Shared Sessions for MTC Devices in Wireless Networks
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Solution Overview
Problem
Next-generation wireless communication networks face challenges in managing a large number of machine-type communication (MTC) devices, which generate numerous sessions with small bandwidth requirements, leading to increased administrative and signaling costs, network congestion, and power consumption issues due to intermittent and unpredictable transmission times.
Innovation Solution
Implementing shared sessions in communication networks, where multiple devices are associated with a single shared session, reducing network overhead and enabling improved responsiveness by maintaining context even in inactive power-saving states, and using cryptographic keying material for security and authentication.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a separate session is maintained for each MTC device, then each device can be individually served, but network overhead and signaling costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple MTC devices are merged into a single shared session, allowing multiple devices to share common network resources and signaling context. This reduces the total number of sessions the network must manage, thereby reducing network overhead and signaling costs while still providing individual device service through device identification within the shared session.
Solution Approach 2:
The shared session structure enables a single session to serve multiple devices simultaneously, making the session universal rather than device-specific. This multi-functional approach allows the network to maintain fewer sessions while accommodating multiple MTC devices, reducing overall network complexity.
2Reliability
If a separate session is maintained for each MTC device, then device connectivity is ensured, but network congestion increases
Solution Approach 1:
By merging multiple devices into a shared session, the network reduces the total number of active sessions, which decreases signaling traffic and network overhead. This reduces network congestion and improves throughput while maintaining connectivity through the shared session framework that tracks individual devices within the group.
3Reliability
If conventional sessions are used for MTC devices, then authentication is performed, but power consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
Authentication and security context are established at the shared session level rather than at the individual device level during each connection. This preliminary authentication action is performed once when the shared session is created, and subsequent device connections to the same session can reuse the established security context, reducing the frequency of authentication operations and associated power consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
Multiple devices share a common authentication and security context within the shared session, eliminating the need for separate authentication procedures for each device. This merging of security operations reduces the cumulative power consumption across all devices while maintaining robust authentication through the shared security framework.
Data Source
AI summary
A system, apparatus and method are provided for supporting shared sessions in communication networks. The system, apparatus and method include interoperation between a User Equipment and serving nodes of a communication network. The serving nodes communicate with at least one anchor node of the communication network. In some implementations a shared session identifier and User Equipment identifying component are used to identify a User Equipment within a shared session. In some implementations, a paging notification is used to inform one or more target User Equipment that of a downlink message relating to the shared session.