Wake-Up Signal Beacon Occasion for Wireless Device Power Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing wireless communication technologies do not support wake-up signaling in inter-cell mobility scenarios, leading to increased power consumption in user devices when switching between cells, as they must turn on their transceivers during cell reselection, which is not efficient for devices requiring low latency and long battery life.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a Wake-Up Signal Beacon Occasion (WBO) configuration that allows user devices to monitor and switch between WUS beacons within a Tracking Area (TA) without activating their transceivers, using cell-specific time offsets and mapping tables to determine the best WUS beacon for reception, thereby reducing power consumption and avoiding frequency changes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the UE turns on its transceiver during cell reselection to monitor for paging, then it can ensure it does not miss any paging messages, but its power consumption increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the transceiver functionality into two separate components: a low-power WUS receiver that remains active during sleep state to monitor wake-up signals, and the main transceiver that stays in deep sleep mode. This segmentation allows the device to maintain reliable paging reception through the WUS mechanism while dramatically reducing power consumption by keeping the energy-intensive main transceiver off during cell reselection.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements preliminary action by having the WUS receiver continuously monitor for wake-up signals before the main transceiver needs to activate. The network node sends WUS beacons in advance, and the WUS receiver detects them prior to any potential paging event, allowing the main transceiver to remain in deep sleep mode and only activate when actually needed, thus preventing power consumption increase during routine cell reselection.
2Use of energy by moving object
If the UE switches from one WUS beacon to another during cell reselection while remaining in sleep state, then power consumption is reduced, but the device must accurately determine which beacon to switch to
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs feedback mechanisms where the WUS receiver continuously monitors signal quality metrics (RSRP, RSRQ, SINR) of available WUS beacons and provides this information to the processor. The processor uses this feedback to automatically determine the optimal beacon to switch to, eliminating the need for complex device-side decision algorithms and reducing switching complexity while maintaining low power consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements self-service through the mapping table mechanism, where the network node pre-configures the correspondence between WUS beacons and serving cells. When the WUS receiver detects a better beacon, the processor simply looks up the pre-defined mapping to determine the new serving cell, rather than performing complex cell reselection calculations. This self-service approach reduces computational complexity while enabling seamless beacon switching.
3Device complexity
If the existing WUS-based paging procedure only sends WUS in the cell where the UE entered RRC_IDLE state, then the procedure is simple to implement, but it does not support inter-cell mobility scenarios
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extends the WUS mechanism's universality by configuring multiple WUS beacons across different serving cells within the same TA, rather than limiting WUS transmission to a single cell. This allows the WUS-based paging procedure to function universally across inter-cell mobility scenarios, enabling UEs to receive wake-up signals regardless of which cell they are currently camped on, thus maintaining both simplicity and mobility support.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds a spatial dimension to the WUS mechanism by introducing cell-specific time offsets that map different WUS beacons to different serving cells. Instead of a single-dimensional approach where WUS is sent from one cell, the system now operates in multiple dimensions (time offsets, cell IDs, frequency allocations), allowing the network to transmit WUS beacons from multiple cells simultaneously while maintaining a relatively simple overall procedure structure.
Data Source
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AI summary
The present disclosure relates to a simple and power-efficient procedure that allows using wake-up signaling in inter-cell mobility scenarios. The procedure is based on configuring a Wake-Up Signal (WUS) Beacon Occasion (WBO) for each Tracking Area (TA) of a user device. A WUS beacon corresponding to each cell in the TA is transmitted once at a cell-specific time offset within the WBO. The WBO is configured together with a mapping table that maps each of the cell-specific time offsets to cell-specific information. The cell-specific information may comprise a cell ID and/or an indicator of a cell-specific frequency and/or cell-specific frequency range to be used for synchronization signal reception (e.g., Global Synchronization Channel Number (GSCN)). Each TA comprises intra-frequency cells only. By using the WBO, the user device may reduce its power consumption by avoiding switching from its sleep state to its active state when doing cell reselections in the TA.