JP2001036457A - Intermittent reception system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To save the power consumption of a mobile terminal, which corresponds to the use state of a user, and to effectively save a battery by controlling a system so that an information part showing the presence or absence of paging information corresponding to a call group to which a self- terminal belongs is intermittently received. SOLUTION: When a radio wave is received in a reception antenna 202 in a mobile machine 108, a control signal decoding/judging part 204 to which a reception signal is supplied from a receiver 203 decodes the reception signal and extracts a control signal. A signal timing extraction part 209 extracts the signal timing of the control signal from the signal output of the control signal decoding/judging part 204 and outputs extracted signal timing to a battery saving management part 210. The battery saving management part 210 generates the reception timing of a call information channel from signal timing from the signal timing extraction part 209 and from a call group number from a call group reception part 207 and executes intermittent timing control on each function block.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an intermittent reception system for intermittently receiving a control signal from a base station in a mobile communication system to reduce power consumption of a mobile terminal.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Since a mobile terminal is generally driven by a battery, an intermittent reception system for intermittently receiving a control signal from a base station during a standby time is applied in order to extend a battery usable period. For example, consider a case where a control channel from a base station is configured by a time-division frame as shown in FIG. In the example shown in FIG. 7, two paging channels (paging channels) are used during one frame period.
And four communication setting channels are time-division multiplexed. Then, each channel is repeated for each time-division multiplex frame 701.

For example, one of two paging channels (CH1) is a paging channel for a mobile terminal having an odd telephone number, and the other (CH2) is a paging channel for a mobile terminal having an even telephone number. Therefore,
The odd-numbered mobile terminals intermittently receive only the paging channel of CH1. If the paging channel includes call information addressed to the own terminal, the mobile terminal performs a process according to the call. However, when the call information addressed to the own terminal is not included, the power supply to the part in the mobile terminal that does not need to operate during the standby time is stopped until the next paging channel reception timing arrives.

[0004] In order to reduce power consumption as much as possible, various measures have been taken for the intermittent reception system. For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2655548 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-209953 describe a method of reducing power consumption by extending an intermittent reception cycle when a predetermined condition is satisfied.

[0005]

The above-mentioned predetermined conditions are the reception electric field strength and the remaining battery level, and are the environment and situation of the mobile terminal itself. Then, the intermittent reception cycle becomes long regardless of the usage form of the user. However, there are users who want to use the mobile terminal frequently regardless of the received electric field strength or the remaining battery level. In particular, some users use the phone frequently. Conversely, some users do not use the phone so frequently. For such a user, it is desirable to reduce the battery consumption by extending the intermittent reception cycle even when the received electric field strength is strong or the battery level is abundant. That is, in the conventional intermittent reception method,
There is a problem that battery saving that matches the usage of the user cannot be realized.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an intermittent reception system capable of saving power consumption of a mobile terminal according to a usage pattern of a user and effectively realizing battery saving.

[0007]

In a discontinuous reception system according to the present invention, a control channel transmitted to a mobile terminal includes an information portion indicating the presence or absence of paging information for each paging group. Call frequency measuring means for measuring a call frequency for each mobile terminal; call group control means for grouping each mobile terminal into one of a plurality of call groups based on the measurement result of the call frequency measuring means; The mobile terminal includes: a call group information receiving unit that receives call group information from a communication control station; and a call group information receiving unit that receives call group information from a communication control station. Controls intermittent reception of an information part indicating the presence or absence of paging information corresponding to the call group to which the terminal belongs, and intermittent reception period Outside characterized in that it comprises a discontinuous reception means that performs control for stopping the power supply to each functional block in the terminal.

The paging group control means determines that the paging frequency of any mobile terminal belonging to a certain paging group is lower than the paging frequency of each mobile terminal belonging to another paging group having a higher paging frequency, and that the paging frequency is lower. Each mobile terminal is configured to be grouped so as to be higher than the calling frequency of each mobile terminal belonging to the paging group. The mobile terminals are grouped so that the number of mobile terminals included in each paging group is equal. If the mobile terminals are grouped according to the calling frequency as described above, the frequency of sending paging information to each mobile terminal belonging to the group having a low calling frequency is low. Therefore, each mobile terminal belonging to that group is assigned a paging channel. , The chance of executing the receiving process is reduced, and the battery saving effect is increased.

Preferably, the call group notifying means notifies the mobile terminal of the call group information at least at the time of location registration of the mobile terminal.

The control channel is configured to include, for example, a paging channel in addition to a paging channel, which indicates a presence or absence of paging information for each paging group. Also,
For example, each of the plurality of paging channels included in the control channel is configured to include an information portion indicating the presence or absence of paging information of the paging group corresponding to each paging channel.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram showing an example of a mobile communication system to which the discontinuous reception system according to the present invention can be applied. In the system shown in FIG. 1, the telephones 100 to 102 are fixed terminals, and are connected to the communication control station 103 in this example. The base stations 104 and 105
Mobile stations (hereinafter, also referred to as mobile devices) 108 to 109, which are mobile communication terminals located in their own radio base zones A, B (hereinafter, referred to as zones) 106, 107, respectively.
The communication control stations 103 and 110 to 111 are connected by a wireless channel.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a part related to communication settings when the mobile unit 108 is called. In FIG. 2, the components of the mobile device 108 other than the portion related to the communication setting at the time of calling are omitted. The other mobile units 109 to 111 are configured similarly to the mobile unit 108. In the mobile device 108, when a radio wave is received by the reception antenna 202, the receiver 203 supplies the received signal to the control signal decoding / determination unit 204. Control signal decoding / determining section 204 decodes the received signal to extract a control signal.

The signal timing extracting section 209 extracts the signal timing of the control signal from the signal output of the control signal decoding / determining section 204. Then, the extracted signal timing is output to battery save management section 210. Battery save management section 210 generates a call notification channel reception timing from the signal timing from signal timing extraction section 209 and the call group number from call group reception section 207, and controls intermittent timing control (power supply) for each functional block. (Supply on / off control). The call group number and the call notification channel will be described later in detail.

[0014] The base zone detection section 205
4 and 105, and outputs the base zone information to the position registration determination unit 213 via the communication monitoring control unit 217. The location registration determination unit 213 determines whether location registration is required as a mobile station from the base zone information,
If it is determined that it is necessary, the control signal code generation unit 214 is notified. Control signal code generation section 214 generates a position registration request signal in response to the notification, and outputs the signal to transmitter 215. The transmitter 215 sends the position registration request signal from the transmission antenna 216 as a radio wave.

Call group receiving section 207 receives a designated call group number from communication control station 103 via base stations 104 and 105 at the time of location registration or the like, and outputs it to battery save management section 210.

The paging notification determination section 208 determines the presence or absence of paging information relating to the own station from the information of the paging notification channel. If it determines that there is paging information relating to the own station, the paging information is notified to the communication setting reception section 206. I do. Also,
It instructs battery save management section 210 to create a paging channel reception timing for receiving paging information. Communication setting receiving section 206 receives paging information in response to the notification from call notification determining section 208.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of a part relating to communication settings when the base station 104 is called. Note that, in FIG. 3, the components of the base station 104 other than the portion related to the communication setting at the time of calling are omitted. Further, the base station 105 is configured similarly to the base station 104. Base station 1
In 04, the call notification transmitting unit 303 sets the communication control station 1
The control signal code generation unit 3
07. Further, communication setting transmitting section 304 outputs the call group number received from communication control station 103 and the communication setting information at the time of mobile station termination to control signal code generating section 307. Then, paging transmitting section 305 outputs the paging information at the time of calling the mobile station, received from communication control station 103, to control signal code generating section 307.

The signal timing receiving section 306 outputs the signal timing received from the communication control station 103 to the control signal code generating section 307 and the control signal decoding / determining section 312. The control signal code generation unit 307 transmits each information through a predetermined channel in accordance with the input signal timing.
That is, the call presence / absence information is transmitted through a call notification channel,
The communication setting information is transmitted on the communication setting channel, and the paging information is transmitted on the paging channel. Control signal transmitter 308 transmits the output signal of control signal code generation section 307 from transmission antenna 309 as a radio wave.

When a radio wave is received by receiving antenna 310, control signal receiver 311 supplies the received signal to control signal decoding / determining section 312. Control signal decoding / judgment unit 3
12 decodes the control signal in accordance with the signal timing of the received signal. Then, the control signal is transmitted to the communication setting receiving unit 31.
3 to the communication control station 103.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of the configuration of a part relating to communication settings when the communication control station 103 is called. In FIG. 4, the components of the communication control station 103 other than the portion related to the communication setting at the time of calling are omitted.

In the configuration shown in FIG.
101 to 102 are connected to the presence / absence connection control units 405 and 406 to 407 in the communication control station 103. Actually, a wired communication network including an exchange and the like is interposed between the telephones 100, 101 to 102 and the communication control station 103. And the telephones 100, 101 to 1
When a call request to the mobile station occurs from 02, the request reaches the communication control station 103. Presence / absence connection control unit 40
5, 406 to 407, upon detecting a call request from the telephone, transmit the connection destination mobile station information and the incoming call request to the communication monitoring control unit 4.
08 is notified.

The call frequency measurement unit 409 is connected to the communication monitoring control unit 408, and measures the frequency of calls to each mobile station. The paging group control unit 410 assigns each mobile station to one of a plurality of paging groups using the paging frequency as a parameter.

The base station control section 411 is provided for each base station, connects the communication monitoring control section 408 to each base station, and controls each base station. In the base station control unit 411, the call notification sending unit 413 supplies the base station with the call presence / absence information transmitted from the base station via the call notification channel. The communication setting transmitting unit 414 supplies the base station with a call group number transmitted from the base station through a communication setting channel and communication setting information at the time of mobile station termination. Paging sending section 415 sends paging information at the time of mobile station termination transmitted on the paging channel to the base station. Then, the signal timing transmitting section 4
16 supplies the signal timing of each channel in the control signal transmitted from the base station to the base station.

The communication setting receiving section 417 inputs the location registration information and communication setting information received by the base station through the communication setting channel from the base station, and outputs the information to the communication monitoring control section 408.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing one configuration example of the control channel. In this example, a call notification channel, two paging channels (paging channels), and three communication setting channels are time-division multiplexed during one frame period. Each channel is repeated for each time-division multiplex frame 501.

For example, one of the two paging channels (CH1) is a paging channel for a mobile terminal having an odd telephone number, and the other (CH2) is a paging channel for a mobile terminal having an even telephone number. In the call notification channel, information indicating the presence or absence of a call for each call group is set. Hereinafter, a portion including information indicating the presence or absence of a call is referred to as a subchannel. A mobile station belonging to a certain paging group receives only sub-channels related to the group to which the mobile station belongs. Then, only when paging is set in the sub-channel, reception processing of the paging channel and the communication setting channel is performed.

Next, the operation will be described. In the communication control station 103 shown in FIG.
When a connection request is received from the telephone set 100, 101 to 102 via the presence / absence connection control units 405, 406 to 407, a call process is performed on the connection destination mobile station, and the connection frequency measurement unit 409 is Notify the mobile station number. The call frequency measurement unit 409 manages the call frequency for each mobile station. That is, the number of calls per mobile station is counted, and the number of calls per unit time is used as the call frequency.
The paging frequency measurement unit 409 dynamically grasps the paging frequency, and supplies the latest value at the time when the mobile station performs location registration or the like to the paging group control unit 410.

The paging group control section 410 dynamically allocates each mobile station to one of the paging groups based on the paging frequency. Here, assignment is performed so that the number of mobile stations belonging to each call group becomes equal. For example, if there are 100 mobile stations under the control of the communication control station 103 and the number of paging groups is 4, grouping is performed so that 25 stations are assigned to each paging group.

Further, the call group control unit 410 performs grouping according to the magnitude of the call frequency. For example, if the mobile station under the control of the communication control station 103 at that time is 100
It is assumed that the number of call groups in the station is 4, the first group is the group with the highest call frequency, the second group is the group with the next highest call frequency, the third group is the group with the third highest call frequency, and the fourth group. If the group is the group with the lowest calling frequency, 25 stations are assigned to the first group in descending order of the calling frequency from among the 100 stations, and the remaining 75 stations are allocated.
Of the stations, 25 stations with a high calling frequency are assigned to the second group, and 25 stations with a high calling frequency among the remaining 50 stations are assigned to the third group, and the remaining 25 stations are assigned to the fourth group.

Thus, the first group includes mobile stations having higher call frequencies, and the fourth group includes mobile stations having lower call frequencies. Further, mobile stations having relatively high call frequency are collected in the second group, and mobile stations having relatively low call frequency are collected in the third group. The call group control unit 410 performs group reorganization every time a new value is input from the call frequency measurement unit 409.

That is, the mobile stations belonging to each paging group are allocated to the paging group having the highest paging frequency so that the number of mobile stations belonging to each paging group becomes equal. Grouping is performed so as to be assigned to the corresponding calling group. Therefore, the calling frequency of any mobile terminal belonging to a certain calling group is lower than the calling frequency of each mobile terminal belonging to another calling group having a higher calling frequency, and each mobile terminal belonging to another calling group having a lower calling frequency. Each mobile terminal is grouped so as to be higher than the calling frequency of the terminal.

The mobile station is notified of the group to which the mobile station belongs by the communication setting channel from the communication monitoring control unit 408 via the communication setting transmitting unit 414 and the base station. For example, the group to which the mobile station belongs is notified at the time of location registration or the like. In addition, when there is a change in the grouping due to a change in the calling frequency of each mobile station or an increase or decrease in the number of mobile stations, the communication monitoring control unit 408 does not wait for the location registration, and the next time. The change of the call group is notified to the mobile station using the signal exchange between the communication control station and the mobile station at the time of communication setting.

Next, the call group notification operation at the time of location registration will be described in detail with reference to FIGS. Here, a case where the mobile station 108 is powered on in the zone 106 of the base station 104 is taken as an example. When the power of the mobile device 108 is turned on, the control signal from the base station 104 is received and determined on the route of the receiving antenna 202, the receiver 203, the control signal decoding / determination unit 204, and the base zone detection unit 205. Then, base zone detecting section 205 knows that the own station is present in zone 106 of base station 104. Then, the base zone detection unit 205 determines that the communication monitoring control unit 217
And outputs the base zone information to the location registration determination unit 213 via the.

The location registration determining unit 213 determines that location registration is necessary based on the base zone information. Then, the position registration determination unit 213 and the control signal code generation unit 21
4, a radio wave including a position registration request signal is transmitted to the base station 104 via the path of the transmitter 215 and the transmission antenna 216.

At base station 104, receiving antenna, 3
10, control signal receiver 311, control signal decoding / determination unit 3
The location registration request signal is received through twelve routes. The control signal decoding / judgment unit 312 sends a position registration request signal to the communication control station 103 via the communication setting reception unit 313, matching the signal timing from the signal timing reception unit 306.

In the communication control station 103, the communication monitoring control unit 408 inputs a position registration request signal via the communication setting receiving unit 417. Then, it requests the grouping of the mobile units 108 from the paging group control unit 410. The paging group control unit 410 obtains the paging frequency of each mobile station from the paging frequency measurement unit 409, and determines the grouping of the mobile devices 108 based on the obtained paging frequency. And mobile device 1
08 is assigned to the call group number to which the communication monitoring control unit 408 belongs.
Return to.

The communication monitoring control unit 408 creates location registration reception information including a call group number, and
14 to the base station 104. In the base station 104, the location registration reception information is input to the communication setting transmission section 304 and is supplied to the control signal code generation section 307. The control signal code generation unit 307 includes a signal timing reception unit 306
The position registration reception information is put on the communication setting channel in accordance with the signal timing from the control signal transmitter, and transmitted via the control signal transmitter 308 and the transmission antenna 309.

In mobile unit 108, communication setting information including location registration acceptance information is input to control signal decoding / judgment unit 204 via reception antenna 202 and receiver 203. The control signal decoding / determining unit 204 outputs the received communication setting information to the communication monitoring control unit 217 via the communication setting receiving unit 206. Also, the call group number added to the location registration reception information included in the communication setting information is separated by control signal decoding / determining section 204 and transmitted to call group receiving section 207.

The call group number is notified to battery save management section 210. Battery save management unit 210
Controls the power supply to each functional block so as to intermittently receive the sub-channel (see FIG. 5) in the call notification channel corresponding to the notified call group number.

Next, a specific battery save control will be described with reference to FIG. Battery save management unit 21
0 controls power supply to each functional block so as to intermittently receive only the sub-channel corresponding to the call group to which the own station belongs during standby. That is, in a period other than the period of receiving the sub-channel corresponding to the call group to which the own station belongs, power is supplied to only the minimum necessary function blocks, and power is not supplied to other function blocks. Then, when there is no call to the call group to which the own station belongs, at the time of intermittent reception, (受 信) × (１ ／) =
The receiving operation is performed for (1/24) cycle.

In the conventional example shown in FIG. 7, since the paging channel must be received during the intermittent reception operation, (1)
/ 6) Periodic receiving operation was performed. Therefore, in this embodiment, a battery saving effect four times that of the conventional example is expected. If the setting of paging is made in the sub-channel, the receiving process of the paging channel allocated to the own station is performed.

In this embodiment, the call groups are grouped based on the call frequency. Then, since the mobile stations with low calling frequency are gathered in the same group, the frequency of sending the paging information to the mobile stations belonging to the group is low. As a result, each mobile station belonging to the group has less chance to execute the paging channel reception processing, and the battery saving effect increases. When grouping is performed ignoring the paging frequency, the paging channel reception process is frequently performed because the mobile station that is frequently called is included in the group even though the frequency of calling the own station is extremely low. There may be situations that must be done. That is, although the frequency at which the own station is called is extremely low, the degree of battery consumption increases.

In the conventional example shown in FIG. 7, if the time-division frame period is increased, the battery saving effect can be enhanced, but the time required to detect a call is increased. ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, the time until a call is detected can be substantially kept (without changing a time-division frame period), and the battery saving effect can be improved.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a time-division frame according to another embodiment. In the example shown in FIG.
In one time division frame 601, three paging channels and three communication setting channels are set. Each paging channel corresponds to each paging group according to the frequency of use. In addition, each paging channel includes a subchannel in which information indicating the presence or absence of a call for each call group is set.

Each mobile station performs control to intermittently receive only the subchannel of the paging channel corresponding to the paging group to which the mobile station belongs during standby. The notification method of the calling group and the grouping method according to the frequency of use are as follows.
This is the same as in the above embodiment.

When the time-division frame of the control channel is configured as shown in FIG. 6, a higher battery saving effect can be expected as compared with the case of the conventional example shown in FIG. Also, for mobile stations that are called less frequently,
A higher battery saving effect can be expected as in the case of the above embodiment.

[0047]

As described above, according to the present invention, the communication control station measures the frequency of calls to each mobile terminal and sets each mobile terminal to a plurality of call groups based on the measurement result. The mobile terminal notifies each mobile terminal of paging group information indicating which paging group it belongs to, and indicates whether the mobile terminal has paging information corresponding to the paging group to which the mobile terminal belongs. Since the control for stopping the power supply to each functional block in the terminal is performed except during the period in which the information portion is intermittently received, the battery saving effect can be enhanced without prolonging the time required for detecting a call. .

Further, if each mobile terminal is configured to be grouped according to the calling frequency, the battery saving effect of each mobile terminal belonging to the group having a low calling frequency can be particularly improved. This means that for a user who uses the device with a low usage frequency (call frequency), the battery consumption that matches the usage frequency, that is, the low battery consumption that corresponds to the low usage frequency, is realized.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram showing an example of a mobile communication system.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a part related to communication settings at the time of calling in the mobile device.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration example of a part related to communication settings at the time of calling in a base station.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration example of a portion related to communication settings at the time of calling in a communication control station.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing a configuration example of a control channel.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing another configuration example of the control channel.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing a configuration example of a conventional control channel.

[Explanation of symbols]

 100 to 102 Telephone 103 Communication control station 104, 105 Base station 106, 107 Zone 108 to 111 Mobile station (mobile station)

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. An intermittent reception for reducing power consumption of a mobile terminal in a communication system including a communication control station that performs a paging control process for the mobile terminal and a base station that connects the mobile terminal and the communication control station. A control channel transmitted to a mobile terminal includes an information portion indicating presence / absence of paging information for each paging group, wherein the communication control station performs paging for measuring a paging frequency for each mobile terminal. Frequency measurement means, call group control means for grouping each mobile terminal into any of a plurality of call groups based on the measurement result of the call frequency measurement means,
Call group notifying means for notifying each mobile terminal of call group information indicating to which call group the mobile terminal belongs, the mobile terminal receiving call group information from a communication control station via a base station Calling group information receiving means,
Intermittent receiving means for controlling so as to intermittently receive an information portion indicating the presence or absence of paging information corresponding to the call group to which the own terminal belongs, and controlling to stop power supply to each functional block in the terminal during periods other than the intermittent reception period; A discontinuous reception method characterized by including: 2. The calling group control means, wherein the calling frequency of any mobile terminal belonging to a certain calling group is lower than the calling frequency of each mobile terminal belonging to another calling group having a higher calling frequency, and the calling frequency is higher. 2. The intermittent reception system according to claim 1, wherein each mobile terminal is grouped so as to be higher in calling frequency than each mobile terminal belonging to another low calling group. 3. The intermittent reception system according to claim 2, wherein the call group control means divides each mobile terminal into groups so that the number of mobile terminals included in each call group becomes equal. 4. The intermittent reception system according to claim 1, wherein the call group notifying means notifies the mobile terminal of call group information at least at the time of location registration of the mobile terminal. 5. The intermittent reception method according to claim 1, wherein the control channel includes a paging channel in addition to a paging channel, which indicates whether or not paging information exists for each paging group. 6. The control channel includes a plurality of paging channels, and each paging channel includes an information portion indicating presence / absence of paging information of a paging group corresponding to each paging channel.
Intermittent reception method described.