Central Node Management of UE Context in 3GPP Networks
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Solution Overview
Problem
In Evolved 3GPP Packet Switched Domain networks, extensive UE context signalling is required across entities, leading to significant signalling and potential issues when an entity fails, as the current UE context is lost, necessitating reloads and affecting network stability.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a central node that stores and manages UE contexts for all entities, allowing network entities to become 'stateless' and reducing the impact of entity failures by maintaining the most current UE context at the central node, which can enhance security and resilience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If each network entity stores its own UE context, then the entity can independently access and update context information, but the signalling overhead increases significantly and the system reliability decreases when an entity fails
Solution Approach 1:
A central node is introduced as an intermediary to store and manage UE contexts. When a network entity needs to access or update UE context, it communicates with the central node rather than maintaining local copies. This mediator approach ensures that the most current context is always available while reducing the burden on individual entities and preventing information loss during entity failures.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the UE context storage function from multiple distributed network entities into a single centralized location. Instead of each entity (MME, SGW, PGW) maintaining its own UE context, all contexts are consolidated at the central node, eliminating redundancy and ensuring a single source of truth for context information.
2Ease of operation
If network entities maintain current UE context locally, then quick access to context is possible, but the complexity of context management and the risk of inconsistency increase
Solution Approach 1:
The context management functionality is extracted from individual network entities and relocated to a dedicated central node. This separation allows entities to focus on their core functions while the central node handles the complexity of context storage, updates, and retrieval, simplifying the overall system architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
The central node acts as an intermediary that handles all context management operations. Entities simply request context from or send updates to the central node, which manages the actual storage and retrieval. This intermediary layer abstracts the complexity away from entities while maintaining efficient access through standardized communication interfaces.
3Stability of the object's composition
If extensive UE context signalling is performed across entities, then context synchronization is achieved, but the signalling overhead and network load increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges all UE context storage operations into a single central node, eliminating the need for multiple entities to exchange context information through extensive signalling. Updates and retrievals are performed through a single communication channel to/from the central node, dramatically reducing signalling overhead while maintaining synchronization.
Data Source
AI summary
The invention relates to a node in a communications network for enabling communication with at least one wireless communication terminal served by the communications network. According to an embodiment, the node stores at least one current User Equipment (UE) context of the at least one communication terminal to be used by a first network entity of the plurality of network entities in the communications network; receives, from a second network entity of the plurality of network entities, a message intended for the first network entity; and delivers at least a part of the received message to the first network entity and at least a part of the stored at least one current UE context to be used by the first network entity.