CN112449383A

CN112449383A - Apparatus, method and storage medium for wireless communication system

Info

Publication number: CN112449383A
Application number: CN201910805456.8A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 赵培尧; 王昭诚; 曹建飞
Original assignee: Sony Corp
Current assignee: Sony Corp
Priority date: 2019-08-28
Filing date: 2019-08-28
Publication date: 2021-03-05
Also published as: WO2021037011A1; CN114270940A

Abstract

The present invention relates to an apparatus, a method, and a storage medium for a wireless communication system. In the embodiment of the present disclosure, one representative terminal device is selected from a plurality of terminal devices in a terminal device group, so that the terminal device group can use the representative terminal device as a representative of the terminal device group, and switch from an original cell to a target cell in units of a group.

Description

Apparatus, method and storage medium for wireless communication system

Technical Field

The present invention relates generally to wireless communication systems, and in particular to cell switching techniques in wireless communication systems.

Background

With the development of science and technology and the progress of technology, people have increasing requirements for travel. The increasing number of passengers and their equipment in vehicles brings with it a great demand for communication services, and it is therefore becoming important to investigate wireless communication systems in vehicles, especially in high-speed vehicles.

Due to the fast moving speed of high speed vehicles, users on high speed vehicles are faced with frequent inter-cell handovers. In addition, the number of passengers in a high-speed vehicle is large, and a large number of users are required to complete switching in a short time. Thus, for wireless communication on high-speed vehicles, frequent cell handovers and simultaneous handovers by a large number of users present technical challenges that are not negligible for existing wireless communication systems. Therefore, it is very important for a wireless communication system in a high-speed vehicle to research a technology for fast cell handover and simultaneous handover of a large number of users.

Disclosure of Invention

In view of the foregoing, the present disclosure proposes a technique for packet-based cell handover. In addition, the disclosure also provides a technology of cell switching based on prediction.

The present disclosure provides an apparatus, method, and storage medium for a wireless communication system.

One aspect of the present disclosure relates to an electronic device for a control device side of a wireless communication system. According to one embodiment, the electronic device includes processing circuitry configured to: selecting one representative terminal device from a plurality of terminal devices in the terminal device group, so that the terminal device group can use the representative terminal device as a representative of the terminal device group, and switching from the original cell to a target cell served by the electronic device by taking the group as a unit.

Another aspect of the present disclosure relates to a terminal device for a terminal side of a wireless communication system. According to one embodiment, the terminal device includes processing circuitry configured to: triggering the electronic equipment serving the control side of the wireless communication system of the terminal equipment to send a cell switching request of a terminal equipment group comprising the terminal equipment and receive a cell switching reply of a corresponding terminal equipment group, so that the terminal equipment group takes one terminal equipment as a representative terminal equipment and switches from an original cell served by the electronic equipment to a target cell by taking a group as a unit.

Another aspect of the present disclosure relates to an electronic device for a control side of a wireless communication system. According to one embodiment, the electronic device includes processing circuitry configured to: and sending a cell switching request of the terminal equipment group to another electronic equipment in the target cell and receiving a cell switching reply of the terminal equipment group from the other electronic equipment, so that the terminal equipment group takes one terminal equipment as a representative terminal equipment and is switched from an original cell served by the electronic equipment to the target cell by taking the group as a unit.

Another aspect of the present disclosure relates to a packet-based cell switching method for use in an electronic device on a control device side for a wireless communication system. According to one embodiment, the method comprises: selecting one representative terminal device from a plurality of terminal devices in the terminal device group, so that the terminal device group can use the representative terminal device as a representative of the terminal device group, and switching from the original cell to a target cell served by the electronic device by taking the group as a unit.

Another aspect of the present disclosure relates to a packet-based cell switching method for use in a terminal device for a terminal side of a wireless communication system. According to one embodiment, the method comprises: triggering the electronic equipment serving the control side of the wireless communication system of the terminal equipment to send a cell switching request of a terminal equipment group comprising the terminal equipment and receive a cell switching reply of a corresponding terminal equipment group, so that the terminal equipment group takes one terminal equipment as a representative terminal equipment and switches from an original cell served by the electronic equipment to a target cell by taking a group as a unit.

Another aspect of the present disclosure relates to a packet-based cell handover method for use in an electronic device for a control side of a wireless communication system. According to one embodiment, the method comprises: and sending a cell switching request of the terminal equipment group to another electronic equipment in the target cell and receiving a cell switching reply of the terminal equipment group from the other electronic equipment, so that the terminal equipment group takes one terminal equipment as a representative terminal equipment and is switched from an original cell served by the electronic equipment to the target cell by taking the group as a unit.

Another aspect of the disclosure relates to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a processor, enable the processor to perform the method described in the disclosure.

Another aspect of the disclosure relates to a device comprising a processor and a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by the processor, enable the device to perform the method described in the disclosure.

Another aspect of the disclosure relates to an apparatus containing means for performing the method described in the disclosure.

Therefore, the method and the device can simultaneously perform cell switching on the users on the high-speed vehicles in a group mode, so that the switching speed can be improved, the resource overhead is obviously reduced, the probability of random access collision when a large number of users perform cell switching simultaneously is reduced, and the switching time delay is further reduced. Moreover, the method and the device can also trigger cell switching in advance by predicting the quality of the received signal of the target cell, thereby effectively reducing the probability of switching failure.

The above summary is provided to summarize some exemplary embodiments to provide a basic understanding of various aspects of the subject matter described herein. Thus, the above-described features are merely examples and should not be construed to narrow the scope or spirit of the subject matter described herein in any way. Other features, aspects, and advantages of the subject matter described herein will become apparent from the following detailed description, which, when taken in conjunction with the drawings.

Drawings

A better understanding of the present disclosure may be obtained when the following detailed description of the embodiments is considered in conjunction with the following drawings. The same or similar reference numbers are used throughout the drawings to refer to the same or like parts. The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and form a part of the specification, illustrate embodiments of the present disclosure and together with the detailed description, serve to explain the principles and advantages of the disclosure. Wherein:

fig. 1 is a flowchart schematically illustrating a conventional cell handover procedure;

FIG. 2A is a diagram schematically illustrating a scene in which a high speed vehicle is operating in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 2B is a diagram schematically illustrating a cell handover history according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram that schematically illustrates an example structure of an electronic device, in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4 schematically illustrates a flow chart of operations of an electronic device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 5 is a flow chart schematically illustrating grouping of terminal devices according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 6 is a diagram schematically illustrating a data format of a cell handover request and a cell handover reply of a terminal device group according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 7 is a diagram schematically illustrating a random access procedure of a packet user according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 8A is a diagram schematically illustrating the variation of reference signal received power RSRP of an original cell and a target cell of a terminal device with time;

fig. 8B is a diagram schematically illustrating a prediction-based cell handover according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 9 is an exemplary signaling flow diagram schematically illustrating a packet-based cell handover scheme according to an embodiment of the disclosure;

fig. 10 is a diagram schematically illustrating cell handover with a downlink transmission beam subset corresponding to a handover region according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 11 is a block diagram schematically illustrating an example structure of a terminal device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 12 is a flowchart schematically illustrating an operation of a terminal device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 13 is a block diagram schematically illustrating an example structure of another electronic device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

FIG. 14 is a flow chart that schematically illustrates operations of another electronic device, in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 15 is a block diagram schematically showing an example structure of a personal computer of an information processing apparatus employable in the embodiment according to the present disclosure;

fig. 16 is a block diagram showing a first example of a schematic configuration of an eNB to which the technology of the present disclosure may be applied;

fig. 17 is a block diagram illustrating a second example of a schematic configuration of an eNB to which the techniques of this disclosure may be applied;

fig. 18 is a block diagram showing an example of a schematic configuration of a smartphone to which the technique of the present disclosure can be applied; and

fig. 19 is a block diagram showing an example of a schematic configuration of a car navigation device to which the technique of the present disclosure can be applied.

While the embodiments described in this disclosure may be susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are herein described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims.

Detailed Description

Representative applications of various aspects of the apparatus and methods according to the present disclosure are described below. These examples are described merely to add context and aid in the understanding of the described embodiments. It will thus be apparent to one skilled in the art that the embodiments described below may be practiced without some or all of the specific details. In other instances, well known process steps have not been described in detail in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the described embodiments. Other applications are possible, and aspects of the disclosure are not limited to these examples.

Hereinafter, one or more preferred embodiments of the present disclosure will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the present specification and the drawings, structural elements having substantially the same function and structure are denoted by the same reference numerals, and repeated explanation of these structural elements is omitted.

Also, in the present specification and the drawings, elements having substantially the same function and structure may be distinguished by different letters appended to the same symbol in some cases. On the other hand, when each of a plurality of elements having substantially the same function and structure is not particularly distinguished, only the same symbol will be given.

Typically, a wireless communication system includes at least a control side and a terminal side, and a device of the control side may provide a communication service for one or more devices of the terminal side.

In the present disclosure, the "control side" of a wireless communication system has its full breadth of its usual meaning, typically indicating the side of the communication system that transmits a signal stream for control, which may be, for example, the side of the communication system that controls cell switching. Similarly, the term "terminal side" has its full breadth in its usual meaning and accordingly may indicate a side of a communication system that receives a signal stream to operate in accordance with a control, e.g., may be a side of a communication system that is controlled for cell switching. As an example, the "control side" and the "terminal side" may comprise different devices in the communication system, depending on the direction of signal flow in the communication system. For uplink signal transmission, for example, the device on the "control side" may comprise a "base station" in the communication system, and the device on the "terminal side" may correspondingly comprise a "terminal device" in the communication system. Conversely, for downlink signal transmission, a device on the "control side" may comprise a "terminal device" in the communication system, and a device on the "terminal side" may correspondingly comprise a "base station" in the communication system.

In this disclosure, the term "base station" has its full breadth in its ordinary meaning and includes at least a wireless communication station that is part of a wireless communication system or radio system to facilitate communications. As an example, the base station may be, for example, an eNB compliant with a 4G communication standard, a gNB compliant with a 5G communication standard, a remote radio head, a wireless access point, a drone control tower, or a communication device performing similar functions.

In the present disclosure, "electronic device on the control side" has its full breadth of general meaning and may include, for example, a device that is part of a wireless communication system or radio system to facilitate cell switching. In the present disclosure, "electronic device on the control side" and "base station" may be used interchangeably, or "electronic device on the control side" may be implemented as part of "base station".

In the present disclosure, a "mobility management unit" is a device on the control side of a wireless communication system, and the term "mobility management unit" has its full breadth of general meaning and may include, for example, a device that is part of a wireless communication system or a radio system to facilitate signaling processing and mobility management.

In this disclosure, the term "terminal device" or "User Equipment (UE)" has its full breadth of general meaning and includes at least a terminal device that is part of a wireless communication system or radio system to facilitate communications. By way of example, the terminal device may be a terminal device such as a mobile phone, a laptop, a tablet, a vehicle communication device, etc., or an element thereof. In the present disclosure, "terminal device" and "user device" (which may be referred to simply as "user" hereinafter) may be used interchangeably, or "terminal device" may be implemented as part of "user device".

It should be noted that although the embodiments of the present disclosure are described below primarily based on a communication system including a base station and a user equipment, the descriptions may be correspondingly extended to the case of a communication system including any other type of control device side and terminal device side. For example, for the downlink case, the control device side operation may correspond to the base station operation, while the terminal side operation may correspond to the terminal device operation accordingly.

In addition, the description will be made in the following order.

1. Cell handover overview

2. Examples of Wireless communication systems

3. Structural configuration and operation of devices

3.1. Structural configuration and operation of electronic equipment of target cell

3.2. Structural configuration and operation of terminal equipment

3.3. Structural configuration and operation of electronic equipment of original cell

4. Application example

5. Conclusion

Overview of cell Handover

With the increase of travel demand and the improvement of technology, high-speed vehicles, such as high-speed trains, subways, and the like, are increasing. The increasing number of passengers and their equipment on high-speed vehicles has created a large demand for communication services, as well as problems and challenges.

Since the high-speed vehicle moves at a high speed, users thereon are faced with frequent cell switching. In the prior art, users often perform cell switching by taking the users as units. An example of a conventional cell handover procedure will be described below with reference to fig. 1.

Fig. 1 is a flowchart schematically illustrating a conventional cell handover procedure. As shown in fig. 1, the wireless communication system includes an electronic device 10 in a target cell, a terminal device 20, and an electronic device 30 in an original cell.

In a conventional cell switching process, in step S101, the electronic device 30 serving the user in the original cell performs measurement control (for example, Reference Signal Receiving Power (RSRP) measurement control) on the terminal device 20 of the user. Next, in step S102, the terminal device 20 performs measurement based on the control of the electronic device 30, and reports the measurement result to the electronic device 30. Next, when the measurement result satisfies the cell switching condition, in step S103, the electronic apparatus 30 transmits a cell switching request to the electronic apparatus 10 to be served to the terminal apparatus 20 in the target cell to be switched. Next, in step S104, the electronic device 10 controls whether or not cell switching is permitted. Then, in the case where the cell switching is permitted, the electronic apparatus 10 transmits a cell switching reply to the electronic apparatus 30 in step S105. Then, in step S106, the electronic device 30 transmits a handover command to the terminal device 20 after receiving the cell handover reply.

Subsequently, in step S107, the terminal device 20 disconnects the connection with the electronic device 30 in the original cell, and then performs downlink synchronization with the target cell, and in step S108, performs random access to the target cell by using the non-contention random access resource. Specifically, in the downlink Synchronization, the terminal device 20 detects a Synchronization Signal Block (SSB) and obtains an optimal downlink transmission beam. Then, according to the corresponding relationship between the downlink transmission beam and the uplink random access resource, the terminal device 20 performs random access on the corresponding uplink random access resource, and the electronic device 10 in the target cell detects the optimal uplink reception beam and obtains the optimal downlink transmission beam by using the corresponding relationship between the downlink transmission beam and the uplink random access resource.

The cell switching of the user usually employs non-competitive random access, wherein the configuration information of the non-competitive random access resource is sent to the electronic device 30 of the original cell by the electronic device 10 of the target cell through the cell switching response, and then sent to the terminal device 20 through the switching command.

Next, after the Random Access is successful, in step S109, the electronic device 10 transmits a Random Access Response (RAR) to the terminal device 20. Finally, in step S110, the terminal device 20 that successfully detects the RAR sends a handover complete signaling to the electronic device 10 serving the terminal device 20 in the target cell, thereby completing a cell handover of the terminal device 20.

However, conventional cell switching can present significant problems in the case of high speed vehicles. As an example, assuming that a high speed vehicle runs at a moving speed of about 350km/h and a cell radius is 500m, the residence time of the high speed vehicle in each cell is only 5s to 10s on average, and thus frequent cell switching is required. In addition, since the number of passengers in a high-speed vehicle is large, a large number of users need to complete the switching in a short time. Still taking the example of a moving speed of 350km/h, assuming that 85 people can be accommodated every 25m on a high-speed vehicle, a maximum of over 300 users in 1s need to perform cell switching.

Such user cell switching on high speed vehicles causes the following problems:

first, a large number of users performing cell handover simultaneously may cause an increase in handover preparation time, thereby possibly causing handover failure. In particular, the handover preparation time may correspond to the time from the sending of the cell handover request of step S103 to the sending of the cell handover reply of step S105 described above. In the case of simultaneous switching by a large number of users, the control-side electronic device needs to process one by one for a plurality of users to prepare for switching, which inevitably results in an increase in preparation time, and in the case of an excessively long preparation time, even some users may fail to perform switching.

Secondly, when a large number of users perform cell switching simultaneously, non-competitive random access channel resources to be allocated to the users are insufficient when the users access a target cell, so that part of the users need to perform competitive random access, and random access conflict and delay of cell switching are increased;

thirdly, the handover request and the handover reply in the existing NR/LTE system are generated individually for each user performing cell handover, which may cause an increase in signaling overhead on the Xn/X2 interface between base stations when a large number of users perform cell handover simultaneously;

fourth, cell handover is triggered by measurement report (e.g., RSRP measurement report), and there is a certain Time interval (i.e., Time-to-trigger (TTT)) between the measurement report and the measurement event performed under measurement control, and since the high speed vehicle moves at a fast speed, the presence of the Time trigger may cause the user to fail to receive the handover command, thereby causing cell handover failure. Particularly, after triggering a measurement event and after the triggering time and the handover preparation time of the original cell and the target cell, the original cell sends a handover command to the user, and because the user on the high-speed vehicle moves at a high speed, the RSRP of the original cell of the user may have been reduced to a degree that the user cannot correctly receive the handover command, thereby causing a handover failure.

In view of the above considerations, the present disclosure proposes a technique for packet-based cell handover. Particularly, in the technology disclosed by the disclosure, cell switching is simultaneously performed on users on a high-speed vehicle by taking a group as a unit, and one representative user is selected in each group for random access, so that the switching speed is increased, the resource overhead is remarkably reduced, the probability of random access collision when a large number of users perform cell switching simultaneously is reduced, and the switching delay is further reduced.

Further, the present disclosure also provides a technology of cell handover based on prediction. Particularly, in the technology of the present disclosure, the cell handover can be triggered in advance based on the prediction, thereby effectively reducing the probability of handover failure.

The technical implementation of the present disclosure will be exemplarily explained below for an application scenario of a high-speed train. It should be noted, however, that implementations of the technology of the present disclosure are not so limited, and may be equally applicable to other types of vehicles that carry multiple terminal devices that require frequent and/or simultaneous switching, such as subway, fleet, etc., networking, and so forth. Hereinafter, the electronic device 10, the terminal device 20, the electronic device 30 may operate according to either the radio access technology in LTE of 4G or the new radio access (NR) technology of 5G.

Example of Wireless communication System

A scene in which a high-speed vehicle operates and a method of identifying that a user is a user located on the high-speed vehicle according to an embodiment of the present disclosure will be described below with reference to fig. 2A and 2B.

It is worth pointing out that the solution proposed by the present disclosure is suitable for users on high-speed vehicles with fast moving speed, fixed track and a large number of users with similar positions. As shown in fig. 2A, a high-speed vehicle may travel, for example, along a particular track, along which a plurality of cell base stations C1-C7 are arranged along the track. During the travel of the high-speed vehicle along a particular track, the terminal devices of the users carried by the high-speed vehicle are constantly switched from one base station to another.

According to the present disclosure, whether a user is a user located on a high speed vehicle may be identified in a variety of ways. According to one embodiment, the user may be identified based on a user-related trajectory. As an example, when the movement trajectory of the user matches the trajectory of the high-speed vehicle, it is determined that the user is a user on the high-speed vehicle (e.g., high-speed train, high-speed rail). According to another embodiment, the user may be identified based on the speed of the user. As an example, when the moving speed of the user is greater than a certain threshold, it is determined that the user is a user on a high-speed vehicle that is in operation. According to yet another embodiment, it may be determined whether the user is on a high speed vehicle based on both the trajectory and the speed of the user. As an example, when the movement locus of the user matches the trajectory of the high-speed vehicle and the user speed is sufficiently high, it is determined that the user is a user on the high-speed vehicle.

According to an embodiment, a cell handover history of a user may be stored for use in identifying the user on a high speed vehicle. Generally, user Mobility may be managed by a Mobility Management Entity (MME) on the network side. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 2B, the MME is caused to record the user's cell handover history, including the cell ID of each cell accessed (e.g., C1-C)_N) Time of access to each cell (may also be referred to as entry time, e.g. T)₁₁-T_N1) And the time of disconnection from the respective cell (which may also be referred to as the departure time, e.g. T)₁₂-T_N2). According to this embodiment, the entering time may be based on the time when the base station serving the cell receives the handover complete signaling sent by the user, and the leaving time may be based on the time when the base station sends the handover command.

Taking a high-speed train as an example, for the identification based on the track, the network side (e.g., MME) stores in advance information of the cell base stations along the track of the high-speed train, including, for example, the ID and the location of the base station. And judging whether the user is a high-speed rail user or not by matching the cell switching history of the user with the pre-stored information of the cell base station. For example, if all the base stations involved in the cell switching history of the user are base stations along a prestored high-speed train track, it may be preliminarily determined that the user moves along the high-speed train track.

Further, for speed-based identification, the MME may estimate an average speed of user movement over a certain time period, which is calculated as: average speed is moving distance/moving time. The moving time is the length of the time period, for example, the moving time may be the residence time of the user in the cell as contained in the cell handover history, and the moving distance may be estimated as the distance between the base station of the cell where the user is located at the end time and the base station of the cell where the user is located at the initial time. In addition, as an example, the length of the exercise time period is selected such that the user spans multiple base stations during the time period, for example, 1-2 min is preferable. According to the method, if the average moving speed of the user is greater than a certain threshold value, for example, 150-200 km/h, the user can be determined to be the user on the high-speed train.

Constructional arrangements and operation of the apparatus

< 3.1. structural configuration and operation of electronic device of target cell >

Fig. 3 is a block diagram schematically illustrating an example structure of an electronic device of a target cell according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. As shown in fig. 3, the electronic device 10 comprises a processing circuit 100, a memory 101 and a communication unit 102.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuitry may be configured to select a representative terminal device among a plurality of terminal devices in the terminal device group, so that the terminal device group can switch from the original cell to a target cell served by the electronic device in group units using the representative terminal device as a representative of the terminal device group.

In this example of the structure of the electronic device, the processing circuit 100 may be in the form of a general-purpose processor, or may be a dedicated processing circuit, such as an ASIC. For example, the processing circuit 100 can be constructed by a circuit (hardware) or a central processing device such as a Central Processing Unit (CPU). Further, the processing circuit 100 may carry thereon a program (software) for causing an electric circuit (hardware) or a central processing apparatus to operate. The program can be stored in the memory 101 (such as disposed in the memory 101) or an external storage medium connected from the outside, and downloaded via a network (such as the internet).

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 100 may comprise a selection unit 1001, and the selection unit 1001 may be configured to select one representative terminal device among the plurality of terminal devices in the terminal device group. According to this embodiment, the selected representative terminal device is reserved with non-contention random access resources.

According to this embodiment, the terminal devices may be grouped according to signal space characteristics. According to this embodiment, the individual terminal devices in the terminal device group have the same or similar signal space characteristics. It is easily understood that on a high-speed vehicle, users holding respective terminal devices in the same terminal device group are adjacent in spatial position, and maintain a spatially adjacent state during a cell switching time, and thus have the same or similar signal spatial characteristics. According to this embodiment, as an example, the signal space characteristics comprise one or more of the following: downlink transmit beam, direct path angle, doppler shift, path loss, and cell handover history.

According to an embodiment, the terminal device group at the time of cell handover may be the same as the previous terminal device group or may be changed. As an example, in the case that the terminal devices are already grouped in the original cell, another electronic device accessed by the terminal device in the original cell obtains a new terminal device group by removing the terminal device in the original terminal device group that has a larger difference in signal space characteristics from other terminal devices in the group, and adding a new terminal device that is close to the signal space characteristics of the terminal devices in the group. As another example, in a case where the terminal devices are not grouped in the original cell, another electronic device accessed by the terminal device in the original cell obtains a terminal device group by clustering signal space features.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 100 may further comprise a receiving unit 1002, and the receiving unit 1002 may be configured to receive a cell handover request of the terminal device group from another electronic device to which the terminal device accesses in the original cell.

In this embodiment, as an example, the selection unit 1001 may select the representative terminal device based on the ID of the representative terminal device recommended by another electronic device included in the cell handover request of the terminal device group. As another example, the selection unit 1001 may also randomly select a representative terminal device. As still another example, the selection unit 1001 may also select a representative terminal device according to its own needs.

In this embodiment, the cell handover request of the terminal device group includes terminal device specific information, and the terminal device specific information may include a Timing Advance (TA) value of each terminal device in the terminal device group in the original cell. The TA value is the time that the user needs to advance in the uplink transmission, and different TA values need to be configured for different users in order to ensure that uplink signals of different users can reach the base station side at the same time due to different distances from different users to the base station.

In this embodiment, the processing circuit 100 may further include a transmitting unit 1003, and the transmitting unit 1003 may be configured to transmit a cell switching reply of the terminal device group to another electronic device serving the original cell in response to the cell switching request of the terminal device group. Therein, as an example, the cell handover reply of the terminal device group may include terminal device specific information, which may include an ID of one or more terminal devices permitted to handover, an ID of the selected representative terminal device, and configuration information of non-contention random access resources reserved for the representative terminal device. It should be noted that the terminal devices permitted to be handed over may be at least some or all of the terminal devices in the group of terminal devices. In addition, the cell handover reply for the terminal device group may also include a cell radio network temporary identity (C-RNTI) for each terminal device in the terminal device group at the target cell.

In this embodiment, in response to the cell handover reply of the terminal device group, another electronic device serving the original cell may send a handover command to the terminal device group. Further, in response to the handover command, all terminal devices in the terminal device group may disconnect from the original cell and perform downlink synchronization on the target cell.

In this embodiment, the handover command includes, as an example, a random access indicator indicating whether or not the terminal device is a representative terminal device. In addition, for the representative terminal device, the handover command may further include configuration information of non-contention random access resources reserved by the electronic device for the representative terminal device.

In this embodiment, the electronic device in the target cell is randomly accessed on behalf of the terminal device using the reserved non-contention random access resource. Specifically, as an example, the representative terminal device may transmit a preamble sequence to the electronic device using the reserved non-contention random access resource, thereby accessing the electronic device in the target cell. In this embodiment, the time between the reception of the handover command and the transmission of the preamble sequence by the delegate terminal device is greater than or equal to a predetermined group waiting window time to ensure that the non-delegate terminal device can successfully complete downlink synchronization.

In this embodiment, the processing circuit 100 may further include an information obtaining unit 1004, and the information obtaining unit 1004 is configured to obtain a TA value representing the terminal device in the target cell based on the preamble sequence, for example, may be calculated when the target cell is accessed on behalf of the terminal device. In addition, the information acquisition unit 1004 may be further configured to obtain an optimal downlink transmission beam representing the terminal device in the target cell based on the preamble sequence.

In addition, in this embodiment, the processing circuit 100 may further include a calculating unit 1005, and the calculating unit 1005 is configured to calculate a TA value change amount of the representative terminal device in the original cell and the target cell, and obtain the TA value of the non-representative terminal device in the target cell by adding the TA value of the non-representative terminal device in the terminal device group in the original cell and the TA value change amount of the representative terminal device.

In this embodiment, the sending unit 1003 is further configured to send a random access response RAR to all terminal devices in the terminal device group. For example, the RAR may be transmitted through a Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) Channel, and may include the aforementioned TA value of each terminal device. In this embodiment, the processing circuit 100 may further comprise a scrambling unit 1006, the scrambling unit 1006 being configured to scramble the RAR to be sent to the non-representative terminal device with the C-RNTI of the non-representative terminal device. In this embodiment, the non-representative terminal device may continuously detect the RAR after completing the downlink synchronization.

In this embodiment, the receiving unit 1002 is further configured to receive a handover completion signaling from the terminal device that successfully detects the RAR by using the uplink transmission resource indicated in the RAR, so as to complete one cell handover of the terminal device group.

In addition, in this embodiment, the cell handover request of the terminal device group may be triggered by measurement reports of one or more terminal devices in the terminal device group. As an example, the measurement report may be a measurement report for RSRP. In this embodiment, a cell handover request for a group of terminal devices may be triggered when the RSRP predicted by the terminal device in the target cell exceeds the RSRP predicted in its original cell by a predetermined threshold. For example, the predicted RSRP of the terminal device in the original cell and the target cell may be calculated by using the currently measured RSRP, the RSRP variation slope, and the advance time. Wherein, as an example, the RSRP variation slope may be estimated using a measured RSRP history value fit. Wherein the lead time is the difference between the predicted time and the current time. According to this embodiment, the advance time may be configured based on the measured moving speed of the terminal device.

In addition, according to this embodiment, it is also possible to reserve only preamble sequence resources corresponding to a part of downlink transmission beams of the electronic device for transmitting the synchronization signal block SSB for the representative terminal device, so as to further reduce resource overhead in the cell handover process.

Further, optionally, the electronic device 10 may further include a memory 101 and a communication unit 102 shown in dotted lines in fig. 3. In addition, the electronic device 10 may also include other components not shown, such as radio frequency links, baseband processing units, network interfaces, processors, controllers, and so forth. The processing circuit 100 may be associated with a memory 101 and/or a communication unit 102. For example, the processing circuit 100 may be directly or indirectly (e.g., with other components possibly interposed) connected to the memory 101 for data access. Also for example, the processing circuit 100 may be directly or indirectly connected to the communication unit 102 to send radio signals via the communication unit 102 and to receive radio signals via the communication unit 102.

The memory 101 may store various information generated by the processing circuit 100 and various information to be utilized by the processing circuit 100 (e.g., terminal device specific information, terminal device group common information, etc.), programs and data for operation of the electronic device 10, data to be transmitted by the communication unit 102, and the like. The memory 101 is depicted with dashed lines, since it may also be located within the processing circuit 100 or outside the electronic device 10. The memory 101 may be volatile memory and/or non-volatile memory. For example, memory 101 may include, but is not limited to, Random Access Memory (RAM), Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), Read Only Memory (ROM), flash memory.

The communication unit 102 may be configured to communicate with other electronic devices and terminal devices under the control of the processing circuit 100. In one example, the communication unit 102 may be implemented as a transmitter or transceiver, including antenna arrays and/or communication components such as radio frequency links. In one embodiment, the communication unit 102 may send the cell handover reply of the terminal device group determined in the processing circuit 100 to another electronic device serving the original cell. In one embodiment, the communication unit 102 may also send and receive signaling required for the processes described in embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure.

Although the processing circuit 100 is shown in fig. 3 as being separate from the communication unit 102, the processing circuit 100 may also be implemented to include the communication unit 102. Further, the processing circuit 100 may also be implemented to include one or more other components in the electronic device 10, or the processing circuit 100 may be implemented as the electronic device 10 itself. In actual implementation, the processing circuit 100 may be implemented as a chip (such as an integrated circuit module comprising a single wafer), a hardware component, or a complete product.

It should be noted that the above units are only logic modules divided according to the specific functions implemented by the units, and are not used for limiting the specific implementation manner, and may be implemented in software, hardware or a combination of software and hardware, for example. In actual implementation, the above units may be implemented as separate physical entities, or may also be implemented by a single entity (e.g., a processor (CPU or DSP, etc.), an integrated circuit, etc.). Furthermore, the various elements described above are shown in dashed lines in the figures to indicate that these elements may not actually be present, but that the operations/functions that they implement may be implemented by the processing circuitry itself.

The packet-based cell handover scheme and the prediction-based cell handover scheme implemented by the electronic device will be exemplarily described below with reference to fig. 4 to 9.

Fig. 4 schematically shows a flow chart of the operation of an electronic device of a target cell according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

First, in step S401, the electronic device receives a cell switching request of a terminal device group from another electronic device to which the terminal device has access in an original cell.

According to this embodiment, the individual terminal devices in the terminal device group have the same or similar signal space characteristics. Ideally, closely located terminal devices (e.g., terminal devices located in the same car) should be grouped into the same group. However, in an actual communication system, it is often difficult for the base station to accurately determine the position of the terminal device. Thus, in some embodiments, terminal devices may be grouped by signal space characteristics. According to the embodiment, under the condition that the terminal devices are not grouped in the original cell, another electronic device accessed by the terminal devices in the original cell can obtain the terminal device group by clustering the signal space characteristics.

Specifically, terminal devices within the same group have the same beam, similar cell handover history, similar path loss, similar direct path angle, and similar doppler shift due to their close locations. Thus, the features may be formed into a high-dimensional feature vector, and the high-dimensional feature vectors of the plurality of terminal devices may be clustered (e.g., using a K-means algorithm, etc.), resulting in a plurality of terminal device groupings.

According to the embodiment, since the TA value of the user is related to the beam, it is necessary that the users in the same user group have the same base station downlink transmission beam. In addition, there are generally two types of base station downlink transmission beams, namely, a beam for transmitting the synchronization signal block SSB and a beam for transmitting the physical downlink shared channel PDSCH. Since the cell handover process mainly involves beams corresponding to the SSBs, the beams corresponding to the SSBs are selected for user grouping.

As an example, fig. 5 schematically shows a flow diagram of signaling to group terminal devices according to an embodiment of the disclosure. As shown in fig. 5, in step S501, the terminal device transmits an uplink reference signal to the electronic device serving the terminal device. Next, in step S502, the electronic device may estimate signal space characteristics of the terminal device, including but not limited to a downlink transmission beam, a direct path angle, a doppler shift, a path loss, and the like, based on the received uplink reference signal. Next, in step S503, the electronic device transmits a signaling inquiring about the cell handover history of the terminal device to the MME. Then, the MME returns the cell handover history of the terminal device that it previously stored to the electronic device after receiving the cell handover history query signaling, as shown in step S504. Finally, in step S505, the electronic device groups the terminal devices according to the cell handover history received from the MME and its estimated signal space characteristics.

In some embodiments, terminal device grouping may also be facilitated using other information such as in-car Wifi systems, inter-device (D2D) systems, and the like. For example, grouping of terminal devices may be assisted based on characteristics of similar signal strength of Wifi access points measured by closely located terminal devices.

According to this embodiment, the terminal device grouping at cell handover may be the same as the previous terminal device grouping or may be changed, e.g. dynamically adjusted according to signal space characteristics. As an example, in the case that the terminal devices are already grouped in the original cell, another electronic device that the terminal device can access in the original cell obtains a new terminal device group by removing the terminal device in the original terminal device group that has a larger difference in signal space characteristics from other terminal devices in the group, and adding a new terminal device that is close to the signal space characteristics of the terminal devices in the group.

It should be understood that the grouping of the terminal devices is not limited to the above description, and may be performed by the electronic device serving the terminal device in the original cell, the electronic device to be served by the terminal device in the target cell, or the MME on the network side.

According to this embodiment, the cell handover request of the terminal device group may include terminal device group common information and terminal device specific information. The terminal device group common information is information that is the same for terminal devices in the same terminal device group. As shown in fig. 6, the cell switching request of the terminal device group includes the terminal device group common information and the information unique to the terminal devices 1 to K. All the terminal devices in the terminal device group can reduce Xn/X2 interface signaling overhead by multiplexing the common information of the terminal device group.

According to this embodiment, the terminal device specific information in the cell handover request of the terminal device group may include a TA value of each terminal device in the terminal device group in the original cell. In some embodiments, the terminal device group common information in the cell handover request of the terminal device group may include a target cell ID, original cell minimum system information, and the like.

Referring back to fig. 4, next, in step S402, the electronic device determines whether cell switching is permitted for the terminal device group. In the case where the cell switching request is permitted (yes at step S402), the electronic device selects one representative terminal device among the plurality of terminal devices in the terminal device group at step S403, and then, at step S404, transmits a cell switching reply of the terminal device group to another electronic device of the original cell.

According to this embodiment, the cell switch reply of the terminal device group may include the terminal device group common information and the terminal device specific information. The terminal device group common information is information that is the same for terminal devices in the same terminal device group. As shown in fig. 6, the cell switching reply of the terminal device group includes the terminal device group common information and the information unique to the terminal devices 1 to K. All the terminal devices in the terminal device group can reduce Xn/X2 interface signaling overhead by multiplexing the common information of the terminal device group.

According to this embodiment, the terminal device specific information in the cell handover reply of the terminal device group may include the ID of the one or more terminal devices granting handover, the ID of the selected representative terminal device, and configuration information of the non-contention random access resource reserved for the representative terminal device. In some embodiments, the terminal device group common information in the cell handover reply for the terminal device group may include a target cell ID, a target cell security algorithm identification, a target cell system information block, and the like.

According to this embodiment, the representative terminal device may be selected by the target cell in various ways. In some embodiments, the electronic device may also randomly select the representative terminal device or select the representative terminal device according to its own needs. As an example, the selection may be random from within the terminal device group, or may be performed according to some terminal device characteristics (such as RSRP).

In some embodiments, in order to support subsequent packet random access, the cell handover request of the terminal device group may further include a representative terminal device ID recommended by another electronic device serving the original cell. According to this embodiment, the electronic device may select the representative terminal device based on the ID of the representative terminal device recommended by another electronic device of the original cell. As an example, typically, the electronic device in the target cell does not know the characteristics of the terminal device. Therefore, another electronic device providing services in the original cell can recommend a suitable representative terminal device according to the characteristics of the terminal device, for example, the terminal device with the best channel quality (for example, the highest RSRP) can be recommended as the representative terminal device, and the ID of the representative terminal device is included in the cell handover request of the terminal device group and sent to the electronic device providing services in the target cell.

In order to support subsequent packet random access, according to this embodiment, the cell handover reply for the terminal device group may further include the C-RNTI of each terminal device in the terminal device group in the target cell.

According to this embodiment, in response to the cell handover reply of the terminal device group, another electronic device in the original cell sends a handover command to the terminal device group. According to this embodiment, the handover command may include a random access indicator indicating whether the terminal device is a representative terminal device. As an example, the random access indicator may be 1 for a representative terminal device, and 0 for a non-representative terminal device. According to this embodiment, for the representative terminal device, the handover command may further include configuration information of the non-contention random access resource reserved for the representative terminal device by the electronic device in the target cell, so as to inform the representative terminal device of the non-contention random access resource reserved for the representative terminal device.

Referring back to fig. 4, next, in step S405, the electronic device receives terminal device group random access. Specifically, the representative terminal device disconnects from the original cell and synchronizes with the electronic device in the target cell in the downlink. Then, the representative terminal device randomly accesses the electronic device in the target cell using the non-contention random access resource reserved for it. As an example, the representative terminal device transmits a preamble sequence to the electronic device by using the reserved non-contention random access resource, the electronic device in the target cell detects an optimal uplink receiving beam based on the preamble sequence, and obtains the optimal downlink transmitting beam by using a corresponding relationship between the downlink transmitting beam and the uplink random access resource.

It is easy to understand that, because the downlink transmission beams of each terminal device in the same user terminal device group are the same, the optimal downlink transmission beam of the representative terminal device is also the optimal downlink transmission beam of other non-representative terminal devices in the group, so that the non-representative terminal device also cuts off the connection with the original cell and is in downlink synchronization with the electronic device in the target cell, and then the electronic device in the target cell can be randomly accessed by using the optimal downlink transmission beam.

According to the embodiment, the time between the reception of the handover command and the transmission of the preamble sequence by the representative terminal device is greater than or equal to the predetermined group waiting window time, as shown in fig. 6, so that it can be ensured that the non-representative terminal device can complete downlink synchronization within the group waiting window time, and access failure of the non-representative terminal device is avoided, thereby improving the robustness of the communication system.

Next, in step S406, the electronic device transmits a random access response RAR to the terminal device. In some embodiments, the electronic device sends a random access response RAR to all terminal devices in the group of terminal devices. In this embodiment, the RAR may include a TA value, a C-RNTI and uplink transmission resources. In some embodiments, the electronic device may transmit the RAR in a common Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) space.

According to an embodiment, the TA value contained in the RAR may include a TA value of a non-representative terminal device, and the TA value may be calculated as follows. According to this embodiment, the electronic device may further obtain a TA value representing the terminal device in the target cell based on the preamble sequence. Since the time for cell handover is short (usually within tens ms to hundreds ms), it can be assumed that the ue clock is stable during cell handover, and therefore, for all the ues in the same ue group, the TA change during cell handover (i.e. the difference between the TA value in the target cell and the TA value in the original cell) is substantially the same. According to the embodiment, the electronic device may calculate the variation amount of the TA values of the representative terminal devices in the original cell and the target cell, and obtain the TA value of the non-representative terminal device in the target cell by adding the TA value of the non-representative terminal device in the terminal device group in the original cell and the variation amount of the TA value of the representative terminal device. The calculation formula of the new TA value of the non-representative terminal device in the target cell may be: the non-representative terminal equipment target cell TA is the non-representative terminal equipment original cell TA + represents the variation of the terminal equipment TA.

In order to enable the non-representative terminal device to receive and correctly decode the RAR transmitted by the electronic device in the target cell, in this embodiment, the electronic device scrambles the RAR to be transmitted to the non-representative terminal device using the C-RNTI of the non-representative terminal device. Since the C-RNTI of the terminal device in the target cell is already included in the cell handover reply and is sent to the terminal device by the handover command, the terminal device already obtains the C-RNTI in the new cell before accessing the target cell, and can decode the received RAR through the C-RNTI.

In addition, since the TA value of the non-representative terminal device can be calculated only after the representative terminal device completes the random access, the RAR of the non-representative terminal device needs to be transmitted after the representative terminal device completes the random access, and therefore the non-representative terminal device does not know when the RAR will be transmitted, and therefore in this embodiment, the non-representative terminal device needs to continuously detect the RAR after completing the downlink synchronization, as shown in fig. 6. In some embodiments, the non-representative terminal device may continuously detect RAR in the common PDCCH space.

Although the reception of the random access and the transmission of the random access response are described herein as being divided into two steps S405 and S406, in some embodiments, steps S405 and S406 may also be referred to as a random access procedure as a whole.

Finally, in step S407, the electronic device may receive a handover complete signaling from the terminal device that successfully detects the RAR by using the uplink transmission resource indicated in the RAR, thereby completing the cell handover.

Furthermore, according to this embodiment, the cell handover request of the terminal device group may be triggered by a measurement report of one or more terminal devices in the terminal device group, e.g. may be triggered by an RSRP measurement report.

In the existing NR/LTE system, a plurality of measurement events are defined, and when a measurement event condition is satisfied, measurement reporting is triggered, and an electronic device in an original cell determines whether to perform cell handover according to the measurement reporting. As an example, a measurement event a3 defined in the NR/LTE system means that the RSRP of a neighboring cell is higher than the RSRP of the own cell by more than a certain threshold (e.g., may be 3dB or 6 dB).

However, it should be noted that measurement reporting is typically performed after a certain time (e.g., 200ms) has elapsed since the measurement event was triggered. Furthermore, the radio protocol stack typically has three layers: layer 1, layer 2 and layer 3. Among them, layer 1(L1) is the lowest layer and implements various physical layer signal processing to provide transparent transmission function of signals; layer 2(L2 layer) is above the physical layer and is responsible for the link between the terminal device and the electronic device above the physical layer; layer 3 (layer L3) is responsible for obtaining radio resources (i.e., radio bearers) and for configuring the lower layers using RRC signaling between the electronic device and the terminal device. The user usually triggers the measurement event by using L3 RSRP, and L3 RSRP is obtained by filtering L1 RSRP, although it is more accurate, but there is a certain delay.

Fig. 8A schematically shows the variation of reference signal received power RSRP of the original cell and the target cell of the terminal device over time. During the movement of the high-speed train, since the terminal devices on the train are farther from the original cell and closer to the target cell, as shown in fig. 8A, the L3 RSRP (as indicated by the dotted line) of the original cell continuously decreases with time, and the L3 RSRP (as indicated by the solid line) of the target cell continuously increases with time.

In a conventional scheme, when a target cell L3 RSRP of a terminal device exceeds an original cell L3 RSRP threshold τ, a measurement event may be triggered, and after a triggering time TTT and a handover preparation time of the original cell and the target cell, the original cell sends a handover command to the terminal device. Since the moving speed of the terminal device on the high-speed train is high, at this time, the original cell L3 RSRP of the terminal device may have been reduced to a degree that the handover command cannot be correctly received, thereby causing a cell handover failure.

To address this problem, the present disclosure proposes a prediction-based cell handover scheme. In this embodiment, a cell handover request for a group of terminal devices may be triggered when the RSRP predicted by the terminal device in the target cell exceeds the RSRP predicted in its original cell by a predetermined threshold.

As shown in fig. 8B, the predicted L3 RSRP of the terminal device in the original cell and the target cell can be calculated using the currently measured RSRP, the RSRP variation slope, and the advance time. Specifically, the prediction formula of L3 RSRP is as follows:

predicted L3 RSRP-current L3 RSRP + L3 RSRP change slope x advance time

The slope of the change of the L3 RSRP may be obtained by fitting and estimating a history value of the measured RSRP, for example, by using an algorithm such as a least square method to fit and estimate an L3 RSRP value in a recent period of time. The advance time is a time difference between the predicted time and the current time, and may be configured in advance based on the moving speed of the measured terminal device, for example, more advance times may be configured as the moving speed is faster. For the terminal equipment on the high-speed vehicle, the moving track is fixed, so the optimal advance time can be obtained through long-term learning, and the advance time with the highest switching success rate can be selected by the terminal equipment of the original cell. In addition, the prediction is performed independently for RSRP in the original cell and the target cell.

As mentioned above, a prediction-based measurement event may be defined, such as the predicted L3 RSRP of the target cell exceeding the predicted L3 RSRP of the original cell by a certain threshold τ. By utilizing the measurement event based on prediction, the inter-cell switching can be triggered in advance, and the RSRP of the original cell of the terminal equipment is still large enough when the original cell sends a switching command to the terminal equipment, so that the switching failure probability can be reduced.

Although described above with respect to only L3 RSRP, it should be understood that the prediction-based cell handover scheme described above is also applicable where L1 RSRP is employed, or where other parameters are employed. Furthermore, it is noted that the prediction-based principle is also applicable to the refinement of other measurement events defined in the NR/LTE system.

Fig. 9 is an exemplary signaling flow diagram schematically illustrating a packet-based cell handover scheme according to an embodiment of the disclosure.

As shown in fig. 9, in step S901, the electronic device 30 serving the user in the original cell performs measurement control on the terminal device 20 of the user. Then, in step S902, the terminal device 20 performs measurement based on the control of the electronic device 30, and reports the measurement result to the electronic device 30. The measurement may include measurement of RSRP of the terminal device 20, and may also include measurement of other parameters.

Next, in step S903, the electronic device 30 determines whether or not to perform cell switching of the terminal device group based on the defined prediction-based cell switching conditions. For example, when the measurement report of one or more terminal devices in the terminal device group satisfies the cell handover condition, it may be determined that the cell handover of the terminal device group is performed.

When the electronic device 30 makes a cell handover decision for the terminal device group, in step S904, the electronic device 30 transmits a cell handover request of the terminal device group to the electronic device 10 that will serve the terminal device 20 in the target cell to be handed over to initiate cell handover of the terminal device group. The cell handover request of the terminal device group may include terminal device group common information and terminal device specific information, and the terminal device specific information may include a TA value of each terminal device in the original cell.

Next, in step S905, the electronic device 10 of the target cell performs admission control to admit or reject the cell handover request of the terminal device group. In the case of granting a cell handover request for a terminal device group, the electronic device 10 selects one terminal device from the terminal device group as a representative terminal device, and reserves a non-contention random access resource therefor.

Next, in step S906, the electronic device 10 in the target cell transmits a cell switching reply of the terminal device group to the electronic device 30 in the original cell. The cell handover reply of the terminal device group may include terminal device group common information and terminal device specific information, and the terminal device specific information may include an ID of one or more terminal devices permitted to perform cell handover, an ID of the selected representative terminal device, and configuration information of non-contention random access resources reserved for the representative terminal device.

Next, in step S907, the electronic device 30 of the original cell generates a handover command for each terminal device, and in step S908, transmits the handover command to the terminal device that permits cell handover. The handover command may include a random access indicator, for example, the random access indicator is 1 for the representative terminal device, and the random access indicator is 0 for the non-representative terminal device. In addition, for the representative terminal device, the handover command may further include configuration information of the non-contention random access resource reserved by the target cell for the representative terminal device.

Next, in step S909, the terminal device that has received the handover command disconnects from the original cell, and performs downlink synchronization on the target cell. Subsequently, in step S910, the representative terminal device performs random access to the target cell using the reserved non-contention random access resource. The electronic device 10 in the target cell obtains the optimal downlink transmit beam and TA value of the representative terminal device, and further calculates the TA value of the non-representative terminal device in the terminal device group.

Next, in step S911, the electronic device 10 of the target cell transmits RAR to all the terminal devices in the terminal device group. For the representative terminal device, the RAR may be sent by using a method in the existing standard, and for the non-representative terminal device, the RAR may be sent after being scrambled by using the C-RNTI. Wherein, the non-representative terminal device continuously detects the RAR after the downlink synchronization.

Finally, in step S912, the terminal device that successfully detects the RAR sends a handover complete signaling to the electronic device 10 in the target cell by using the uplink transmission resource indicated in the RAR, thereby completing cell handover.

It should be understood that only the main signaling flow in a specific example of a grouped cell handover according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown here, and that a grouped cell handover according to the present disclosure naturally also includes other auxiliary signaling needed to complete the cell handover. The grouped cell handover according to the embodiments of the present disclosure is accomplished according to the principles and signaling flow of cell handover as described above.

Packet-based cell handover and prediction-based cell handover techniques according to exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure have been described above with reference to fig. 4-9. According to the group-based cell switching, the cell switching can be simultaneously carried out on the users on the high-speed transportation means by taking the group as a unit, the switching speed is accelerated, only one representative user is selected in each group for random access, so that the resource overhead is obviously reduced, the probability of random access collision when a large number of users carry out the cell switching simultaneously is reduced, and the switching time delay is further reduced. In addition, according to the cell switching based on the prediction, the cell switching can be triggered in advance based on the prediction, so that the probability of switching failure is effectively reduced. Note that the packet-based cell handover and prediction-based cell handover techniques described above may be used separately or in combination.

In addition, in the wireless communication process, the initial access process of the terminal device of the user needs to enable the base station (i.e., the electronic device) to acquire the optimal downlink transmission beam for each user, which is determined by the fixed mapping relationship between the downlink synchronization signal block SSB and the uplink preamble sequence, where each SSB corresponds to one downlink transmission beam. Specifically, the base station periodically sends a downlink synchronization signal block SSB, the user detects the SSB with the largest RSRP, and determines a preamble sequence used in the uplink random access process according to a correspondence between the downlink SSB and the uplink preamble sequence. And then, the user sends the leader sequence to carry out random access, and the base station can acquire the SSB with the maximum RSRP by detecting the leader sequence adopted by the user, so that the optimal downlink sending beam is determined.

In a non-contention random access scenario, preamble resources are reserved for users. It can be seen that the more SSBs, the more preamble sequence resources need to be reserved, which results in a larger resource overhead. In order to further reduce the resource overhead in the cell switching process, the invention provides that only the leader sequence corresponding to part of SSBs can be reserved. In this embodiment, preamble sequence resources corresponding to a part of downlink transmission beams of the base station for transmitting the downlink SSB may be reserved only for the representative terminal device.

This is because, for a user on a high-speed train, because the movement track is fixed, the inter-cell handover usually occurs in a relatively fixed area, such as the handover area shown in fig. 10. The base station downlink transmission beam corresponding to the handover region is a subset of all possible downlink transmission beams, as shown by the downlink transmission beam marked with a black part in fig. 10. The downlink transmission beam subset is commonly used in a cell handover process, and therefore, the base station may only configure the preamble sequence resource corresponding to the downlink transmission beam subset. In some embodiments, the downlink transmission beam subset of the base station corresponding to the handover region may be obtained by long-term learning of an optimal downlink transmission beam when a user on the high-speed train accesses the cell.

In addition, although the above description only separately describes the electronic device 10 of the target cell and the electronic device 30 of the original cell, it should be understood that the electronic device 10 of the target cell and the electronic device 30 of the original cell may be used interchangeably and the functions described for both may be integrated in the same electronic device.

<3.2. structural configuration and operation of terminal apparatus >

The terminal device of the present disclosure will be described below with reference to the drawings. It should be noted that some of the terms described herein may have similar meanings as described above. Fig. 11 is a block diagram schematically showing an example structure of a terminal device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. As shown in fig. 11, the terminal device 20 includes a processing circuit 200, a memory 201, and a communication unit 202.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 200 may be configured to trigger an electronic device on a control side of a wireless communication system serving a terminal device to transmit a cell handover request of a terminal device group including the terminal device and receive a cell handover reply of the corresponding terminal device group, so that the terminal device group takes one of the terminal devices as a representative terminal device and is handed over from an original cell served by the electronic device to a target cell in units of a group. Further, the processing circuit 200 may be configured to trigger the electronic device to send a cell handover request for the terminal device group when the terminal device moves along a certain trajectory with a movement speed greater than a certain threshold and the measurement report satisfies the cell handover condition.

In a structural example of the terminal device 20, the processing circuit 200 may be in the form of a general-purpose processor, or may be a dedicated processing circuit, such as an ASIC. For example, the processing circuit 200 can be constructed by a circuit (hardware) or a central processing device such as a Central Processing Unit (CPU). Further, the processing circuit 200 may carry thereon a program (software) for causing an electric circuit (hardware) or a central processing apparatus to operate. The program can be stored in the memory 201 (such as arranged in the memory) or an external storage medium connected from the outside, and downloaded via a network (such as the internet).

According to this embodiment, the processing circuitry 200 may comprise a receiving unit 2001, which may be configured to receive measurement control commands from the electronic device of the original cell. In addition, according to this embodiment, the receiving unit 2001 may also be configured to receive a handover command from the electronic device of the original cell. In addition, according to this embodiment, the receiving unit 2001 may also be configured to receive a random access response RAR from the electronic device of the target cell.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 200 may further comprise a measuring unit 2002 which may be configured to measure the terminal device in response to the measurement control command, e.g. may measure L1 RSRP or L3 RSRP.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 200 may further comprise a sending unit 2003 configured to send a measurement report to the electronic device of the original cell to report the measurement result thereto. In addition, according to this embodiment, the sending unit 2003 may be further configured to send a preamble sequence to the electronic device of the target cell using the reserved non-contention random access resource when the terminal device is the representative terminal device, thereby accessing the electronic device in the target cell. In addition, in some embodiments, the sending unit 2003 may be further configured to send a handover completion signaling to the electronic device to be accessed by the terminal device in the target cell, by using the uplink transmission resource indicated in the RAR, when the terminal device successfully detects the RAR.

In some embodiments, terminal devices may be grouped by electronic devices according to their signal space characteristics and cell handover history. In some embodiments, the signal space characteristic may be estimated by the electronic device based on an uplink reference signal transmitted by the terminal device, and the cell handover history may be queried by the electronic device from the mobility management unit. Further, in some embodiments, terminal devices having the same or similar signal space characteristics may be grouped together. In some embodiments, the group of terminal devices may include one delegate terminal device and one or more non-delegate terminal devices.

In addition, the processing circuit 200 may further include a synchronization unit 2004, which may be configured to disconnect from the original cell and perform downlink synchronization on the target cell in response to the handover command.

Further, according to this embodiment, the processing circuit 200 may comprise a detection unit 2005, which may be configured to detect a random access response, RAR. According to this embodiment, when the terminal device is a non-representative terminal device, after the downlink synchronization is completed, the detection unit 2005 continuously detects a random access response RAR.

Further, optionally, the terminal device 20 may further include a memory 201 and a communication unit 202 shown by dotted lines in the figure. Further, the terminal device 20 may also include other components not shown, such as radio frequency links, baseband processing units, network interfaces, processors, controllers, and so forth. The processing circuitry 200 may be associated with a memory 201 and/or a communication unit 202. For example, the processing circuit 200 may be directly or indirectly (e.g., with other components possibly interposed) connected to the memory 201 for accessing data. Also for example, the processing circuit 200 may be directly or indirectly connected to the communication unit 202 to transmit radio signals via the communication unit 202 and to receive radio signals via the communication unit 202.

The memory 201 may store various information (e.g., measurement results, handover completion signaling, etc.) generated by the processing circuit 200, programs and data for the operation of the terminal device 20, data to be transmitted by the communication unit 202, and the like. The memory 201 is depicted with dashed lines, since it may also be located within the processing circuit 200 or outside the terminal device 20. The memory 201 may be volatile memory and/or non-volatile memory. For example, memory 201 may include, but is not limited to, Random Access Memory (RAM), Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), Read Only Memory (ROM), flash memory.

The communication unit 202 may be configured to communicate with the electronic device under control of the processing circuit 200. In one example, the communication unit 202 may be implemented as a transmitter or transceiver, including antenna arrays and/or communication components such as radio frequency links. In one embodiment, the communication unit 202 may transmit the measurement result of the at least one terminal device acquired by the processing circuit 200 to the electronic device. In one embodiment, the communication unit 202 may also send and receive signaling required for the processes described in embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure.

Although the processing circuit 200 is shown in fig. 11 as being separate from the communication unit 202, the processing circuit 200 may also be implemented to include the communication unit 202. Further, processing circuit 200 may also be implemented to include one or more other components in terminal device 20, or processing circuit 200 may be implemented as terminal device 20 itself. In actual implementation, the processing circuit 200 may be implemented as a chip (such as an integrated circuit module comprising a single wafer), a hardware component, or a complete product.

Fig. 12 is a flowchart schematically illustrating an operation of a terminal device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

As shown in fig. 12, in step S1201, the terminal apparatus receives a measurement control command from the electronic apparatus of the original cell. Next, in step S1202, the terminal device performs measurement in response to the measurement control command, and transmits a measurement report to the electronic device.

In some embodiments, when the terminal device moves along a specific track and the moving speed is greater than a specific threshold, and the measurement report satisfies a cell handover condition, the electronic device is triggered to send a cell handover request of the terminal device group and receive a cell handover reply of the corresponding terminal device group, so that the terminal device group takes one of the terminal devices as a representative terminal device, and is handed over from an original cell served by the electronic device to a target cell in units of groups.

In some embodiments, terminal devices are grouped by electronic devices according to their signal space characteristics and cell handover history. In some embodiments, the signal space characteristic is estimated by the electronic device based on an uplink reference signal transmitted by the terminal device. In some embodiments, the cell handover history is queried by the electronic device from the mobility management unit. In some embodiments, terminal devices having the same or similar signal space characteristics are grouped together. In some embodiments, the group of terminal devices includes one delegate terminal device and one or more non-delegate terminal devices.

Next, in step S1203, the terminal device receives a switching command from the electronic device. Then, in step S1204, in response to the handover command, the terminal device disconnects the original cell and performs downlink synchronization on the target cell.

Next, in step S1205, the terminal device group randomly accesses the target cell. In some embodiments, when the terminal device is a representative terminal device, it randomly accesses an electronic device in the target cell using the reserved non-contention random access resource, and receives a random access response RAR from the electronic device in the target cell. In some embodiments, when the terminal device is a representative terminal device, the terminal device transmits a preamble sequence to the electronic device in the target cell by using the reserved non-contention random access resource, so as to access the electronic device in the target cell, and the non-representative terminal device may also access the electronic device in the target cell by using the optimal downlink transmission beam determined based on the preamble sequence. In some embodiments, when the terminal device is a non-representative terminal device, it continuously detects a random access response RAR after completing downlink synchronization.

Finally, in step S1206, when the terminal device successfully detects the RAR, the uplink transmission resource indicated in the RAR is used to send a handover complete signaling to the electronic device to be accessed by the terminal device in the target cell.

<3.3. structural configuration and operation of electronic device of original cell >

The electronic equipment of the original cell of the present disclosure will be described below with reference to the drawings. It should be noted that some of the terms described herein may have similar meanings as described above. Fig. 13 is a block diagram schematically illustrating an example structure of another electronic device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. As shown in fig. 13, the electronic device 30 includes a processing circuit 300, a memory 301, and a communication unit 302.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 300 may be configured to send a cell handover request of a terminal device group to an electronic device in a target cell and receive a cell handover reply of the terminal device group from the electronic device in the target cell, so that the terminal device group is handed over from an original cell to the target cell in units of groups with one of the terminal devices as a representative terminal device.

In the above-mentioned structural example of the electronic device 30, the processing circuit 300 may be in the form of a general-purpose processor, or may be a dedicated processing circuit, such as an ASIC. For example, the processing circuit 300 can be constructed by a circuit (hardware) or a central processing device such as a Central Processing Unit (CPU). Further, the processing circuit 300 may carry thereon a program (software) for causing the circuit (hardware) or the central processing apparatus to operate. The program can be stored in the memory 301 (such as disposed in the memory) or an external storage medium connected from the outside, and downloaded via a network (such as the internet).

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 300 may comprise a transmitting unit 3001, which may be configured to transmit a cell handover request of a terminal device group to an electronic device in a target cell. According to this embodiment, the transmitting unit 3001 may be further configured to transmit a cell handover request of the terminal device group to the electronic device serving the target cell when the measurement report of the terminal device satisfies the cell handover condition. In some embodiments, the cell handover request for the terminal device group may include a representative terminal device ID recommended by the electronic device 30 to the electronic device of the target cell. According to this embodiment, the transmitting unit 3001 may be further configured to transmit a cell handover history inquiry command to the mobile management unit.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 300 may further comprise a receiving unit 3002, which may be configured to receive a cell handover reply for the group of terminal devices from the electronic device of the target cell. In some embodiments, the receiving unit 3002 may be further configured to receive measurement reports from one or more terminal devices of the group of terminal devices. In some embodiments, the receiving unit 3002 may be further configured to receive a cell handover history of the terminal device from the mobility management unit. In some embodiments, the receiving unit 3002 may be further configured to receive an uplink reference signal from the terminal device.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 300 may further comprise a grouping unit 3003, which may be configured to group the terminal devices served by the electronic device 30 into one or more terminal device groups, wherein each terminal device group comprises one delegate terminal device and one or more non-delegate terminal devices. In some embodiments, the grouping unit 3003 may be further configured to group the terminal devices according to their signal space characteristics and cell handover history. In some embodiments, the grouping unit 3003 may be further configured to group terminal devices having the same or similar signal space characteristics into a group by clustering the signal space characteristics when the terminal devices are not originally grouped; and when the terminal devices are originally grouped, removing the terminal devices with larger difference with the signal space characteristics of other terminal devices in the group in the original terminal device group, and adding new terminal devices with similar signal space characteristics with the terminal devices in the group to obtain a new terminal device group.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 300 may further comprise an estimating unit 3004, which may be configured to estimate a signal space characteristic of the terminal device based on the uplink reference signal received by the receiving unit 3002.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 300 may further comprise a selection unit 3005, which may be configured to select the representative terminal device according to a characteristic of the terminal device.

According to this embodiment, the transmitting unit 3001 may be further configured to transmit the handover command to the terminal device group in response to a cell handover reply of the terminal device group. In some embodiments, the handover command includes a cell radio network temporary identity, C-RNTI, of each terminal device in the group of terminal devices at the target cell. In some embodiments, the transmitting unit 3001 may be further configured to transmit a cell handover request of the terminal device group to the electronic device serving the target cell when a reference signal received power, RSRP, predicted by the terminal device in the target cell exceeds an RSRP predicted in the original cell by a predetermined threshold.

According to this embodiment, the processing circuit 300 may further comprise a calculating unit 3006, which may be configured to calculate a predicted RSRP of the terminal device in the old cell and the target cell using the currently measured RSRP, the RSRP variation slope and the advance time. In some embodiments, the estimating unit 3004 may be further configured to fit an estimated RSRP variation slope using the measured RSRP history values. In some embodiments, the advance time may be configured based on the measured speed of movement of the terminal device.

Further, optionally, the electronic device 30 may further include a memory 301 and a communication unit 302 shown by dotted lines in the figure. Further, the electronic device 30 may also include other components not shown, such as radio frequency links, baseband processing units, network interfaces, processors, controllers, and so forth. The processing circuit 300 may be associated with a memory 301 and/or a communication unit 302. For example, the processing circuit 300 may be directly or indirectly (e.g., with other components possibly interposed) connected to the memory 301 for accessing data. Also for example, the processing circuit 300 may be directly or indirectly connected to the communication unit 302 to transmit radio signals via the communication unit 302 and to receive radio signals via the communication unit 302.

The memory 301 may store various information generated by the processing circuit 300 (e.g., grouping information of terminal devices, signal space characteristics, a selected representative terminal device ID, etc.), programs and data for operation of the electronic device 30, data to be transmitted by the communication unit 302, and the like. The memory 301 is depicted with dashed lines, since it may also be located within the processing circuit 300 or outside the electronic device 30. The memory 301 may be volatile memory and/or non-volatile memory. For example, memory 301 may include, but is not limited to, Random Access Memory (RAM), Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), Read Only Memory (ROM), flash memory.

The communication unit 302 may be configured to communicate with electronic devices and terminal devices under the control of the processing circuit 300. In one example, the communication unit 302 may be implemented as a transmitter or transceiver, including an antenna array and/or a radio frequency link, among other communication components. In one embodiment, the communication unit 302 may transmit the representative terminal device ID determined in the processing circuit 300 to the electronic device of the original cell in the wireless communication system. In one embodiment, the communication unit 302 may also send and receive signaling needed for the processes described in embodiments according to the present disclosure.

Although the processing circuit 300 is shown in fig. 13 as being separate from the communication unit 302, the processing circuit 300 may also be implemented to include the communication unit 302. Further, the processing circuit 300 may also be implemented to include one or more other components in the electronic device 30, or the processing circuit 300 may be implemented as the electronic device 30 itself. In actual implementation, the processing circuit 300 may be implemented as a chip (such as an integrated circuit module comprising a single wafer), a hardware component, or a complete product.

Fig. 14 is a flow chart schematically illustrating operation of an electronic device of an original cell in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure.

As shown in fig. 14, in step S1401, the electronic device groups the terminal devices. Specifically, the electronic device groups the terminal devices served by the electronic device into one or more terminal device groups, wherein each terminal device group comprises one representative terminal device and one or more non-representative terminal devices.

In some embodiments, the electronic device may group the terminal devices according to their signal space characteristics and cell handover history. In some embodiments, the electronic device sends a cell handover history query command to the mobility management unit and then receives a cell handover history of the terminal device from the mobility management unit. In some embodiments, the electronic device receives an uplink reference signal from the terminal device and then estimates a signal space characteristic of the terminal device based on the received uplink reference signal.

In some embodiments, the electronic device groups terminal devices having the same or similar signal space characteristics into a group by clustering the signal space characteristics when the terminal devices were not originally grouped. In other embodiments, when the terminal devices are originally grouped, the electronic device obtains a new terminal device group by removing the terminal device in the original terminal device group that has a larger difference in signal spatial characteristics from other terminal devices in the group, and adding a new terminal device that is close to the signal spatial characteristics of the terminal devices in the group.

Next, in step S1402, the electronic device selects a representative terminal device according to the characteristics of the terminal device. Note that step S1402 is not essential, and the representative terminal device may not be selected by the electronic device of the original cell but by the electronic device of the target cell.

Next, in step S1403, the electronic device determines whether the measurement report satisfies the cell switching condition based on the measurement report received from one or more terminal devices in the terminal device group. When the measurement report satisfies the cell switching condition (yes in step S1403), the electronic apparatus transmits a cell switching request of the terminal apparatus group to another electronic apparatus serving the target cell in step S1404. On the contrary, when the measurement report does not satisfy the cell switching condition (no in step S1403), the electronic device returns to perform determination based on the newly received measurement report again.

In some embodiments, when the reference signal received power, RSRP, predicted by the terminal device in the target cell exceeds the RSRP predicted in the original cell by a predetermined threshold, the electronic device sends a cell handover request for the group of terminal devices to another electronic device serving the target cell. In some embodiments, the electronic device calculates a predicted RSRP of the terminal device in the old cell and the target cell using the currently measured RSRP, the RSRP variation slope, and the advance time. In some embodiments, the electronic device fits an estimated RSRP variation slope using the measured RSRP historical values in the measurement report. In some embodiments, the electronic device configures the advance time based on the measured speed of movement of the terminal device.

In some embodiments, the cell handover request of the terminal device group includes the representative terminal device ID selected by the electronic device, that is, the representative terminal device ID recommended to another electronic device of the target cell.

Next, in step S1405, the electronic apparatus receives a cell switching reply of the terminal apparatus group from another electronic apparatus of the target cell. When the electronic apparatus receives a cell handover reply of the terminal apparatus group from another electronic apparatus of the target cell (yes at step S1405), the electronic apparatus transmits a handover command to the terminal apparatus group to instruct the terminal apparatus group to perform cell handover at step S1406. On the contrary, when the electronic apparatus does not receive a cell switching reply of the terminal apparatus group from another electronic apparatus of the target cell (no in step S1405), the cell switching ends.

In some embodiments, the handover command includes a cell radio network temporary identity, C-RNTI, of each terminal device in the group of terminal devices at the target cell.

As mentioned above, other specific details of cell handover have been described and will not be repeated here.

EXAMPLE 4 application example

An example of a high speed train communication scenario is described in the present disclosure, but it should be understood that the application scenario of the present disclosure is not limited to a high speed train communication scenario. The improvement scheme provided by the disclosure can be applied to any mobile communication application scene with higher requirements on resources and reliability.

It should be noted that the above description is merely exemplary. Embodiments of the present disclosure may also be carried out in any other suitable manner that still achieves the advantageous results obtained by embodiments of the present disclosure. Moreover, embodiments of the present disclosure are equally applicable to other similar examples of applications and still achieve the advantageous effects achieved by embodiments of the present disclosure.

It should be understood that machine-executable instructions in a machine-readable storage medium or program product according to embodiments of the disclosure may be configured to perform operations corresponding to the above-described apparatus and method embodiments. Embodiments of the machine-readable storage medium or program product will be apparent to those skilled in the art when the above apparatus and method embodiments are referenced and, therefore, will not be described repeatedly. Machine-readable storage media and program products for carrying or including the machine-executable instructions described above are also within the scope of the present disclosure. Such storage media may include, but is not limited to, floppy disks, optical disks, magneto-optical disks, memory cards, memory sticks, and the like.

In addition, it should be understood that the series of processes and apparatuses described above may also be implemented by software and/or firmware. In the case of implementation by software and/or firmware, a program constituting the software is installed from a storage medium or a network to a computer having a dedicated hardware structure, such as a general-purpose personal computer 1500 shown in fig. 15, which is capable of executing various functions and the like when various programs are installed. Fig. 15 is a block diagram showing an example structure of a personal computer of an information processing apparatus employable in the embodiment according to the present disclosure. In one example, the personal computer may correspond to the above-described exemplary terminal device according to the present disclosure.

In fig. 15, a Central Processing Unit (CPU)1501 executes various processes in accordance with a program stored in a Read Only Memory (ROM)1502 or a program loaded from a storage section 1508 to a Random Access Memory (RAM) 1503. In the RAM 1503, data necessary when the CPU 1501 executes various processes and the like is also stored as necessary.

The CPU 1501, the ROM 1502, and the RAM 1503 are connected to each other via a bus 1504. An input/output interface 1505 is also connected to the bus 1504.

The following components are connected to the input/output interface 1505: an input section 1506 including a keyboard, a mouse, and the like; an output portion 1507 including a display such as a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT), a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), and the like, and a speaker and the like; a storage section 1508 including a hard disk and the like; and a communication section 1509 including a network interface card such as a LAN card, a modem, and the like. The communication section 1509 performs communication processing via a network such as the internet.

A driver 1510 is also connected to the input/output interface 1505, as needed. A removable medium 1511 such as a magnetic disk, an optical disk, a magneto-optical disk, a semiconductor memory, or the like is mounted on the drive 1510 as necessary, so that the computer program read out therefrom is installed into the storage section 1508 as necessary.

In the case where the above-described series of processes is realized by software, a program constituting the software is installed from a network such as the internet or a storage medium such as the removable medium 1511.

It should be understood by those skilled in the art that such a storage medium is not limited to the removable medium 1511 shown in fig. 15 in which the program is stored, distributed separately from the apparatus to provide the program to the user. Examples of the removable medium 1511 include a magnetic disk (including a floppy disk (registered trademark)), an optical disk (including a compact disk read only memory (CD-ROM) and a Digital Versatile Disk (DVD)), a magneto-optical disk (including a Mini Disk (MD) (registered trademark)), and a semiconductor memory. Alternatively, the storage medium may be the ROM 1502, a hard disk included in the storage section 1508, or the like, in which programs are stored and which are distributed to users together with the apparatus including them.

The techniques of this disclosure can be applied to a variety of products.

For example, the electronic device 10/electronic device 30 according to embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented as or included in various control devices/base stations. For example, the terminal device 20 according to the embodiment of the present disclosure may be implemented as or included in various terminal devices.

For example, the electronic devices/base stations mentioned in the present disclosure may be implemented as any type of base station, e.g., an eNB, such as a macro eNB and a small eNB. The small eNB may be an eNB that covers a cell smaller than a macro cell, such as a pico eNB, a micro eNB, and a home (femto) eNB. Also for example, may be implemented as a gNB, such as a macro gNB and a small gNB. The small gNB may be a gNB covering a cell smaller than a macro cell, such as a pico gNB, a micro gNB, and a home (femto) gNB. Alternatively, the Base Station may be implemented as any other type of Base Station, such as a NodeB and a Base Transceiver Station (BTS). The base station may include: a main body (also referred to as a base station apparatus) configured to control wireless communication; and one or more Remote Radio Heads (RRHs) disposed at a different place from the main body. In addition, various types of terminals, which will be described below, can each operate as a base station by temporarily or semi-persistently performing a base station function.

For example, the terminal device mentioned in the present disclosure may be implemented as a mobile terminal such as a smart phone, a tablet Personal Computer (PC), a notebook PC, a portable game terminal, a portable/cryptographic dog-type mobile router, and a digital camera in some embodiments, or a vehicle-mounted terminal such as a car navigation device. The terminal device may also be implemented as a terminal (also referred to as a Machine Type Communication (MTC) terminal) that performs machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. Further, the terminal device may be a wireless communication module (such as an integrated circuit module including a single chip) mounted on each of the above-described terminals.

Application examples according to the present disclosure will be described below with reference to fig. 16 to 19.

[ example relating to base station ]

It should be understood that the term electronic device/base station in this disclosure has its full breadth of ordinary meaning and includes at least a wireless communication station that is used to facilitate communications as part of a wireless communication system or radio system. Examples of base stations may be for example, but not limited to, the following: the base station may be one or both of a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) and a Base Station Controller (BSC) in a GSM system, one or both of a Radio Network Controller (RNC) and a Node B in a WCDMA system, an eNB in LTE and LTE-Advanced systems, or a corresponding network Node in future communication systems (e.g., a gbb, an LTE eNB, etc., as may occur in a 5G communication system). Part of the functions in the base station of the present disclosure may also be implemented as an entity having a control function for communication in the D2D, M2M, and V2V communication scenarios, or as an entity functioning as spectrum coordination in the cognitive radio communication scenario.

First example

Fig. 16 is a block diagram illustrating a first example of a schematic configuration of an eNB to which the technology of the present disclosure may be applied. The eNB1600 includes multiple antennas 1610 and base station equipment 1620. The base station device 1620 and each antenna 1610 may be connected to each other via an RF cable. In one implementation, eNB1600 (or base station device 1620) herein may correspond to electronic device 10 or electronic device 30 described above.

Each of the antennas 1610 includes a single or multiple antenna elements (such as multiple antenna elements included in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna), and is used for the base station apparatus 1620 to transmit and receive wireless signals. As shown in fig. 16, the eNB1600 may include multiple antennas 1610. For example, the multiple antennas 1610 may be compatible with multiple frequency bands used by the eNB 1600.

Base station apparatus 1620 comprises a controller 1621, memory 1622, network interface 1623, and wireless communication interface 1625.

The controller 1621 may be, for example, a CPU or a DSP, and operates various functions of higher layers of the base station apparatus 1620. For example, the controller 1621 triggers cell handover according to a measurement report at the terminal side in the wireless communication system acquired by the wireless communication interface 1625, so that a terminal device group takes one of the terminal devices as a representative terminal device and is handed over from an original cell to a target cell in units of a group. The controller 1621 may have a logic function to perform the following control: such as radio resource control, radio bearer control, mobility management, access control and scheduling. The control may be performed in connection with a nearby eNB or core network node. The memory 1622 includes a RAM and a ROM, and stores programs executed by the controller 1621 and various types of control data (such as switching permission data and switching command data).

The network interface 1623 is a communication interface for connecting the base station apparatus 1620 to a core network 1624. The controller 1621 may communicate with a core network node or another eNB via a network interface 1623. In this case, the eNB1600 and the core network node or other enbs may be connected to each other through a logical interface, such as an S1 interface and an X2 interface. Network interface 1623 may also be a wired communication interface or a wireless communication interface for a wireless backhaul. If network interface 1623 is a wireless communication interface, network interface 1623 may use a higher frequency band for wireless communication than the frequency band used by wireless communication interface 1625.

The wireless communication interface 1625 supports any cellular communication scheme, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced, and provides wireless connectivity to terminals located in the cell of the eNB1600 via the antenna 1610. Wireless communication interface 1625 may generally include, for example, a baseband (BB) processor 1626 and RF circuitry 1627. The BB processor 1626 may perform, for example, encoding/decoding, modulation/demodulation, and multiplexing/demultiplexing, and perform various types of signal processing of layers such as L1, Medium Access Control (MAC), Radio Link Control (RLC), and Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP). The BB processor 1626 may have a part or all of the above-described logic functions in place of the controller 1621. The BB processor 1626 may be a memory storing a communication control program, or a module including a processor and associated circuitry configured to execute programs. The update program may cause the function of the BB processor 1626 to change. The module may be a card or blade that is inserted into a slot of base station device 1620. Alternatively, the module may be a chip mounted on a card or blade. Meanwhile, the RF circuit 1627 may include, for example, a mixer, a filter, and an amplifier, and transmits and receives a wireless signal via the antenna 1610. Although fig. 16 shows an example in which one RF circuit 1627 is connected to one antenna 1610, the present disclosure is not limited to this illustration, and one RF circuit 1627 may be connected to a plurality of antennas 1610 simultaneously.

As shown in fig. 16, wireless communication interface 1625 may include multiple BB processors 1626. For example, the plurality of BB processors 1626 may be compatible with multiple frequency bands used by the eNB 1600. As shown in fig. 16, wireless communication interface 1625 may include a plurality of RF circuits 1627. For example, the plurality of RF circuits 1627 may be compatible with multiple antenna elements. Although fig. 16 illustrates an example in which the wireless communication interface 1625 includes multiple BB processors 1626 and multiple RF circuits 1627, the wireless communication interface 1625 may also include a single BB processor 1626 or a single RF circuit 1627.

Second example

Fig. 17 is a block diagram illustrating a second example of a schematic configuration of an eNB to which the technology of the present disclosure may be applied. The eNB1700 includes multiple antennas 1710, RRHs 1720, and base station devices 1730. The RRH1720 and each antenna 1710 can be connected to each other via an RF cable. The base station devices 1730 and RRHs 1720 may be connected to each other via a high speed line such as a fiber optic cable. In one implementation, eNB1700 (or base station device 1730) here may correspond to electronic device 10 or electronic device 30 described above.

Each of the antennas 1710 includes a single or multiple antenna elements (such as multiple antenna elements included in a MIMO antenna), and is used for the RRH1720 to transmit and receive wireless signals. As shown in fig. 17, eNB1700 may include multiple antennas 1710. For example, the multiple antennas 1710 may be compatible with multiple frequency bands used by the eNB 1700.

Base station device 1730 includes a controller 1731, memory 1732, a network interface 1733, a wireless communication interface 1734, and a connection interface 1736. The controller 1731, memory 1732, and network interface 1733 are the same as the controller 1621, memory 1622, and network interface 1623 described with reference to fig. 16.

The wireless communication interface 1734 supports any cellular communication scheme (such as LTE and LTE-Advanced) and provides wireless communication via the RRHs 1720 and the antennas 1710 to terminals located in a sector corresponding to the RRHs 1720. Wireless communication interface 1734 may generally include a BB processor 1735, for example. The BB processor 1735 is the same as the BB processor 1626 described with reference to fig. 16, except that the BB processor 1735 is connected to the RF circuitry 1722 of the RRH1720 via a connection interface 1736. As shown in fig. 17, wireless communication interface 1734 may include multiple BB processors 1735. For example, the plurality of BB processors 1735 may be compatible with the plurality of frequency bands used by the eNB 1700. Although fig. 17 shows an example in which wireless communication interface 1734 includes multiple BB processors 1735, wireless communication interface 1734 may also include a single BB processor 1735.

The connection interface 1736 is an interface for connecting the base station device 1730 (wireless communication interface 1734) to the RRHs 1720. The connection interface 1736 may also be a communication module for communication in the above-described high-speed lines connecting the base station device 1730 (wireless communication interface 1734) to the RRHs 1720.

RRH1720 includes a connection interface 1723 and a wireless communication interface 1721.

The connection interface 1723 is an interface for connecting the RRH1720 (wireless communication interface 1721) to the base station device 1730. The connection interface 1723 may also be a communication module for communication in the above-described high-speed line.

Wireless communication interface 1721 transmits and receives wireless signals via antenna 1710. The wireless communication interface 1721 may generally include, for example, RF circuitry 1722. The RF circuitry 1722 may include, for example, mixers, filters, and amplifiers, and transmits and receives wireless signals via the antenna 1710. Although fig. 17 shows an example in which one RF circuit 1722 is connected to one antenna 1710, the present disclosure is not limited to this illustration, and one RF circuit 1722 may be connected to a plurality of antennas 1710 at the same time.

As shown in fig. 17, wireless communication interface 1721 may include a plurality of RF circuits 1722. For example, multiple RF circuits 1722 may support multiple antenna elements. Although fig. 17 illustrates an example in which wireless communication interface 1721 includes multiple RF circuits 1722, wireless communication interface 1721 may also include a single RF circuit 1722.

[ examples relating to user equipments ]

First example

Fig. 18 is a block diagram illustrating an example of a schematic configuration of a smartphone 1800 to which the techniques of this disclosure may be applied. The smart phone 1800 includes a processor 1801, memory 1802, storage 1803, external connection interfaces 1804, camera devices 1806, sensors 1807, microphone 1808, input devices 1809, display devices 1810, speaker 1811, wireless communication interface 1812, one or more antenna switches 1815, one or more antennas 1816, bus 1817, battery 1818, and auxiliary controller 1819. In one implementation, the smart phone 1800 (or the processor 1801) herein may correspond to the terminal device 20 described above.

The processor 1801 may be, for example, a CPU or a system on a chip (SoC), and controls functions of an application layer and another layer of the smart phone 1800. The memory 1802 includes a RAM and a ROM, and stores data and programs executed by the processor 1801. The storage device 1803 may include a storage medium such as a semiconductor memory and a hard disk. The external connection interface 1804 is an interface for connecting an external device such as a memory card and a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device to the smartphone 1800.

The image pickup device 1806 includes an image sensor such as a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) and a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS), and generates a captured image. The sensors 1807 may include a set of sensors such as a measurement sensor, a gyro sensor, a geomagnetic sensor, and an acceleration sensor. The microphone 1808 converts sound input to the smartphone 1800 into an audio signal. The input device 1809 includes, for example, a touch sensor, a keypad, a keyboard, a button, or a switch configured to detect a touch on the screen of the display device 1810, and receives an operation or information input from a user. The display device 1810 includes a screen, such as a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) display, and displays an output image of the smart phone 1800. The speaker 1811 converts an audio signal output from the smart phone 1800 into sound.

The wireless communication interface 1812 supports any cellular communication scheme (such as LTE and LTE-Advanced) and performs wireless communication. The wireless communication interface 1812 may generally include, for example, a BB processor 1813 and RF circuitry 1814. The BB processor 1813 may perform, for example, encoding/decoding, modulation/demodulation, and multiplexing/demultiplexing, and perform various types of signal processing for wireless communication. Meanwhile, the RF circuit 1814 may include, for example, a mixer, a filter, and an amplifier, and transmit and receive a wireless signal via the antenna 1816. The wireless communication interface 1812 may be one chip module on which the BB processor 1813 and the RF circuit 1814 are integrated. As shown in fig. 18, the wireless communication interface 1812 may include a plurality of BB processors 1813 and a plurality of RF circuits 1814. Although fig. 18 shows an example in which the wireless communication interface 1812 includes a plurality of BB processors 1813 and a plurality of RF circuits 1814, the wireless communication interface 1812 may also include a single BB processor 1813 or a single RF circuit 1814.

Further, the wireless communication interface 1812 may support another type of wireless communication scheme, such as a short-range wireless communication scheme, a near field communication scheme, and a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) scheme, in addition to the cellular communication scheme. In this case, the wireless communication interface 1812 may include a BB processor 1813 and RF circuits 1814 for each wireless communication scheme.

Each of the antenna switches 1815 switches a connection destination of the antenna 1816 between a plurality of circuits (e.g., circuits for different wireless communication schemes) included in the wireless communication interface 1812.

Each of the antennas 1816 includes a single or multiple antenna elements (such as multiple antenna elements included in a MIMO antenna), and is used for the wireless communication interface 1812 to transmit and receive wireless signals. As shown in fig. 18, the smartphone 1800 may include multiple antennas 1816. Although fig. 18 shows an example in which the smartphone 1800 includes multiple antennas 1816, the smartphone 1800 may also include a single antenna 1816.

Further, the smartphone 1800 may include an antenna 1816 for each wireless communication scheme. In this case, the antenna switch 1815 may be omitted from the configuration of the smartphone 1800.

The bus 1817 connects the processor 1801, the memory 1802, the storage device 1803, the external connection interface 1804, the image pickup device 1806, the sensor 1807, the microphone 1808, the input device 1809, the display device 1810, the speaker 1811, the wireless communication interface 1812, and the auxiliary controller 1819 to each other. The battery 1818 provides power to the various blocks of the smartphone 1800 shown in fig. 18 via a feed line, which is partially shown as a dashed line in the figure. The auxiliary controller 1819 operates the minimum necessary functions of the smartphone 1800, for example, in a sleep mode.

Second example

Fig. 19 is a block diagram showing an example of a schematic configuration of a car navigation device 1900 to which the technique of the present disclosure can be applied. The car navigation device 1900 includes a processor 1901, a memory 1902, a Global Positioning System (GPS) module 1904, a sensor 1905, a data interface 1906, a content player 1907, a storage medium interface 1908, an input device 1909, a display device 1910, a speaker 1911, a wireless communication interface 1913, one or more antenna switches 1916, one or more antennas 1917, and a battery 1918. In one implementation, the car navigation device 1900 (or the processor 1901) herein may correspond to the terminal device 20.

The processor 1901 may be, for example, a CPU or an SoC, and controls the navigation function and another function of the car navigation device 1900. The memory 1902 includes a RAM and a ROM, and stores data and programs executed by the processor 1901.

The GPS module 1904 measures the position (such as latitude, longitude, and altitude) of the car navigation device 1900 using GPS signals received from GPS satellites. The sensors 1905 may include a set of sensors, such as a gyroscope sensor, a geomagnetic sensor, and an air pressure sensor. The data interface 1906 is connected to, for example, an in-vehicle network 1921 via a terminal not shown, and acquires data generated by a vehicle (such as vehicle speed data).

The content player 1907 reproduces content stored in a storage medium (such as a CD and a DVD) inserted into the storage medium interface 1908. The input device 1909 includes, for example, a touch sensor, a button, or a switch configured to detect a touch on the screen of the display device 1910, and receives an operation or information input from a user. The display device 1910 includes a screen such as an LCD or OLED display, and displays an image of a navigation function or reproduced content. The speaker 1911 outputs the sound of the navigation function or the reproduced content.

The wireless communication interface 1913 supports any cellular communication scheme (such as LTE and LTE-Advanced) and performs wireless communication. The wireless communication interface 1913 may generally include, for example, a BB processor 1914 and RF circuitry 1915. The BB processor 1914 may perform, for example, encoding/decoding, modulation/demodulation, and multiplexing/demultiplexing, and perform various types of signal processing for wireless communication. Meanwhile, the RF circuit 1915 may include, for example, a mixer, a filter, and an amplifier, and transmits and receives a wireless signal via the antenna 1917. The wireless communication interface 1913 may also be a chip module on which the BB processor 1914 and the RF circuit 1915 are integrated. As shown in fig. 19, the wireless communication interface 1913 may include a plurality of BB processors 1914 and a plurality of RF circuits 1915. Although fig. 19 shows an example in which the wireless communication interface 1913 includes multiple BB processors 1914 and multiple RF circuits 1915, the wireless communication interface 1913 may also include a single BB processor 1914 or a single RF circuit 1915.

Further, the wireless communication interface 1913 may support another type of wireless communication scheme, such as a short-range wireless communication scheme, a near field communication scheme, and a wireless LAN scheme, in addition to the cellular communication scheme. In this case, the wireless communication interface 1913 may include a BB processor 1914 and RF circuitry 1915 for each wireless communication scheme.

Each of the antenna switches 1916 switches a connection destination of the antenna 1917 between a plurality of circuits (such as circuits for different wireless communication schemes) included in the wireless communication interface 1913.

Each of the antennas 1917 includes a single or multiple antenna elements (such as multiple antenna elements included in a MIMO antenna), and is used for wireless communication interface 1913 to transmit and receive wireless signals. As shown in fig. 19, the car navigation device 1900 may include a plurality of antennas 1917. Although fig. 19 shows an example in which the car navigation apparatus 1900 includes a plurality of antennas 1917, the car navigation apparatus 1900 may include a single antenna 1917.

Further, the car navigation device 1900 may include an antenna 1917 for each wireless communication scheme. In this case, the antenna switch 1916 may be omitted from the configuration of the car navigation device 1900.

The battery 1918 supplies power to the respective blocks of the car navigation device 1900 shown in fig. 19 via a feeder line, which is partially shown as a broken line in the drawing. The battery 1918 accumulates electric power supplied from the vehicle.

The techniques of this disclosure may also be implemented as an in-vehicle system (or vehicle) 1920 including one or more blocks of the car navigation device 1900, the in-vehicle network 1921, and the vehicle module 1922. The vehicle module 1922 generates vehicle data (such as vehicle speed, engine speed, and fault information) and outputs the generated data to the on-board network 1921.

Conclusion 5

The embodiment of the present disclosure has been described in detail above with reference to fig. 1 to 19. As described above, the electronic device according to the embodiment of the present disclosure can perform cell switching on a terminal device on a high-speed vehicle based on a packet-based cell switching technique and a prediction-based cell switching technique. According to the embodiment of the disclosure, users on a high-speed vehicle can be accurately identified, cell switching is simultaneously carried out on the users on the high-speed vehicle by taking a group as a unit, the switching speed is obviously improved, only one representative user is selected in each group for random access, through the design of grouped cell switching requests and cell switching responses, the resource overhead when a large number of users carry out cell switching simultaneously is obviously reduced, and the probability of random access collision and switching time delay when a large number of users carry out cell switching simultaneously are also reduced. In addition, the cell switching can be triggered in advance based on the prediction, so that the switching failure probability is effectively reduced. Moreover, the present disclosure also provides a scheme of reserving only the preamble sequence corresponding to a part of SSBs, thereby further reducing the resource overhead in the cell handover process.

The exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure are described above with reference to the drawings, but the present disclosure is of course not limited to the above examples. Various changes and modifications within the scope of the appended claims may be made by those skilled in the art, and it should be understood that these changes and modifications naturally will fall within the technical scope of the present disclosure.

In addition, it should be understood that the series of processes and apparatuses described above may also be implemented by software and/or firmware. In the case of implementation by software and/or firmware, respective programs constituting the respective software are stored in a storage medium of the relevant device, and when the programs are executed, various functions can be performed.

For example, a plurality of functions included in one unit may be implemented by separate devices in the above embodiments. Alternatively, a plurality of functions implemented by a plurality of units in the above embodiments may be implemented by separate devices, respectively. In addition, one of the above functions may be implemented by a plurality of units. Needless to say, such a configuration is included in the technical scope of the present disclosure.

In this specification, the steps described in the flowcharts include not only the processing performed in time series in the described order but also the processing performed in parallel or individually without necessarily being performed in time series. Further, even in the steps processed in time series, needless to say, the order can be changed as appropriate.

Example embodiment implementation of the present disclosure

Various implementations of implementing the concepts of the present disclosure are contemplated in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, including but not limited to:

example embodiment 1. an electronic device for a control side of a wireless communication system, comprising processing circuitry configured to:

selecting one representative terminal device from a plurality of terminal devices in the terminal device group, so that the terminal device group can use the representative terminal device as a representative of the terminal device group, and switching from the original cell to a target cell served by the electronic device by taking the group as a unit.

Exemplary embodiment 2 the electronic device according to exemplary embodiment 1, wherein

The representative terminal device is reserved with non-contention random access resources.

Exemplary embodiment 3 the electronic device as described in exemplary embodiment 1, wherein

Each terminal device in the terminal device group has the same or similar signal space characteristics.

Exemplary embodiment 4 the electronic device as described in exemplary embodiment 3, wherein

And under the condition that the terminal equipment is grouped in the original cell, the other electronic equipment accessed by the terminal equipment in the original cell obtains the terminal equipment group by removing the terminal equipment with larger difference with the signal space characteristics of other terminal equipment in the group in the original terminal equipment group and adding new terminal equipment with the signal space characteristics close to the signal space characteristics of the terminal equipment in the group.

Exemplary embodiment 5 the electronic device as described in exemplary embodiment 3, wherein

And under the condition that the terminal equipment is not grouped in the original cell, another electronic equipment accessed by the terminal equipment in the original cell obtains the terminal equipment group by clustering the signal space characteristics.

Exemplary embodiment 6 the electronic device as in any of exemplary embodiments 3-5, wherein

The signal spatial features include one or more of: downlink transmit beam, direct path angle, doppler shift, path loss, and cell handover history.

Example embodiment 7. the electronic device of example embodiment 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and receiving a cell switching request of a terminal equipment group from another electronic equipment accessed in the original cell by the terminal equipment.

Example embodiment 8 the electronic device of example embodiment 7, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and selecting the representative terminal equipment based on the ID of the representative terminal equipment recommended by the other electronic equipment contained in the cell switching request of the terminal equipment group.

Example embodiment 9 the electronic device of example embodiment 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and randomly selecting the representative terminal equipment.

Exemplary embodiment 10 the electronic device as described in exemplary embodiment 7, wherein

The cell switching request of the terminal equipment group comprises terminal equipment specific information, and the terminal equipment specific information comprises a timing advance TA value of each terminal equipment in the terminal equipment group in an original cell.

Example embodiment 11 the electronic device of example embodiment 7, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and responding to the cell switching request of the terminal equipment group, and sending a cell switching reply of the terminal equipment group to the other electronic equipment.

Exemplary embodiment 12 the electronic device as in exemplary embodiment 11, wherein

The cell handover reply of the terminal device group includes terminal device specific information including an ID of one or more terminal devices permitted to handover, an ID of the selected representative terminal device, and configuration information of non-contention random access resources reserved for the representative terminal device.

Exemplary embodiment 13 the electronic device as in exemplary embodiment 11, wherein

And the cell switching reply of the terminal equipment group comprises a cell radio network temporary identifier C-RNTI of each terminal equipment in the terminal equipment group in a target cell.

Exemplary embodiment 14 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 11, wherein

In response to the cell handover reply of the terminal device group, the other electronic device sends a handover command to the terminal device group; and is

And responding to the switching command, cutting off the connection with the original cell by all the terminal equipment in the terminal equipment group, and performing downlink synchronization on the target cell.

Exemplary embodiment 15 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 14, wherein

The handover command includes a random access indicator indicating whether the terminal device is a representative terminal device.

Exemplary embodiment 16 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 14, wherein

For the representative terminal device, the handover command includes configuration information of non-contention random access resources reserved by the electronic device for the representative terminal device.

Exemplary embodiment 17 the electronic device as described in exemplary embodiment 2, wherein

The representative terminal equipment randomly accesses the electronic equipment in the target cell by using the reserved non-competitive random access resource; and is

And the electronic equipment sends a random access response RAR to all the terminal equipment in the terminal equipment group.

Exemplary embodiment 18 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 2, wherein

And the representative terminal equipment transmits a leader sequence to the electronic equipment by using the reserved non-competitive random access resources so as to access the electronic equipment in the target cell.

Exemplary embodiment 19 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 18, wherein

The time between the reception of the handover command and the transmission of the preamble sequence by the representative terminal device is greater than or equal to a predetermined group waiting window time.

Example embodiment 20 the electronic device of example embodiment 18, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and obtaining a timing advance TA value representing the terminal equipment in the target cell based on the preamble sequence.

Example embodiment 21 the electronic device of example embodiment 20, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

calculating the change quantity of TA values of the representative terminal equipment in the original cell and the target cell; and

and adding the TA value of the non-representative terminal equipment in the terminal equipment group in the original cell and the change quantity of the TA value of the representative terminal equipment to obtain the TA value of the non-representative terminal equipment in the target cell.

Example embodiment 22 the electronic device of example embodiment 18, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and obtaining the optimal downlink transmission beam representing the terminal equipment in the target cell based on the leader sequence.

Example embodiment 23 the electronic device of example embodiment 17, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and scrambling RAR to be sent to the non-representative terminal equipment by using the cell radio network temporary identity (C-RNTI) of the non-representative terminal equipment in the target cell.

Exemplary embodiment 24 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 17, wherein

And after finishing the downlink synchronization, the non-representative terminal equipment continuously detects the RAR.

Example embodiment 25 the electronic device of example embodiment 17, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and receiving a switching completion signaling from the terminal equipment which successfully detects the RAR by using the uplink transmission resource indicated in the RAR.

Exemplary embodiment 26 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 7, wherein

The cell handover request of the terminal device group is triggered by measurement reports of one or more terminal devices in the terminal device group.

Exemplary embodiment 27 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 7, wherein

When the Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) predicted by the terminal equipment in the target cell exceeds the RSRP predicted in the original cell by a preset threshold value, the cell switching request of the terminal equipment group is triggered.

Exemplary embodiment 28 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 27, wherein

The predicted RSRP of the terminal device in the original cell and the target cell is calculated by using the currently measured RSRP, the RSRP change slope and the advance time.

Exemplary embodiment 29 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 28 wherein

The RSRP change slope is estimated by fitting measured RSRP historical values.

Exemplary embodiment 30 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 28, wherein

The advance time is the difference between the predicted time and the current time.

Exemplary embodiment 31 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 28 wherein

The advance time is configured based on the measured speed of movement of the terminal device.

Exemplary embodiment 32 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 1, wherein

And reserving the preamble sequence resources corresponding to a part of downlink transmission beams of the electronic equipment for transmitting the synchronization signal block SSB for the representative terminal equipment.

Example embodiment 33 a terminal device for a terminal side of a wireless communication system, the terminal device comprising processing circuitry configured to:

triggering electronic equipment at a control side of a wireless communication system serving terminal equipment to send a cell switching request of a terminal equipment group comprising the terminal equipment and receive a cell switching reply of a corresponding terminal equipment group, so that the terminal equipment group takes one terminal equipment as a representative terminal equipment and switches from an original cell served by the electronic equipment to a target cell by taking a group as a unit.

Example embodiment 34 the terminal device of example embodiment 33, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and when the terminal equipment moves along a specific track and the moving speed is greater than a specific threshold value and the measurement report meets the cell switching condition, triggering the electronic equipment to send a cell switching request of a terminal equipment group.

Example embodiment 35 the terminal device of example embodiment 33, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

receiving a measurement control command from the electronic device; and is

And responding to the measurement control command to measure, and sending a measurement report to the electronic equipment.

Exemplary embodiment 36 the terminal device according to exemplary embodiment 33, wherein

The terminal devices are grouped by the electronic device according to their signal space characteristics and cell handover history.

Exemplary embodiment 37 the terminal device according to exemplary embodiment 36, wherein

The signal space characteristic is estimated by the electronic device based on an uplink reference signal transmitted by the terminal device.

Exemplary embodiment 38 the terminal device according to exemplary embodiment 36, wherein

The cell handover history is queried by the electronic device from a mobility management unit.

Exemplary embodiment 39 the terminal device according to exemplary embodiment 36, wherein

Terminal devices having the same or similar signal spatial characteristics are grouped together.

Exemplary embodiment 40 the terminal device according to exemplary embodiment 33, wherein

The terminal equipment group comprises a representative terminal equipment and one or more non-representative terminal equipments.

Example embodiment 41 the terminal device of example embodiment 33, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

a handover command is received from the electronic device.

Example embodiment 42 the terminal device of example embodiment 41, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and responding to the switching command, the terminal equipment cuts off the connection with the original cell and performs downlink synchronization on the target cell.

Example 43 the terminal device of example 33, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

when the terminal equipment is representative terminal equipment, randomly accessing to another electronic equipment in the target cell by using the reserved non-competitive random access resource; and

receiving a random access response, RAR, from the other electronic device.

Example embodiment 44 the terminal device of example embodiment 43, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and when the terminal equipment is the representative terminal equipment, transmitting a leader sequence to the other electronic equipment in the target cell by using the reserved non-competitive random access resource so as to access the other electronic equipment in the target cell.

Exemplary embodiment 45 the terminal device according to exemplary embodiment 43, wherein

And when the terminal equipment is non-representative terminal equipment, the terminal equipment continuously detects a random access response RAR after finishing downlink synchronization.

Example embodiment 46 the terminal device of example embodiment 43, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and when the terminal equipment successfully detects the RAR, sending a switching completion signaling to another electronic equipment to be accessed in the target cell by using the uplink transmission resource indicated in the RAR.

Example embodiment 47 an electronic device for a control side of a wireless communication system, the electronic device comprising processing circuitry configured to:

and sending a cell switching request of the terminal equipment group to another electronic equipment in the target cell and receiving a cell switching reply of the terminal equipment group from the other electronic equipment, so that the terminal equipment group takes one terminal equipment as a representative terminal equipment and switches from an original cell served by the electronic equipment to the target cell by taking a group as a unit.

Example embodiment 48 the electronic device of example embodiment 47, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

the terminal devices served by the terminal devices are grouped into one or more terminal device groups, wherein each terminal device group comprises one representative terminal device and one or more non-representative terminal devices.

Example embodiment 49 the electronic device of example embodiment 48, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and grouping the terminal equipment according to the signal space characteristics of the terminal equipment and the cell switching history.

Example embodiment 50 the electronic device of example embodiment 47, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

sending a cell switching history inquiry command to a mobile management unit; and

a cell handover history of the terminal device is received from the mobility management unit.

Example embodiment 51 the electronic device of example embodiment 47, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

receiving an uplink reference signal from a terminal device; and

and estimating the signal space characteristics of the terminal equipment based on the received uplink reference signal.

Example embodiment 52 the electronic device of example embodiment 48, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

when the terminal devices are not originally grouped, clustering the signal space characteristics to group the terminal devices with the same or similar signal space characteristics; and

when the terminal devices are originally grouped, the new terminal device group is obtained by removing the terminal devices in the original terminal device group which have larger difference with the signal space characteristics of other terminal devices in the group and adding new terminal devices which are close to the signal space characteristics of the terminal devices in the group.

Example embodiment 53 the electronic device of example embodiment 47, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

receiving a measurement report from one or more terminal devices in the group of terminal devices; and

and when the measurement report meets the cell switching condition, sending a cell switching request of a terminal equipment group to the other electronic equipment serving the target cell.

Exemplary embodiment 54 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 47, wherein

The cell switching request of the terminal device group includes a representative terminal device ID recommended by the electronic device to the other electronic device.

Example embodiment 55 the electronic device of example embodiment 47, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and selecting the representative terminal device according to the characteristics of the terminal device, and transmitting the ID of the selected representative terminal device to the other electronic device.

Example embodiment 56 the electronic device of example embodiment 47, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and responding to the cell switching reply of the terminal equipment group, and sending a switching command to the terminal equipment group.

Exemplary embodiment 57 the electronic device as in exemplary embodiment 56, wherein

The switching command comprises a cell radio network temporary identifier C-RNTI of each terminal device in the terminal device group in a target cell.

Example embodiment 58 the electronic device of example embodiment 47, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and when the Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) predicted by the terminal equipment in the target cell exceeds the RSRP predicted in the original cell by a preset threshold value, sending a cell switching request of the terminal equipment group to another electronic equipment serving the target cell.

Example embodiment 59 the electronic device of example embodiment 58, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

and calculating the predicted RSRP of the terminal equipment in the original cell and the target cell by using the currently measured RSRP, the RSRP change slope and the advance time.

Exemplary embodiment 60 the electronic device of exemplary embodiment 59, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

fitting an estimate of the RSRP change slope using the measured RSRP historical values.

Example embodiment 61 the electronic device of example embodiment 59, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:

configuring the advance time based on the measured moving speed of the terminal device.

Example embodiment 62 a packet-based cell handover method for use in an electronic device for a control side of a wireless communication system, comprising:

Exemplary embodiment 63 a packet-based cell switching method for use in a terminal device for a terminal side of a wireless communication system, comprising:

Example embodiment 64 a packet-based cell handover method for use in an electronic device for a control side of a wireless communication system, comprising:

Example embodiment 65. a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon, which when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

selecting one representative terminal device from a plurality of terminal devices in the terminal device group, so that the terminal device group can utilize the representative terminal device as a representative of the terminal device group, and switching from the original cell to the target cell by taking the group as a unit.

Example embodiment 66. a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon, which when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

Example embodiment 67. a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon, which when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

and sending a cell switching request of the terminal equipment group to another electronic equipment in the target cell and receiving a cell switching reply of the terminal equipment group from the other electronic equipment, so that the terminal equipment group takes one terminal equipment as a representative terminal equipment and is switched from the original cell to the target cell by taking a group as a unit.

Example embodiment 68 a device comprising a processor and a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by the processor, enable the device to perform the method described in the present disclosure.

Example embodiment 69. an apparatus comprising means for performing the method described in this disclosure.

Although the present disclosure and its advantages have been described in detail, it should be understood that various changes, substitutions and alterations can be made herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosure as defined by the appended claims. Also, the terms "comprises," "comprising," or any other variation thereof, of the embodiments of the present disclosure are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus. The term "comprising", without further limitation, means that the element so defined is not excluded from the group consisting of additional identical elements in the process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises the element.

Claims

1. An electronic device for a control side of a wireless communication system, comprising processing circuitry configured to:

2. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein

3. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein

4. The electronic device of claim 3, wherein

5. The electronic device of claim 3, wherein

6. The electronic device of any of claims 3-5, wherein

7. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the processing circuit is further configured to:

8. The electronic device of claim 7, wherein the processing circuit is further configured to:

9. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the processing circuit is further configured to:

and randomly selecting the representative terminal equipment.

10. The electronic device of claim 7, wherein