CN109548113B - Paging method of user equipment and related equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

The embodiment of the application discloses a paging method of user equipment and related equipment, which realize the operations of allocating a first paging area for the user equipment by network equipment, indicating gateway equipment to cache downlink data of the user equipment, initiating paging of the user equipment in the first paging area and the like, thereby having little change on the network equipment and the gateway equipment and being very easy to realize. The method in the embodiment of the application comprises the following steps: the network equipment receives the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station; the network equipment allocates a first paging area for the user equipment according to the inactive state information; the network equipment sends inactive state information to the gateway equipment, and the inactive state information is used for indicating the gateway equipment to cache downlink data of the user equipment; the network equipment receives a downlink data notification of the user equipment sent by the gateway equipment; and the network equipment initiates paging to the user equipment in the first paging area according to the downlink data notification.

Description

Paging method of user equipment and related equipment

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of communications technologies, and in particular, to a paging method for a user equipment and a related device.

Background

There are two states after the User Equipment (UE) attaches to the network: a connected state and an idle state. In the connected state, the base station allocates radio resources for the user equipment to transmit user plane data, and the user equipment and the base station can directly transmit data. However, in the connected state, the ue consumes much power and occupies much radio resources, so that the base station may turn the ue to the idle state when there is no data transmission for a while. In the idle state, the base station releases the radio resources allocated to the ue, and the ue also operates in the power saving mode. When the network equipment needs to send signaling or data to the user equipment, the user equipment is paged in all cells in the registration area of the user equipment through a paging technology, wherein in the idle state, the location area of the user equipment known by the network equipment is called the registration area. The user equipment responds to the paging after receiving the paging message sent to the user equipment, establishes communication with the network equipment and converts the communication into a connection state.

In order to save signaling overhead of the network device for paging the user equipment and enable the user equipment to quickly access to the network when the user equipment needs to perform a service, the base station may transfer the user equipment to a Radio Resource Control (RRC) inactive state, which is hereinafter referred to as an inactive state. In this inactive state, the base station releases the radio resources allocated to the user equipment, but the base station and the network equipment, and the user equipment and the network equipment are still in a connected state. As shown in fig. 1, when the base station is disconnected from the ue, the base station allocates a paging area to the ue, and the paging area is included in the registration area. When the user equipment needs to send or receive data, the network equipment firstly sends the data of the user equipment to the base station, the base station caches the data, and the base station triggers paging of the user equipment in a paging area. After the base station pages the user equipment, the connection with the user equipment is restored, and the cached data can be sent to the user equipment. The location area of the user equipment known to the base station is referred to as a paging area. Because the paging area in the inactive state is smaller than the registration area in the idle state, and the network device does not need to page the user equipment, the signaling overhead of the network for paging the user equipment can be saved. For the network device, the user equipment is still in a connected state, that is, the connection between the base station and the network device and the connection between the user equipment and the network device still exist, so in the paging procedure in the inactive state, signaling messages are not needed to recover the connection between the base station and the network device and the connection between the user equipment and the network device, thereby ensuring that the user equipment can quickly access to the network when the user equipment needs to perform a service.

Although in an inactive state, after the base station releases the radio resources allocated to the user equipment, the functions of paging area allocation, user accessibility management, data packet caching and the like can be realized through the base station, so that the signaling overhead of the network equipment for paging the user equipment is saved, and the user equipment can be quickly accessed to a network when needing to perform services, after the base station releases the radio resources allocated to the user equipment, the functions of paging area allocation, user accessibility management, data packet caching and the like are realized through the base station, and the functions need to be supported by complicated software and hardware changes on the base station, so that the realization is very complicated.

Disclosure of Invention

In order to solve the technical problem that a base station is greatly changed in the prior art, an embodiment of the present application provides a paging method for a user equipment. Then, the network device sends the inactive state information to the gateway device, so that the gateway device buffers the received downlink data of the user equipment. After receiving the downlink data notification sent by the gateway device, the network device initiates paging to the user equipment in the first paging area. The network device allocates the first paging area for the user device in the inactive state, instructs the gateway device to cache the downlink data of the user device, initiates paging of the user device in the first paging area, and the like, so that the network device and the gateway device are not changed greatly, and the realization is very easy. The embodiment of the application also provides a paging device, network equipment, gateway equipment, a base station, a computer program product, a computer storage medium and other related equipment of the user equipment.

A first aspect of an embodiment of the present application provides a paging method for a user equipment, including: the network device receives inactive state information of the user equipment sent by a first base station, where the first base station is a base station where the user equipment currently resides, and the inactive state information may be obtained by the first base station turning the user equipment into an inactive state when detecting that there is no data transmission in a preset time period, and sending the inactive state information of the user equipment to the network device. The network device learns that the user equipment is switched to the inactive state according to the received inactive state information of the user equipment, and at the moment, the network device allocates a first paging area for the user equipment. The first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network equipment, and the first paging area may include cells corresponding to one or more cell identities. When receiving the inactivity state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station, the network equipment also sends the inactivity state information to the gateway equipment. And the gateway equipment marks the state of the user equipment as an inactive state according to the inactive state information, and caches the downlink data of the user equipment when receiving the downlink data of the user equipment. The network device receives a downlink data notification of the user device sent by the gateway device, where the downlink data notification is sent by the gateway device after caching the downlink data of the user device. After receiving the downlink data notification, the network device learns that the downlink data of the user device arrives, and at this time, the network device initiates paging of the user device in the first paging area. For example, the network device may send a paging message to the first base station so that the first base station pages the user equipment within its coverage area, or may send paging messages to the base stations included in the first paging area respectively so that the base stations page the user equipment within their coverage areas respectively. The network device can allocate a paging area (namely, a first paging area) to the user equipment, instruct the gateway device to cache received downlink data, initiate paging of the user equipment in the paging area and the like when the user equipment is in an inactive state, and the gateway device has functions of downlink data caching and the like because the network device has functions of registration area allocation (the paging area is a subset of the registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device) and paging and the like. Therefore, when the operation is realized on the network equipment and the gateway equipment, the network equipment and the gateway equipment are not changed greatly, and the realization is very easy.

With reference to the first aspect of the present application, in a first implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the initiating, by a network device, paging of a user equipment in a first paging area includes: the network equipment respectively sends paging messages to all base stations included in the first paging area, so that all base stations page the user equipment in respective coverage areas. Specifically, first, the network device determines base stations included in a first paging area, the base stations including a first base station and other base stations except the first base station. Then, the network device sends a paging message to the first base station, sends a paging message carrying the first base station identifier to other base stations, sends the paging message to the first base station and sends the paging message to other base stations, and is used for indicating each base station in the first paging area and other base stations except the first base station to page the user equipment in the coverage area of each base station. The effect of carrying the first base station identifier in the paging message sent to the other base station is that, when the other base station pages the user equipment subsequently, the other base station can obtain the context of the user equipment from the first base station according to the identifier of the first base station, so that the other base station can recover the RRC connection with the user equipment according to the context of the user equipment. In this embodiment, when initiating paging for the user equipment in the first paging area, the network device may send a paging message to each base station included in the first paging area, so that each base station pages the user equipment in its coverage area, thereby improving convenience of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the first implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, in a second implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, a paging message sent by a network device carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct each base station in a first paging area to page user equipment in a cell corresponding to a cell identifier that needs to be paged. That is, a paging message sent by the network device to the first base station carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to indicate the first base station to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to a cell identifier that needs to be paged. The network device carries a cell identifier list in paging messages sent to other base stations except the first base station in the first paging area, the cell identifier list comprises one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used for indicating other base stations to page user equipment in cells corresponding to cell identifiers needing paging respectively. In this embodiment, the paging message sent by the network device carries the cell identifier list, so that each base station in the first paging area can page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier that needs to be paged, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a third implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the initiating, by the network device, paging of the user equipment in the first paging area includes: the network equipment firstly sends a first paging message to the first base station, and then the first base station sends a second paging message to other base stations. Specifically, the network device sends a first paging message to a first base station, so that the first base station pages the user equipment within the coverage area of the first base station after receiving the first paging message, determines other base stations within the first paging area, and sends a second paging message to the other base stations, so that the other base stations page the user equipment within the respective coverage areas after receiving the second paging message. In this embodiment, the network device only needs to send the first paging message to the first base station, and then the first base station sends the second paging message to the other base stations, so that each base station pages the user equipment in its coverage area, thereby improving the flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application and any one of the first implementation manner to the third implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a fourth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, when a user equipment moves from a first base station to a coverage area of a second base station, a second base station pages to the user equipment, at this time, a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is switched from the first base station to the second base station, a network device receives a path switching request message sent by the second base station, where the path switching request message may carry data forwarding information of the second base station, and the data forwarding information may be a user plane IP address of the second base station, and may also include a tunnel protocol identifier of the second base station. After receiving the path switching request message, the network device sends the path switching request message to the gateway device, so that the gateway device learns that a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is switched from the first base station to the second base station according to the received path switching request message, and at the moment, the cached downlink data is sent to the second base station, and then the second base station sends the cached downlink data to the user equipment. In the embodiment, the second base station can page the user equipment, so that the range of paging the user equipment is expanded, and the success rate of paging the user equipment is improved.

With reference to the fourth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in the fifth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the network device receives a context of the user equipment sent by the first base station, where the context of the user equipment may be that the network device receives the context of the user equipment sent by the first base station while receiving the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station; the context of the user equipment may also be the context of the user equipment sent by the first base station after the network equipment receives the inactivity state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station, which is not limited herein. After the network equipment receives the context of the user equipment, the network equipment sends the context of the user equipment to the second base station, so that the second base station recovers RRC connection with the user equipment according to the context of the user equipment, and sends downlink data of the user equipment to the user equipment. In this embodiment, the network device sends the context of the ue to the second base station, which facilitates the RRC connection between the second base station and the ue to be recovered, and is very convenient to implement.

With reference to the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, and any one of the first to third implementation manners to the third implementation manners of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a sixth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, when the ue is in a coverage area of the first base station (the ue is always in the coverage area of the first base station, or the ue moves to another base station and then moves back to the coverage area of the first base station), the first base station pages to the ue, and at this time, the network device receives connection status information sent by the first base station. After receiving the connection state information, the network device sends the connection state information to the gateway device, so that the gateway device learns that a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is a first base station according to the received connection state information, and at the moment, sends the cached downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station. In the embodiment, the first base station can page the user equipment, so that the method is very convenient to realize and the convenience of paging the user equipment is improved.

With reference to the third implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a seventh implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the network device first sends the first paging message to the first base station, and then the first base station sends the paging message to another base station having an interface with the first base station to page the user equipment, and for a base station having no interface with the first base station, if the paging message sent by the first base station is not received, the user equipment is not paged. This may result in a failure to page the user equipment, since the user equipment may move to a base station that does not have an interface with the first base station. At this time, the first base station sends a paging failure message to the network device, the network device turns the user equipment into an idle state after receiving the paging failure message sent by the first base station, determines a second paging area, and initiates paging of the user equipment in the second paging area, wherein the second paging area can be an area obtained by excluding a paged area in the first paging area; alternatively, the second paging area may be an area excluding a paged area from the registration area, and the like, and is not limited herein. In this embodiment, after the first base station and the base station having the interface with the first base station cannot page the user equipment, the network device may trigger the base station in the second paging area to page the user equipment when receiving a paging failure message sent by the first base station, so that the base station having no interface with the first base station can page the user equipment, thereby ensuring that the user equipment can be paged, and improving efficiency and flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the seventh implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in an eighth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, to avoid initiating repeated paging to the same location area that has been paged, the network device may exclude the area range that has been paged and is provided by the first base station. Specifically, the paging failure message sent by the first base station and received by the network device includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment, and at this time, in a process of initiating paging to the user equipment in the second paging area, the network device may determine the second paging area according to the paging information, that is, an area excluding the area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment in the first paging area is set as the second paging area, and then initiate paging to the user equipment in the second paging area. In this embodiment, the network device may determine the second paging area according to the paging information included in the paging failure message, which may avoid repeated paging in the paged area, and improve the efficiency of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the eighth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a ninth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the paging failure message sent by the first base station and received by the network device includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list. At this time, when the network device initiates paging to the user equipment, the area range in which the first base station has paged the user equipment can be excluded, so that repeated paging is avoided, and the convenience and reliability of paging the user equipment are improved.

With reference to any one of the seventh implementation manner to the ninth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a tenth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the network device determines, according to the paging information included in the paging failure message, a second paging area, where the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes an area range where the network device has paged the user equipment from the paging area; or, the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range where the user equipment has been paged from the registration area. Therefore, when the network equipment initiates paging to the user equipment, the area range which has been paged is excluded, repeated paging is avoided, the efficiency and reliability of paging the user equipment are improved, and the service experience of the user equipment is prevented from being influenced.

A second aspect of the present application provides a paging method for a user equipment, including: the gateway device receives inactive state information of the user device sent by the network device, wherein the inactive state information is obtained by converting the user device into an inactive state by the first base station when detecting that no data transmission exists in the user device within a preset time, and sending the inactive state information of the user device to the network device, and then sending the inactive state information of the user device to the gateway device by the network device. The gateway device learns that the user equipment has been switched to the inactive state according to the received inactive state information, and at this time, the gateway device marks the state of the user equipment as the inactive state. And when the downlink data of the user equipment arrives, the gateway equipment receives the downlink data of the user equipment and caches the downlink data of the user equipment according to the marked inactive state. After caching downlink data of user equipment, the gateway device sends a downlink data notification to the network device, so that the network device learns that the downlink data of the user equipment arrives according to the downlink data notification, and then initiates paging of the user equipment in a first paging area, wherein the first paging area is allocated to the user equipment by the network device when the network device receives inactive state information, the first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device, and the first paging area may include cells corresponding to one or more cell identifiers. When the user equipment is in an inactive state, the gateway equipment can mark the state of the user equipment as an inactive state and buffer downlink data of the user equipment when receiving the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the network equipment, and the network equipment executes operations of allocating a paging area (namely, a first paging area) to the user equipment, indicating the gateway equipment to buffer the received downlink data, initiating paging of the user equipment in the paging area and the like. Therefore, when the operation is realized on the network equipment and the gateway equipment, the network equipment and the gateway equipment are not changed greatly, and the realization is very easy.

With reference to the second aspect of the present embodiment, in the first implementation manner of the second aspect of the present embodiment, when the ue is in the coverage area of the first base station, the first base station pages the ue and sends the connection status information to the network device, so that the network device sends the connection status information to the gateway device after receiving the connection status information. The gateway device receives the connection state information, and learns that a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is a first base station according to the received connection state information, at the moment, the gateway device clears the marked inactive state, and the cached downlink data is sent to the user equipment through the first base station. In this embodiment, the gateway device sends the downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station that pages the user equipment, which is very convenient to implement and improves the convenience of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the second aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a second implementation manner of the second aspect of the embodiment of the present application, when the ue moves from the first base station to the coverage of the second base station, the second base station pages the ue and sends the path switch request message to the network device, so that the network device sends the path switch message to the gateway device, and at this time, a forwarding channel of downlink data of the ue is switched from the first base station to the second base station. The gateway device receives a path switching request message of the user equipment sent by the network device, where the path switching request message may carry data forwarding information of the second base station, and the data forwarding information may be a user plane IP address of the second base station, and may also include a second tunneling protocol identifier and the like. And the gateway equipment updates the forwarding path of the downlink data according to the path switching request message and clears the marked inactive state. And the gateway equipment sends the cached downlink data to the second base station according to the updated forwarding path, and then the second base station sends the downlink data to the user equipment. In this embodiment, the gateway device sends the downlink data to the user equipment through the second base station that pages the user equipment, so as to expand the range of paging the user equipment and improve the success rate of paging the user equipment.

A third aspect of the embodiments of the present application provides a paging method for a user equipment, including: and the base station sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the network equipment, wherein the base station is the base station where the user equipment currently resides. The base station may convert the ue into an inactive state and send the inactive state information of the ue to the network device when detecting that there is no data transmission in the preset time. The network device can know that the user equipment is in the inactive state according to the received inactive state information of the user equipment, and therefore the first paging area is distributed to the user equipment. The first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network equipment, and the first paging area may include cells corresponding to one or more cell identities. The base station receives a first paging area sent by the network equipment and sends the first paging area to the user equipment. The base station receives a first paging message sent by the network equipment, wherein the first paging message is sent to the base station by the network equipment when receiving a downlink data notification of the user equipment sent by the gateway equipment, and the downlink data notification is sent to the network equipment after the gateway equipment caches the downlink data of the user equipment. And the base station pages the user equipment in the coverage range of the base station according to the first paging message, wherein the coverage range of the base station is contained in the first paging area. The base station sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the network equipment so that the network equipment can allocate a first paging area to the user equipment and initiate paging to the user equipment, and the base station pages the user equipment in the coverage range of the base station according to the received first paging message. The method is very convenient to realize, and the convenience of paging the user equipment is improved.

With reference to the third aspect of the present application, in a first implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, after receiving a first paging message sent by a network device, a base station determines other base stations in a first paging area, and may send a second paging message to the other base stations in the first paging area while paging a user equipment within a coverage area of the base station; the base station may send the second paging message to other base stations in the first paging area after paging the user equipment within its coverage area, or the base station may send the second paging message to other base stations in the first paging area first and then page the user equipment within its coverage area, which is not limited herein. The second paging message is used for instructing other base stations to page the user equipment in the coverage areas of the base stations. In this embodiment, the base station may not only page the user equipment after receiving the first paging message, but also send the second paging message to other base stations in the first paging area, so that the other base stations page the user equipment in their respective coverage areas, thereby improving the flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the third aspect of the present application, in a second implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, a cell identifier list is carried in a first paging message received by a base station, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station to page user equipment in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier. In this embodiment, the first paging message received by the base station carries the cell identifier list, so that the base station can page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier to be paged, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the third aspect of the present embodiment, the first implementation manner or the second implementation manner of the third aspect of the present embodiment, in a third implementation manner of the third aspect of the present embodiment, when the user equipment is in the coverage area of the base station, the base station pages to the user equipment. After the base station pages the user equipment, the base station and the user equipment recover RRC connection and send the connection state information to the network equipment, so that the network equipment sends the connection state information to the gateway equipment after receiving the connection state information. And the gateway equipment acquires that the forwarding channel of the downlink data of the user equipment is the base station according to the received connection state information, clears the marked inactive state and sends the cached downlink data to the base station. And the base station receives the cached downlink data of the user equipment sent by the gateway equipment and then sends the received downlink data to the user equipment. In this embodiment, after paging the user equipment, the base station sends the received downlink data sent by the gateway equipment to the user equipment, which is very convenient to implement and improves the convenience of sending the downlink data of the user equipment.

With reference to the third aspect of the present application, the first implementation manner or the second implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, in a fourth implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, the base station sends a context of the user equipment to the network device. The context of the user equipment may be sent by the base station while sending the inactivity state information of the user equipment to the network equipment, or the context of the user equipment may be sent by the base station after or before sending the inactivity state information of the user equipment to the network equipment, which is not limited herein. So that the network device sends the context of the user equipment to the second base station after receiving the context of the user equipment. In this embodiment, the base station sends the context of the user equipment to the network equipment, so that the network equipment can conveniently send the context of the user equipment to the second base station, and the implementation is very convenient.

With reference to the first implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, in a fifth implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, the network device first sends the first paging message to the first base station, and then the first base station sends the paging message to another base station having an interface with the first base station to page the user equipment, and for a base station having no interface with the first base station, if the paging message sent by the first base station is not received, the user equipment is not paged. This may result in a failure to page the user equipment, since the user equipment may move to a base station that does not have an interface with the first base station. At this time, the first base station sends a paging failure message to the network device, the network device turns the user equipment into an idle state after receiving the paging failure message sent by the first base station, determines a second paging area, and initiates paging of the user equipment in the second paging area, wherein the second paging area can be an area obtained by excluding a paged area in the first paging area; alternatively, the second paging area may be an area excluding a paged area from the registration area, and the like, and is not limited herein. In this embodiment, after the first base station and the base station having the interface with the first base station do not page the user equipment, the first base station sends a paging failure message to the network device, and triggers the network device to initiate paging of the user equipment in the second paging area, so that the base station having no interface with the first base station can page the user equipment, thereby ensuring that the user equipment can be paged, and improving efficiency and flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the fifth implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, in a sixth implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, to avoid initiating repeated paging to the same location area that has been paged, the network device may exclude the area range that has been paged and is provided by the first base station. Specifically, the paging failure message sent by the first base station to the network device includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list. So that the network device can determine the second paging area according to the paging information, that is, the area excluding the area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment in the first paging area is set as the second paging area, and then initiate paging for the user equipment in the second paging area. In this embodiment, the first base station may send the paging information to the network device, so that the network device may exclude the area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment according to the paging information to obtain the second paging area, which may avoid repeated paging in the paged area, and improve convenience and reliability of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the fifth implementation manner or the sixth implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, in a seventh implementation manner of the third aspect of the present application, the second paging area is an area in which the network device excludes an area range in which the network device has paged the user equipment from the paging area; or, the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range where the user equipment has been paged from the registration area. Therefore, when the network equipment initiates paging to the user equipment, the area range which has been paged is excluded, repeated paging is avoided, the efficiency and reliability of paging the user equipment are improved, and the service experience of the user equipment is prevented from being influenced.

A fourth aspect of the present invention provides a paging method for a user equipment, including: the base station receives the paging message, wherein the base station is a base station to which the user equipment moves from a first base station, and the first base station is a base station in which the user equipment resides before the user equipment is converted into the inactive state. After receiving the paging message, the base station pages the user equipment within the coverage area thereof according to the paging message. When the base station pages the user equipment, the base station sends a path switching request message to the network equipment, where the path switching request message may carry data forwarding information of the base station, and the data forwarding information may be a user plane IP address of the base station, or may include a tunnel protocol identifier of the base station. The path switching request message is sent to the gateway device by the network device, so that the gateway device learns that a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is switched to the base station by the first base station according to the received path switching request message, and at the moment, the cached downlink data of the user equipment is sent to the base station. And the base station receives the cached downlink data of the user equipment sent by the gateway equipment and sends the downlink data to the user equipment. In this embodiment, when the ue moves to the base station, the base station can page the ue, which enlarges the range of paging the ue and improves the success rate of paging the ue.

With reference to the fourth aspect of the present application, in the first implementation manner of the fourth aspect of the present application, a paging message received by a base station carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station to page user equipment in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier. In this embodiment, the paging message received by the base station carries the cell identifier list, so that the base station can page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier to be paged, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the fourth aspect of the present application or the first implementation manner of the fourth aspect of the present application, in a second implementation manner of the fourth aspect of the present application, a manner for a base station to receive a paging message includes: the network equipment sends paging messages to all base stations in the first paging area respectively, the base stations receive the first paging messages sent by the network equipment, and after receiving the first paging messages, the base stations page the user equipment in the coverage area according to the first paging messages. Or, the network device sends the paging message to the first base station first, and then the first base station sends the second paging message to other base stations, that is, the base station receives the second paging message sent by the first base station, the first base station is a base station where the user equipment resides before the user equipment is switched to the inactive state, and after receiving the second paging message, the base station pages the user equipment within the coverage area according to the second paging message. In this embodiment, the base station may page the ue within its coverage area according to the received paging message sent by the network device or the first base station, so as to improve the diversity and flexibility of triggering the base station to page the ue.

With reference to the second implementation manner of the fourth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in the third implementation manner of the fourth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in order to recover the RRC connection with the user equipment and send downlink data of the user equipment to the user equipment, the base station needs to acquire a context of the user equipment. The base station acquiring the context of the user equipment comprises the following steps: when the base station receives a first paging message sent by the network device, the base station can obtain the context of the user equipment from the first base station according to the identifier of the first base station because the first paging message carries the identifier of the first base station. Or, when the base station receives the first paging message sent by the network device, since the base station where the ue resides before the ue is turned into the inactive state may send the context of the ue to the network device, and the network device stores the context of the ue in the reception zone, the base station may obtain the context of the ue from the network device. Or, when the base station receives the second paging message sent by the first base station, because the second paging message sent by the first base station carries the relevant information of the first base station, such as the identifier of the first base station, the base station may obtain the context of the user equipment from the first base station according to the relevant information of the first base station, for example, the base station may send a context obtaining request to the first base station, so that the first base station feeds back the context of the user equipment to the base station according to the received obtaining request. In this embodiment, the base station may acquire the context of the user equipment in various ways, and may acquire the context from the network equipment or the first base station, thereby improving flexibility and reliability of acquiring the context of the user equipment.

A fifth aspect of the present application provides a paging method for a user equipment, including: the network equipment receives a paging failure message sent by a first base station; the paging failure message may be sent by the first base station when paging the user equipment fails, and the first base station paging the user equipment may be used for receiving a downlink signaling sent by the network equipment after the user equipment is turned to an inactive state, or paging the user equipment when downlink data sent by the gateway equipment is received. After receiving the paging failure message, the network device changes the user equipment to an idle state, and the network device initiates paging to the user equipment in the second paging area. In this embodiment, the first base station notifies the network device of the paging failure message, which may trigger the network device to initiate paging of the user equipment in the second paging area, so as to ensure that the user equipment may be paged, thereby improving efficiency and flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the fifth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in the first implementation manner of the fifth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, to avoid initiating repeated paging to the same location area, the network device may exclude an area range where the user equipment has been paged, that is, a paging failure message sent by the first base station to the network device includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list. When the network device initiates paging to the user equipment in the second paging area, the second paging area may be determined according to the paging information, for example, an area excluding an area range where the user equipment has been paged from the paging area is the second paging area, the second paging area is included in the paging area, and the paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device. For another example, the area excluding the area range where the user equipment has been paged from the registration area is the second paging area, the second paging area is included in the registration area, and at this time, the network equipment initiates paging to the user equipment in the second paging area. In this embodiment, when the first base station does not page the user equipment, the first base station notifies the network equipment of paging failure and notifies the paged area, so that the network equipment can be triggered to page the user equipment in the second paging area, and repeated paging in the paged area can be avoided, so that the user equipment can be paged, the reliability of paging the user equipment is improved, and the service experience of the user equipment is prevented from being influenced.

A sixth aspect of the present application provides a paging device for a user equipment, including: the first receiving unit is configured to receive inactivity state information of the ue sent by the first base station, where the first base station is a base station where the ue currently resides, and the inactivity state information may be obtained after the first base station changes the ue into an inactivity state and sends the inactivity state information of the ue to the network device when detecting that there is no data transmission in the ue within a preset time. An allocating unit, configured to allocate a first paging area to the ue according to the inactivity status information received by the first receiving unit, where the first paging area is a subset of a registration area of the ue, and the first paging area may include cells corresponding to one or more cell identifiers. After the first receiving unit receives the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station, the first sending unit is configured to send the inactive state information received by the first receiving unit to the gateway device, so that the gateway device marks the state of the user equipment as an inactive state according to the inactive state information, and caches downlink data of the user equipment when receiving the downlink data of the user equipment. A second receiving unit, configured to receive a downlink data notification of the user equipment sent by the gateway device, where the downlink data notification is sent by the gateway device after caching the downlink data of the user equipment. And the first paging unit is used for initiating paging to the user equipment in the first paging area allocated by the allocation unit according to the downlink data notification received by the second receiving unit. For example, the first paging unit may send a paging message to the first base station so that the first base station pages the user equipment within its coverage area, or may send paging messages to the base stations included in the first paging area respectively so that the base stations page the user equipment within their coverage areas respectively. The allocation unit can allocate a first paging area for the user equipment when the user equipment is in an inactive state, the first sending unit indicates the gateway equipment to buffer the received downlink data, the first paging unit initiates the operation of paging the user equipment in the first paging area, and the like. Therefore, when the operations are realized on the paging device of the user equipment and the gateway equipment, the changes to the paging devices of the network equipment and the user equipment are not large, and the realization is very easy.

With reference to the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, in the first implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, the first paging unit sends paging messages to the base stations included in the first paging area, respectively, so that the base stations page the user equipment within their coverage areas. Specifically, the first paging unit is specifically configured to determine base stations included in the first paging area allocated by the allocation unit, where the base stations include the first base station and other base stations except the first base station. And then sending a paging message to the first base station, sending a paging message carrying the first base station identifier to other base stations, sending the paging message to the first base station and sending the paging message to other base stations, wherein the paging message is used for indicating each base station in the first paging area and other base stations except the first base station to page the user equipment in the coverage range of the first base station and other base stations. The effect of carrying the first base station identifier in the paging message sent to the other base station is that, when the other base station pages the user equipment subsequently, the other base station can obtain the context of the user equipment from the first base station according to the identifier of the first base station, so that the other base station can recover the RRC connection with the user equipment according to the context of the user equipment. In this embodiment, when initiating paging of the user equipment in the first paging area, the first paging unit may send a paging message to each base station included in the first paging area, so that each base station pages the user equipment in its coverage area, thereby improving convenience of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the first implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present application, in a second implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present application, a paging message sent by the first paging unit carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct each base station in the first paging area to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to a cell identifier that needs to be paged. That is, a paging message sent by the first paging unit to the first base station carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the first base station to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to a cell identifier that needs to be paged. The first paging unit carries a cell identifier list in paging messages sent to other base stations except the first base station in the first paging area, the cell identifier list comprises one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used for indicating other base stations to page user equipment in cells corresponding to cell identifiers needing paging respectively. In this embodiment, the paging message sent by the first paging unit carries the cell identifier list, so that each base station in the first paging area can page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier that needs to be paged, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, in a third implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, the initiating, by the first paging unit, paging of the user equipment in the first paging area includes: the first paging unit firstly sends a first paging message to the first base station, and then the first base station sends a second paging message to other base stations. Specifically, the first paging unit is specifically configured to send a first paging message to the first base station, so that the first base station pages the user equipment within the coverage area of the first base station after receiving the first paging message, determine other base stations in the first paging area allocated by the allocation unit, and send a second paging message to the other base stations, so that the other base stations page the user equipment within their coverage areas after receiving the second paging message. In this embodiment, the first paging unit only needs to send the first paging message to the first base station, and then the first base station sends the second paging message to the other base stations, so that each base station pages the user equipment within its coverage area, thereby improving the flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the sixth aspect of the present embodiment and any one of the first implementation manner to the third implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, in the fourth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, when the user equipment moves from the first base station to the coverage of the second base station, the second base station pages to the user equipment, at this time, a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is switched from the first base station to the second base station, and the third receiving unit receives the path switching request message sent by the second base station. The path switching request message may carry data forwarding information of the second base station, where the data forwarding information may be a user plane IP address of the second base station, and may also include a tunnel protocol identifier of the second base station. After receiving the path switching request message, the second sending unit sends the path switching request message received by the third receiving unit to the gateway device, so that the gateway device learns that a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is switched from the first base station to the second base station according to the received path switching request message, and at the moment, the cached downlink data is sent to the second base station, and then the second base station sends the cached downlink data to the user equipment. In the embodiment, the second base station can page the user equipment, so that the range of paging the user equipment is expanded, and the success rate of paging the user equipment is improved.

With reference to the fourth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, in a fifth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, the paging device of the user equipment further includes: a fourth receiving unit, configured to receive the context of the user equipment sent by the first base station. The context of the user equipment may be that the fourth receiving unit receives the context of the user equipment sent by the first base station while the first receiving unit receives the inactivity state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station; the context of the user equipment may also be that the fourth receiving unit receives the context of the user equipment sent by the first base station after the first receiving unit receives the inactivity state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station, and is not limited herein. After receiving the context of the user equipment, the third sending unit sends the context of the user equipment received by the fourth receiving unit to the second base station. And the second base station recovers RRC connection with the user equipment according to the context of the user equipment and sends the downlink data of the user equipment to the user equipment. In this embodiment, the third sending unit sends the context of the ue to the second base station, which is convenient for the second base station to recover RRC connection with the ue, and is very convenient to implement.

With reference to the sixth aspect of the present embodiment and any one of the first implementation manner to the third implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, in the sixth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, when the ue is in the coverage of the first base station (the ue is always in the coverage of the first base station, or the ue moves to another base station and then moves back to the coverage of the first base station), the first base station pages the ue, and at this time, the fifth receiving unit is configured to receive the connection status information sent by the first base station. After receiving the connection state information, the fourth sending unit is configured to send the connection state information received by the fifth receiving unit to the gateway device, so that the gateway device learns that a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is the first base station according to the received connection state information, and at this time, sends the cached downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station. In the embodiment, the first base station can page the user equipment, so that the method is very convenient to realize and the convenience of paging the user equipment is improved.

With reference to the third implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, in a seventh implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the present embodiment, the first paging unit first sends the first paging message to the first base station, and then the first base station sends the paging message to another base station having an interface with the first base station, so as to page the user equipment, and for a base station having no interface with the first base station, if the paging message sent by the first base station is not received, the user equipment is not paged. This may result in a failure to page the user equipment, since the user equipment may move to a base station that does not have an interface with the first base station. In this case, the paging apparatus of the user equipment further includes: a sixth receiving unit, configured to receive a paging failure message sent by the first base station; the processing unit is used for converting the user equipment into an idle state according to the paging failure message received by the sixth receiving unit; a second paging unit for initiating paging of the user equipment in a second paging area. The second paging area may be a partial area obtained by excluding a paged area from the first paging area; alternatively, the second paging area may be an area excluding a paged area from the registration area, and the like, and is not limited herein. In this embodiment, after the first base station and the base station having the interface with the first base station do not page the user equipment, the sixth receiving unit may trigger the base station in the second paging area to page the user equipment by the second paging unit when receiving the paging failure message sent by the first base station, so that the base station having no interface with the first base station can page the user equipment, thereby ensuring that the user equipment can be paged, and improving efficiency and flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the seventh implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in an eighth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, to avoid initiating repeated paging to the same location area that has been paged, the network device may exclude the area range that has been paged and is provided by the first base station. Specifically, the paging failure message includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment, and at this time, the second paging unit is specifically configured to determine a second paging area according to the paging information, and initiate paging of the user equipment in the second paging area. Namely, the area excluding the area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment in the first paging area is set as the second paging area, and then paging of the user equipment in the second paging area is initiated. In this embodiment, the second paging unit may determine the second paging area according to the paging information included in the paging failure message, which may avoid repeated paging in the paged area, and improve the efficiency of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the eighth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a ninth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the paging information includes an area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list. At this time, when the second paging unit initiates paging to the user equipment, the area range in which the first base station has paged the user equipment can be excluded, so that repeated paging is avoided, and the convenience and reliability of paging the user equipment are improved.

With reference to any one of the seventh implementation manner to the ninth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a tenth implementation manner of the sixth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the second paging unit determines, according to the paging information included in the paging failure message, a second paging area, where the second paging area is an area where the area range is excluded from the paging area by the network device; or, the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range from the registration area. Therefore, when the second paging unit initiates paging to the user equipment, the area range which has been paged is excluded, repeated paging is avoided, the efficiency and reliability of paging the user equipment are improved, and the service experience of the user equipment is prevented from being influenced.

A seventh aspect of the present embodiment provides a paging device for a user equipment, including: a first receiving unit, configured to receive inactivity status information of a user equipment sent by a network device. The inactive state information is sent to the first receiving unit by the network device after the first base station changes the user equipment into an inactive state when detecting that the user equipment does not have data transmission within the preset time. The marking unit learns that the user equipment has been switched to the inactive state according to the inactive state information received by the first receiving unit, and at this time, the marking unit marks the state of the user equipment as the inactive state. And when the downlink data of the user equipment arrives, the second receiving unit is used for receiving the downlink data of the user equipment. And the buffer unit is used for buffering the downlink data received by the second receiving unit according to the inactive state marked by the marking unit. A first sending unit, configured to send a downlink data notification to a network device, so that the network device learns that downlink data of a user equipment arrives according to the downlink data notification, and thus initiates paging of the user equipment in a first paging area, where the first paging area is allocated to the user equipment by the network device when receiving inactivity information, the first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device, and the first paging area may include cells corresponding to one or more cell identifiers. When the user equipment is in an inactive state, the first receiving unit receives the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the network equipment, the marking unit marks the state of the user equipment to be in the inactive state, and the buffer unit buffers the downlink data of the user equipment, while the network equipment executes the operations of allocating a paging area (namely, a first paging area) to the user equipment, indicating gateway equipment to buffer the received downlink data, initiating paging of the user equipment in the paging area and the like. Therefore, when the operations are realized on the paging devices of the network equipment and the user equipment, the paging devices of the network equipment and the user equipment are not greatly changed, and the operation is very easy to realize.

With reference to the seventh aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in the first implementation manner of the seventh aspect of the embodiment of the present application, when the ue is in the coverage area of the first base station, the first base station pages the ue and sends the connection status information to the network device, so that the network device sends the connection status information to the third receiving unit after receiving the connection status information. And a third receiving unit, configured to receive the connection status information sent by the network device, and learn, according to the received connection status information, that a forwarding channel of downlink data of the user equipment is the first base station. And the clearing unit is used for clearing the marked inactive state according to the connection state information received by the third receiving unit. And a second sending unit, configured to send the buffered downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station, where the first base station is a base station that pages the user equipment. In this embodiment, the second sending unit sends the downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station that pages the user equipment, which is very convenient to implement and improves the convenience of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the seventh aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a second implementation manner of the seventh aspect of the embodiment of the present application, when the ue moves from the first base station to a coverage area of the second base station, the second base station pages to the ue and sends a path switching request message to the network device, so that the network device sends the path switching message to the fourth receiving unit, and at this time, a forwarding channel of downlink data of the ue is switched from the first base station to the second base station. A fourth receiving unit, configured to receive a path switching request message of the user equipment sent by the network device, where the path switching request message may carry data forwarding information of the second base station, and the data forwarding information may be a user plane IP address of the second base station, and may also include a second tunneling protocol identifier, and the like. An updating unit, configured to update a forwarding path of the downlink data according to the path switching request message received by the fourth receiving unit, and clear the marked inactive state; and a third sending unit, configured to send the cached downlink data to the user equipment through the second base station according to the forwarding path updated by the updating unit, where the second base station is a base station that pages the user equipment. In this embodiment, the third sending unit sends the downlink data to the ue through the second base station that pages the ue, so as to expand the range of paging the ue and improve the success rate of paging the ue.

An eighth aspect of the present application provides a paging device for a user equipment, including: the base station may convert the ue into an inactive state and send the inactive state information of the ue to the network device when detecting that there is no data transmission in a preset time. The network device can know that the user equipment is in the inactive state according to the received inactive state information of the user equipment, and therefore the first paging area is distributed to the user equipment. The first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network equipment, and the first paging area may include cells corresponding to one or more cell identities. The first receiving unit is configured to receive a first paging area sent by the network device and send the first paging area to the user equipment, where the first paging area is allocated to the user equipment when the network device receives the inactive state information sent by the first sending unit. A second receiving unit, configured to receive a first paging message sent by a network device, where the first paging message is sent to a base station by the network device when receiving a downlink data notification of a user equipment sent by a gateway device, and the downlink data notification is sent to the network device after the gateway device caches downlink data of the user equipment. And the paging unit is used for paging the user equipment in the coverage range of the base station according to the first paging message received by the second receiving unit, and the coverage range of the base station is contained in the first paging area received by the first receiving unit. The method and the device realize that the first sending unit sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the network equipment so that the network equipment allocates a first paging area for the user equipment and initiates paging to the user equipment, and the paging unit pages the user equipment in the coverage range of the paging unit according to the received first paging message. The method is very convenient to realize, and the convenience of paging the user equipment is improved.

With reference to the eighth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a first implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the paging apparatus of the user equipment further includes: a determining unit, configured to determine other base stations in the first paging area. And the second sending unit is used for sending a second paging message to the other base stations determined by the determining unit, wherein the second paging message is used for indicating the other base stations to page the user equipment in the coverage areas of the other base stations. The paging unit may page the user equipment within a coverage area of the base station, and the second sending unit sends the second paging message to other base stations in the first paging area; the second sending unit may send the second paging message to other base stations in the first paging area after the paging unit pages the user equipment within the coverage area of the base station, or the second sending unit first sends the second paging message to other base stations in the first paging area, and then the paging unit pages the user equipment within the coverage area of the base station, which is not limited herein. In this embodiment, not only can the paging unit page the user equipment after receiving the first paging message, but also the second sending unit can send the second paging message to other base stations in the first paging area, so that the other base stations page the user equipment in respective coverage areas, thereby improving the flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the eighth aspect of the present application, in a second implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the present application, the first paging message received by the second receiving unit carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the paging unit to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier. In this embodiment, the first paging message received by the second receiving unit carries the cell identifier list, so that the paging unit may page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier to be paged, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the eighth aspect of the present embodiment, the first implementation manner or the second implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the present embodiment, in a third implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the present embodiment, the paging device of the user equipment further includes: and a third sending unit, configured to send the connection status information to the gateway device through the network device when the paging unit pages the user equipment. So that the network device sends the connection state information to the gateway device after receiving the connection state information. So that the gateway device learns that the forwarding channel of the downlink data of the user equipment is the base station according to the received connection state information, and at this time, the gateway device clears the marked inactive state and sends the cached downlink data to the third receiving unit. And a third receiving unit, configured to receive the cached downlink data of the user equipment, which is sent by the gateway device according to the connection state information. And a fourth sending unit, configured to send the downlink data received by the third receiving unit to the user equipment. In this embodiment, after the paging unit pages the user equipment, the fourth sending unit sends the received downlink data sent by the gateway device to the user equipment, which is very convenient to implement and improves the convenience of sending the downlink data of the user equipment.

With reference to the eighth aspect of the present embodiment, the first implementation manner or the second implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the present embodiment, in a fourth implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the present embodiment, the paging device of the user equipment further includes: a fifth sending unit, configured to send the context of the user equipment to the network device. The context of the user equipment may be sent to the network device by the fifth sending unit while the first sending unit sends the inactivity state information of the user equipment to the network device, or the context of the user equipment may be sent to the network device by the fifth sending unit after or before the first sending unit sends the inactivity state information of the user equipment to the network device, which is not limited herein. So that the network device sends the context of the user equipment to the second base station after receiving the context of the user equipment. In this embodiment, the fifth sending unit sends the context of the ue to the network device, so that the network device can conveniently send the context of the ue to the second base station, which is very convenient to implement.

With reference to the first implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a fifth implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the network device first sends the first paging message to the second receiving unit, and then the second sending unit sends the paging message to another base station having an interface with the second receiving unit, so as to page the user equipment, and for a base station having no interface with the second sending unit, the base station does not receive the paging message sent by the second sending unit, so as not to page the user equipment. This may result in a failure to page the user equipment since the user equipment may move to a base station that does not have an interface with the second transmitting unit. In this case, the paging apparatus of the user equipment further includes: a sixth sending unit, configured to send a paging failure message to the network device when paging the user equipment fails, where the paging failure message is used to instruct the network device to convert the user equipment into an idle state, and initiate paging of the user equipment in the second paging area. The second paging area may be a partial area obtained by excluding an area paged by the paging unit from the first paging area; alternatively, the second paging area may be an area excluding a paged area from the registration area, and the like, and is not limited herein. In this embodiment, after the second sending unit and the base station having the interface with the second sending unit do not page the user equipment, the sixth sending unit sends a paging failure message to the network device, and triggers the network device to initiate paging of the user equipment in the second paging area, so that the base station having no interface with the second sending unit can page the user equipment, thereby ensuring that the user equipment can be paged, and improving efficiency and flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the fifth implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a sixth implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, to avoid initiating repeated paging to the same location area that has been paged, the network device may exclude an area range that has been paged by the paging unit. Specifically, the paging failure message sent by the sixth sending unit to the network device includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the paging unit has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list. So that the network device can determine the second paging area according to the paging information, that is, the area excluding the area range where the paging unit has paged the user equipment in the first paging area is set as the second paging area, and then initiate paging for the user equipment in the second paging area. In this embodiment, the sixth sending unit may send the paging information to the network device, so that the network device may exclude the area range where the paging unit has paged the user equipment according to the paging information to obtain the second paging area, which may avoid repeated paging in the paged area, and improve convenience and reliability of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the fifth or sixth implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a seventh implementation manner of the eighth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the second paging area is an area in which the area range is excluded from the paging area by the network device; or, the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range from the registration area. Therefore, when the network equipment initiates paging to the user equipment, the area range which has been paged is excluded, repeated paging is avoided, the efficiency and reliability of paging the user equipment are improved, and the service experience of the user equipment is prevented from being influenced.

A ninth aspect of the present application provides a paging device for a user equipment, including: a first receiving unit, configured to receive a paging message. And the paging unit is used for paging the user equipment in the coverage range of the first receiving unit according to the paging message received by the first receiving unit. The first sending unit is used for sending a path switching request message to the network equipment when the paging unit pages the user equipment, and the path switching request message is sent to the gateway equipment by the network equipment. The path switching request message may carry data forwarding information of the base station, where the data forwarding information may be a user plane IP address of the base station, and may also include a tunnel protocol identifier of the base station. And the gateway equipment acquires that the forwarding channel of the downlink data of the user equipment is switched to the paging device of the user equipment by the first base station according to the received path switching request message, and sends the cached downlink data of the user equipment to the second receiving unit. A second receiving unit, configured to receive cached downlink data of the user equipment sent by the gateway device according to the path switching request message; and the second sending unit is used for sending the downlink data received by the second receiving unit to the user equipment. In this embodiment, when the ue moves to the paging device of the ue, the paging device of the ue can page the ue, so that the range of paging the ue is expanded, and the success rate of paging the ue is increased.

With reference to the ninth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in the first implementation manner of the ninth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the paging message received by the first receiving unit carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier. In this embodiment, the paging message received by the first receiving unit carries the cell identifier list, so that the paging unit can page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier to be paged, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the ninth aspect of the embodiment of the present application or the first implementation manner of the ninth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a second implementation manner of the ninth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, the first receiving unit is specifically configured to receive a first paging message sent by a network device; the paging unit is specifically configured to page the user equipment within a coverage area of the first paging message received by the first receiving unit. Or, the first receiving unit is specifically configured to receive a second paging message sent by a first base station, where the first base station is a base station where the user equipment resides before the user equipment is converted into the inactive state; the paging unit is specifically configured to page the ue within a coverage area of the first receiving unit according to the second paging message received by the first receiving unit. In this embodiment, the paging unit may page the ue within a coverage area of the first receiving unit according to the paging message received by the first receiving unit and sent by the network device or the first base station, so as to improve the diversity and flexibility of triggering the paging unit to page the ue.

With reference to the second implementation manner of the ninth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in a third implementation manner of the ninth aspect of the embodiment of the present application, in order to recover the RRC connection with the user equipment and send downlink data of the user equipment to the user equipment, a paging device of the user equipment needs to acquire a context of the user equipment. At this time, the paging device of the user equipment further includes: a first obtaining unit, configured to obtain, when the first receiving unit receives a first paging message sent by the network device, a context of the user equipment from the first base station according to an identifier of the first base station, where the first paging message carries the identifier of the first base station. Or, the paging device of the user equipment further includes: and the second acquiring unit is used for acquiring the context of the user equipment from the network equipment when the first receiving unit receives the first paging message sent by the network equipment. Since the base station where the user equipment resides before the user equipment is turned into the inactive state may send the context of the user equipment to the network equipment, and the network equipment stores the context of the user equipment receiving the band, the second obtaining unit may obtain the context of the user equipment from the network equipment. Or, the paging device of the user equipment further includes: for example, the third obtaining unit may send a request for obtaining the context to the first base station, so that the first base station feeds back the context of the user equipment to the third obtaining unit according to the received request for obtaining the context. In this embodiment, the context of the ue may be obtained in various manners, and may be obtained from the network device or the first base station, so that the flexibility and reliability of obtaining the context of the ue are improved.

A tenth aspect of the present embodiment provides a paging device for a user equipment, including: a sending unit, configured to send a downlink signaling to a first base station; a receiving unit, configured to receive a paging failure message sent by a first base station; the paging failure message may be sent by the first base station when paging the ue fails, and the first base station paging the ue may be configured to receive the downlink signaling sent by the sending unit after the ue is turned to the inactive state, or page the ue when receiving downlink data sent by the gateway device. After the receiving unit receives the paging failure message, the processing unit converts the user equipment into an idle state, and the paging unit initiates paging to the user equipment in the second paging area. In this embodiment, the first base station notifies the receiving unit of the paging failure message, which can trigger the paging unit to initiate paging to the user equipment in the second paging area, so as to ensure that the user equipment can be paged, thereby improving the efficiency and flexibility of paging the user equipment.

With reference to the tenth aspect of the present embodiment, in the first implementation manner of the tenth aspect of the present embodiment, to avoid initiating repeated paging to the same location area, the paging unit may exclude an area range where the user equipment has been paged, that is, the paging failure message sent by the first base station to the receiving unit includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the user equipment has been paged by the first base station, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list. When the paging unit initiates paging to the user equipment in the second paging area, the second paging area may be determined according to the paging information, for example, an area excluding an area range where the user equipment has been paged from the paging area is the second paging area, the second paging area is included in the paging area, and the paging area is a subset of a registration area of the user equipment. For another example, the area excluding the area where the user equipment has been paged from the registration area is the second paging area, the second paging area is included in the registration area, and at this time, the paging unit initiates paging to the user equipment in the second paging area. In this embodiment, when the first base station does not page the user equipment, the first base station notifies the receiving unit of a paging failure and notifies the paged area, which may trigger the paging unit to page the user equipment in the second paging area, and may also avoid repeated paging in the paged area, thereby ensuring that the user equipment may be paged, improving reliability of paging the user equipment, and avoiding affecting service experience of the user equipment.

An eleventh aspect of an embodiment of the present application provides a network device, including: a processor, a memory, a bus, an input device, and an output device; the memory has program codes stored therein; the processor executes the paging method according to any one of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application and the first implementation manner to the tenth implementation manner of the first aspect of the embodiment of the present application when calling the program code in the memory.

A twelfth aspect of the embodiments of the present application provides a gateway device, including: a processor, a memory, a bus, an input device, and an output device; the memory has program codes stored therein; the processor, when calling the program code in the memory, executes the paging method as described in any one of the second aspect of the embodiments of the present application, the first implementation manner or the second implementation manner of the second aspect of the embodiments of the present application.

A thirteenth aspect of an embodiment of the present application provides a base station, including: a processor, a memory, a bus, an input device, and an output device; the memory has program codes stored therein; the processor executes the paging method according to any one of the third aspect of the embodiments of the present application and the first to seventh implementations of the third aspect of the embodiments of the present application when calling the program code in the memory.

A fourteenth aspect of an embodiment of the present application provides a base station, including: a processor, a memory, a bus, an input device, and an output device; the memory has program codes stored therein; the processor executes the paging method according to any one of the fourth aspect of the embodiment of the present application and the first to third embodiments of the fourth aspect of the embodiment of the present application when calling the program code in the memory.

A fifteenth aspect of an embodiment of the present application provides a network device, including: a processor, a memory, a bus, an input device, and an output device; the memory has program codes stored therein; the processor, when calling the program code in the memory, executes the paging method according to the fifth aspect of the embodiment of the present application or the first implementation manner of the fifth aspect of the embodiment of the present application.

A sixteenth aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer program product containing instructions, which when run on a computer, causes the computer to execute the paging method according to the first aspect of embodiments of the present application, or any one of the first to tenth implementations of the first aspect of embodiments of the present application.

A seventeenth aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer program product containing instructions that, when run on a computer, cause the computer to perform the paging method as set forth in any one of the second aspect of embodiments of the present application, the first implementation manner or the second implementation manner of the second aspect of embodiments of the present application.

An eighteenth aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer program product containing instructions, which when run on a computer, causes the computer to perform the paging method as described in the third aspect of embodiments of the present application, or any one of the first to seventh implementations of the third aspect of embodiments of the present application.

A nineteenth aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer program product containing instructions that, when run on a computer, cause the computer to perform the paging method as set forth in the fourth aspect of embodiments of the present application, or any one of the first to third embodiments of the fourth aspect of embodiments of the present application.

A twentieth aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer program product containing instructions that, when executed on a computer, cause the computer to perform the paging method according to the fifth aspect of embodiments of the present application or the first implementation manner of the fifth aspect of embodiments of the present application.

A twenty-first aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, where instructions are stored, and when the instructions are executed on a computer, the computer performs the paging method according to the first aspect of embodiments of the present application, or any one of the first to tenth implementation manners of the first aspect of embodiments of the present application.

A twenty-second aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed on a computer, cause the computer to perform a paging method as set forth in any one of the foregoing second aspect of embodiments of the present application, the first implementation manner of the second aspect of embodiments of the present application, or the second implementation manner.

A twenty-third aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, having instructions stored therein, which when executed on a computer, cause the computer to perform the paging method as described in the third aspect of embodiments of the present application, and any one of the first to seventh implementations of the third aspect of embodiments of the present application.

A twenty-fourth aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, having stored therein instructions, which, when executed on a computer, cause the computer to perform the paging method according to any one of the foregoing fourth aspect of embodiments of the present application, and the first to third embodiments of the fourth aspect of embodiments of the present application.

A twenty-fifth aspect of embodiments of the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, having stored therein instructions, which, when executed on a computer, cause the computer to perform the paging method according to the foregoing fifth aspect of embodiments of the present application or the first implementation manner of the fifth aspect of embodiments of the present application.

According to the technical scheme, the embodiment of the application has the following advantages:

when the network equipment receives the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station, the network equipment allocates a first paging area for the user equipment. Then, the network device sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the gateway device, so that the gateway device caches the downlink data when receiving the downlink data of the user equipment. After receiving the downlink data notification sent by the gateway device, the network device initiates paging to the user equipment in the first paging area. The network device can allocate a paging area (namely, a first paging area) to the user equipment, instruct the gateway device to cache received downlink data, initiate paging of the user equipment in the paging area and the like when the user equipment is in an inactive state, and the gateway device has functions of downlink data caching and the like because the network device has functions of registration area allocation (the paging area is a subset of the registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device) and paging and the like. Therefore, when the operation is realized on the network equipment and the gateway equipment, the network equipment and the gateway equipment are not changed greatly, and the realization is very easy.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a base station paging a UE according to the prior art;

FIG. 2 is a diagram of a mobile communication network logical architecture according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 3 is a diagram illustrating an embodiment of a paging method of a ue in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 4 is a diagram of another embodiment of a paging method of a ue in the embodiment of the present application;

fig. 5 is a diagram of another embodiment of a paging method of a ue in the embodiment of the present application;

fig. 6 is a diagram of another embodiment of a paging method of a ue in the embodiment of the present application;

fig. 7 is a diagram illustrating another embodiment of a paging method of a ue in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 8 is a diagram of another embodiment of a paging method of a ue in the embodiment of the present application;

fig. 9 is a schematic diagram of another embodiment of a paging method of a ue in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 10 is a schematic diagram of an embodiment of a paging device of a user equipment in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 11 is a schematic diagram of another embodiment of a paging device of a ue in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 12 is a schematic diagram of another embodiment of a paging device of a user equipment in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 13 is a schematic diagram of another embodiment of a paging device of a ue in an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 14 is a schematic diagram of an embodiment of a network device in the embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

In order to solve the technical problem that a base station is greatly changed in the prior art, an embodiment of the present application provides a paging method for a user equipment. Then, the network device sends the inactive state information to the gateway device, so that the gateway device buffers the received downlink data of the user equipment. After receiving the downlink data notification sent by the gateway device, the network device initiates paging to the user equipment in the first paging area. Since the network device itself has functions of registration area allocation (the first paging area is a subset of the registration area allocated to the user device by the network device) and paging, the gateway device itself has functions of downlink data caching. Therefore, when the operation is realized on the network equipment and the gateway equipment, the network equipment and the gateway equipment are not changed greatly, and the realization is very easy. The embodiment of the application also provides a paging device, network equipment, gateway equipment, a base station, a computer program product, a computer storage medium and other related equipment of the user equipment.

As shown in fig. 2, in the mobile communication network system, user equipment, a base station, network equipment, gateway equipment, the internet, etc. may be included, and the user equipment accesses the wireless network through the base station of the current location. The network device is used for device registration, security authentication, mobility management, location management and the like of the user device, and the gateway device is used for forwarding data between the user device and an external data internet.

The architecture in fig. 2 may be applied not only to a 3G/2G mobile communication network, but also to a plurality of actual mobile communication networks such as a next generation 5G mobile communication network and an Evolved Packet System (EPS) network. Taking a 5G mobile communication network as an example, the network device may be an access & mobility function (AMF), a Session Management Function (SMF), and the like. The gateway device may be a User Plane (UP) function. The access and mobility management function (AMF) and the Session Management Function (SMF) belong to a control plane function (CP) or a Core Control Function (CCF), and the control plane function network or the core control function further includes a Policy Control Function (PCF) and a unified data management function (UDM).

It should be noted that the architecture diagram of the mobile communication network system shown in fig. 2 is only an example, the system architecture and the service scenario described in the embodiment of the present application are for more clearly illustrating the technical solution of the embodiment of the present application, and do not form a limitation to the technical solution provided in the embodiment of the present application, and as a person having ordinary skill in the art knows that along with the evolution of the network architecture and the appearance of a new service scenario, the technical solution provided in the embodiment of the present application is also applicable to similar technical problems.

For convenience of understanding, a specific flow in the embodiment of the present application is described below, and referring to fig. 3, an embodiment of a paging method for a ue in the embodiment of the present application includes:

301. the first base station converts the user equipment into an inactive state;

in this embodiment, the ue accesses the network through the first base station, and the first base station is a base station where the ue currently resides. The first base station detects whether the user equipment has data transmission within preset time, and if the data transmission does not exist, the first base station converts the user equipment into an inactive state; if the user equipment has data transmission within the preset time, the first base station does not convert the user equipment into an inactive state. The preset time can be flexibly set according to specific situations, and is not limited herein.

302. A first base station sends the inactive state information of user equipment to network equipment;

when the first base station turns the user equipment into an inactive state, the first base station performs an operation of transmitting inactive state information of the user equipment to the network equipment. The network equipment receives the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station and learns that the user equipment is switched to an inactive state.

303. The network equipment allocates a first paging area for the user equipment;

when the network device receives the inactive state information of the user device sent by the first base station, the network device knows that the user device enters the inactive state at the moment, and the network device allocates a first paging area for the user device at the moment. The first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network equipment, and the first paging area may include cells corresponding to one or more cell identities.

304. The network equipment sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the gateway equipment;

when receiving the inactivity state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station, the network equipment also sends the inactivity state information to the gateway equipment. The inactive state information is used for indicating that the gateway device caches the downlink data of the user equipment when receiving the downlink data of the user equipment.

It should be noted that step 304 may be executed before step 303, or step 304 may be executed after step 303, or may be executed simultaneously, and may be flexibly set according to the actual situation, and the specific details are not limited herein.

305. The gateway equipment marks the state of the user equipment as an inactive state;

after receiving the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the network equipment, the gateway equipment may mark the state of the user equipment as an inactive state. For example, the gateway device may mark the user device as inactive in its local context.

306. The gateway equipment receives downlink data of the user equipment;

when downlink data of the user equipment arrives, the gateway equipment receives the downlink data of the user equipment.

307. The gateway equipment caches downlink data of the user equipment;

after receiving the downlink data of the user equipment, the gateway equipment learns that the user equipment is currently in the inactive state according to the marked inactive state, and at the moment, the gateway equipment caches the downlink data of the user equipment.

308. The gateway equipment sends a downlink data notification of the user equipment to the network equipment;

after the downlink data of the user equipment is cached, the gateway equipment sends the downlink data notification of the user equipment to the network equipment. The network device receives a downlink data notification of the user device sent by the gateway device, and the network device learns that downlink data of the user device arrives according to the downlink data notification.

309. The network equipment sends a paging message to the first base station;

310. a first base station pages user equipment;

after receiving the downlink data notification of the user equipment, the network equipment initiates paging to the user equipment in the first paging area. I.e. the network device sends a paging message to the first base station to cause the first base station to page the user equipment within its coverage area.

It should be noted that, when the first paging area only includes a cell corresponding to a base station, the network device only needs to send a paging message to the base station, so that the base station pages the user equipment in the cell covered by the base station; when the first paging area includes cells corresponding to a plurality of base stations, the network device needs to send paging messages to the plurality of base stations, respectively, so that the plurality of base stations page the user equipment in the cells covered by the plurality of base stations.

To further understand the specific process in the embodiment of the present application, the following will describe the specific process in the embodiment of the present application in detail by taking a 5G mobile communication network as an example, where a network device takes an access and mobility management function AMF and a session management function SMF as an example, and a gateway device takes a user plane function UP as an example, please refer to fig. 4, where another embodiment of the paging method of the user equipment in the embodiment of the present application includes:

401. the base station sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the AMF;

after the user equipment accesses the network through the base station, when the base station detects that the user equipment does not have data transmission within the preset time, the base station turns the user equipment to an inactive state, and sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the AMF.

402. The AMF sends a first paging area notification of the user equipment to the base station;

after receiving the inactive state information of the user equipment, the AMF allocates a first paging area for the user equipment and sends a first paging area notification to the base station, so that the base station knows the first paging area of the user equipment. At this time, the base station transmits the first paging area to the user equipment.

403. AMF sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to SMF;

after receiving the inactivity state information of the user equipment, the AMF also sends the inactivity state information of the user equipment to the SMF.

404. SMF sends the inactive state information of user device to UP;

after receiving the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the AMF, the SMF sends the inactive state information to the UP, and marks the state of the user equipment as an inactive state.

405. UP receives downlink data of user equipment;

the UP marks the state of the user equipment as an inactive state after receiving the inactive state information of the user equipment. When UP receives the downlink data of user equipment, UP buffers the downlink data of the user equipment.

406. UP sends down data notice of user equipment to SMF;

and after the UP buffers the downlink data of the user equipment, sending a downlink data notification of the user equipment to the SMF.

407. The SMF sends a downlink data notification of the user equipment to the AMF;

after receiving the downlink data notification of the user equipment, the SMF sends the downlink data notification to the AMF, so that the AMF knows that the downlink data of the user equipment arrives.

408. And the AMF sends a paging message to a base station corresponding to the first paging area.

And after receiving the downlink data of the user equipment, the AMF sends a paging message to the base station corresponding to the first paging area. For example, in fig. 4, the first paging area includes cells covered by a plurality of base stations, and at this time, the AMF transmits paging messages to the base stations 1, 2 and 3, respectively, so that the base stations 1, 2 and 3 page the user equipment in the respective covered cells.

In the embodiment of the application, after receiving the inactive state information of the user equipment sent by the first base station, the network equipment allocates the first paging area to the user equipment. Then, the network device sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the gateway device, so that the gateway device caches the downlink data when receiving the downlink data of the user equipment. After receiving the downlink data notification sent by the gateway device, the network device initiates paging to the user equipment in the first paging area. The network device can allocate a paging area (namely, a first paging area) to the user equipment, instruct the gateway device to cache received downlink data, initiate paging of the user equipment in the paging area and the like when the user equipment is in an inactive state, and the gateway device has functions of downlink data caching and the like because the network device has functions of registration area allocation (the paging area is a subset of the registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device) and paging and the like. Therefore, when the operation is realized on the network equipment and the gateway equipment, the network equipment and the gateway equipment are not changed greatly, and the realization is very easy.

In the embodiment of the present application, a scenario in which a base station pages a user equipment includes: after the user equipment is switched from the first base station to the coverage area of the second base station, the second base station pages the user equipment; or the user equipment is in the coverage area of the first base station, and the first base station pages the user equipment. For the convenience of understanding, the following will be described in detail by taking the 5G mobile communication network as an example, where the network device takes the access and mobility management function AMF and the session management function SMF as examples, and the gateway device takes the user plane function UP as an example.

Firstly, user equipment is switched from a first base station to a second base station.

When the user equipment moves from the coverage area of the first base station to the coverage area of the second base station, the manner of paging the user equipment at the plurality of base stations corresponding to the first paging area may include: respectively sending paging messages to a plurality of base stations by the AMF so that the plurality of base stations page the user equipment; (II) assuming that a plurality of base stations corresponding to the first paging area are a base station 1 (namely, a first base station), a base station 2 (namely, a second base station) and a base station 3, when interfaces exist between the base station 1 and other base stations, the AMF sends a paging message to the base station 1, so that the base station 1 pages the user equipment, and then the base station 1 sends paging messages to the base stations 2 and 3 respectively, so that the base stations 2 and 3 page the user equipment, wherein the base station 1 is a base station where the user equipment resides before being converted into an inactive state; (III) assuming that a plurality of base stations corresponding to the first paging area are a base station 1 (namely, a first base station), a base station 2 (namely, a second base station) and a base station 3, when no interface exists between the base station 1 and the base station 2, transmitting a paging message to the base station 1 by the AMF so that the base station 1 pages the user equipment within the coverage area of the base station 1, simultaneously transmitting the paging message to the base station 3 by the base station 1 so that the base station 3 pages the user equipment, wherein when the paging of the user equipment fails, the base station 1 transmits a paging failure message to the AMF, and the AMF transmits the paging message to the base station 2 so that the base station 2 pages the user equipment, wherein the base station 1 is a base station which resides before the user equipment is converted into; each will be described in detail below.

Referring to fig. 5, another embodiment of a paging method for a ue in this embodiment of the present application includes:

501. the base station 1 turns the user equipment to an inactive state;

in this embodiment, the ue accesses the network through the base station 1, and the base station 1 is the base station where the ue currently resides. The base station 1 determines to turn the ue to the inactive state, for example, when the base station 1 detects that there is no data transmission for a preset time of the ue, the ue is turned to the inactive state.

502. The base station 1 sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the AMF;

the base station 1 transmits inactivity state information of the user equipment to the AMF in order to inform the AMF that the user equipment has turned to an inactive state. It will be appreciated that the base station 1 may also be arranged to send a message to the AMF, the message being arranged to inform the AMF that the user equipment has turned to an inactive state.

It should be noted that the base station 1 may also send the context of the user equipment to the AMF, for example, the base station 1 may send the context of the user equipment to the AMF while sending the inactivity state information of the user equipment to the AMF; alternatively, the base station 1 transmits the context of the user equipment to the AMF before or after transmitting the inactivity state information of the user equipment to the AMF.

503. The AMF allocates a first paging area for the user equipment;

and after receiving the inactive state information of the user equipment, the AMF allocates a first paging area for the user equipment. The first paging area includes cells corresponding to one or more cell identities, and the first paging area is a subset of registration areas allocated to the user equipment by the AMF.

504. The AMF sends a response message carrying the first paging area to the base station 1;

after allocating the first paging area to the ue, the AMF replies a response message to the base station 1, where the response message carries the first paging area allocated to the ue by the AMF.

505. The base station 1 releases the radio resource control RRC connection;

after receiving the response message sent by the AMF, the base station 1 releases the RRC connection between the base station and the user equipment.

506. The base station 1 informs the user equipment to release RRC connection;

the base station 1 also informs the user equipment to release the RRC connection. That is, the base station 1 sends an RRC connection release request message to the ue, and notifies the ue to release the RRC connection, where the release request message carries a first paging area allocated to the ue by the AMF.

507. The user equipment releases RRC connection;

the user equipment releases the RRC connection after receiving the RRC connection release request message sent by the base station 1.

508. The user equipment replies an RRC connection release response message to the base station 1;

the user equipment replies an RRC connection release response message to the base station 1, and the RRC connection release is successful.

509. AMF sends the inactive state information of user equipment to UP through SMF;

after the AMF allocates the first paging area to the ue, the AMF may further send inactivity information of the ue to the SMF, and the SMF notifies the UP of the inactivity information. It is to be understood that after the AMF allocates the first paging area to the user equipment, the AMF may also send a message to the UP, which is forwarded via the SMF to inform the UP and SMF that the user equipment has turned to the inactive state.

It should be noted that step 509 may be executed before or after any step from step 503 to step 508, or may be executed after step 508, and may be flexibly set according to actual situations, and is not limited herein.

510. SMF and UP mark the user equipment as inactive state;

after receiving the non-active state information of the user equipment sent by the AMF, the SMF marks the state of the user equipment as a non-active state. After receiving the non-active state information of the user equipment forwarded by the SMF, the UP also marks the state of the user equipment as a non-active state. For example, SMF and UP may each mark the user device as inactive in a context local to itself.

511. The UP replies a status response message to the AMF through the SMF;

after the UP marks the state of the user equipment as an inactive state, the UP replies a response message to the AMF, and the state response message is forwarded through the SMF.

512. UP receives downlink data of user equipment;

when a downlink data packet of the user equipment arrives, the UP receives the downlink data of the user equipment.

513. The UP caches downlink data of the user equipment;

after receiving the downlink data packet, the UP learns that the user equipment is in an inactive state through the inactive state of the user equipment marked in the context, and at this time, the UP caches the downlink data of the user equipment.

514. UP sends down data notice to AMF through SMF;

after the UP buffers the downlink data of the user equipment, the UP sends the downlink data notification of the user equipment to the AMF, and the downlink data notification is forwarded by the SMF.

515. AMF sends paging message 3 to base station 3;

after receiving the downlink data notification of the ue, the AMF determines a corresponding base station in a first paging area allocated to the ue, and assumes that the first paging area includes cells covered by base station 1, base station 2, and base station 3, and at this time, the AMF sends a paging message 3 to base station 3.

The paging message 3 may include a list of cell identifiers covered by the base station 3 in the first paging area, and if all cells covered by the base station 3 are included in the first paging area, the list of cell identifiers covered by the base station 3 may not be carried in the paging message 3. The cell identifier list contains one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station 3 to page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier list.

The paging message 3 may also carry an identifier of the base station 1, where the identifier of the base station 1 may be an Identity (ID) of the base station 1, or the identifier of the base station 1 may be an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the base station 1, and the like.

516. AMF sends paging message 2 to base station 2;

since the first paging area further includes the base station 2, the AMF further sends the paging message 2 to the base station 2 after receiving the downlink data notification of the ue, where the paging message 2 may include a cell identifier list covered by the base station 2 in the first paging area, and if all cells covered by the base station 2 are included in the first paging area, the cell identifier list covered by the base station 2 may not be carried in the paging message 2. The cell identifier list contains one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station 2 to page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier list.

The paging message 2 may also carry an identifier of the base station 1, where the identifier of the base station 1 may be an ID of the base station 1, or the identifier of the base station 1 may be an IP address of the base station 1, and the like.

517. AMF sends paging message 1 to base station 1;

after receiving the downlink data notification of the ue, the AMF further sends a paging message 1 to the base station 1, where the paging message 1 includes a cell identifier list covered by the base station 1 in the first paging area, and if all cells covered by the base station 1 are included in the first paging area, the cell identifier list covered by the base station 1 may not be carried in the paging message 1. The cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station 1 to page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier list.

It should be noted that the execution sequence among the steps 515, 516 and 517 can be flexibly set according to specific situations, for example, the step 516 → the step 515 → the step 517 can be, or the step 517 → the step 515 → the step 516 can be, or executed simultaneously, and the like, and the specific situation is not limited herein.

518. Base station 3 pages the user equipment;

after receiving the paging message 3 sent by the AMF, the base station 3 pages the user equipment in its coverage area, or the base station 3 pages the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identification list covered by the base station.

519. Base station 2 pages the user equipment;

after receiving the paging message 2 sent by the AMF, the base station 2 pages the user equipment in its coverage area, or the base station 2 pages the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identification list covered by the base station.

520. Base station 1 pages user equipment;

after receiving the paging message 1 sent by the AMF, the base station 1 pages the user equipment in its coverage area, or the base station 1 pages the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identification list covered by the base station 1.

It should be noted that, when more base stations are included in the first paging area, not limited to the base station 1, the base station 2 and the base station 3, in the process of paging the user equipment, the AMF first determines the base stations included in the first paging area, which include the first base station and other base stations except the first base station. Then, the AMF sends a paging message to the first base station, and sends a paging message carrying the first base station identifier to other base stations, wherein the paging message is used for indicating each base station in the first paging area to page the user equipment in the coverage area of each base station. The first base station is a base station where the user equipment resides before transitioning to the inactive state.

It should be noted that, in this embodiment, the procedure for paging the user equipment may be triggered by the UP when receiving downlink data of the user equipment, or may be triggered in other triggering manners, for example, triggered by the AMF when receiving a signaling message of another network element, and in an actual application, the procedure for paging the user equipment may be triggered when the SMF sends a session update request, and is not limited herein.

521. The user equipment sends an RRC connection recovery request to the base station 2;

suppose that the ue moves into the coverage of the base station 2 after entering the inactive state, and the base station 2 pages the ue. After receiving the paging message 2 of the base station 2, the user equipment initiates a random access process to the base station 2. Thereafter, the user equipment transmits an RRC connection restoration request to the base station 2 to request restoration of the RRC connection.

522. A base station 2 sends a context acquisition request of user equipment to a base station 1;

after receiving the RRC connection recovery request sent by the user equipment, the base station 2 obtains the context of the user equipment from the base station 1. For example, when the AMF sends the paging message 2 to the base station 2, the paging message 2 carries the identifier of the base station 1, and at this time, the base station 2 may find the base station 1 through the identifier of the base station 1 and send the context acquisition request of the user equipment to the base station 1.

523. The base station 1 sends the context of the user equipment to the base station 2;

after receiving a context acquisition request of the user equipment sent by the base station 1, the base station 1 sends the context of the user equipment to the base station 2.

It should be noted that, in practical applications, the obtaining manner of the context of the ue may be other than the obtaining manner obtained from the base station 2 to the base station 1, for example, when the base station 1 determines that the ue enters the inactive state, the base station 1 may also send the context of the ue to the AMF, and the AMF stores the context of the ue. At this time, when the base station 2 receives the paging message 2 sent by the AMF and then the ue sends an RRC connection recovery request to the base station 2, the base station 2 may obtain the context of the ue from the AMF.

524. The base station 2 sends an RRC connection recovery response to the user equipment;

after acquiring the context of the user equipment, the base station 2 sends an RRC connection recovery response to the user equipment.

525. The user equipment sends RRC connection recovery completion to the base station 2;

and the RRC connection is recovered between the base station 2 and the user equipment, and the user equipment recovers the RRC connection to the base station 2 at the moment.

526. The base station 2 sends a path switching request message to the AMF;

after the base station 2 obtains the context of the user equipment, the relevant information of the AMF can be obtained through the context, and the base station 2 can send a path switching request message to the AMF through the relevant information of the AMF. The path switching request message may carry data forwarding information of the base station 2, where the data forwarding information of the base station 2 may be a user plane IP address of the base station 2, and may also include a Tunnel End Identity (TEID) of the base station 2.

527. AMF sends data forwarding information to UP through SMF;

after receiving the data forwarding information of the base station 2, the AMF sends the data forwarding information to the UP through the SMF. The AMF may directly send the path switch request message to the UP through the SMF. When receiving the path switching request message, the UP may acquire the data forwarding information of the base station 2 from the path switching request message.

The AMF may also send a session update request message to the SMF, where the session update request message carries data forwarding information of the base station 2, and the SMF forwards the session update request message to the UP.

528. SMF and UP update the forwarding path of the downlink data and clear the marked inactive state;

when receiving the data forwarding information of the base station 2, the SMF updates the forwarding path of the downlink data and clears the inactive state of the marked ue. The UP also updates the forwarding path of the downlink data and clears the inactive state of the marked ue when receiving the data forwarding information of the base station 2. Namely, the SMF and UP respectively update the downlink data forwarding channel of the ue from the data forwarding information of the base station 1 to the data forwarding information of the base station 2, and clear the inactive status flag in the context of the ue.

529. UP sends update response to AMF through SMF;

after updating the forwarding path of the downlink data, the UP replies an update response to the SMF, and the SMF sends the update response to the AMF.

530. The AMF sends a path switching response to the base station 2;

after receiving the update response of the forwarding path, the AMF sends a path switching response to the base station 2 to notify the base station 2 that the signaling connection of the AMF has been switched from the base station 1 to the base station 2, and meanwhile, the UP downlink data forwarding channel is also switched from the base station 1 to the base station 2.

531. The UP sends the cached downlink data to the base station 2;

after completing the path switching, the UP sends the buffered downlink data of the user equipment to the base station 2.

532. The base station 2 transmits downlink data to the user equipment.

After receiving the downlink data of the user equipment, the base station 2 transmits the downlink data to the user equipment.

In this embodiment, when the base station turns the ue into the inactive state, the base station notifies the network device of an event that the ue turns into the inactive state, and the network device allocates a paging area to the ue. And the network equipment informs the gateway equipment of the event so that the gateway equipment buffers the downlink data after receiving the downlink data. When the user equipment needs to be paged, the network equipment informs a base station in a paging area of paging the user equipment in the coverage area of the base station, when the base station pages the user equipment, the base station changes the user equipment into a connection state, and simultaneously informs the gateway equipment of sending downlink data to the base station, and the base station sends the downlink data to the user equipment. Because the network device has the function of registration area allocation and the gateway device also has the function of downlink data caching, the function requirement of the user equipment in an inactive state can be met by utilizing the existing functions of the network device and the gateway device and carrying out minor modification. The technical problems that in the prior art, a base station needs to allocate a paging area and cache downlink data, and software and hardware of the base station are greatly changed are solved.

(ii) the AMF sends a paging message to the base station 1, and then the base station 1 sends paging messages to the base stations 2 and 3, respectively, referring to fig. 6, another embodiment of the paging method for the ue in the embodiment of the present application includes:

601. the base station 1 turns the user equipment to an inactive state;

602. the base station 1 sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the AMF;

603. the AMF allocates a first paging area for the user equipment;

604. the AMF sends a response message carrying the first paging area to the base station 1;

605. the base station 1 releases the radio resource control RRC connection;

606. the base station 1 informs the user equipment to release RRC connection;

607. the user equipment releases RRC connection;

608. the user equipment replies an RRC connection release response message to the base station 1;

609. AMF sends the inactive state information of user equipment to UP through SMF;

610. SMF and UP mark the user equipment as inactive state;

611. the UP replies a status response message to the AMF through the SMF;

612. UP receives downlink data of user equipment;

613. the UP caches downlink data of the user equipment;

614. UP sends down data notice to AMF through SMF;

it should be noted that steps 601 to 614 in this embodiment are similar to steps 501 to 514 in the embodiment shown in fig. 5, and detailed description thereof is omitted here.

615. AMF sends paging message 1 to base station 1;

after receiving the downlink data notification, the AMF determines a corresponding base station in a first paging area allocated to the ue, and if the first paging area includes cells covered by base station 1, base station 2, and base station 3, the AMF sends paging message 1 to base station 1.

The paging message 1 includes a cell identifier list covered by the base station 1 in the first paging area, and if all cells covered by the base station 1 are included in the first paging area, the cell identifier list covered by the base station 1 may not be carried in the paging message 1. The cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station 1 to page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier list.

616. Base station 1 pages user equipment;

after receiving the paging message 1 sent by the AMF, the base station 1 pages the user equipment in its coverage area, or the base station 1 pages the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identification list covered by the base station 1.

617. The base station 1 sends a paging message 2 to the base station 2;

after receiving paging message 1 sent by AMF, base station 1 sends paging message 2 to base station 2, requesting base station 2 to page the user equipment.

The paging message 2 may include a list of cell identifiers covered by the base station 2 in the first paging area, and if all cells covered by the base station 2 are included in the first paging area, the list of cell identifiers covered by the base station 2 may not be carried in the paging message 2. The cell identifier list contains one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station 2 to page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier list.

618. The base station 1 sends a paging message 3 to the base station 3;

after receiving paging message 1 sent by AMF, base station 1 also sends paging message 3 to base station 3, requesting base station 3 to page the user equipment.

The paging message 3 may include a list of cell identifiers covered by the base station 3 in the first paging area, and if all cells covered by the base station 3 are included in the first paging area, the list of cell identifiers covered by the base station 3 may not be carried in the paging message 3. The cell identifier list contains one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station 3 to page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier list.

It should be noted that the execution sequence between step 617 and step 618 may be that step 617 is executed first and then step 618 is executed, or that step 618 is executed first and then step 617 is executed, or may be executed simultaneously.

619. Base station 2 pages the user equipment;

after receiving the paging message 2 sent by the base station 1, the base station 2 pages the user equipment within its coverage area, or the base station 2 pages the user equipment within a cell corresponding to a cell identification list covered by the base station 2.

620. Base station 3 pages the user equipment;

after receiving the paging message 3 sent by the base station 1, the base station 3 pages the user equipment within its coverage area, or the base station 3 pages the user equipment within a cell corresponding to a cell identification list covered by the base station 3.

It should be noted that, when the first paging area includes more base stations, not limited to base station 1, base station 2 and base station 3, in the process of paging the user equipment, first the AMF sends a first paging message to the base station 1, so that the base station 1 determines other base stations in the first paging area, and sends a second paging message to the other base stations, where the first paging message is used to instruct the base station 1 to page the user equipment in its coverage area, and the second paging message is used to instruct the other base stations to page the user equipment in their coverage areas. The base station 1 is a base station where the user equipment resides before the user equipment goes into the inactive state.

621. The user equipment sends an RRC connection recovery request to the base station 2;

622. a base station 2 sends a context acquisition request of user equipment to a base station 1;

it should be noted that, when the base station 2 receives the paging message of the base station 1, the base station 2 may obtain the identifier of the base station 1, and at this time, the base station 2 may obtain the context of the user equipment from the first base station according to the identifier of the base station 1.

623. The base station 1 sends the context of the user equipment to the base station 2;

624. the base station 2 sends an RRC connection recovery response to the user equipment;

625. the user equipment sends RRC connection recovery completion to the base station 2;

626. the base station 2 sends a path switching request message to the AMF;

627. AMF sends data forwarding information to UP through SMF;

628. SMF and UP update the forwarding path of the downlink data and clear the marked inactive state;

629. UP sends update response to AMF through SMF;

630. the AMF sends a path switching response to the base station 2;

631. the UP sends the cached downlink data to the base station 2;

632. the base station 2 transmits downlink data to the user equipment.

It should be noted that steps 621 to 632 in this embodiment are similar to steps 521 to 532 in the embodiment shown in fig. 5, and detailed description thereof is omitted here.

(iii) the AMF sends a paging message to the base station 1, and then the base station 1 sends a paging message to the base station 3, where the paging of the ue fails, the base station 1 sends a paging failure message to the AMF, and the AMF sends a paging message to the base station 2, so that the base station 2 pages the ue, please refer to fig. 7, where another embodiment of the method for paging a ue in this embodiment of the present application includes:

701. the base station 1 turns the user equipment to an inactive state;

702. the base station 1 sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the AMF;

703. the AMF allocates a first paging area for the user equipment;

704. the AMF sends a response message carrying the first paging area to the base station 1;

705. the base station 1 releases the radio resource control RRC connection;

706. the base station 1 informs the user equipment to release RRC connection;

707. the user equipment releases RRC connection;

708. the user equipment replies an RRC connection release response message to the base station 1;

709. AMF sends the inactive state information of user equipment to UP through SMF;

710. SMF and UP mark the user equipment as inactive state;

711. the UP replies a status response message to the AMF through the SMF;

712. UP receives downlink data of user equipment;

713. the UP caches downlink data of the user equipment;

714. UP sends down data notice to AMF through SMF;

715. AMF sends paging message 1 to base station 1;

716. base station 1 pages user equipment;

it should be noted that steps 701 to 716 in this embodiment are similar to steps 601 to 616 in the embodiment shown in fig. 6, and detailed description thereof is omitted here.

717. The base station 1 sends a paging message 3 to the base station 3;

in this embodiment, since there is no interface between the base station 1 and the base station 2, the base station 1 cannot transmit the paging message 2 to the base station 2. Because there is an interface between the base station 1 and the base station 3, after receiving the paging message 1 sent by the AMF, the base station 1 also sends a paging message 3 to the base station 3, and requests the base station 3 to page the user equipment.

The paging message 3 may include a list of cell identifiers covered by the base station 3 in the paging area, and if all the cells covered by the base station 3 are included in the paging area, the list of cell identifiers covered by the base station 3 may not be carried in the paging message 3. The cell identifier list contains one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station 3 to page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier list.

718. Base station 3 pages the user equipment;

after receiving the paging message 3 sent by the base station 1, the base station 3 pages the user equipment within its coverage area, or the base station 3 pages the user equipment within a cell corresponding to a cell identification list covered by the base station 3.

719. The base station 1 fails to page the user equipment;

since the ue is out of the coverage of the base station 1 and in the coverage of the base station 2, the base station 1 does not page the ue and determines that paging the ue fails.

It should be noted that the base station 1 may determine that paging fails after attempting paging over the air for a plurality of times and the ue still does not respond.

719. The base station 3 fails to page the user equipment and sends a message of failing to page the user equipment to the base station 1;

since the ue is out of the coverage of the base station 3 but in the coverage of the base station 2, the base station 3 does not page the ue and determines that paging the ue fails. When the base station 3 does not page the ue, the base station 3 may reply a message to the base station 1 that paging the ue fails, or the base station 1 may learn that paging of the base station 3 fails by not receiving a paging response within a certain time, where the paging response may be a context acquisition request of the ue. At this time, the base station 1 knows that neither itself nor the base station 3 has paged the ue.

It should be noted that the base station 3 may determine that the paging fails after attempting paging over the air for a plurality of times and the ue still does not respond.

720. The base station 1 sends a paging failure message to the AMF;

the paging failure message is used to notify the AMF that paging the user equipment failed. The paging failure message carries paging information, which may be the area range where the base station 1 has paged the user equipment. The area range where the user equipment has been paged may specifically be the area where the base station 1 paged the user equipment in step 716 and the area where the base station 3 was triggered to page the user equipment in step 717, which is included in the paging area, which may be a cell list or a tracking area list.

721. The AMF converts the user equipment into an idle state and initiates paging to the user equipment in a second paging area;

after receiving the paging failure message sent by the base station 1, the AMF converts the ue to an idle state and determines a second paging area. The AMF may initiate paging of the user equipment in the second paging area, and it should be noted that, to avoid initiating repeated paging to the same location area, the AMF may exclude the area coverage provided by the base station 1 that has been paged. Specifically, the paging failure message includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the base station 1 has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list. The AMF excludes the area range from the first paging area according to the paging information carried in the paging failure message, sets the area after excluding the area range as a second paging area, wherein the second paging area is contained in the first paging area, and initiates paging to the user equipment in the second paging area.

As described in detail below, in one implementation, it is assumed that the paging area of step 703 includes base station 1, base station 2, and base station 3, there is no interface between base station 1 and base station 2, and there is an interface between base station 1 and base station 3. In the paging failure message carrying the paged area range sent by the base station 1 in step 720, the paged area range includes the coverage areas of the base stations 1 and 3. When the AMF determines the second paging area after the paging of the ue fails, the base station 1 and the base station 3 may be excluded, that is, the determined second paging area is an area excluding the base station 1 and the base station 3 in the paging area allocated to the ue by the AMF, that is, the determined second paging area includes the base station 2, so as to avoid repeated paging. In another implementation, the AMF may not exclude the area range that has been paged, but initiates paging of the user equipment in the paging area of the user equipment. In another implementation, the AMF excludes the paged area range from the registration area, and obtains a second paging area, where the registration area is a tracking area list allocated to the user equipment by the AMF, and the registration area includes the base station 4 and the base station 5 in addition to the first paging area in step 703, and the second paging area includes the base station 2, the base station 4 and the base station 5 after the AMF excludes the paged area range from the registration area. In another implementation, the AMF may not exclude the area range that has been paged, but initiates paging of the user equipment in the registration area of the user equipment.

722. AMF sends paging message 2 to base station 2;

when the AMF excludes base station 1 and base station 3 in the first paging area, a paging message 2 is sent to base station 2.

723. Base station 2 pages the user equipment;

and the AMF determines the corresponding base station 2 in the second paging area, sends a paging message to the base station 2 and triggers the base station 2 to page the user equipment in the coverage area.

724. The user equipment sends an RRC connection recovery request to the base station 2;

since the ue moves into the coverage of the base station 2 after entering the inactive state, the base station 2 pages the ue at this time. After receiving the paging message 2 of the base station 2, the user equipment initiates a random access process to the base station 2. Thereafter, the user equipment transmits an RRC connection restoration request to the base station 2 to request restoration of the RRC connection.

725. The base station 2 sends a context acquisition request of the user equipment to the AMF;

after receiving the RRC connection recovery request sent by the ue, the base station 2 obtains the context of the ue from the AMF. For example, when the AMF sends the paging message 2 to the base station 2, the paging message 2 carries the identifier of the AMF, and at this time, the base station 2 may send the request for acquiring the context of the user equipment to the AMF through the identifier of the AMF.

726. The AMF sends the context of the user equipment to the base station 2;

since the base station 1 may transmit the context of the user equipment to the AMF when the base station 1 determines that the user equipment enters the inactive state, the AMF stores the context of the user equipment. At this time, the AMF transmits the context of the user equipment to the base station 2 when receiving the request for acquiring the context of the user equipment transmitted by the base station 2.

727. The base station 2 sends an RRC connection recovery response to the user equipment;

728. the user equipment sends RRC connection recovery completion to the base station 2;

729. the base station 2 sends a path switching request message to the AMF;

730. AMF sends data forwarding information to UP through SMF;

731. SMF and UP update the forwarding path of the downlink data and clear the marked inactive state;

732. UP sends update response to AMF through SMF;

733. the AMF sends a path switching response to the base station 2;

734. the UP sends the cached downlink data to the base station 2;

735. the base station 2 transmits downlink data to the user equipment.

It should be noted that steps 727 to 735 in this embodiment are similar to steps 624 to 632 in the embodiment shown in fig. 6, and detailed description thereof is omitted here.

In this embodiment, when the base station 1 and the base station 2 in the paging area have no interface and the ue moves into the coverage of the base station 2, the base station 1 may not trigger the base station 2 to page the ue in its coverage, which may result in a paging failure. The AMF paging failure message is notified through the base station 1, and the paged area is notified, so that the AMF can be triggered to page the user equipment in the second paging area, repeated paging in the paged area can be avoided, the user equipment can be ensured to be paged, the efficiency and flexibility of paging the user equipment are improved, and the service experience of the user equipment is prevented from being influenced.

And secondly, the user equipment is positioned in the coverage range of the first base station. Referring to fig. 8, another embodiment of a paging method of a ue in the embodiment of the present application includes:

801. the base station 1 turns the user equipment to an inactive state;

802. the base station 1 sends the inactive state information of the user equipment to the AMF;

803. the AMF allocates a paging area for the user equipment;

804. AMF sends a response message carrying a paging area to base station 1;

805. the base station 1 releases the radio resource control RRC connection;

806. the base station 1 informs the user equipment to release RRC connection;

807. the user equipment releases RRC connection;

808. the user equipment replies an RRC connection release response message to the base station 1;

809. AMF sends the inactive state information of user equipment to UP through SMF;

810. SMF and UP mark the user equipment as inactive state;

811. the UP replies a status response message to the AMF through the SMF;

812. UP receives downlink data of user equipment;

813. the UP caches downlink data of the user equipment;

814. UP sends down data notice to AMF through SMF;

it should be noted that steps 801 to 814 in this embodiment are similar to steps 501 to 514 in the embodiment shown in fig. 5, and detailed description thereof is omitted here.

815. AMF sends paging message to base station 1;

after receiving the downlink data notification, the AMF determines a corresponding base station in a paging area allocated to the ue, and assumes that the paging area only includes a cell covered by the base station 1, at this time, the AMF sends a paging message to the base station 1.

The paging message includes a cell identifier list covered by the base station 1 in the paging area, and if all the cells covered by the base station 1 are included in the paging area, the cell identifier list covered by the base station 1 may not be carried in the paging message. The cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station 1 to page the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identifier list.

816. Base station 1 pages user equipment;

after receiving the paging message sent by the AMF, the base station 1 pages the user equipment in its coverage area, or the base station 1 pages the user equipment in the cell corresponding to the cell identification list covered by the base station 1.

817. User equipment sends an RRC connection recovery request to a base station 1;

after entering the inactive state, the ue is always within the coverage of the base station 1, and at this time, the base station 1 pages the ue. After receiving the paging message of the base station 1, the user equipment initiates a random access process to the base station 1. Thereafter, the user equipment transmits an RRC connection restoration request to the base station 1 to request restoration of the RRC connection.

818. The base station 1 sends RRC connection recovery response to the user equipment;

819. the user equipment sends RRC connection recovery completion to the base station 1;

820. the base station 1 sends connection state information to the AMF;

after the base station 1 completes the RRC connection restoration with the ue, the base station 1 sends connection status information to the AMF, where the connection status information is used to notify the AMF that the ue is in a connection status.

821. AMF sends connection state information to UP through SMF;

after receiving the connection state information sent by the base station 1, the AMF sends the connection state information to the SMF, and then the SMF sends the connection state information to the UP.

822. SMF and UP clear the marked inactive state of the user equipment;

the SMF clears the inactive state of the marked user equipment upon receiving the connection state information sent by the base station 1. The UP also clears the marked inactive state of the user equipment upon receiving the connection state information sent by the SMF.

823. The UP sends a state update response to the AMF through the SMF;

the UP sends a status update response to the AMF via the SMF after clearing the marked inactive status of the user equipment.

824. The UP sends the cached downlink data to the base station 1;

after clearing the marked inactive state of the user equipment, the UP sends the buffered downlink data of the user equipment to the base station 1.

825. The base station 1 transmits downlink data to the user equipment.

After receiving the downlink data of the user equipment, the base station 1 sends the downlink data to the user equipment.

In this embodiment, the network device may perform paging area allocation, and the gateway device buffers downlink data, so as to convert the user equipment in the inactive state into the connected state, so as to receive the downlink data. The method can be realized only by slightly changing the existing functions of the network equipment and the gateway equipment, avoids the complex change of the base station, can ensure the quick access of the user equipment to the base station on the premise of reducing the change of software and hardware of the base station, and reduces the paging expense on the base station side.

And thirdly, the user equipment is out of the coverage range of the first base station (namely, the base station 1) and in the coverage range of the second base station (namely, the base station 2), an interface is not arranged between the first base station and the second base station, the first base station, the second base station and the third base station (namely, the base station 3) all belong to the paging area of the user equipment, and the base station 1, the base station 2, the base station 3, the base station 4 and the base station 5 all belong to the registration area of the user equipment. Referring to fig. 9, another embodiment of a paging method of a ue in the embodiment of the present application includes:

901. the base station 1 turns the user equipment to an inactive state;

in this embodiment, the ue accesses the network through the base station 1, and the base station 1 is the base station where the ue currently resides. The base station 1 determines to turn the ue to the inactive state, for example, when the base station 1 detects that there is no data transmission for a preset time of the ue, the ue is turned to the inactive state.

902. A base station 1 receives a downlink signaling sent by an AMF;

903. the base station 1 pages the user equipment in a first paging area;

when the base station 1 receives the downlink signaling sent by the AMF, the base station 1 determines the base stations included in the first paging area, such as including the base station 1, the base station 2, and the base station 3. While base station 1 determines that there is no interface with base station 2.

The base station 1 may also page the user equipment in the first paging area when receiving the downlink data transmitted by UP.

The base station 1 pages the user equipment within its coverage area or, alternatively, the base station 1 pages the user equipment within a cell comprised in the paging area it covers.

904. The base station 1 triggers other base stations in a first paging area to page the user equipment;

the base station 1 sends a paging message 3 to the base station 3.

Since there is no interface between base station 1 and base station 2, base station 1 cannot send paging message 2 to base station 2. Due to the interface between the base station 1 and the base station 3, the base station 1 sends a paging message 3 to the base station 3, requesting the base station 3 to page the user equipment within its coverage area.

905. Base station 3 pages the user equipment;

906. the base station 1 fails to page the user equipment;

since the ue is out of the coverage of the base station 1 and in the coverage of the base station 2, the base station 1 does not page the ue and determines that paging the ue fails.

907. The base station 3 fails to page the user equipment;

since the ue is out of the coverage of the base station 3 but in the coverage of the base station 2, the base station 3 does not page the ue and determines that paging the ue fails. When the base station 3 does not page the ue, the base station 3 may reply a message to the base station 1 that paging the ue fails, or the base station 1 may learn that paging of the base station 3 fails by not receiving a paging response within a certain time, where the paging response may be a context acquisition request of the ue. At this time, the base station 1 knows that neither itself nor the base station 3 has paged the ue.

908. The base station 1 sends a paging failure message to the AMF;

when neither base station 1 nor base station 3 pages the user equipment, base station 1 sends a paging failure message to the AMF.

It should be noted that, the base station 1 or the base station 3 may determine that the paging fails after attempting paging over the air for a plurality of times and the ue still does not respond.

The base station 1 sends a paging failure message to the AMF for notifying the AMF of paging failure, where the paging failure message may carry paging information, and the paging information may be an area range where the base station 1 has paged the user equipment. The area range where the user equipment has been paged may specifically be an area corresponding to the user equipment paged by the base station 1 in step 903, and an area where the base station 3 is triggered to page the user equipment in step 904, where the area is included in the paging range, and the area may be a cell list or a tracking area list.

909. The AMF converts the user equipment into an idle state;

910. the AMF determines a second paging area;

after receiving the paging failure message sent by the base station 1, the AMF converts the user equipment into an idle state.

The AMF may initiate paging of the user equipment in the registration area, which is the second paging area. It should be noted that, in order to avoid initiating repeated paging to the same location area, the AMF may exclude the area coverage provided by the base station 1 that has been paged. Specifically, the paging failure message includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the base station 1 has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list. The AMF excludes the area range of the paged user equipment from the registration area according to the paging information carried in the paging failure message, sets the registration area excluding the area range as a second paging area, wherein the second paging area is contained in the registration area, and initiates paging to the user equipment in the second paging area.

For example, when the AMF determines the second paging area after the paging of the ue fails, the base station 1 and the base station 3 may be excluded, that is, the determined second paging area is an area excluding the base station 1 and the base station 3 in the registration area allocated to the ue by the AMF, that is, the determined second paging area includes the base station 2, the base station 4 and the base station 5, so as to avoid repeated paging. The registration area is a tracking area list allocated to the user equipment by the AMF. Alternatively, the AMF may not exclude the area range that has been paged, but initiate paging for the user equipment in the registration area of the user equipment.

911. AMF sends paging message 2 to base station 2;

when the AMF excludes the base station 1 and the base station 3, the paging message 2 is transmitted to the base station 2 included in the second paging area.

912. AMF sends paging message 4 to base station 4;

when the AMF excludes the base station 1 and the base station 3, a paging message 4 is transmitted to the base station 4 included in the second paging area.

913. The AMF sends a paging message 5 to the base station 5;

when the AMF excludes the base station 1 and the base station 3, a paging message 5 is transmitted to the base station 5 included in the second paging area.

914. Base station 2 pages the user equipment;

the base station 2, upon receiving the paging message 2 sent by the AMF, pages the user equipment within its coverage area.

915. Base station 4 pages the user equipment;

the base station 4, upon receiving the paging message 4 sent by the AMF, pages the user equipment within its coverage area.

916. Base station 5 pages the user equipment;

the base station 5, upon receiving the paging message 5 sent by the AMF, pages the user equipment within its coverage area.

917. The user equipment sends an RRC connection recovery request to the base station 2;

since the ue moves into the coverage of the base station 2 after entering the inactive state, the base station 2 pages the ue at this time. After receiving the paging message 2 of the base station 2, the user equipment initiates a random access process to the base station 2. Thereafter, the user equipment transmits an RRC connection restoration request to the base station 2 to request restoration of the RRC connection.

918. The base station 2 sends a context establishment request of the user equipment to the AMF;

after receiving the RRC connection recovery request sent by the user equipment, the base station 2 sends a context establishment request of the user equipment to the AMF. For example, when the AMF sends the paging message 2 to the base station 2, the paging message 2 carries the identifier of the AMF, and at this time, the base station 2 may send the context establishment request of the user equipment to the AMF through the identifier of the AMF.

919. The AMF sends a context establishment response of the user equipment to the base station 2;

the AMF replies a context establishment response of the user equipment to the base station 2, and the message carries UP packet forwarding information and the like.

920. The base station 2 sends an RRC connection recovery response to the user equipment;

921. the user equipment sends RRC connection recovery complete to the base station 2.

In this embodiment, when the base station 1 and the base station 2 in the paging area have no interface, and the ue moves into the coverage of the base station 2, the base station 1 cannot trigger the base station 2 to page the ue in its coverage, which may result in a paging failure. The base station 1 notifies the AMF of paging failure and notifies the paged area, so that the AMF can be triggered to page the user equipment in the second paging area, repeated paging in the paged area can be avoided, the user equipment can be ensured to be paged, and the service experience of the user equipment is prevented from being influenced.

In the above description of the paging method of the ue in the embodiment of the present application, referring to fig. 10, a paging device of the ue in the embodiment of the present application is described below, where an embodiment of the paging device of the ue in the embodiment of the present application includes:

a first receiving unit 1001, configured to receive inactivity status information of a ue sent by a first base station, where the first base station is a base station where the ue currently resides;

an allocating unit 1002, configured to allocate a paging area to the ue according to the inactivity status information received by the first receiving unit 1001;

a first sending unit 1003, configured to send, to the gateway device, the inactivity state information received by the first receiving unit 1001, where the inactivity state information is used to indicate that the gateway device caches downlink data of the user equipment;

a second receiving unit 1004, configured to receive a downlink data notification of the user equipment sent by the gateway device;

a first paging unit 1005, configured to initiate paging for the user equipment in the paging area allocated by the allocating unit 1002 according to the downlink data notification received by the second receiving unit 1004.

It should be noted that, in this embodiment, the flow executed by each unit in the paging apparatus of the ue is similar to the method flow described in the embodiments shown in fig. 3 and fig. 4, and is not described again here.

In some embodiments of the present application, the first paging unit 1005 is specifically configured to determine base stations included in a paging area allocated by the allocating unit 1002, where the base stations include a first base station and other base stations except the first base station; and sending a paging message to the first base station and sending paging messages carrying the first base station identifier to other base stations, wherein the paging messages are used for indicating each base station in a paging area to page the user equipment in the coverage range of each base station.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging message carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to indicate each base station in the paging area to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to a cell identifier that needs to be paged.

In some embodiments of the present application, the first paging unit 1005 is specifically configured to send a first paging message to the first base station, so that the first base station determines other base stations in the paging area allocated by the allocating unit 1002, and send a second paging message to the other base stations, where the first paging message is used to instruct the first base station to page the user equipment within a coverage area of the first base station, and the second paging message is used to instruct the other base stations to page the user equipment within respective coverage areas.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a third receiving unit, configured to receive a path switching request message sent by the second base station; and a second sending unit, configured to send the path switching request message received by the third receiving unit to the gateway device, where the path switching request message is used to instruct the gateway device to send the cached downlink data to the user equipment through a second base station, and the second base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a fourth receiving unit, configured to receive a context of the user equipment sent by the first base station; a third sending unit, configured to send the context of the user equipment received by the fourth receiving unit to the second base station.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a fifth receiving unit, configured to receive connection status information sent by the first base station; and a fourth sending unit, configured to send the connection state information received by the fifth receiving unit to the gateway device, where the connection state information is used to instruct the gateway device to send the buffered downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station, and the first base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a sixth receiving unit, configured to receive a paging failure message sent by the first base station; the processing unit is used for converting the user equipment into an idle state according to the paging failure message received by the sixth receiving unit; a second paging unit for initiating paging of the user equipment in a second paging area.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging failure message includes paging information, and the second paging unit is specifically configured to determine a second paging area according to the paging information, and initiate paging for the user equipment in the second paging area.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging information includes an area range where the first base station has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list.

In some embodiments of the present application, the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes an area range from the first paging area; or, the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range from the registration area.

It should be noted that, in some embodiments of the present application, a flow executed by each unit in the paging apparatus of the ue is similar to a method flow described in the embodiments shown in fig. 5 to fig. 8, and is not described again here.

Referring to fig. 11, another embodiment of a paging device of a ue in the embodiment of the present application includes:

a first receiving unit 1101, configured to receive inactivity status information of a user equipment sent by a network device;

a marking unit 1102, configured to mark the state of the user equipment as an inactive state according to the inactive state information received by the first receiving unit 1101;

a second receiving unit 1103, configured to receive downlink data of the user equipment;

a buffering unit 1104, configured to buffer the downlink data received by the second receiving unit 1103 according to the inactive state marked by the marking unit 1102;

a first sending unit 1105, configured to send a downlink data notification to the network device, where the downlink data notification is used to instruct the network device to initiate paging for the user equipment in a paging area, and the paging area is allocated to the user equipment when the network device receives the inactive state information.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a third receiving unit, configured to receive connection status information sent by the network device; a clearing unit, configured to clear the marked inactive state according to the connection state information received by the third receiving unit; and a second sending unit, configured to send the buffered downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station, where the first base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a fourth receiving unit, configured to receive a path switching request message of the user equipment sent by the network device; an updating unit, configured to update a forwarding path of the downlink data according to the path switching request message received by the fourth receiving unit, and clear the marked inactive state; and a third sending unit, configured to send the cached downlink data to the user equipment through the second base station according to the forwarding path updated by the updating unit, where the second base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

It should be noted that, the flow executed by each unit in the paging apparatus of the ue in the embodiment of the present application is similar to the method flow described in the embodiments shown in fig. 3 to fig. 8, and is not described again here.

Referring to fig. 12, another embodiment of a paging device of a ue in the embodiment of the present application includes:

a first sending unit 1201, configured to send inactivity information of a ue to a network device, where a base station is a base station where the ue currently resides;

a first receiving unit 1202, configured to receive a paging area sent by a network device, and send the paging area to a user equipment, where the paging area is allocated to the user equipment when the network device receives the inactive state information sent by the first sending unit 1201;

a second receiving unit 1203, configured to receive a first paging message sent by a network device;

a paging unit 1204, configured to page the ue within a coverage area of a base station according to the first paging message received by the second receiving unit 1203, where the coverage area of the base station is included in the paging area received by the first receiving unit 1202.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a determining unit, configured to determine other base stations in the paging area; and the second sending unit is used for sending a second paging message to the other base stations determined by the determining unit, wherein the second paging message is used for indicating the other base stations to page the user equipment in the coverage areas of the other base stations.

In some embodiments of the present application, the first paging message carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a third sending unit, configured to send connection status information to the gateway device through the network device when the paging unit pages the user equipment; a third receiving unit, configured to receive cached downlink data of the user equipment sent by the gateway device according to the connection state information; and a fourth sending unit, configured to send the downlink data received by the third receiving unit to the user equipment.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a fifth sending unit, configured to send the context of the user equipment to the network device.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a sixth sending unit, configured to send a paging failure message to the network device when paging the user equipment fails, where the paging failure message is used to instruct the network device to convert the user equipment into an idle state, and initiate paging of the user equipment in the second paging area.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging failure message includes paging information, where the paging information includes an area range where the paging unit has paged the user equipment, and the area range includes a cell list or a tracking area list.

In some embodiments of the present application, the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes an area range from the first paging area; or, the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range from the registration area.

It should be noted that, the flow executed by each unit in the paging apparatus of the ue in the embodiment of the present application is similar to the method flow described in the embodiments shown in fig. 3 to fig. 8, and is not described again here.

Referring to fig. 13, another embodiment of a paging device of a ue in the embodiment of the present application includes:

a first receiving unit 1301, configured to receive a paging message;

a paging unit 1302, configured to page the user equipment within a coverage area of the first receiving unit 1301 according to the paging message received by the first receiving unit 1301;

a first sending unit 1303, configured to send a path switching request message to the network device when the paging unit 1302 pages the user equipment, where the path switching request message is sent to the gateway device by the network device;

a second receiving unit 1304, configured to receive the cached downlink data of the user equipment sent by the gateway device according to the path switching request message;

a second sending unit 1305, configured to send the downlink data received by the second receiving unit 1304 to the user equipment.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging message carries a cell identifier list, where the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier.

In some embodiments of the present application, the first receiving unit 1301 is specifically configured to receive a first paging message sent by a network device; the paging unit 1302 is specifically configured to page the ue within a coverage area of the first paging unit 1301 according to the first paging message received by the first receiving unit 1301;

or, the first receiving unit 1301 is specifically configured to receive a second paging message sent by a first base station, where the first base station is a base station where the ue resides before the ue changes to the inactive state; the paging unit 1302 is specifically configured to page the ue within a coverage area of the first receiving unit 1301 according to the second paging message received by the first receiving unit 1301.

In some embodiments of the present application, the paging device of the ue further includes: a first obtaining unit, configured to obtain, when the first receiving unit receives a first paging message sent by the network device, a context of the user equipment from the first base station according to an identifier of the first base station, where the first paging message carries the identifier of the first base station;

or, the paging device of the user equipment further includes: a second obtaining unit, configured to obtain, when the first receiving unit receives a first paging message sent by a network device, a context of a user equipment from the network device;

or, the paging device of the user equipment further includes: and the third acquiring unit is used for acquiring the context of the user equipment from the first base station when the first receiving unit receives the second paging message sent by the first base station.

It should be noted that, in the embodiments of the present application, the flow executed by each unit in the paging apparatus of the ue is similar to the method flow described in the embodiments shown in fig. 3 to fig. 8, and is not described again here.

In the above, the paging apparatus of the user equipment in the embodiment of the present application is described from the perspective of the modular functional entity, and the network equipment in the embodiment of the present application is described from the perspective of hardware processing, please refer to fig. 14, where an embodiment of the network equipment in the embodiment of the present application includes:

an input device 1401, an output device 1402, a processor 1403 and a memory 1404 (wherein the number of processors 1401 in the network device may be one or more, and one processor 1401 is taken as an example in fig. 14). In some embodiments of the present invention, the input device 1401, the output device 1402, the processor 1403, and the memory 1404 may be connected by a bus or other means, wherein the connection by a bus is exemplified in fig. 14.

Wherein the memory 1404 has program codes stored therein, and the processor 1403 is configured to execute the method of the embodiment shown in fig. 3 to 8 by calling the program codes stored in the memory 1404.

An embodiment of a gateway device in an embodiment of the present application includes: input means, output means, a processor and a memory (wherein the number of processors in the network device may be one or more). In some embodiments of the invention, the input device, the output device, the processor, and the memory may be connected by a bus or other means. Wherein, the memory stores program codes, and the processor is used for executing the method of the embodiment shown in the foregoing fig. 3 to fig. 8 by calling the program codes stored in the memory.

One embodiment of the base station in the embodiments of the present application includes: input means, output means, a processor and a memory (wherein the number of processors in the network device may be one or more). In some embodiments of the invention, the input device, the output device, the processor, and the memory may be connected by a bus or other means. Wherein, the memory stores program codes, and the processor is used for executing the method of the embodiment shown in the foregoing fig. 3 to fig. 8 by calling the program codes stored in the memory.

The terms "first," "second," "third," "fourth," and the like in the description and in the claims of the present application and in the above-described drawings (if any) are used for distinguishing between similar elements and not necessarily for describing a particular sequential or chronological order. It will be appreciated that the data so used may be interchanged under appropriate circumstances such that the embodiments described herein may be practiced otherwise than as specifically illustrated or described herein. Furthermore, the terms "comprises," "comprising," and "having," and any variations thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, system, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of steps or elements is not necessarily limited to those steps or elements expressly listed, but may include other steps or elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus.

It is clear to those skilled in the art that, for convenience and brevity of description, the specific working processes of the above-described apparatuses, devices and units may refer to the corresponding processes in the foregoing method embodiments, and are not described herein again.

In the several embodiments provided in the present application, it should be understood that the disclosed apparatus, device and method may be implemented in other ways. For example, the above-described apparatus embodiments are merely illustrative, and for example, the division of the units is only one logical division, and other divisions may be realized in practice, for example, a plurality of units or components may be combined or integrated into another system, or some features may be omitted, or not executed. In addition, the shown or discussed mutual coupling or direct coupling or communication connection may be an indirect coupling or communication connection through some interfaces, devices or units, and may be in an electrical, mechanical or other form.

The units described as separate parts may or may not be physically separate, and parts displayed as units may or may not be physical units, may be located in one place, or may be distributed on a plurality of network units. Some or all of the units can be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the solution of the embodiment.

In addition, functional units in the embodiments of the present application may be integrated into one processing unit, or each unit may exist alone physically, or two or more units are integrated into one unit. The integrated unit can be realized in a form of hardware, and can also be realized in a form of a software functional unit.

The integrated unit, if implemented in the form of a software functional unit and sold or used as a stand-alone product, may be stored in a computer readable storage medium. Based on such understanding, the technical solution of the present application may be substantially implemented or contributed to by the prior art, or all or part of the technical solution may be embodied in a software product, which is stored in a storage medium and includes instructions for causing a computer device (which may be a personal computer, a server, or a network device) to execute all or part of the steps of the method according to the embodiments of the present application. And the aforementioned storage medium includes: a U-disk, a removable hard disk, a Read-Only Memory (ROM), a Random Access Memory (RAM), a magnetic disk or an optical disk, and other various media capable of storing program codes.

The above embodiments are only used for illustrating the technical solutions of the present application, and not for limiting the same; although the present application has been described in detail with reference to the foregoing embodiments, it should be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that: the technical solutions described in the foregoing embodiments may still be modified, or some technical features may be equivalently replaced; and such modifications or substitutions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the corresponding technical solutions in the embodiments of the present application.

Claims (48)

1. A method for paging a user equipment, comprising:

the method comprises the steps that network equipment receives inactive state information of user equipment sent by a first base station, wherein the first base station is a base station where the user equipment currently resides, and the inactive state information is information when the first base station detects that the user equipment has no data transmission within preset time and converts the user equipment into an inactive state;

the network equipment allocates a first paging area to the user equipment according to the inactive state information, wherein the first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network equipment;

the network equipment sends the inactive state information to gateway equipment, and the inactive state information is used for indicating the gateway equipment to cache downlink data of the user equipment;

the network equipment receives a downlink data notification of the user equipment sent by the gateway equipment;

and the network equipment initiates paging to the user equipment in the first paging area according to the downlink data notification.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the network device initiating paging of the user equipment in the first paging area according to the downlink data notification comprises:

the network equipment determines base stations included in the first paging area, wherein the base stations include the first base station and other base stations except the first base station;

and the network equipment sends a paging message to the first base station and sends paging messages carrying first base station identifiers to other base stations, wherein the paging messages are used for indicating each base station in the first paging area to page the user equipment in the coverage range of each base station.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the paging message carries a cell identifier list, the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct each base station in the first paging area to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to a cell identifier that needs to be paged.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the network device initiating paging of the user equipment in the first paging area according to the downlink data notification comprises:

the network device sends a first paging message to the first base station, so that the first base station determines other base stations in the first paging area, and sends a second paging message to the other base stations, wherein the first paging message is used for indicating the first base station to page the user equipment in the coverage area of the first base station, and the second paging message is used for indicating the other base stations to page the user equipment in the coverage areas of the other base stations.

5. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 4, further comprising:

the network equipment receives a path switching request message sent by a second base station;

the network device sends the path switching request message to the gateway device, where the path switching request message is used to instruct the gateway device to send the cached downlink data to the user equipment through the second base station, and the second base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

the network equipment receives the context of the user equipment sent by the first base station;

the network equipment sends the context of the user equipment to the second base station.

7. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 4, further comprising:

the network equipment receives connection state information sent by the first base station;

the network device sends the connection state information to the gateway device, where the connection state information is used to instruct the gateway device to send the cached downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station, and the first base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

8. The method of claim 4, wherein after the network device sends the first paging message to the first base station, the method further comprises:

the network equipment receives a paging failure message sent by the first base station;

the network equipment converts the user equipment into an idle state according to the paging failure message;

the network device initiates paging of the user equipment in a second paging area.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the paging failure message includes paging information, and wherein the network device initiating paging of the user equipment in a second paging area comprises:

the network equipment determines a second paging area according to the paging information;

the network device initiates paging of the user equipment within the second paging area.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the paging information comprises an area range where the first base station has paged the ue, and wherein the area range comprises a cell list or a tracking area list.

11. The method according to any of claims 8 to 10, wherein the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range from the first paging area; alternatively, the first and second electrodes may be,

the second paging area is an area where the area range is excluded from the registration area by the network device.

12. A method for paging a user equipment, comprising:

the method comprises the steps that gateway equipment receives inactive state information of user equipment sent by network equipment, wherein the inactive state information is information obtained when a first base station detects that the user equipment has no data transmission within preset time and converts the user equipment into an inactive state;

the gateway equipment marks the state of the user equipment as an inactive state according to the inactive state information;

the gateway equipment receives downlink data of the user equipment;

the gateway equipment caches the downlink data according to the marked inactive state;

the gateway device sends a downlink data notification to the network device, where the downlink data notification is used to instruct the network device to initiate paging of the user equipment in a first paging area, the first paging area is allocated to the user equipment by the network device when receiving the inactive state information, and the first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein after the gateway device sends the downstream data notification to the network device, the method further comprises:

the gateway equipment receives the connection state information sent by the network equipment;

the gateway equipment clears the marked inactive state according to the connection state information;

and the gateway equipment sends the cached downlink data to the user equipment through a first base station, wherein the first base station is a base station paging the user equipment.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein after the gateway device sends the downstream data notification to the network device, the method further comprises:

the gateway equipment receives a path switching request message of the user equipment sent by the network equipment;

the gateway equipment updates the forwarding path of the downlink data according to the path switching request message and clears the marked inactive state;

and the gateway equipment sends the cached downlink data to the user equipment through a second base station according to the updated forwarding path, wherein the second base station is a base station paging the user equipment.

15. A method for paging a user equipment, comprising:

a base station sends inactive state information of user equipment to network equipment, wherein the base station is a base station where the user equipment currently resides, and the inactive state information is information when the base station detects that the user equipment has no data transmission within preset time and converts the user equipment into an inactive state;

the base station receives a first paging area sent by the network equipment and sends the first paging area to user equipment, wherein the first paging area is allocated to the user equipment by the network equipment when the network equipment receives the inactivity state information, and the first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network equipment;

the base station receives a first paging message sent by the network equipment;

the base station pages the user equipment in the coverage area of the base station according to the first paging message, wherein the coverage area of the base station is contained in the first paging area;

the method further comprises the following steps:

the base station determines other base stations in the first paging area;

and the base station sends a second paging message to the other base stations, wherein the second paging message is used for indicating the other base stations to page the user equipment in respective coverage ranges.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the first paging message carries a cell identifier list, and wherein the cell identifier list comprises one or more cell identifiers, and wherein the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station to page the ue in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier.

17. The method according to any one of claims 15 to 16, further comprising:

when the base station pages the user equipment, the base station sends connection state information to gateway equipment through the network equipment;

the base station receives the cached downlink data of the user equipment, which is sent by the gateway equipment according to the connection state information;

and the base station sends the downlink data to the user equipment.

18. The method according to any one of claims 15 to 16, further comprising:

the base station sends the context of the user equipment to the network equipment.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein after the base station transmits the second paging message to the other base station, the method further comprises:

when the paging of the user equipment fails, the base station sends a paging failure message to the network equipment, wherein the paging failure message is used for indicating the network equipment to convert the user equipment into an idle state and initiating paging of the user equipment in a second paging area.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the paging failure message comprises paging information, and wherein the paging information comprises an area range where the first base station has paged the ue, and wherein the area range comprises a cell list or a tracking area list.

21. The method of claim 19 or 20, wherein the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range from the first paging area; alternatively, the first and second electrodes may be,

the second paging area is an area where the area range is excluded from the registration area by the network device.

22. A method for paging a user equipment, comprising:

a base station receives a paging message;

the base station pages the user equipment in the coverage range according to the paging message;

when the base station pages the user equipment, the base station sends a path switching request message to network equipment, and the path switching request message is sent to gateway equipment by the network equipment;

the base station receives the cached downlink data of the user equipment sent by the gateway equipment according to the path switching request message;

the base station sends the downlink data to the user equipment;

the base station receiving the paging message comprises:

the base station receives a second paging message sent by a first base station, wherein the first base station is a base station where the user equipment resides before the user equipment is converted into an inactive state;

the base station pages the user equipment in the coverage area according to the paging message, and the paging method comprises the following steps:

and the base station pages the user equipment within the coverage range of the base station according to the second paging message.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the paging message carries a cell identifier list, wherein the cell identifier list comprises one or more cell identifiers, and wherein the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station to page the ue in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier.

24. The method of claim 22, further comprising:

when the base station receives a first paging message sent by the network equipment, the base station acquires the context of the user equipment from the network equipment;

alternatively, the first and second electrodes may be,

and when the base station receives a second paging message sent by a first base station, the base station acquires the context of the user equipment from the first base station.

25. A paging apparatus of a user equipment, comprising:

a first receiving unit, configured to receive inactivity information of a user equipment sent by a first base station, where the first base station is a base station where the user equipment currently resides, and the inactivity information is information obtained when the first base station detects that there is no data transmission for the user equipment within a preset time and changes the user equipment into an inactivity state;

an allocating unit, configured to allocate a first paging area to the ue according to the inactivity status information received by the first receiving unit, where the first paging area is a subset of a registration area of the ue;

a first sending unit, configured to send the inactivity status information received by the first receiving unit to a gateway device, where the inactivity status information is used to instruct the gateway device to cache downlink data of the user equipment;

a second receiving unit, configured to receive a downlink data notification of the user equipment sent by the gateway device;

a first paging unit, configured to initiate paging to the user equipment in the first paging area allocated by the allocation unit according to the downlink data notification received by the second receiving unit.

26. The apparatus of claim 25, wherein the first paging unit is specifically configured to determine base stations included in the first paging area allocated by the allocation unit, the base stations including the first base station and other base stations except the first base station;

and sending a paging message to the first base station and sending a paging message carrying a first base station identifier to the other base stations, wherein the paging message is used for indicating each base station in the first paging area to page the user equipment in the coverage range of each base station.

27. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein the paging message carries a cell identifier list, the cell identifier list includes one or more cell identifiers, and the cell identifier list is used to instruct each base station in the first paging area to page the user equipment in a cell corresponding to a cell identifier that needs to be paged.

28. The apparatus of claim 25, wherein the first paging unit is specifically configured to send a first paging message to the first base station, so that the first base station determines other base stations in the first paging area allocated by the allocation unit, and send a second paging message to the other base stations, the first paging message is used to instruct the first base station to page the ue within the coverage area of the first base station, and the second paging message is used to instruct the other base stations to page the ue within respective coverage areas.

29. The apparatus of any one of claims 25 to 28, further comprising:

a third receiving unit, configured to receive a path switching request message sent by the second base station;

a second sending unit, configured to send the path switching request message received by the third receiving unit to the gateway device, where the path switching request message is used to instruct the gateway device to send the cached downlink data to the user equipment through the second base station, and the second base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

30. The apparatus of claim 29, further comprising:

a fourth receiving unit, configured to receive a context of the user equipment sent by the first base station;

a third sending unit, configured to send the context of the user equipment received by the fourth receiving unit to the second base station.

31. The apparatus of any one of claims 25 to 28, further comprising:

a fifth receiving unit, configured to receive connection status information sent by the first base station;

a fourth sending unit, configured to send the connection status information received by the fifth receiving unit to the gateway device, where the connection status information is used to instruct the gateway device to send the cached downlink data to the user equipment through the first base station, and the first base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

32. The apparatus of claim 28, further comprising:

a sixth receiving unit, configured to receive a paging failure message sent by the first base station;

a processing unit, configured to convert the ue into an idle state according to the paging failure message received by the sixth receiving unit;

a second paging unit for initiating paging of the user equipment in a second paging area.

33. The apparatus of claim 32, wherein the paging failure message comprises paging information, and wherein the second paging unit is specifically configured to determine a second paging area according to the paging information, and initiate paging of the ue in the second paging area.

34. The apparatus of claim 33, wherein the paging information comprises an area range where the first base station has paged the ue, and wherein the area range comprises a cell list or a tracking area list.

35. The apparatus according to any of claims 32 to 34, wherein the second paging area is an area where a network device excludes the area range from the first paging area; alternatively, the first and second electrodes may be,

the second paging area is an area where the area range is excluded from the registration area by the network device.

36. A paging apparatus of a user equipment, comprising:

a first receiving unit, configured to receive inactivity information of a user equipment sent by a network device, where the inactivity information is information obtained when a first base station detects that there is no data transmission in the user equipment within a preset time and changes the user equipment into an inactivity state;

a marking unit, configured to mark a state of the user equipment as an inactive state according to the inactive state information received by the first receiving unit;

a second receiving unit, configured to receive downlink data of the user equipment;

a buffer unit, configured to buffer the downlink data received by the first receiving unit according to the inactive state marked by the marking unit;

a first sending unit, configured to send a downlink data notification to the network device, where the downlink data notification is used to instruct the network device to initiate paging of the user equipment in a first paging area, the first paging area is allocated to the user equipment by the network device when the network device receives the inactive state information, and the first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device.

37. The apparatus of claim 36, further comprising:

a third receiving unit, configured to receive connection status information sent by the network device;

a clearing unit, configured to clear the marked inactive state according to the connection state information received by the third receiving unit;

a second sending unit, configured to send the buffered downlink data to the user equipment through a first base station, where the first base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

38. The apparatus of claim 36, further comprising:

a fourth receiving unit, configured to receive a path switching request message of the user equipment sent by the network device;

an updating unit, configured to update a forwarding path of the downlink data according to the path switching request message received by the fourth receiving unit, and clear the marked inactive state;

a third sending unit, configured to send the cached downlink data to the user equipment through a second base station according to the forwarding path updated by the updating unit, where the second base station is a base station that pages the user equipment.

39. A paging apparatus of a user equipment, comprising:

a first sending unit, configured to send, to a network device, inactivity state information of a user equipment, where the inactivity state information is information obtained when a base station detects that there is no data transmission in the user equipment within a preset time and changes the user equipment into an inactivity state;

a first receiving unit, configured to receive a first paging area sent by the network device, and send the first paging area to a user equipment, where the first paging area is allocated to the user equipment by the network device when the network device receives the inactivity status information sent by the first sending unit, and the first paging area is a subset of a registration area allocated to the user equipment by the network device;

a second receiving unit, configured to receive a first paging message sent by the network device;

a paging unit, configured to page the ue within a coverage area of the base station according to the first paging message received by the second receiving unit, where the coverage area of the base station is included in the first paging area received by the first receiving unit;

the device further comprises:

a determining unit, configured to determine other base stations in the first paging area;

a second sending unit, configured to send a second paging message to the other base stations determined by the determining unit, where the second paging message is used to instruct the other base stations to page the user equipment within their coverage areas.

40. The apparatus of claim 39, wherein the first paging message carries a cell identifier list, wherein the cell identifier list comprises one or more cell identifiers, and wherein the cell identifier list is used to instruct the base station to page the UE in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier.

41. The apparatus of any one of claims 39 to 40, further comprising:

a third sending unit, configured to send connection status information to a gateway device through the network device when the paging unit pages the user equipment;

a third receiving unit, configured to receive the cached downlink data of the user equipment sent by the gateway device according to the connection status information;

a fourth sending unit, configured to send the downlink data received by the third receiving unit to the user equipment.

42. The apparatus of any one of claims 39 to 40, further comprising:

a fifth sending unit, configured to send the context of the user equipment to the network device.

43. The apparatus of claim 39, further comprising:

a sixth sending unit, configured to send a paging failure message to the network device when paging of the ue fails, where the paging failure message is used to instruct the network device to convert the ue into an idle state, and initiate paging of the ue in a second paging area.

44. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the paging failure message comprises paging information, and wherein the paging information comprises an area range in which the paging unit has paged the UE, and wherein the area range comprises a cell list or a tracking area list.

45. The apparatus according to claim 43 or 44, wherein the second paging area is an area where the network device excludes the area range from the first paging area; alternatively, the first and second electrodes may be,

the second paging area is an area where the area range is excluded from the registration area by the network device.

46. A paging apparatus of a user equipment, comprising:

a first receiving unit, configured to receive a paging message;

a paging unit, configured to page the user equipment within a coverage area of the first receiving unit according to the paging message received by the first receiving unit;

a first sending unit, configured to send a path switching request message to a network device when the paging unit pages the user equipment, where the path switching request message is sent to a gateway device by the network device;

a second receiving unit, configured to receive the cached downlink data of the user equipment sent by the gateway device according to the path switching request message;

a second sending unit, configured to send the downlink data received by the second receiving unit to the user equipment;

the first receiving unit is specifically configured to receive a second paging message sent by a first base station, where the first base station is a base station where the user equipment resides before the user equipment is converted into the inactive state;

the paging unit is specifically configured to page the ue within a coverage area of the first receiving unit according to the second paging message received by the first receiving unit.

47. The apparatus of claim 46, wherein the paging message carries a cell identifier list, wherein the cell identifier list comprises one or more cell identifiers, and wherein the cell identifier list is used to instruct a base station to page the UE in a cell corresponding to the cell identifier.

48. The apparatus of claim 46, further comprising:

a second obtaining unit, configured to obtain, when the first receiving unit receives a first paging message sent by the network device, a context of the user equipment from the network device;

alternatively, the apparatus further comprises:

a third obtaining unit, configured to obtain, when the first receiving unit receives the second paging message sent by the first base station, a context of the user equipment from the first base station.

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