, 306, 600) and methods therein for adapting the allocating of random access resources to user equipments of a cell served by a base station. A method in a base station (102, 204, 306, 600) where each RA preamble group maps or corresponds to an uplink allocation size, comprises receiving a RA preamble from a UE in a cell served by the base station, the preamble indicating a requested resource allocation size for uplink transmission of UE data. Radio resource usage (S-348, 402) in the cell is monitored and a mapping between groups of RA preambles and uplink allocation sizes (S-356, 412) configured for the cell is adapted based on the monitored usage of radio resources. UEs or MTC devices are thus provided with an efficient means to have their UL allocation needs for transmission of user data in conjunction with step 3 of the Random Access procedure met.

Description

technical field [0001] The present disclosure relates generally to the field of random access, and more specifically, to the field of random access allocation of resources to user equipment. The present disclosure relates in particular to methods and apparatus for adapting random access resource allocation to user equipments. Background technique [0002] The current general outlook for the future development of communications in cellular networks is to include a large number of small autonomous devices that typically transmit and receive small amounts of data only occasionally, eg once a week to once a minute. These devices are generally considered not to be associated with humans, but instead are associated with different kinds of sensors or actuators that communicate with application servers in order to enable the configuration and Data reception from these devices. Accordingly, this type of communication is often referred to as machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, a...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

This rigidity leads to a poor match between the UL data to be sent and the size of the UL resources allocated for the RA uplink message Msg3, which in turn leads to poor resource utilization

[0022] Furthermore, a consequence of this rigidity is that poor or at least non-optimal correspondence between RA preamble groups and uplink resource allocation sizes may become common, which adversely affects the collision probability

[0023] In an example case, all UEs will seek to use preambles from the same preamble group, which increases the collision probability since UEs use a smaller number of preambles for contention

Images