Wireless Terminal Context Retention for Cell Outage Recovery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional wireless networks struggle to maintain wireless communications during unexpected outages in serving cells, as they lack effective methods to retain and utilize context information for active wireless terminals.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves retaining contexts for active wireless terminals by the serving Radio Node (RN) or the wireless terminals themselves after a cell outage, and providing these contexts to neighbor RNs to facilitate connection reestablishment with a neighbor cell.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the serving cell performs handover procedures before expected outages, then call failures are avoided, but the solution is not applicable for unexpected outages and requires extensive signaling overhead
Solution Approach 1:
The serving cell performs handover procedures before expected outages occur, proactively transferring active wireless terminals to neighbor cells. This preliminary action prevents call failures during scheduled maintenance or upgrades, though it requires signaling overhead and cannot handle unexpected outages
Solution Approach 2:
The serving Radio Node creates and stores context copies for active wireless terminals in anticipation of possible outages. These context copies contain essential information needed for connection reestablishment, allowing the system to quickly restore communications after unexpected outages without extensive signaling overhead
2Reliability
If the serving cell provides context information periodically to neighbor cells, then connection reestablishment is facilitated, but extensive signaling overhead is generated with much waste
Solution Approach 1:
The serving cell periodically provides context information to neighbor cells at scheduled intervals. This periodic action ensures that context data is available when needed for connection reestablishment, though it generates significant signaling overhead even when outages are not imminent
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of periodic transmission, the system creates context copies that are stored and only transmitted when actually needed - specifically when an outage occurs. This on-demand copying approach maintains connection reestablishment capability while eliminating the waste of periodic signaling overhead
Data Source
AI summary
An entity in a wireless network 100 retains contexts for each wireless terminal 140 served by a serving cell in a serving Radio Node (RN) 110 after that serving cell experiences an outage. The contexts may be retained by the serving RN 110 of the serving cell and/or by the wireless terminal served by the serving cell. The retained contexts are then provided to neighbor RNs 120 to facilitate connection reestablishment for the wireless terminals 140 previously served by the serving cell now experiencing an outage with a neighbor cell, e.g., another cell in the serving RN 110 or a neighbor cell in a neighbor RN 120.