CN111385831B

CN111385831B - Communication method and communication device

Info

Publication number: CN111385831B
Application number: CN201811646846.7A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 李宏宇; 赵文龙; 鄂楠
Original assignee: Huawei Device Co Ltd
Current assignee: Huawei Device Co Ltd
Priority date: 2018-12-29
Filing date: 2018-12-29
Publication date: 2024-04-12
Anticipated expiration: 2038-12-29
Also published as: CN111385831A

Abstract

The application provides a communication method and a communication device, which can timely restore services by earlier shunting the uplink services of a secondary cell group to a primary cell group or triggering a failure flow of the secondary cell group. The method comprises the following steps: when the auxiliary cell group and the main cell group transmit uplink service through separate bearing, the terminal equipment determines whether the uplink service quality of the auxiliary cell group meets a first condition; and under the condition that the uplink service quality of the auxiliary cell group does not meet the first condition, the terminal equipment shunts the uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to the main cell group or triggers a failure flow of the auxiliary cell group, wherein the main cell group and the auxiliary cell group are the current service cells of the terminal equipment.

Description

Communication method and communication device

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of communications, and more particularly, to a communication method and a communication apparatus.

Background

The fifth generation (5th generation,5G) network architecture is divided into two types, non-stand alone (NSA) and Stand Alone (SA). From the perspective of smooth evolution from the fourth generation (4th generation,4G) network to the 5G network and protection of existing 4G investments, most operators choose NSA for networking in the early stages of 5G networking, while long term evolution (long term evolution, LTE) and New Radio (NR) dual connectivity (E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity, EN-DC) are the main technical forms of NSA networking.

In EN-DC, from the terminal device side, there are 3 bearer types: primary cell group (master cell group, MCG) bearers, secondary cell group (secondary cell group, SCG) bearers, and split (split) bearers. In EN-DC, after the network configures the split bearer for the terminal device, when the uplink traffic is higher than a specific threshold, the terminal device may perform uplink traffic splitting.

In the process of carrying out the service, the service quality is poor due to the reasons of discontinuous coverage, wireless interference, network equipment failure, unreasonable parameters and the like, so that the problem that the user can surf the internet slowly or even can not surf the internet when using the mobile cellular network is caused. In the EN-DC upstream traffic offload scenario, packets are offloaded through MCG and SCG. Once the MCG or SCG has poor uplink service quality, the network side cannot completely receive data, and the service is blocked or even interrupted. Compared with the higher coverage of LTE, the NR frequency band is smaller, and the influence of the continuity of the initial coverage of the network construction is smaller, so that the SCG is easier to have the problem of poor uplink service quality compared with the MCG.

After the quality of service in SCG uplink is poor, how to recover the service is a problem to be solved.

Disclosure of Invention

The application provides a communication method and a communication device, which can timely restore services by earlier shunting the uplink services of a secondary cell group to a primary cell group or triggering a failure flow of the secondary cell group.

In a first aspect, a communication method is provided, including:

when the auxiliary cell group and the main cell group transmit uplink service through separate bearing, the terminal equipment determines whether the uplink service quality of the auxiliary cell group meets a first condition;

and under the condition that the uplink service quality of the auxiliary cell group does not meet the first condition, the terminal equipment executes a first operation, wherein the first operation is to shunt the uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to a main cell group or trigger a failure flow of the auxiliary cell group, and the main cell group and the auxiliary cell group are the current service cells of the terminal equipment.

Therefore, in the communication method provided by the application, when the uplink service quality of the SCG does not meet the first condition, for example, when the BLER of the uplink service of the SCG is greater than or equal to the first threshold, the terminal device may resume the transmission of the uplink service by shunting the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG or triggering the SCG failure flow.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementation manners of the first aspect, the determining, by the terminal device, whether uplink service quality of the secondary cell group meets a first condition includes:

The terminal device determines whether a block error rate (BLER) of an uplink service of the secondary cell group is greater than or equal to a first threshold.

With reference to the first aspect, in some implementations of the first aspect, in a case where uplink service quality of the secondary cell group does not meet a first condition, the terminal device performs a first operation, including:

in the case that the uplink service quality of the secondary cell group does not meet the first condition, the terminal device determines whether the uplink service quality of the primary cell group meets a second condition;

and the terminal equipment executes the first operation under the condition that the uplink service quality of the main cell group meets the second condition.

Therefore, in the process of transmitting the uplink service by the terminal equipment through the separation bearing, if the uplink service quality of the SCG does not meet the requirement, the uplink service of the SCG can be shunted to the MCG when the uplink service quality of the MCG is better, so that the problem that the MCG cannot guarantee the service quality after the uplink service of the SCG is shunted to the MCG can be avoided.

The uplink quality of service of MCG may be characterized by BLER, or may also be characterized by other parameters, which are not limited in this application. Further, the uplink quality of service of the MCG and the SCG may be characterized by the same parameter or may be characterized by different parameters. Similar to the first condition, the second condition may also be a preset threshold, for example, denoted as a second threshold, but the present application is not limited thereto.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementation manners of the first aspect, in a case where uplink service quality of the primary cell group meets the second condition, the terminal device performs the first operation, including:

under the condition that the uplink service quality of the primary cell group meets the second condition, the terminal equipment determines whether to conduct neighbor cell measurement, wherein the measured neighbor cell is the neighbor cell of the primary cell in the secondary cell group;

and under the condition that the terminal equipment determines that the neighbor cell measurement is not performed, the terminal equipment shunts the uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to the main cell group.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementation manners of the first aspect, the method further includes:

under the condition that the terminal equipment determines to measure the adjacent cells, the terminal equipment determines whether to measure the inter-frequency adjacent cells, wherein the measured inter-frequency adjacent cells are the inter-frequency adjacent cells of the main cells in the auxiliary cell group;

if the terminal equipment determines that the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is not performed, if the inter-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition exists, triggering a secondary cell failure flow by the terminal equipment, and reporting a measurement report of the inter-frequency neighbor cell, otherwise, shunting uplink service of the secondary cell group to the primary cell group by the terminal equipment, wherein the inter-frequency neighbor cell is the inter-frequency neighbor cell of the primary cell in the secondary cell group; or,

And under the condition that the terminal equipment determines to measure the inter-frequency neighbor cells, if the inter-frequency neighbor cells meeting the third condition or the inter-frequency neighbor cells meeting the fourth condition exist, triggering a failure flow of the auxiliary cell by the terminal equipment, reporting a measurement report of the inter-frequency neighbor cells, otherwise, shunting the uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to the main cell group by the terminal equipment.

the terminal equipment starts a timer;

the terminal device determines whether the network device performs a second operation;

if the network device performs the second operation and the timer is not overtime, the terminal device stops the timer and sets the count value of the counter as an initial value, wherein the count value of the counter is the number of times that the terminal device shunts the uplink service of the secondary cell group to the primary cell group and then switches to the transmission of the uplink service through the separated bearer by the primary cell group and the secondary cell group;

if the network device does not execute the second operation and the timer is overtime, the terminal device determines whether the count value of the counter is less than or equal to a preset maximum number of times;

If the count value of the counter is smaller than or equal to the preset maximum number of times, the terminal equipment determines whether the data volume of uplink service is larger than or equal to a preset data volume threshold value, and if yes, the terminal equipment transmits the uplink service through the separated bearer in the main cell group and the auxiliary cell group; or,

and if the count value of the counter is greater than the preset maximum times, the terminal equipment sets the count value of the counter to be 1.

By the method, after the terminal equipment is allowed to shunt the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG, the recovery attempt of transmitting the uplink service through the separated bearer is carried out, so that flexible transmission can be realized.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the second operation includes at least one of:

secondary node change, secondary node release, secondary cell group change, or radio resource control (radio resource control, RRC) RRC release.

In a second aspect, a communication device is provided for performing the method of the first aspect or any possible implementation of the first aspect. In particular, the communication device comprises means for performing the method of the first aspect or any possible implementation of the first aspect.

In a third aspect, there is provided a communication apparatus comprising: a transceiver, a processor, and a bus system. Optionally, the communication device may further comprise a memory. Wherein the transceiver, the memory and the processor are connected by the bus system, the memory is configured to store instructions, the processor is configured to execute the instructions stored by the memory to control the transceiver to receive and/or transmit signals, and when the processor executes the instructions stored by the memory, the execution causes the processor to perform the method of the first aspect or any possible implementation of the first aspect.

In a fourth aspect, a computer readable medium is provided for storing a computer program comprising instructions for performing the method in any of the possible implementations of the first aspect described above.

In a fifth aspect, there is provided a computer program product comprising: computer program code which, when run by a communication unit, processing unit or transceiver, processor of a communication device, causes the means for beam training to perform the method in any of the possible implementations of the first aspect described above.

Drawings

FIG. 1 shows a schematic diagram of an EN-DC system.

Fig. 2 is an exemplary flow chart of a communication method provided herein.

Fig. 3 shows a specific embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 4 shows a schematic block diagram of a communication device of the present application.

Fig. 5 shows a schematic block diagram of another communication device of the present application.

Detailed Description

The technical solutions in the present application will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

The method and the device can be applied to EN-DC scenes, and can also be applied to other types of double-connection scenes, such as NR-E-UTRA double connection (NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity, NE-DC), NR double connection (NR dual connectivity, NR DC), LTE double connection (LTE dual connectivity, LTE DC) and the like. In order to enable those skilled in the art to better understand the present application, the following description will mainly take EN-DC scenario as an example.

FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a schematic diagram of an EN-DC system. As depicted in fig. 1, system 100 includes a terminal device 110, a network device 120, and a network device 130. Wherein the terminal device 110 communicates with the network device 120 and the network device 130 by means of dual connectivity. The network device 120 may be a Master Node (MN), the network device 130 may be a Secondary Node (SN), the MN may be an LTE base station, such as an evolved NodeB (eNB or eNodeB) in an LTE system, and the SN may be an NR base station, such as a gNB. The service cell group controlled by the MN is MCG, and the service cell group controlled by the SN is SCG.

A terminal device in the present application may refer to a user equipment, an access terminal, a subscriber unit, a subscriber station, a mobile station, a remote terminal, a mobile device, a user terminal, a wireless communication device, a user agent, or a user equipment. The terminal device may also be a cellular telephone, a cordless telephone, a session initiation protocol (session initiation protocol, SIP) phone, a wireless local loop (wireless local loop, WLL) station, a personal digital assistant (personal digital assistant, PDA), a handheld device with wireless communication capabilities, a computing device or other processing device connected to a wireless modem, an in-vehicle device, a wearable device, a terminal device in a future 5G network or a terminal device in a future evolved public land mobile network (public land mobile network, PLMN), etc., as the embodiments of the application are not limited in this respect.

In EN-DC, data plane radio bearers may be serviced independently by the MN or SN, or by both the MN and SN. The service by MN is called MCG bearer, the service by SN is called SCG bearer, and the service by MN and SN is called split bearer. After the network configures the split bearer for the terminal device, when the uplink traffic is higher than a specific threshold (ul-datasplit threshold), the terminal device may perform uplink traffic splitting.

In the process of carrying out the service, the service quality is poor due to the reasons of discontinuous coverage, wireless interference, network equipment failure, unreasonable parameters and the like, so that the problem that the user can surf the internet slowly or even can not surf the internet when using the mobile cellular network is caused. In the EN-DC upstream traffic offload scenario, packets are offloaded through MCG and SCG. Once the MCG or SCG has poor uplink service quality, the network side cannot completely receive data, and the service is blocked or even interrupted. Compared with the higher coverage of LTE, the NR frequency band is smaller, and the influence of the continuity of the initial coverage of the network construction is added, so that the SCG is easier to have the problem of poor uplink service quality compared with the MCG. After the quality of service in SCG uplink is poor, how to recover the service is a problem to be solved.

In view of this, the present application provides a communication method capable of timely recovering services by earlier shunting the uplink service of the secondary cell group to the primary cell group or triggering the secondary cell group failure flow.

Fig. 2 is an exemplary flow chart of a communication method provided herein. Hereinafter, each step in fig. 2 will be described in detail.

S210, when the SCG and the MCG transmit uplink service through separated bearing, the terminal equipment determines whether the uplink service quality of the SCG meets a first condition.

S220, in case that the uplink service quality of the SCG does not meet the first condition, the terminal device performs the first operation. The first operation is to shunt the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG or trigger the SCG failure flow, where the MCG and the SCG are the current serving cells of the terminal device.

The quality of the uplink service of the SCG may be characterized by the BLER, or may also be characterized by other parameters, which are not limited in this application. The first condition may be a preset threshold, for example, denoted as a first threshold.

In one possible implementation, the determining, by the terminal device, whether the quality of uplink service of the SCG meets a first condition includes: the terminal device determines whether the BLER of the uplink traffic of the SCG is greater than or equal to a first threshold.

That is, the terminal device may determine whether the uplink quality of service of the SCG satisfies the first condition by comparing the size relation of the BLER of the uplink service of the SCG with the first threshold. If the BLER of the uplink service of the SCG is greater than or equal to a first threshold value, the uplink service quality of the SCG is not considered to meet the first condition, otherwise, the uplink service quality of the SCG is considered to meet the first condition.

Specifically, in the process of the terminal device transmitting the uplink service through the split bearer, if the uplink service quality of the SCG becomes worse to be unable to meet the first condition, for example, the BLER of the uplink service of the SCG is greater than or equal to the first threshold, the terminal device shunts the uplink service of the SCG area to the MCG, that is, the uplink service is transmitted through the MCG bearer, and the uplink service is not transmitted through the split bearer any more; or when the quality of the uplink service of the SCG is poor and cannot meet the first condition, the terminal device may trigger the SCG failure flow to attempt to resume the transmission of the uplink service.

After triggering the SCG procedure, the terminal device may suspend the data radio bearer (data radio bearer, DRB) of the SCG, stop the transmission on the SCG, reset the SCG media access control (media access control, MAC), and then the terminal device sends SCG Failure Information or SCG Failure Information NR, and the network side further decides according to the information carried by the message, where the specific protocol is undefined, and there may be actions: 1. the SCG is released. 2. An SCG is updated for the terminal device. For SCG failure flow, reference may be made specifically to the prior art, and will not be described in detail herein.

In addition, generally, when the terminal device detects an unrecoverable error in the radio link control (radio link control, RLC) layer or the downlink is out of step, the uplink service may be recovered through the SCG failure procedure. However, in practice, a scenario of fluctuation occurs after the service quality is deteriorated to a certain extent, and this situation requires a long time to wait for the service quality to be thoroughly deteriorated, so that an unrecoverable error of the RLC layer or downlink out-of-step may occur, which may cause occurrence of service delay. In the method, when the BLER of the uplink service is greater than or equal to the first threshold, the terminal equipment can shunt the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG or trigger the SCG failure flow, and the SCG failure flow is triggered without waiting until the RLC layer fails to recover the error or after the downlink step out occurs. Therefore, the method can reduce service delay.

Optionally, as an embodiment of the present application, when the uplink service quality of the SCG does not meet the first condition, the terminal device performs a first operation, including:

in the case that the uplink service quality of the SCG does not meet the first condition, the terminal equipment determines whether the uplink service quality of the MCG meets the second condition; and the terminal equipment executes the first operation under the condition that the uplink service quality of the MCG meets the second condition.

Specifically, in the case where the uplink service quality of the SCG does not satisfy the first condition, the terminal device needs to determine whether the uplink service quality of the MCG satisfies the second condition, and in the case where the uplink service quality of the MCG satisfies the second condition, the terminal device performs the first operation.

In one possible implementation, the determining, by the terminal device, whether the uplink quality of service of the MCG meets the second condition includes: the terminal device determines whether the BLER of the uplink traffic of the MCG is greater than or equal to a second threshold.

That is, the terminal device may determine whether the uplink quality of service of the MCG satisfies the second condition by comparing the size relation of the BLER of the uplink service of the MCG with the second threshold. If the BLER of the uplink service of the MCG is smaller than the second threshold value, the uplink service quality of the MCG is considered to meet the second condition, otherwise, the uplink service quality of the MCG is considered to not meet the second condition.

Optionally, as an embodiment of the present application, in a case where the uplink service quality of the MCG meets the second condition, the terminal device performs a first operation, including:

and under the condition that the uplink service quality of the MCG meets the second condition, the terminal equipment determines whether to conduct neighbor cell measurement, and under the condition that the terminal equipment determines not to conduct neighbor cell measurement, the terminal equipment shunts the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG. Wherein the measured neighbor cell is the neighbor cell of the primary cell in the SCG.

For example, in the case where the uplink service quality of the MCG satisfies the second condition, the terminal device may determine that neighbor cell measurement is not required by determining whether the RSRP of the primary cell in the SCG is greater than or equal to TH1, and in the case where the RSRP of the primary cell in the SCG is greater than or equal to TH1, at this time, the terminal device shunts the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG. Conversely, if the RSRP of the primary cell in the SCG is smaller than TH1, the terminal device needs to perform neighbor cell measurement.

Here, TH1 is a preset threshold, which may be a threshold for performing neighbor cell measurement specified in the protocol, but the value of TH1 is not limited in this application.

Optionally, as an embodiment of the present application, the method further includes:

under the condition that the terminal equipment determines to measure the adjacent cells, the terminal equipment determines whether to measure the inter-frequency adjacent cells, wherein the measured inter-frequency adjacent cells are the inter-frequency adjacent cells of the main cells in the SCG;

under the condition that the terminal equipment determines that the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is not performed, if the co-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition exists, the terminal equipment triggers a failure flow of the auxiliary cell and reports a measurement report of the co-frequency neighbor cell, otherwise, the terminal equipment shunts the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG, and the co-frequency neighbor cell is the co-frequency neighbor cell of the main cell in the SCG; or,

under the condition that the terminal equipment determines to measure the inter-frequency neighbor cells, if the inter-frequency neighbor cells meeting the third condition or the inter-frequency neighbor cells meeting the fourth condition exist, the terminal equipment triggers a failure flow of the auxiliary cell and reports a measurement report of the inter-frequency neighbor cells, otherwise, the terminal equipment shunts the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG.

Specifically, in the case where the uplink service quality of the MCG satisfies the second condition, the terminal device first determines whether to perform the neighbor cell measurement, and in the case where the terminal device determines to perform the neighbor cell measurement, it is also necessary to determine whether to perform the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement. For example, the terminal device may determine whether the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is needed by comparing the RSRP of the primary cell in the SCG with the TH 2. For example, if the RSRP of the primary cell in the SCG is smaller than TH1 and greater than or equal to TH2, the terminal device needs to perform neighbor cell measurement (here, co-frequency neighbor cell) but does not need to perform inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement. The RSRP of the primary cell in the SCG is smaller than TH1 and smaller than TH2, and the terminal device needs to perform inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement. Here, TH2 is a preset threshold, which is smaller than TH1, and TH2 may be set as the different frequency A2 threshold, but the embodiment of the present application is not limited thereto.

If the terminal equipment determines that the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is not performed and the co-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition exists, for example, if the co-frequency neighbor cell with the RSRP being larger than the third threshold exists, the terminal equipment triggers the secondary cell failure flow and reports the measurement report of the co-frequency neighbor cell. If there is no co-frequency neighbor cell satisfying the third condition, for example, if there is no co-frequency neighbor cell with RSRP greater than the third threshold, the terminal device shunts the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG.

If the terminal equipment determines that the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is performed, if the same-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition or the inter-frequency neighbor cell meeting the fourth condition exists, for example, if the same-frequency neighbor cell with the RSRP larger than the third threshold exists or the inter-frequency neighbor cell with the RSRP larger than the fourth threshold exists, the terminal equipment triggers a failure flow of the auxiliary cell and reports a measurement report of the inter-frequency neighbor cell. And if the same-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition does not exist and the different-frequency neighbor cell meeting the fourth condition does not exist, the terminal equipment shunts the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG.

Here, the third threshold value and the fourth threshold value may be set in advance, and may be equal or unequal, which is not limited in this application.

the terminal equipment starts a timer;

if the network equipment executes the second operation and the timer is not overtime, the terminal equipment stops the timer, and sets the count value of the counter as an initial value, wherein the count value of the counter is the number of times that the terminal equipment shunts the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG and then switches to the MCG and the SCG to transmit the uplink service through the separated bearer;

If the network equipment does not execute the second operation and the timer is overtime, the terminal equipment determines whether the count value of the counter is smaller than or equal to the preset maximum number of times; if the count value of the counter is smaller than or equal to the preset maximum number of times, the terminal equipment determines whether the data volume of the uplink service is larger than or equal to a preset data volume threshold value, and if so, the terminal equipment transmits the uplink service through separate bearers in the MCG and the SCG; or if the count value of the counter is greater than the preset maximum number of times, the terminal equipment sets the count value of the counter to 1.

In short, after the terminal device shunts the SCG upstream traffic to the MCG, the terminal device is allowed to attempt to transmit the upstream traffic through the split bearer by switching back to the MCG if certain conditions are met. After switching back to transmitting the uplink service through the split bearer, if the uplink service quality of the SCG meets the first condition, no other operation is needed, if the uplink service quality of the SCG does not meet the first condition, the uplink service of the SCG is shunted to the MCG, and after switching over a certain number of times, no attempt is made to transmit the uplink service through the split bearer.

For example, assume that the initial value of the count value of the counter is 1, and the preset maximum number of times is 5. When the SCG and the MCG transmit uplink traffic through separate bearers, or may be simply referred to as uplink traffic transmission through a first transmission mode, the terminal device determines that the uplink traffic quality of the SCG does not meet the first condition, and the uplink traffic quality of the MCG meets the second condition, and branches the uplink traffic of the SCG to the MCG, or may be simply referred to as uplink traffic transmission through a second transmission mode. And starting a timer at the moment, and judging whether the counter of the counter is larger than the preset maximum times when the timer is overtime if the network equipment does not execute the second operation before the timer is overtime. At this time, the count value of the counter is 1 and is smaller than the preset maximum number of times, the terminal device judges whether the data volume of the uplink service of the MCG is greater than or equal to the preset data volume threshold value, if the judging result is no, no other operation is performed, otherwise, the first transmission mode is switched, and the count value of the counter is accumulated by 1. Then the terminal device repeatedly performs the above operation, and if the count value of the counter is increased to 6, the terminal device does not switch to the first transmission mode any more, and sets the count value of the counter to 1. In addition, after the terminal device switches from the first transmission mode to the second transmission mode, if the network device performs the second operation before the timer times out, the timer is stopped, and the count value of the counter is set to 1.

Further, the second operation includes at least one of:

secondary node change, secondary node release, SCG change, or radio resource control RRC release.

Fig. 3 shows a specific embodiment of the present application. The embodiment shown in fig. 3 is described below in conjunction with the above. It should be understood that the method shown in fig. 3 may be performed by a terminal device.

Referring to fig. 3, the method shown in fig. 3 includes a sub-flow 1 and a sub-flow 2, the sub-flow 1 includes S301 to S308, and the sub-flow 2 includes S309 to S316. The terminal device starts execution from sub-flow 1.

S301, when the SCG and the MCG transmit uplink service through separated bearing, judging whether BLER of the uplink service of the SCG is larger than or equal to a first threshold S1.

If yes, executing S302, otherwise continuing to execute S301.

S302, it is determined whether the BLER of the uplink traffic of the MCG is greater than or equal to the second threshold S2. If yes, ending the flow. Otherwise, S303 is performed.

S303, judging whether the RSRP of the main cell in the SCG is larger than or equal to TH1.

If yes, S304 is executed, otherwise S305 is executed.

S304, the uplink service of the SCG is shunted to the MCG. Then, sub-flow 2 is performed.

S305, determining whether the RSRP of the primary cell in the SCG is greater than or equal to TH2, and determining whether there is a co-frequency neighbor cell satisfying the third condition.

If the determination result is yes, S306 is executed, otherwise S307 is executed.

S306, triggering SCG failure flow, and carrying the same-frequency neighbor cell MR.

S307, judging whether the different frequency neighbor cell meeting the fourth condition exists.

If yes, executing S308, otherwise, the result flow is executed.

S308, triggering an SCG failure flow, and carrying the MR of the different-frequency neighbor cell.

S309, starting a timer.

After S304, S309 may be performed. Then, S310 is performed.

S310, judging whether one of the following is true: SN change or release, SCG change, RRC release.

If so, S311 is performed. Otherwise, S312 is performed.

S311 sets the count value C of the counter to 1, and stops the timer.

It should be understood that C is set at the beginning of execution of sub-flow 1 and is set to 1.

S312, judging whether the timer is overtime.

If the timer times out, S313 is executed, otherwise S312 is continued.

S313, judging whether C is greater than a preset maximum number T _C 。

If C is less than or equal to T _C S314 is performed, otherwise S315 is performed.

S314, judging whether the data quantity D of the uplink service of the MCG is larger than or equal to a preset data quantity threshold TD.

If the determination is yes, S316 is executed. It should be understood that TD may be, for example, a protocol-defined parameter ul-datasplit threshold, but this is not limiting in this application.

S315, setting C to 1.

S316, transmitting uplink traffic through the split bearer, and accumulating 1 by C. Then, the process jumps to execute sub-flow 1.

Therefore, in the communication method provided by the application, when the uplink service quality of the SCG does not meet the first condition, the terminal equipment can resume the transmission of the uplink service by shunting the uplink service of the SCG to the MCG or triggering the SCG failure flow.

The communication method provided by the embodiment of the present application is described in detail above with reference to fig. 1 to 3, and the communication device provided by the embodiment of the present application will be described in detail below with reference to fig. 4 and 5.

Fig. 4 shows a schematic block diagram of a communication device 400 provided in an embodiment of the present application. The apparatus 400 may be a terminal device. The apparatus 400 comprises a determination unit 410 and an execution unit 420.

A determining unit 410, configured to determine, when the secondary cell group and the primary cell group transmit uplink traffic through separate bearers, whether uplink traffic quality of the secondary cell group meets a first condition;

And the execution unit 420 is configured to execute a first operation when the uplink service quality of the secondary cell group does not meet the first condition, where the first operation is to shunt the uplink service of the secondary cell group to a primary cell group or trigger a secondary cell group failure flow, and the primary cell group and the secondary cell group are current serving cells of the terminal device.

Optionally, the determining unit 410 is specifically configured to:

and determining whether the block error rate BLER of the uplink service of the secondary cell group is greater than or equal to a first threshold.

Optionally, the execution unit 420 is specifically configured to:

determining whether the uplink service quality of the primary cell group meets a second condition under the condition that the uplink service quality of the secondary cell group does not meet the first condition;

and executing the first operation under the condition that the uplink service quality of the primary cell group meets the second condition.

Optionally, the execution unit 420 is specifically configured to:

determining whether to perform neighbor cell measurement under the condition that the uplink service quality of the primary cell group meets the second condition, wherein the measured neighbor cell is a neighbor cell of the primary cell in the secondary cell group;

And under the condition that the neighbor cell measurement is not carried out, the uplink service of the auxiliary cell group is shunted to the main cell group.

Optionally, the determining unit 410 is further configured to:

under the condition of determining to measure the adjacent cells, determining whether to measure the inter-frequency adjacent cells, wherein the measured inter-frequency adjacent cells are the inter-frequency adjacent cells of the main cells in the auxiliary cell group;

under the condition that the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is not carried out, if the co-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition exists, triggering a failure flow of the auxiliary cell, and reporting a measurement report of the co-frequency neighbor cell, otherwise, shunting uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to the main cell group, wherein the co-frequency neighbor cell is a co-frequency neighbor cell of the main cell in the auxiliary cell group; or under the condition that the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is determined, if the same-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition or the inter-frequency neighbor cell meeting the fourth condition exists, triggering a failure flow of the auxiliary cell, reporting a measurement report of the inter-frequency neighbor cell, and otherwise, shunting the uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to the main cell group.

Optionally, the method further comprises:

a starting unit for starting the timer;

The determining unit 410 is further configured to determine whether the network device performs the second operation;

if the network device performs the second operation and the timer is not timed out, the execution unit 420 is configured to stop the timer, and set a count value of a counter as an initial value, where the count value of the counter is a number of times of splitting uplink traffic of the secondary cell group to the primary cell group and then switching to transmitting uplink traffic by the primary cell group and the secondary cell group through the split bearer;

if the network device does not perform the second operation and the timer is overtime, the determining unit 410 is configured to determine whether the count value of the counter is less than or equal to a preset maximum number of times;

if the count value of the counter is less than or equal to the preset maximum number of times, the determining unit 410 is configured to determine whether the data amount of the uplink traffic is greater than or equal to a preset data amount threshold, and if the result of the determination is yes, transmitting the uplink traffic through the separate bearer in the primary cell group and the secondary cell group; or,

and if the count value of the counter is larger than the preset maximum number of times, setting the count value of the counter to be 1.

Optionally, the second operation includes at least one of:

secondary node change, secondary node release, secondary cell group change, or radio resource control RRC release.

It should be noted that in an embodiment of the present invention, the determining unit 410 and the executing unit 420 may be implemented by a processor. As shown in fig. 5, the communication device 500 may include a processor 510, a memory 520, and a transceiver 530. Wherein the memory 520 may be used for storing code or the like executed by the processor 510, and the processor 510 may be used for processing data or programs.

In implementation, the steps of the above method may be performed by integrated logic circuitry in hardware or instructions in software in processor 510. The steps of a method disclosed in connection with the embodiments of the present invention may be embodied directly in a hardware processor for execution, or in a combination of hardware and software modules in the processor for execution. The software modules may be located in a random access memory, flash memory, read only memory, programmable read only memory, or electrically erasable programmable memory, registers, etc. as well known in the art. The storage medium is located in a memory 520, and the processor 510 reads information in the memory 520, and in combination with its hardware, performs the steps of the above method. To avoid repetition, a detailed description is not provided herein.

The communication apparatus 400 shown in fig. 4 or the communication apparatus 500 shown in fig. 5 can implement each process of the corresponding terminal device in fig. 2 and 3 in the foregoing method embodiment, and in particular, the communication apparatus 400 or the communication apparatus 500 may refer to the above description, and in order to avoid repetition, the description is omitted here.

The embodiment of the application also provides a computer readable medium for storing a computer program, where the computer program includes instructions for executing a method corresponding to the terminal device in the above method embodiment.

Embodiments of the present application also provide a computer program product comprising: computer program code which, when executed by a communication unit, a processing unit or a transceiver, a processor of a communication device (e.g. a terminal device or a network device), causes the communication device to perform the method corresponding to the terminal device in any of the method embodiments described above.

The embodiments in this application may be used independently or in combination, and are not limited herein.

It should be appreciated that the processors referred to in embodiments of the present invention may be central processing units (central processing unit, CPU), but may also be other general purpose processors, digital signal processors (digital signal processor, DSP), application specific integrated circuits (application specific integrated circuit, ASIC), off-the-shelf programmable gate arrays (field programmable gate array, FPGA) or other programmable logic devices, discrete gate or transistor logic devices, discrete hardware components, or the like. A general purpose processor may be a microprocessor or the processor may be any conventional processor or the like.

It should also be understood that the memory referred to in embodiments of the present invention may be volatile memory or nonvolatile memory, or may include both volatile and nonvolatile memory. The nonvolatile memory may be a read-only memory (ROM), a Programmable ROM (PROM), an Erasable PROM (EPROM), an electrically Erasable EPROM (EEPROM), or a flash memory. The volatile memory may be random access memory (random access memory, RAM) which acts as an external cache. By way of example, and not limitation, many forms of RAM are available, such as Static RAM (SRAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), double data rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM), enhanced SDRAM (ESDRAM), synchronous DRAM (SLDRAM), and direct memory bus RAM (DR RAM).

Note that when the processor is a general-purpose processor, DSP, ASIC, FPGA or other programmable logic device, discrete gate or transistor logic device, discrete hardware components, the memory (storage module) is integrated into the processor.

It should be noted that the memory described herein is intended to comprise, without being limited to, these and any other suitable types of memory.

It should also be understood that, in various embodiments of the present application, the sequence numbers of the foregoing processes do not mean the order of execution, and the order of execution of the processes should be determined by the functions and internal logic thereof, and should not constitute any limitation on the implementation process of the embodiments of the present application.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the various illustrative elements and algorithm steps described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented as electronic hardware, or combinations of computer software and electronic hardware. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware or software depends upon the particular application and design constraints imposed on the solution. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality in varying ways for each particular application, but such implementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from the scope of the present application.

It will be clear to those skilled in the art that, for convenience and brevity of description, specific working procedures of the above-described systems, apparatuses and units may refer to corresponding procedures in the foregoing method embodiments, and are not repeated herein.

In the several embodiments provided in this application, it should be understood that the disclosed systems, devices, and methods may be implemented in other manners. For example, the apparatus embodiments described above are merely illustrative, e.g., the division of the units is merely a logical function division, and there may be additional divisions when actually implemented, e.g., multiple units or components may be combined or integrated into another system, or some features may be omitted or not performed. Alternatively, the coupling or direct coupling or communication connection shown or discussed with each other may be an indirect coupling or communication connection via some interfaces, devices or units, which may be in electrical, mechanical or other form.

The units described as separate units may or may not be physically separate, and units shown 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 may be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the solution of this embodiment.

In addition, each functional unit in each embodiment of the present application may be integrated in one processing unit, or each unit may exist alone physically, or two or more units may be integrated in one unit.

The functions, if implemented in the form of software functional units 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 embodied essentially or in a part contributing to the prior art or in a part of the technical solution, in the form of a software product stored in a storage medium, including several instructions for causing a computer device (which may be a personal computer, a server, or a network device, etc.) to perform all or part of the steps of the methods described in 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 (random access memory, RAM), a magnetic disk, or an optical disk, or other various media capable of storing program codes.

The foregoing is merely specific embodiments of the present application, but the scope of the present application is not limited thereto, and any person skilled in the art can easily think about changes or substitutions within the technical scope of the present application, and the changes and substitutions are intended to be covered by the scope of the present application. Therefore, the protection scope of the present application shall be subject to the protection scope of the claims.

Claims

1. A method of communication, comprising:

under the condition that the uplink service quality of the auxiliary cell group does not meet the first condition, the terminal equipment executes a first operation, wherein the first operation is to shunt the uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to a main cell group or trigger a failure flow of the auxiliary cell group, and the main cell group and the auxiliary cell group are current service cells of the terminal equipment;

wherein the determining, by the terminal device, that the uplink traffic quality of the secondary cell group does not meet the first condition includes the terminal device determining that a block error rate (BLER) of the uplink traffic of the secondary cell group is greater than or equal to a first threshold.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the terminal device performs a first operation if the quality of uplink traffic for the secondary cell group does not satisfy a first condition, comprising:

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the terminal device performs the first operation if the uplink quality of service of the primary cell group satisfies the second condition, comprising:

4. A method as claimed in claim 3, wherein the method further comprises:

5. A method as claimed in claim 3, wherein the method further comprises:

the terminal equipment starts a timer;

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the second operation comprises at least one of:

7. A communication device, comprising:

a determining unit, configured to determine, when the secondary cell group and the primary cell group transmit uplink traffic through separate bearers, whether uplink traffic quality of the secondary cell group meets a first condition;

an execution unit, configured to execute a first operation when the uplink service quality of the secondary cell group does not meet the first condition, where the first operation is to shunt uplink service of the secondary cell group to a primary cell group or trigger a secondary cell group failure procedure, and the primary cell group and the secondary cell group are current serving cells of the communication device;

Wherein the determining unit determining that the uplink traffic quality of the secondary cell group does not meet the first condition includes determining that a block error rate BLER of the uplink traffic of the secondary cell group is greater than or equal to a first threshold.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the execution unit is specifically configured to:

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the execution unit is specifically configured to:

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the determining unit is further to:

under the condition that the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is not carried out, if the co-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition exists, triggering a failure flow of the auxiliary cell, and reporting a measurement report of the co-frequency neighbor cell, otherwise, shunting uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to the main cell group, wherein the co-frequency neighbor cell is a co-frequency neighbor cell of the main cell in the auxiliary cell group; or,

and under the condition that the inter-frequency neighbor cell measurement is determined, if the inter-frequency neighbor cell meeting the third condition or the inter-frequency neighbor cell meeting the fourth condition exists, triggering a failure flow of the auxiliary cell, reporting a measurement report of the inter-frequency neighbor cell, and otherwise, shunting the uplink service of the auxiliary cell group to the main cell group.

11. The apparatus as recited in claim 9, further comprising:

a starting unit for starting the timer;

the determining unit is further configured to determine whether the network device performs a second operation;

if the network device performs the second operation and the timer is not overtime, the execution unit is configured to stop the timer, and set a count value of a counter to be an initial value, where the count value of the counter is a number of times of splitting uplink traffic of the secondary cell group to the primary cell group and then switching to the primary cell group and the secondary cell group to transmit the uplink traffic through the split bearer;

If the network device does not execute the second operation and the timer is overtime, the determining unit is configured to determine whether the count value of the counter is less than or equal to a preset maximum number of times;

if the count value of the counter is smaller than or equal to the preset maximum number of times, the determining unit is used for determining whether the data volume of uplink service is larger than or equal to a preset data volume threshold value, and if yes, the uplink service is transmitted on the primary cell group and the secondary cell group through the separated bearer; or,

12. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the second operation comprises at least one of: