Multi-Carrier DRX Control for Lower LTE Terminal Power
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Solution Overview
Problem
The increased power consumption of terminals in LTE and LTE-advanced systems due to the use of multiple carriers in carrier aggregation is not effectively addressed by existing technologies.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method for a base station to control discontinuous reception (DRX) operations across multiple carriers by transmitting unified DRX parameters, activating or deactivating carriers based on data requirements, and using carrier indicators to optimize power consumption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If carrier aggregation technology is used to support maximum bandwidth of 100 MHz, then system capacity and data rate are improved, but terminal power consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements discontinuous reception (DRX) operation where the terminal periodically switches between active reception states and sleep states. During DRX cycles, the terminal activates receivers only during scheduled subframes and enters sleep mode during inactive periods, reducing power consumption while maintaining system capacity through carrier aggregation. The base station schedules downlink transmissions to align with terminal DRX active periods, ensuring data delivery while minimizing terminal energy usage.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent dynamically adjusts carrier activation status based on traffic conditions and QoS requirements. The base station can activate or deactivate specific component carriers for each terminal through RRC connection reconfiguration messages, allowing the system to adapt the number of active carriers to current data rate requirements, thereby optimizing the balance between system capacity and terminal power consumption.
2Productivity
If multiple component carriers are activated simultaneously, then data rate and throughput are improved, but terminal complexity and processing burden increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the wideband carrier aggregation operation into multiple independent component carriers, each with its own physical channels and resource allocations. The terminal processes each component carrier separately with dedicated reception and demodulation resources, reducing the complexity of simultaneous multi-carrier processing by dividing the overall operation into manageable independent segments.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements unified DRX parameter configuration that applies across all component carriers. A single set of DRX parameters (drx-OnDuration, drx-InactivityTimer, drx-LongCycle, drx-ShortCycle) controls the reception behavior on multiple carriers simultaneously, reducing terminal complexity by using a universal control mechanism rather than separate configurations for each carrier.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for reducing power consumption of a terminal that communicates with a base station in a mobile communication system using a multi-carrier structure composed of a primary component carrier and at least one secondary component carrier comprises: receiving a discontinuous reception (DRX) parameter group for multi carriers from the base station; and setting the multi carriers to the same parameter value, by using the received parameter group. The method for reducing power consumption of the terminal further comprises: performing a downlink control channel receive operation on each carrier according to a DRX cycle. As the base station in the mobile communication system using the multi-carrier structure simplifies the DRX process for reducing power consumption of a terminal by reducing signaling load for the multi-carrier control of the terminal, it becomes possible to reduce power consumption of the terminal.