RRC idle and RRC inactive non-terrestrial network (NTN) measurement reporting

Abstract

A UE 502 receives the configuration information from a serving cell 504 to perform non-terrestrial network (NTN) measurements. The configuration information may include NTN assistance information which comprises of ephermis information or timing information or satellite ID of the NTN satellite. Further, the UE performs NTN measurements 510 while it is in RRC Idle or RRC Inactive mode. The measurements are related to available NTN cells (114, fig. 1a) or NTN carrier frequencies. After measuring, the UE enters the RRC Connected mode 514 and reports the measurements to the serving cell 516. The UE may need to validate its own position before measuring the NTN cells. The UE may indicate its NTN measurement capability by indicating frequency bands and a RAT the UE can perform measurement on. The measurements may be configured to be performed in inter-RAT scenarios. For example, the UE’s serving cell is PLMN (E-UTRAN or 5G NR) and is performing measurements on NTNs such as 5G NR NTN, NB-IoT NTN or 6G IoT NTN. [Fig. 5]