PDCP PDU Aggregation for Lower Mobile Packet Overhead
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
The high PDU rate in mobile communications, particularly due to small IP packet sizes and the one-to-one mapping of protocols, leads to increased overhead in transmission, receiving, and processing, exacerbated by the high ratio of TCP ACK packets, which results in inefficient data transmission.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method to generate PDCP data PDUs that contain multiple SDUs through concatenation or using a new PDCP data PDU format with a multi-PDU container field, allowing for efficient transfer of multiple SDUs in a single PDU.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If one-to-one mapping between IP packets and PDCP PDUs is used, then protocol simplicity is maintained, but PDU rate increases and overhead becomes dominant
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple SDUs (Service Data Units) into a single PDCP PDU (Packet Data Convergence Protocol Packet Data Unit). This merging approach allows multiple small IP packets to be aggregated and transmitted together, reducing the overall PDU rate and minimizing protocol overhead while maintaining protocol simplicity through the existing one-to-one mapping framework.
2Reliability
If TCP ACK packets are transmitted individually, then acknowledgment reliability is ensured, but ACK rate becomes high and uplink resources are wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies merging by concatenating multiple TCP ACK packets together with other data packets to form aggregated PDCP PDUs. This allows reliable TCP acknowledgments to be transmitted while significantly reducing the number of separate uplink transmissions required, thereby improving uplink resource utilization without compromising acknowledgment reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements preliminary action by buffering TCP ACK packets in the UE (User Equipment) before uplink resources are granted. When resources become available, the buffered ACKs are concatenated with other data and transmitted together in a single grant, eliminating the need to fill grants solely with ACK packets and reducing overall transmission overhead.
3Speed
If small IP packet sizes are used, then network responsiveness is improved, but overhead ratio increases and transmission efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple small IP packets (maintaining fast network responsiveness) into aggregated PDCP PDUs for transmission. This approach preserves the responsiveness benefits of small packet sizes while improving transmission efficiency by reducing the overhead ratio through aggregation, allowing small packets to be sent quickly without incurring proportional overhead for each individual packet.
Data Source
AI summary
Various solutions for protocol data unit (PDU) rate reduction in mobile communications are described. A processor of an apparatus implementable in a user equipment (UE) generates a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) data PDU containing a plurality of service data units (SDUs). The apparatus then transfers the PDCP data PDU to a receiver of the apparatus.