Base Station Neighbor List Maintenance via User Equipment Measurements
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Solution Overview
Problem
In cellular wireless telecommunications, the proliferation of base stations, especially small cells, increases the complexity of handover between base stations, as a serving base station may not be aware of all neighboring base stations, leading to poor service due to incomplete neighbor lists and interference, resulting in potential handover failures.
Innovation Solution
Maintaining multiple base station neighbor lists, each with entries of neighboring base stations, and using user equipment measurement reports to identify and update these lists, ensuring accurate neighbor relationships and improving handover success rates by querying associated lists when a detected base station is not initially recognized.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Area of stationary object
If base stations deploy more extensively to provide coverage, then coverage area is improved, but handover complexity increases and neighbor list completeness deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces user equipment as an intermediary to assist base stations in detecting neighboring base stations. Instead of base stations directly sensing all neighbors (which is complex and incomplete), user equipment performs measurements and reports detected base stations to the serving base station, which then updates its neighbor list. This intermediary approach reduces the detection complexity at the base station while maintaining comprehensive neighbor awareness.
2Adaptability or versatility
If base stations provision complete neighbor lists manually, then handover options are improved, but deployment complexity and interference vulnerability increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service mechanisms where base stations automatically detect and register neighboring base stations through user equipment measurements without manual network provisioning. The serving base station autonomously updates its neighbor list by receiving measurement reports from user equipment and identifying detected base stations, eliminating the need for complex manual deployment while maintaining comprehensive handover options.
3Ease of operation
If base stations rely on local sensing only, then sensing simplicity is improved, but neighbor detection completeness deteriorates due to obstruction and limited sensing location
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from a single-point sensing model to a distributed sensing model by utilizing user equipment at multiple locations within the cell. Instead of the base station sensing from a single central location, user equipment performs measurements at various positions, providing a more comprehensive view of neighboring base stations and overcoming the limitations of single-point sensing caused by obstructions and limited coverage.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method of identifying neighbouring base stations, a network node and a computer program product are disclosed. The method of identifying neighbouring base stations, comprises the steps of: maintaining a plurality of base station neighbour lists, each base station neighbour list being associated with one of a plurality of base stations, each base station neighbour list having at least one entry identifying a neighbouring base station which neighbours the one of a plurality of base stations, each entry having a base station identifier and a base station characteristic; and on receipt of a detected base station characteristic provided by a querying one of the plurality of base stations, determining a set of the plurality of base station neighbour lists which share at least one common base station identifier with the base station neighbour list of the querying one of the plurality of base stations, establishing whether the detected base station characteristic has a matching entry which matches a base station characteristic of any entry in the set of the plurality of base station neighbour lists and, if so, providing the base station identifier from the matching entry to the querying one of the plurality of base stations. In this way, a neighbouring base station can be identified which would otherwise not have been detected.