Method and device for discovering small cells in a heterogeneous communication network

Abstract

The invention provides a scheme for discovering / identifying a small cell in a heterogeneous communication network, in particular to a method and a device for discovering a small cell in a heterogeneous communication network. In one scheme for discovering the small cell in the heterogeneous communication network, a macro base station judges whether user equipment approaches a certain small cell or a plurality of small cells based on the position range information of each small cell in a macro cell and the estimated position information of the user equipment, if so, a special signaling is transmitted to the user equipment, and the user equipment triggers a search to periodically search the one or more small cells based on the special signaling. The invention further provides another scheme which is used for discovering the small cell and comprises the following steps: the user equipment judges whether the local user equipment approaches the certain small cell or small cells based on the received position range information in an alarm area of each small cell which is broadcasted by the macro base station and the estimated position information of the user equipment, if so, the search is triggered to periodically search the one or more small cells. According to the schemes, the small cell in the heterogeneous communication network can be discovered / identified more effectively in the situation of reducing the power consumption of the user equipment.

Description

[0001] This application is a divisional application of the patent application with the application number 201110190014.0 filed on July 7, 2011, entitled "Method and Device for Discovering Small Cells in a Heterogeneous Communication Network". technical field [0002] The present application relates to a heterogeneous communication network (HetNet), and in particular to a method and device for discovering a small cell in a heterogeneous communication network. Background technique [0003] The existing closed subscriber group (closed subscriber group, CGS) cell discovery / identification scheme is based on the mechanism of autonomous search function (autonomous search function, ASF) and proximity indication (proximity indication), one of its important goals is to reduce Power consumption of user equipment. In this scheme, a white list is stored on the user equipment side, and the white list contains cell IDs (cell IDs) of a limited number of CGS cells associated with it. Inform...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, due to the large number of public pico cells, it is impossible for the user equipment to store the information of all these public pico cells. Therefore, the existing CGS cell discovery scheme is not suitable for the discovery of public pico cells. / identify

[0005] At present, the discovery / identification of public picocells is only implemented by exhaustive search, which leads to higher power consumption of user equipment

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