Group switching method in energy-saving mode

Abstract

A group switching method in an energy-saving mode. The access and switching of a user are dynamically managed by means of a grouping method, so that a sufficient number of services having sufficient quality are provided for existing users, the efficiency of switching is improved, cells are not overloaded, and resources are not wasted. The proposed group switching method mainly comprises: on the basis of a user service type, performing group partitioning on a switching user and an energy-saving compensation cell, dynamically partitioning a user group according to a magnitude relationship between resources required by a user and resources provided by the compensation cell, and accessing the user group.

Description

A group switching method in energy-saving mode Technical Field

[0001] The present invention belongs to the technical field of communications and relates to a packet switching method in an energy-saving mode. Background Art

[0002] The wireless network energy-saving technology system can be broadly divided into three technical areas: device level, site level, and network level. Device-level energy conservation primarily utilizes new materials and technologies to reduce device energy consumption. Site-level energy conservation primarily relies on network load to shut down unused RF hardware resources, thereby saving power and resources. The network level primarily utilizes multi-cell collaboration, using algorithms to shut down and wake up cells based on current network configuration, performance requirements, and user parameters. This invention primarily reduces system resource consumption at the network level.

[0003] In mobile communication networks, energy conservation is achieved by turning base stations on and off. Base stations can actively monitor network conditions to trigger energy conservation operations, or they can passively manage the operating status of each base station through a centralized controller, ultimately notifying each base station of its operating status through an interface. A base station can be awakened by itself, or a neighboring base station can send a request to a dormant base station to wake it up, thereby sharing the high network load. Whether distributed or centralized, the design process is similar. During the initialization phase of energy conservation operations, all base stations periodically broadcast their cell configuration information and relevant useful information, such as load, user information, and base station power allocation, to neighboring base stations. This information triggers the execution of energy conservation algorithms, making decisions about cell operating state transitions. Finally, the results of these decisions are executed, and each base station enters the corresponding operating state.

[0004] Global cell status detection based on real-time information exchange requires the periodic exchange of useful information between network nodes. Once the local cell's load is determined to be below a set threshold, and through information exchange, it is determined that neighboring cells are not saturated and can accommodate users in the local cell, the local eNB can enter a power-saving state, and users can be switched to the neighboring eNB. When the load on the neighboring eNB increases, signaling is sent to wake up the cell in power-saving mode, alleviating the load. Power-saving is triggered by a combination of internal information within the local cell and information exchanged with neighboring cells. The entire signaling exchange consists of three phases: initialization, information exchange; sending a shutdown notification and wake-up request once power-saving conditions are met; and confirmation and execution upon receipt of the notification. Global cell status detection based on real-time information exchange can fully utilize every energy-saving opportunity and accurately execute power-up and wake-up operations, taking into account user QoS. However, this requires frequent signaling exchanges, which increases system complexity.

[0005] This invention proposes a packet handover method in energy-saving mode. First, it determines whether the power resources required by the handover user in the energy-saving cell are less than the idle power resources in the energy-saving compensation cell, thereby determining whether all cells should adopt energy-saving operations. Then, it determines the user type in each compensation cell and selects the user type to be connected. Finally, it selects the compensation cell for handover based on the user's service type.

[0006] Summary of the Invention

[0007] In view of this, the purpose of the present invention is to provide a group switching method in energy-saving mode. When a cell switches from normal mode to energy-saving mode or between different energy-saving modes, users will randomly switch to other adjacent energy-saving compensation cells, which may result in the inability to meet the service needs of all users. In order to provide existing users with sufficient quality and quantity of services in the cell energy-saving compensation mode and improve switching efficiency, users can be grouped in the energy-saving cell according to user information. However, this will cause some problems. For example: what information of the user is grouped according to, the number of users that can be loaded in different energy-saving modes, and the proportion of different types of users in the energy-saving cell. In response to the above problems, the present invention proposes a user grouping method according to different cell energy-saving modes, and dynamically manages user access and switching through the grouping method, so that the cell is not overloaded and resources are not wasted.

[0008] In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides the following technical solutions:

[0009] A group switching method in an energy-saving mode, the method comprising two stages: preparing user groups and group switching;

[0010] The prepared user groups are:

[0011] The mobile communication system defines four types of user services: conversational, streaming, interactive, and background. Users are differentiated based on their service types and divided into four types.

[0012] According to the requirements for transmission rate, they are divided into two major categories, specifically into three user groups; first, since the switching users of session type and flow type have certain requirements for transmission rate, these two types of switching users are merged into the same category; this category is named high transmission rate requirement category; interactive type and background type are merged into another category, low transmission rate requirement category; then, 2 / 3 of the switching users in the high rate requirement category are randomly divided into user group 1, and 2 / 3 of the switching users in the low rate requirement category are randomly divided into user group 2, and the remaining switching users are formed into user group 3; they are accessed to the energy-saving compensation cell in a grouped manner; the energy-saving compensation cell is divided into two categories according to the user type in the cell, namely: high transmission rate cell; low transmission rate cell; low transmission rate cell refers to the energy-saving compensation cell in which the interactive type and background type users are more than the other two types of users, represented as cell 1; high transmission rate cell refers to the energy-saving compensation cell in which the session type and flow type users are more than the other two types of users, represented as cell 2;

[0013] The group switching is:

[0014] The centralized controller calculates the power resources required by all switching users in the energy-saving cells to support their own services, and uses P N Indicates the power resources required by the user; and, through the centralized controller, the idle power resources of all energy-saving cells are calculated, that is, the power resources that can be provided to the switching user; using P C Indicates the idle power resources in all energy-saving compensation cells; if the power resources required by the user P N Greater than the idle resources P of the energy-saving compensation cell C , indicating that the energy-saving compensation cell cannot accommodate all switching users at this time; reduce the number of energy-saving cells, that is, reduce the number of switching users, until the power resources required by switching users are less than the size of the idle resources of the energy-saving compensation cell; otherwise, gradually reduce the number of energy-saving cells; after determining that the idle resources of the energy-saving compensation cell are greater than the resources required by the switching users, determine the number of users in user group 1 and user group 2; if the number of users in user group 1 is greater than the number of users in user group 2, first analyze the access status of user group 1; otherwise, first analyze the access status of user group 2.

[0015] Optionally, if the number of users in user group 1 is greater than the number of users in user group 2, determine whether the power resources required by user group 1 are less than the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 1; if the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 1 are less than the resources required by user group 1, switch some users of user group 1 to cell 1, and merge the remaining switched users that have not been connected into user group 3; connect all the switched users of user group 3 and user group 2 to cell 2; if the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 1 are greater than the resources required by user group 1, switch all user group 1 to cell 1; determine whether there are still idle resources in cell 1, and if there are remaining idle resources, switch some users of user group 2 to cell 1; if there are no idle resources in cell 1 at this time, it indicates that cell 1 can just fully serve the switched users of user group 1; connect the remaining switched users to cell 2;

[0016] If the number of users in user group 2 is greater than the number of users in user group 1, determine whether the power resources required by user group 2 are less than the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 2; if the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 2 are greater than the resources required by user group 2, all user group 2 are switched to cell 2; then, determine whether there are remaining idle resources in cell 2. If there are still excess idle power resources, some of the switching users of user group 1 are connected to cell 2. If there are no idle resources in cell 2 at this time, it indicates that cell 2 fully serves the switching users of user group 2; the remaining switching users of user group 3 and user group 1 are connected to cell 2; if the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 2 are less than the resources required by user group 2, some of user group 2 are switched to cell 2, and the remaining switching users that have not been connected are merged into user group 3; all the switching users of user group 3 and user group 1 are connected to cell 1.

[0017] The beneficial effects of the present invention are:

[0018] First, determine whether the power resources required by users in the energy-saving cell are less than the idle power resources that the compensation cell can provide. Otherwise, the number of cells requiring energy saving is reduced through the centralized controller. That is, some cells requiring energy saving receive users from other energy-saving cells, thereby increasing the number of users to exceed the energy-saving threshold.

[0019] Then, the service types of the original users in the energy-saving compensation cell and the proportion of users with different service types are analyzed, and user groups are divided according to the different service types of the switching users.

[0020] Finally, according to the user information and energy-saving compensation cell information provided by the centralized controller, user switching and cell access are selected.

[0021] Other advantages, objects, and features of the present invention will be described in part in the following description and, in part, will be apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following description or may be learned from practice of the present invention. The objects and other advantages of the present invention may be realized and obtained through the following description. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0022] In order to make the purpose, technical solutions and advantages of the present invention more clear, the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

[0023] Figure 1 shows a multi-cell collaborative energy-saving system;

[0024] Figure 2 is a flow chart of the cell energy-saving mechanism;

[0025] FIG3 is a flow chart of a packet switching method. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0026] The following describes the embodiments of the present invention by means of specific examples, and those skilled in the art can easily understand other advantages and effects of the present invention from the contents disclosed in this specification. The present invention can also be implemented or applied through other different specific embodiments, and the details in this specification can also be modified or changed in various ways based on different viewpoints and applications without departing from the spirit of the present invention. It should be noted that the illustrations provided in the following embodiments are only schematic illustrations of the basic concept of the present invention, and the following embodiments and features in the embodiments can be combined with each other without conflict.

[0027] Among them, the accompanying drawings are only for illustrative purposes and represent only schematic diagrams rather than actual pictures, and should not be understood as limiting the present invention. In order to better illustrate the embodiments of the present invention, some parts of the accompanying drawings may be omitted, enlarged or reduced, and do not represent the dimensions of actual products. For those skilled in the art, it is understandable that some well-known structures and their descriptions may be omitted in the accompanying drawings.

[0028] The same or similar numbers in the drawings of the embodiments of the present invention correspond to the same or similar parts; in the description of the present invention, it should be understood that if there are terms such as "upper", "lower", "left", "right", "front", "back", etc. indicating directions or positional relationships, they are based on the directions or positional relationships shown in the drawings. They are only for the convenience of describing the present invention and simplifying the description, and do not indicate or imply that the device or element referred to must have a specific direction, be constructed and operate in a specific direction. Therefore, the terms describing the positional relationship in the drawings are only used for illustrative purposes and cannot be understood as limiting the present invention. For ordinary technicians in this field, the specific meanings of the above terms can be understood according to specific circumstances.

[0029] The present invention designs a group switching method in a cell energy-saving mode to achieve rational utilization of system resources. Switching a cell from normal working mode to energy-saving mode or between different energy-saving modes may result in the inability to meet the service needs of all users, causing some users to switch to other adjacent cells. Therefore, the energy-saving cell groups users to provide sufficient quality and quantity of services to existing users in the system energy-saving mode. The present invention considers energy-saving operation of multiple cells, as shown in Figure 1. The present invention divides energy-saving compensation cells according to the proportion of users with different service types. In addition, users are grouped according to different service types. Users in different user groups have different service types, and thus have different power resource requirements for the cell. Different user groups access different energy-saving compensation cells. Dynamic management of user access and switching is achieved through grouping strategies to prevent cell overload and waste of resources. The specific implementation process of this solution is divided into the following two stages.

[0030] Phase 1: Preparing user groups

[0031] During off-peak hours, cells change their network state to a low-power mode. Base stations perform energy-saving operations and change their operating states. The different energy-saving states are defined as follows: Normal state refers to the cellular network not taking any energy-saving actions, maintaining full-power operation for all devices without any reduction in energy consumption; Energy-saving state refers to the cellular network implementing certain energy-saving mechanisms to put some or all network devices into a low-power state. At this point, the devices in the network can be turned off or dormant; Energy-saving compensation state refers to the process of implementing energy-saving mechanisms, where certain network devices, while maintaining their normal operating state, also need to adjust their transmit power to compensate for the impact of other surrounding base stations entering energy-saving states. For example, in a cellular network structure, when a base station enters energy-saving state, one or more surrounding base stations need to expand their coverage area to fill in coverage gaps. At this point, the base station expanding coverage enters energy-saving compensation state.

[0032] In mobile communication networks, energy conservation is achieved by switching base stations on and off. A centralized controller (CRM) manages the operating status of each base station and notifies each base station of its operating status through an interface. A base station can be self-triggered or a neighboring base station can send a request to a dormant base station to wake it up, thereby sharing the high network load. During the initialization phase of centralized energy conservation, all base stations periodically broadcast their cell configuration information and related useful information, such as load, user information, and base station power allocation, to neighboring base stations. This information triggers the execution of energy conservation algorithms, making decisions about cell operating state transitions. Finally, each base station implements the decision results and enters the corresponding operating state. The flow chart of the entire energy conservation mechanism is shown in Figure 2. In the flow chart, the trigger condition is global cell status detection based on real-time information exchange. This global cell status detection based on real-time information exchange requires periodic exchange of useful information between network nodes. Once the local cell load is determined to be below a set threshold, and information exchange indicates that neighboring cells are not saturated and can accommodate users in the local cell, the local eNB can enter an energy conservation state, and users can be switched to neighboring base stations. When the load on neighboring base stations increases, signaling is sent to wake up cells in energy-saving mode, alleviating the load. Energy-saving triggers are determined by both the cell's internal information and the interaction with neighboring cells. The entire signaling interaction consists of three phases: initialization, which involves information exchange; sending shutdown notifications and wake-up requests once energy-saving conditions are met; and confirmation and execution of received notifications. Global cell status detection based on real-time information exchange fully utilizes every energy-saving opportunity and considers user QoS when executing power-up and wake-up operations.

[0033] Mobile communication systems define four types of user services: session, stream, interactive, and background. These types differ primarily in their sensitivity to latency. Session services must maintain the temporal variability of information entities within the stream and place stringent latency requirements. Therefore, session services have the highest requirements and require high network data rates. Stream services must maintain the temporal relationships between information entities within the stream and have certain latency requirements. Interactive services operate in a request-response mode and must maintain data integrity. Background services are services for which the destination has virtually no time constraints, requiring only data integrity, and have the lowest rate requirements. Therefore, users can be differentiated based on their service type and categorized into four types.

[0034] Based on transmission rate requirements, users can be divided into two major categories, specifically three user groups. First, because conversational and streaming users have certain transmission rate requirements, these two types of users are combined into the same category. For convenience, this category is named the high transmission rate requirement category. Compared to conversational and streaming users, interactive and background users have less stringent transmission rate requirements and are therefore combined into another category, the low transmission rate requirement category. Then, randomly divide 2 / 3 of the users in the high transmission rate requirement category into user group 1, 2 / 3 of the users in the low transmission rate requirement category into user group 2, and the remaining users into user group 3. These users are grouped into energy-saving compensation cells. Similarly, energy-saving compensation cells can be divided into two categories based on user type: high transmission rate cells and low transmission rate cells. Low transmission rate cells are energy-saving compensation cells where interactive and background users outnumber the other two types of users and are also represented as cell 1. The high transmission rate cell refers to an energy-saving compensation cell in which the number of session-type and flow-type users is greater than the number of the other two types of users, and may also be represented as cell 2.

[0035] Phase 2: Packet Handover Method

[0036] In the second stage, the main task is to complete the user group switching, and its main process is shown in Figure 3. First, the centralized controller calculates the power resources required by the switching users in all energy-saving cells to support their own services, and uses P N Indicates the power resources required by the user. In addition, the idle power resources of all energy-saving cells are calculated by the centralized controller, that is, the power resources that can be provided to the switching user. C Indicates the idle power resources in all energy-saving compensation cells. If the power resources required by the user P N Greater than the idle resources P of the energy-saving compensation cell C , indicating that the energy-saving compensation cell cannot accommodate all handover users. Therefore, the number of energy-saving cells, and therefore the number of handover users, needs to be reduced until the power resources required by handover users are less than the idle resources in the energy-saving compensation cells. Otherwise, the number of energy-saving cells should be gradually reduced. After confirming that the idle resources in the energy-saving compensation cells are greater than the resources required by handover users, the number of users in User Group 1 and User Group 2 is determined. If the number of users in User Group 1 is greater than that in User Group 2, the access status of User Group 1 is analyzed first; otherwise, the access status of User Group 2 is analyzed first.

[0037] If the number of users in user group 1 is greater than the number of users in user group 2, a determination is made as to whether the power resources required by user group 1 are less than the idle power resources available in cell 1. If the idle power resources available in cell 1 are less than the resources required by user group 1, some of the users in user group 1 are switched to cell 1, and the remaining switched users who have not yet connected are merged into user group 3. Because the overall idle resources are greater than the required resources, all users in user group 3 and user group 2 can be switched to cell 2. If the idle power resources available in cell 1 are greater than the resources required by user group 1, all users in user group 1 are switched to cell 1. At this point, it is still necessary to determine whether cell 1 still has idle resources. If so, some users in user group 2 are switched to cell 1. If cell 1 does not have idle resources, this indicates that cell 1 can fully serve the users in user group 1. The remaining switched users are then switched to cell 2.

[0038] If the number of users in User Group 2 is greater than that in User Group 1, a determination is made as to whether the power resources required by User Group 2 are less than the idle power resources available in Cell 2. If the idle power resources available in Cell 2 are greater than the resources required by User Group 2, all users in User Group 2 are handed over to Cell 2. A determination is then made as to whether there are any remaining idle resources in Cell 2. If there are, some of the users in User Group 1 are connected to Cell 2. If there are no idle resources in Cell 2 at this point, this indicates that Cell 2 can fully serve all the users in User Group 2. Subsequently, the remaining users in User Group 3 and User Group 1 are connected to Cell 2. If the idle power resources available in Cell 2 are less than the resources required by User Group 2, some of User Group 2 are handed over to Cell 2, and the remaining users who have not yet been connected are merged into User Group 3. Similarly, since the overall idle resources are greater than the required resources, all users in User Group 3 and User Group 1 can be connected to Cell 1.

[0039] Finally, it should be noted that the above embodiments are only used to illustrate the technical solutions of the present invention and are not limiting. Although the present invention has been described in detail with reference to the preferred embodiments, those skilled in the art should understand that the technical solutions of the present invention can be modified or replaced by equivalents without departing from the purpose and scope of the technical solutions, which should all be included in the scope of the claims of the present invention.

Claims

1. A packet switching method in an energy-saving mode, characterized in that: The method includes two stages: preparing user groups and switching groups; The prepared user groups are: The mobile communication system defines four types of user services: session type, flow type, interactive type, and background type. Users are differentiated according to their service types and divided into four types of users. According to the requirements for transmission rate, they are divided into two categories, specifically into three user groups; first, since the switching users of session type and flow type have certain requirements for transmission rate, these two types of switching users are merged into the same category; this category is named high transmission rate requirement category; interactive type and background type are merged into another category, low transmission rate requirement category; then, 2 / 3 of the switching users in the high rate requirement category are randomly divided into user group 1, and 2 / 3 of the switching users in the low rate requirement category are randomly divided into user group 2, and the remaining switching users form user group 3; access to the energy-saving compensation cell in a grouped manner; the energy-saving compensation cell is divided into two categories according to the user type in the cell, namely: high transmission rate cell; low transmission rate cell; low transmission rate cell refers to the energy-saving compensation cell in which the interactive type and background type users are more than the other two types of users, represented as cell 1; high transmission rate cell refers to the energy-saving compensation cell in which the session type and flow type users are more than the other two types of users, represented as cell 2; The grouping is switched as follows: The centralized controller calculates the power resources required by all switching users in the energy-saving cells to support their own services, using P N Indicates the power resources required by the user; and, through the centralized controller, the idle power resources of all energy-saving cells are calculated, that is, the power resources that can be provided to the switching user; using P C represents the idle power resources in all energy-saving compensation cells; if the power resources required by the user P N Greater than the idle resources P of the energy-saving compensation cell C , indicating that the energy-saving compensation cell cannot fully access the switching users at this time; reduce the number of energy-saving cells, that is, reduce the number of switching users, until the power resources required by the switching users are less than the size of the idle resources of the energy-saving compensation cell, otherwise gradually reduce the number of energy-saving cells; after determining that the idle resources of the energy-saving compensation cell are greater than the resources required by the switching users, then determine the number of users in user group 1 and user group 2; if the number of users in user group 1 is greater than the number of users in user group 2, first analyze the access situation of user group 1, otherwise first analyze the access situation of user group 2.

2. The method for packet switching in energy-saving mode according to claim 1, characterized in that: If the number of users in user group 1 is greater than the number of users in user group 2, determine whether the power resources required by user group 1 are less than the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 1; if the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 1 are less than the resources required by user group 1, switch some users of user group 1 to cell 1, and merge the remaining switched users that have not been connected into user group 3; connect all the switched users of user group 3 and user group 2 to cell 2; If the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 1 are greater than the resources required by user group 1, all users of user group 1 will be switched to cell 1; it is determined whether there are still idle resources in cell 1. If there are remaining idle resources, some users of user group 2 will be switched to cell 1. If there are no idle resources in cell 1 at this time, it indicates that cell 1 can just fully serve the switching users of user group 1; the remaining switching users will be connected to cell 2; If the number of users in user group 2 is greater than the number of users in user group 1, determine whether the power resources required by user group 2 are less than the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 2; if the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 2 are greater than the resources required by user group 2, all user group 2 are switched to cell 2; then, determine whether there are remaining idle resources in cell 2. If there are still excess idle power resources, some switching users of user group 1 are connected to cell 2. If there are no idle resources in cell 2 at this time, it indicates that cell 2 fully serves the switching users of user group 2; the remaining switching users of user group 3 and user group 1 are connected to cell 2; if the idle power resources that can be provided by cell 2 are less than the resources required by user group 2, some user group 2 are switched to cell 2, and the remaining switching users that have not been connected are merged into user group 3; all switching users of user group 3 and user group 1 are connected to cell 1.

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