CN114374991B

CN114374991B - Neighbor cell information providing and acquiring method and device

Info

Publication number: CN114374991B
Application number: CN202111638793.6A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 刘悦; 杨建�; 刘元荣; 刘秋飞; 李文斌; 杨波; 王立云; 张海
Original assignee: China Telecom Corp Ltd
Current assignee: China Telecom Corp Ltd
Priority date: 2021-12-29
Filing date: 2021-12-29
Publication date: 2024-04-16
Anticipated expiration: 2041-12-29
Also published as: CN114374991A

Abstract

The application discloses a method and a device for providing and acquiring neighbor cell information, which are used for improving neighbor cell addition efficiency without a terminal having NCGI reading capability. The application provides a neighbor cell information providing method, which comprises the following steps: receiving a neighbor cell information acquisition request sent by access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition request comprises a physical cell identifier PCI and frequency point information of an unknown neighbor cell of a service cell of a terminal; determining neighbor cell information according to the neighbor cell information acquisition request, wherein the neighbor cell information comprises a new air interface cell global identifier NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell; and sending a neighbor cell information acquisition response to the access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information is carried.

Description

Neighbor cell information providing and acquiring method and device

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of communications technologies, and in particular, to a method and an apparatus for providing and acquiring neighbor cell information.

Background

The following description of the background art may include an insight, discovery, understanding, or disclosure, or association, of at least some examples of embodiments of the application, and disclosures not known to the relevant art but provided by the embodiments of the application. Some such contributions of embodiments of the application may be specifically pointed out below, while other such contributions of embodiments of the application will be apparent from the relevant context.

SON (Self-Organized Networks) is a concept mainly put forward by a mobile operator in the standardization stage of an LTE network, and the main idea is to realize some autonomous functions of a wireless network, reduce manual participation and reduce operation cost.

NCGI (NR Cell Global Identifier) is an NR (new radio) cell global identifier, NCGI is composed of a PLMN identity to which the cell belongs and an NR Cell Identity (NCI) of the cell.

The planning optimization of the neighbor relation is an important link in the wireless network planning network optimization. The 4G era introduces an ANR (automatic neighbor relation) technology, solves the problems of high cost, low optimization efficiency and incomplete neighbor addition of the traditional neighbor optimization mode, and is widely applied to commercial networks.

ANR (Automatic Neighbor Relation) is composed of two parts of automatic neighbor cell addition and automatic neighbor cell optimization. The automatic neighbor cell addition is that a user reports an unknown physical cell identifier (PHYSICAL CELL IDENTITY, PCI) in the service process, and the base station enables the UE to report the cell ID and then adds the cell ID as a neighbor cell, so that the UE needs to have the capability of reporting the cell ID. The neighbor optimization is to replace/delete unnecessary neighbors by various indexes.

For 5G, anr is also a basic tool for wireless network planning network optimization, but is limited by terminal progress, and the automatic neighbor addition requires that the terminal have NCGI reading capability, while most 5G terminals in the existing network do not have the capability of reporting NCGI, which greatly limits the efficiency of the automatic neighbor relation addition in 5G.

Disclosure of Invention

The embodiment of the application provides a method and a device for providing and acquiring neighbor cell information, which are used for improving neighbor cell addition efficiency without a terminal having NCGI reading capability.

On the network management equipment side, the neighbor cell information providing method provided by the embodiment of the application comprises the following steps:

Receiving a neighbor cell information acquisition request sent by access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition request comprises a physical cell identifier PCI and frequency point information of an unknown neighbor cell of a service cell of a terminal;

Determining neighbor cell information according to the neighbor cell information acquisition request, wherein the neighbor cell information comprises a new air interface cell global identifier NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell;

and sending a neighbor cell information acquisition response to the access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information is carried.

In the embodiment of the application, the access network equipment is received to send the neighbor cell information acquisition request, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition request comprises the PCI and the frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell of the service cell of the terminal; determining neighbor cell information according to the neighbor cell information acquisition request, wherein the neighbor cell information comprises NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell; and sending a neighbor cell information acquisition response to the access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information is carried, so that neighbor cell addition efficiency is improved, a terminal does not need to have NCGI reading capability, user perception is improved, the problem that the neighbor cell addition efficiency is very low due to the fact that most terminals do not have NCGI reading capability or have limited capability at present is avoided, and the problem that the user perception is influenced due to the fact that a measurement period is prolonged for the terminal with NCGI reading capability is also avoided.

Optionally, determining the neighbor cell information according to the neighbor cell information acquisition request specifically includes:

searching for a known neighbor cell with a distance from the serving cell within a preset range;

Determining candidate cells from the known neighbor cells according to PCI and frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cells carried in the neighbor cell information acquisition request;

A target cell is determined from the candidate cells and NCGI of the target cell is determined to be NCGI of the unknown neighbor.

Optionally, determining a candidate cell from the known neighbor cells specifically includes:

And determining the known neighbor cell with the PCI consistent with that of the unknown neighbor cell and the frequency point consistent with that of the unknown neighbor cell as a candidate cell.

Optionally, determining a target cell from the candidate cells specifically includes:

And if the candidate cell is only one cell, determining the candidate cell as a target cell.

if the candidate cell includes a plurality of cells, determining a target cell by:

Generating a reference cell center point according to the longitude and latitude of a known neighbor cell indicated in a measurement report reported by the serving cell and the terminal; wherein the reference cell comprises the serving cell and a known neighbor cell indicated in the measurement report;

and calculating the distance between each candidate cell and the center point of the reference cell, and determining the candidate cell with the shortest distance as a target cell.

Optionally, generating a reference cell center point according to the longitude and latitude of a known neighbor cell carried in the measurement report reported by the serving cell and the terminal specifically includes:

Converting longitude and latitude of each reference cell into three-dimensional coordinates of the reference cell;

Determining the three-dimensional coordinates of the center point of the reference cell according to the three-dimensional coordinates of all the reference cells;

and converting the three-dimensional coordinates of the center point of the reference cell into longitude and latitude.

Optionally, calculating a distance between each candidate cell and the center point of the reference cell specifically includes:

for each candidate cell:

converting longitude and latitude of the candidate cell into three-dimensional coordinates;

calculating the linear distance between the candidate cell and the center point of the reference cell;

and converting the linear distance between the candidate cell and the center point of the reference cell into an arc distance.

On the access network side, the neighbor cell information acquisition method provided by the embodiment of the application comprises the following steps:

Receiving a measurement report reported by a terminal;

And if the measurement report comprises the physical cell identification PCI and the frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell of the service cell of the terminal, sending a neighbor cell information acquisition request to network management equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition request comprises the PCI and the frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell.

Optionally, the method further comprises:

And receiving a neighbor cell information acquisition response sent by the network management equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition response comprises a new air interface cell global identifier NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell.

Optionally, before receiving the measurement report reported by the terminal, the method further includes: receiving an indication message for starting an automatic neighbor cell adding function, which is sent by the network management equipment;

the measurement report reported by the receiving terminal specifically comprises:

and receiving and counting the PCI and frequency point information of the unknown neighbor in the measurement report reported by the terminal in the preset time according to the indication message.

On the network management device side, the neighbor cell information providing device provided by the embodiment of the application comprises:

A receiving request unit, configured to receive a neighbor cell information acquisition request sent by an access network device, where the neighbor cell information acquisition request includes a physical cell identifier PCI and frequency point information of an unknown neighbor cell of a serving cell of a terminal;

The determining unit is configured to determine neighbor cell information according to the neighbor cell information acquisition request, where the neighbor cell information includes a new air interface cell global identifier NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell;

And the response unit is used for sending a neighbor cell information acquisition response to the access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information is carried.

On the access network side, the neighbor cell information acquisition device provided by the embodiment of the application comprises:

the receiving measurement report unit is used for receiving a measurement report reported by the terminal;

And the sending request unit is used for sending a neighbor cell information acquisition request to network management equipment if the measurement report comprises the physical cell identifier PCI and the frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell of the service cell of the terminal, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition request comprises the PCI and the frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell.

Optionally, the neighbor cell information obtaining apparatus further includes:

And the receiving response unit is used for receiving a neighbor cell information acquisition response sent by the network management equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition response comprises a new air interface cell global identifier NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell.

The embodiment of the application also provides a communication system, which comprises: the neighbor cell information providing device and/or the neighbor cell information acquiring device.

Another embodiment of the present application provides a computing device including a memory for storing program instructions and a processor for invoking program instructions stored in the memory to perform any of the methods described above in accordance with the obtained program.

Furthermore, according to an embodiment, for example, a computer program product for a computer is provided, comprising software code portions for performing the steps of the method defined above, when said product is run on a computer. The computer program product may include a computer-readable medium having software code portions stored thereon. Furthermore, the computer program product may be directly loaded into the internal memory of the computer and/or transmitted via the network by at least one of an upload procedure, a download procedure and a push procedure.

Another embodiment of the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for causing the computer to perform any of the methods described above.

Drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present application, the drawings that are needed in the description of the embodiments will be briefly described below, and it is obvious that the drawings in the following description are only some embodiments of the present application, and other drawings may be obtained according to these drawings without inventive effort for a person skilled in the art.

Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a network architecture according to an embodiment of the present application;

Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of an automatic neighbor cell adding process flow based on network management according to an embodiment of the present application;

Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of radian distance between a candidate cell and a center point of a reference cell according to an embodiment of the present application;

Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of a self-addition flow of a neighbor cell network manager in a system according to an embodiment of the present application;

Fig. 5 is a flow chart of a method for providing neighbor cell information according to an embodiment of the present application;

Fig. 6 is a flow chart of a method for obtaining neighbor cell information according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 7 is a schematic structural diagram of a neighbor cell information providing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present application;

Fig. 8 is a schematic structural diagram of a neighbor cell information acquiring device according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 9 is a schematic structural diagram of a computing device according to an embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

The following description of the embodiments of the present application will be made clearly and completely with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which it is apparent that the embodiments described are only some embodiments, but not all embodiments of the present application. All other embodiments, which can be made by those skilled in the art based on the embodiments of the application without making any inventive effort, are intended to be within the scope of the application.

The method and the device are based on the same application, and because the principles of solving the problems by the method and the device are similar, the implementation of the device and the method can be referred to each other, and the repetition is not repeated.

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

The following examples and embodiments are to be construed as illustrative only. Although the specification may refer to "an", "one", or "some" example or embodiment(s) at several points, this does not mean that each such reference is related to the same example or embodiment, nor that the feature is applicable to only a single example or embodiment. Individual features of different embodiments may also be combined to provide further embodiments. Furthermore, terms such as "comprising" and "including" should be understood not to limit the described embodiments to consist of only those features already mentioned; such examples and embodiments may also include features, structures, units, modules, etc. that are not specifically mentioned.

The technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application can be suitable for various systems, in particular to a 5G system. For example, applicable systems may be global system for mobile communications (Global System of Mobile communication, GSM) system, code division multiple access (Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA) system, wideband code division multiple access (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, WCDMA) General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) system, long term evolution (Long Term Evolution, LTE) system, LTE frequency division duplex (Frequency Division Duplex, FDD) system, LTE time division duplex (Time Division Duplex, TDD), universal mobile system (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System, UMTS), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access, wiMAX) system, 5G NR system, etc. Terminal devices and network devices are included in these various systems.

The terminal device according to the embodiment of the present application may be a device that provides voice and/or data connectivity to a user, a handheld device with a wireless connection function, or other processing device connected to a wireless modem. The names of the terminal devices may also be different in different systems, for example in a 5G system, the terminal devices may be referred to as User Equipment (UE). The wireless terminal device may communicate with one or more core networks via the RAN, and may be mobile terminal devices such as mobile phones (or "cellular" phones) and computers with mobile terminal devices, e.g., portable, pocket, hand-held, computer-built-in, or vehicle-mounted mobile devices that exchange voice and/or data with the radio access network. Such as personal communication services (Personal Communication Service, PCS) phones, cordless phones, session initiation protocol (Session Initiated Protocol, SIP) phones, wireless local loop (Wireless Local Loop, WLL) stations, personal digital assistants (personal DIGITAL ASSISTANT, PDA) and the like. The wireless terminal device may also be referred to as a system, subscriber unit (subscriber unit), subscriber station (subscriber station), mobile station (mobile station), remote station (remote station), access point (access point), remote terminal device (remote terminal), access terminal device (ACCESS TERMINAL), user terminal device (user terminal), user agent (user agent), user equipment (user device), and embodiments of the present application are not limited.

The network device related to the embodiment of the application can be a base station and network management equipment, and the base station can comprise a plurality of cells. A base station may also be referred to as an access point, or may refer to a device in an access network that communicates over the air-interface, through one or more sectors, with wireless terminal devices, or by other names, depending on the particular application. The network device may be configured to convert the received air frames to and from internet protocol (Internet Protocol, IP) packets as a router between the wireless terminal device and the rest of the access network, which may include an Internet Protocol (IP) communication network. The network device may also coordinate attribute management for the air interface. For example, the network device according to the embodiment of the present application may be a network device (Base Transceiver Station, BTS) in a global system for mobile communications (GSM) or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), a network device (NodeB) in a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), an evolved network device (evolutional Node B, eNB or e-NodeB) in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, a 5G base station in a 5G network architecture (next generation system), a home evolved base station (Home evolved Node B, heNB), a relay node (relay node), a home base station (femto), a pico base station (pico), etc., which are not limited in the embodiment of the present application.

Various embodiments of the application are described in detail below with reference to the drawings attached to the specification. It should be noted that, the display sequence of the embodiments of the present application only represents the sequence of the embodiments, and does not represent the advantages or disadvantages of the technical solutions provided by the embodiments.

The technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application is used for solving the problem of adding the neighbor cells in the scene of limited reporting capability of the terminal NCGI. The method mainly comprises the following two aspects:

The base station reports neighbor cell information: for the terminal without NCGI reading capability, after the base station recognizes that the terminal reports the PCI of the unknown NR cell, the base station performs data caching, and after a preset period is reached, reports the unknown PCI in the cache queue, the frequency point information corresponding to the unknown PCI and the frequency point information of the service cell to the network manager, and triggers NCGI an acquisition process, and meanwhile, impact on the network manager is avoided.

Wherein the cached data comprises, for example, one or a combination of the following information: PCI, frequency point and RSRP of unknown NR cell; neighbor cell PCIs, NCGIs, frequency points, and RSRPs are known in NR serving cells and Measurement Reports (MRs).

The network manager responds to the base station request: the network manager uses PCI, frequency point and other information queried by the network manager, such as cell location information, to determine NCGI corresponding to PCI and feed back to the base station.

And the base station executes the neighbor cell adding flow after receiving the response of the network manager.

The network management-based automatic neighbor cell addition network architecture provided by the embodiment of the application is shown in fig. 1, and comprises the following steps: UME device, network element device, UE. Wherein,

UME equipment, namely network element management equipment, is called network management equipment for short, and provides configuration deployment, operation and maintenance monitoring, intelligent operation and maintenance, opening capability and system safety functions. The network management equipment manages subordinate network element equipment, namely the network management equipment can inquire configuration data of any network element and further acquire information of any cell. The network management equipment provides the cell information acquisition service for the ANR functional module.

Network element equipment: i.e. access network equipment, e.g. base stations, provide cell coverage, UE management, call access, broadcast etc. functions.

ANR: the ANR function module on the network element equipment provides functions of unknown neighbor collection, unknown neighbor measurement, frequency statistics and sequencing, unknown neighbor information inquiry initiation, effective neighbor relation configuration and the like.

And after the ANR functional module acquires the neighbor information from the network management equipment, configuring data for the neighbor configuration persistent effective network element. Wherein the configuration data comprises NR neighbor data. Because the network management equipment only transmits NCGI to the base station, and the base station matches the unknown PCI with NCGI, the neighbor information needs to be rewritten to the network management, so that the data loss after restarting is avoided.

UE: a terminal residing under a serving cell of a network element device. Along with the movement of the terminal, the terminal can measure the neighbor cells around the serving cell and report neighbor cell information to the network element equipment in a measurement report mode.

The neighbor cell information may carry information of a plurality of neighbor cells, including: information such as PCI, RSRP (REFERENCE SIGNAL RECEIVING Power for reference signal reception), frequency point of an unknown cell, and information such as PCI, RSRP, frequency point of a known neighbor cell. The unknown cell, that is, the unknown neighbor cell of the serving cell of the terminal, that is, the neighbor cell of NCGI is not known. The known neighbor cell, i.e. the known neighbor cell of the serving cell of the terminal, i.e. the neighbor cell of the known NCGI.

In summary, the automatic neighbor cell adding processing flow based on the network management provided by the embodiment of the application specifically comprises the following steps: unknown neighbor cell collection, neighbor cell information acquisition and neighbor cell configuration validation.

Specific examples are given below:

Referring to fig. 2, the network management device sends a message for starting an automatic neighbor cell addition function to the network element device, where the message for starting the automatic neighbor cell addition function carries an ANR function policy, and after receiving the policy, the network element device side ANR function module starts the automatic neighbor cell addition function. Wherein the ANR function policies include, for example: unknown PCI acquisition policies, CGI acquisition policies, etc. The unknown PCI acquisition strategy comprises, for example, whether the unknown PCI is acquired through switching or fast ANR; the CGI acquisition policy includes, for example, whether the CGI is acquired through MR and a ginseng, whether the CGI is acquired through terminal reporting, and so on.

It should be noted that, in the embodiment of the present application, the network element device may also receive the measurement report and collect the unknown neighbor information under the condition that the message for starting the automatic neighbor addition function is not received.

And the ANR function module in the network element equipment collects the measurement report reported by the UE in a preset statistical time period, identifies the unknown neighbor information therein and stores the unknown neighbor information. When the statistics timer is reached, the network element device selects a plurality of unknown neighbor cells, and sends a neighbor cell information acquisition request (or called an unknown neighbor cell information query request) to the network management device, wherein the request is used for requesting the unknown neighbor cell information and comprises the following steps: PCI and frequency point information of one or more unknown neighbor cells. Specifically, the neighbor information acquisition request may include, for example: PCI, frequency point, RSRP, NR service cell of corresponding unknown NR cell, and PCI, NCGI, frequency point and RSRP of known neighbor cell in measurement report. After receiving the query request of the unknown neighbor information, the network management device determines NCGI for any unknown neighbor, for example, by adopting the following steps:

step one: searching for a known neighbor cell whose distance from the serving cell is within a preset range.

The cell reporting the unknown NR neighbor PCI is regarded as a serving NR cell, and is called a serving cell for short.

The distance is calculated as follows:

Difference in altitude:

Longitude difference:

Where R represents the earth radius, r=6371 km.

CellCoverDistTh is a network management setting value, and the default preset value is 1.5km.

B represents latitude, north latitude is positive, and south latitude is negative.

Specifically, for a known neighbor cell with longitude and latitude difference values within a preset range with a serving cell, matching is performed according to the PCI and the frequency point, and the known neighbor cell with the PCI and the frequency point of the unknown neighbor cell (the PCI of the known neighbor cell is consistent with the PCI of the unknown neighbor cell, and the frequency point of the known neighbor cell is consistent with the frequency point of the unknown neighbor cell) is used as a candidate neighbor cell, namely a matching cell.

If there is only one matching cell, the network management device takes NCGI of the matching cell as NCGI of the unknown neighbor.

If there are multiple matching cells, the following steps are executed to make further selection determination:

step two: generating a reference cell center point according to the longitude and latitude of the known neighbor cell in the serving cell and the measurement report;

Wherein the reference cell comprises: a serving cell, and known neighbors reported by the MR.

The calculation method for the center point of the reference cell includes, for example, the following steps:

1. For each reference cell i, converting the longitude and latitude of the reference cell i into three-dimensional coordinates X _i、Y_i、Z_i of the reference cell i:

X_i＝cos B*cos A,Y_i＝cos B*sin A,Z_i＝sin B

Where, for example, there are n reference cells, i= … … n, i represents the number of the reference cell, A is the longitude of the reference cell, and B is the latitude of the reference cell; it should be noted that, each reference cell has its own longitude and latitude, which are not described differently herein.

2. Calculating the three-dimensional coordinates of the center point of the reference cell (namely, the center point of all the reference cells) according to the three-dimensional coordinates of all the reference cells:

3. converting the three-dimensional coordinates of the center point of the reference cell into longitude and latitude:

Where atan represents the inverse function of tan.

Step three: the distance (actually, arc distance) between each candidate cell and the center point of the reference cell is calculated, and NCGI of the candidate cell with the shortest distance is taken as NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell.

As shown in fig. 3, where R is the earth radius, D is the straight line distance between the candidate cell and the reference cell center point, and L is the radian distance between the candidate cell and the reference cell center point. Specifically, for each candidate cell i (i represents the number of the candidate cell, for example, m candidate cells are provided, i takes a value of 1 to m), and the radian distance between the candidate cell i and the center point of the reference cell is calculated as follows:

1. Converting the longitude and latitude of the candidate cell i into three-dimensional coordinates x _i、y_i、z_i on the sphere:

x_i＝R*cos B_i*cos A_i,y_i＝R*cos B_i*sin A_i,z_i＝R*sin B_i

Where a _i represents the longitude of candidate cell i and B _i represents the latitude of candidate cell i.

2. Calculate the linear distance Dist _i between the candidate cell i and the reference cell center point (i.e. D in fig. 3):

Wherein X _c、Y_c、Z_c represents the three-dimensional coordinates of the reference cell center point.

3. The straight line distance between the candidate cell i and the center point of the reference cell is converted into an arc distance dist _i dist (i.e. L in fig. 3):

wherein asin represents the inverse function of sin.

After the network management device finishes obtaining the neighbor cell information, that is, after NCGI of the candidate cell is finally selected and determined, the neighbor cell information query response result is returned to the network element device, wherein the result comprises NCGI of the candidate cell finally selected and determined in the steps. And the ANR function in the network element equipment receives the neighbor information inquiry response result of the network management equipment and then takes effect of neighbor configuration, namely the network element adds neighbor (NCGI, PCI and frequency point) in the neighbor configuration and writes the neighbor (NCGI, PCI and frequency point) back to the network management equipment.

In a simple embodiment, as shown in fig. 4, the base station normally transmits a measurement control message to the terminal, and the terminal reports the measurement report MR. If the MR contains the PCI of the unknown neighbor cell, the gNB reports the PCI and the frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell to the network manager, and the network manager finds the information of the unknown neighbor cell with the highest possibility, namely NCGI of the neighbor cell with the shortest radian distance, in the neighbor cell configuration of the serving cell according to the PCI, the frequency point and the position information in the industrial parameter. After the network manager finds out the unknown neighbor information, return NCGI and key neighbor information of the unknown neighbor to gNB, gNB initiates neighbor relation addition, and updates neighbor relation list. Wherein, the project is information when building a station, and the network manager can inquire. And the key neighbor information is information such as whether vendor custom fields such as VoNR are supported or not.

In summary, compared with the prior art, the embodiment of the present application improves the user perception and the neighbor cell addition efficiency, and the original automatic neighbor cell addition request terminal must have NCGI reading capability, but most terminals at present do not have this capability or have limited capability, so that the neighbor cell addition efficiency is very low, and the measurement period is prolonged for the terminal having NCGI reading capability, so that the user perception is affected. The embodiment of the application does not require the terminal to have NCGI capability, improves the neighbor cell adding efficiency and does not influence the user perception.

The technical schemes provided by the embodiment of the application are summarized and described from different sides respectively.

Referring to fig. 5, on the network management device side, a method for providing neighbor information provided by an embodiment of the present application includes:

S101, receiving a neighbor cell information acquisition request sent by access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition request comprises a physical cell identifier PCI and frequency point information of an unknown neighbor cell of a service cell of a terminal;

S102, determining neighbor cell information according to the neighbor cell information acquisition request, wherein the neighbor cell information comprises a new air interface cell global identifier NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell;

s103, sending a neighbor cell information acquisition response to the access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information is carried.

for each candidate cell:

Correspondingly, referring to fig. 6, on the access network side, the method for acquiring neighbor cell information provided by the embodiment of the application includes:

S201, receiving a measurement report reported by a terminal;

S202, if the measurement report comprises the physical cell identification PCI and the frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell of the service cell of the terminal, sending a neighbor cell information acquisition request to network management equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information acquisition request comprises the PCI and the frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell.

Optionally, the method further comprises:

Optionally, before receiving the measurement report reported by the terminal, the method further includes: and receiving an indication message which is sent by the network management equipment and used for starting the automatic neighbor cell adding function.

That is, the neighbor cell information obtaining request sent in step S202 may include PCI and frequency point information of at least one unknown neighbor cell reported by one or more terminals within a period of time.

The following describes a device or apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application, where explanation or illustration of the same or corresponding technical features as those described in the above method is omitted.

Referring to fig. 7, on the network management device side, a neighbor cell information providing apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application includes:

A receiving request unit 11, configured to receive a neighbor cell information acquisition request sent by an access network device, where the neighbor cell information acquisition request includes a physical cell identifier PCI and frequency point information of an unknown neighbor cell of a serving cell of a terminal;

a determining unit 12, configured to determine neighbor cell information according to the neighbor cell information acquisition request, where the neighbor cell information includes a new air interface cell global identifier NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell;

and the response unit 13 is used for sending a neighbor cell information acquisition response to the access network equipment, wherein the neighbor cell information is carried.

for each candidate cell:

Referring to fig. 8, on the access network side, a neighbor cell information obtaining apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application may be, for example, a base station, including:

A receiving measurement report unit 21, configured to receive a measurement report reported by a terminal;

And a sending request unit 22, configured to send a neighbor cell information acquisition request to a network management device if the measurement report includes physical cell identifier PCI and frequency point information of an unknown neighbor cell of a serving cell of the terminal, where the neighbor cell information acquisition request includes PCI and frequency point information of the unknown neighbor cell.

Optionally, the neighbor cell information obtaining apparatus further includes:

A receiving response unit (not shown in fig. 8), configured to receive a neighbor cell information acquisition response sent by the network management device, where the neighbor cell information acquisition response includes a new air interface cell global identifier NCGI of the unknown neighbor cell.

Optionally, the reception measurement report unit 21 is further configured to: before receiving a measurement report reported by the terminal, receiving an indication message sent by the network management equipment for starting an automatic neighbor cell adding function;

It should be noted that, in the embodiment of the present application, the division of the units is schematic, which is merely a logic function division, and other division manners may be implemented in actual practice. In addition, each functional unit in the embodiments of the present application may be integrated in one processing unit, or each unit may exist alone physically, or two or more units may be integrated in one unit. The integrated units may be implemented in hardware or in software functional units.

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

The embodiment of the application provides a computing device which can be a desktop computer, a portable computer, a smart phone, a tablet Personal computer, a Personal digital assistant (Personal DIGITAL ASSISTANT, PDA) and the like. The computing device may include a central processing unit (Center Processing Unit, CPU), memory, input/output devices, etc., the input devices may include a keyboard, mouse, touch screen, etc., and the output devices may include a display device, such as a liquid crystal display (liquid CRYSTAL DISPLAY, LCD), cathode Ray Tube (CRT), etc.

The memory may include Read Only Memory (ROM) and Random Access Memory (RAM) and provides the processor with program instructions and data stored in the memory. In the embodiment of the present application, the memory may be used to store a program of any of the methods provided in the embodiment of the present application.

The processor is configured to execute any of the methods provided by the embodiments of the present application according to the obtained program instructions by calling the program instructions stored in the memory.

For example, referring to fig. 9, a computing device provided by an embodiment of the present application includes:

a memory 520 for storing program instructions;

The processor 500 is configured to call the program instructions stored in the memory, and execute the method according to any one of the embodiments of the present application according to the obtained program.

Specifically, if the computing device is used as the neighbor information providing apparatus, that is, the processor 500 is configured to perform the neighbor information providing method, then:

A processor 500 for calling program instructions stored in the memory, executing according to the obtained program:

for each candidate cell:

If the computing device is used as a neighbor cell information acquiring apparatus, that is, the processor 500 is configured to perform a neighbor cell information acquiring method, then:

Receiving a measurement report reported by a terminal;

Optionally, the processor 500 is further configured to call the program instructions stored in the memory, and execute according to the obtained program:

Optionally, before receiving the measurement report reported by the terminal, the processor 500 is further configured to invoke the program instructions stored in the memory, and execute according to the obtained program: receiving an indication message for starting an automatic neighbor cell adding function, which is sent by the network management equipment;

A transceiver 510 for receiving and transmitting data under the control of the processor 500.

Wherein in fig. 9, a bus architecture may comprise any number of interconnected buses and bridges, and in particular one or more processors represented by processor 500 and various circuits of memory represented by memory 520, linked together. The bus architecture may also link together various other circuits such as peripheral devices, voltage regulators, power management circuits, etc., which are well known in the art and, therefore, will not be described further herein. The bus interface provides an interface. The transceiver 510 may be a number of elements, i.e., including a transmitter and a receiver, providing a means for communicating with various other apparatus over a transmission medium. The processor 500 is responsible for managing the bus architecture and general processing, and the memory 520 may store data used by the processor 500 in performing operations.

The processor 500 may be a Central Processing Unit (CPU), an Application SPECIFIC INTEGRATED Circuit (ASIC), a field-programmable gate array (field-programmable GATE ARRAY, FPGA), or a complex programmable logic device (Complex Programmable Logic Device, CPLD).

Embodiments of the present application also provide a computer program product or computer program comprising computer instructions stored in a computer readable storage medium. The processor of the computer device reads the computer instructions from the computer-readable storage medium, and the processor executes the computer instructions, so that the computer device performs the method of any of the above embodiments. The program product may employ any combination of one or more readable media. The readable medium may be a readable signal medium or a readable storage medium. The readable storage medium can be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or a combination of any of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the readable storage medium would include the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable disk, a hard disk, random Access Memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or flash memory), optical fiber, portable compact disk read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing.

An embodiment of the present application provides a computer readable storage medium storing computer program instructions for use in an apparatus provided in the embodiment of the present application, where the computer program instructions include a program for executing any one of the methods provided in the embodiment of the present application. The computer readable storage medium may be a non-transitory computer readable medium.

The computer-readable storage medium can be any available medium or data storage device that can be accessed by a computer, including, but not limited to, magnetic storage (e.g., floppy disks, hard disks, magnetic tape, magneto-optical disks (mos), etc.), optical storage (e.g., CD, DVD, BD, HVD, etc.), and semiconductor storage (e.g., ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, nonvolatile storage (NAND FLASH), solid State Disk (SSD)), etc.

It should be understood that:

The access technology via which an entity in the communication network communicates traffic may be any suitable current or future technology, such as WLAN (wireless local access network), wiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access), LTE-a, 5G, bluetooth, infrared, etc. may be used; in addition, embodiments may also apply wired technologies, e.g., IP-based access technologies, such as wired networks or fixed lines.

Embodiments suitable for implementation as software code or a portion thereof and operation using a processor or processing function are software code independent and may be specified using any known or future developed programming language, such as a high-level programming language, such as an object-C, C, C ++, c#, java, python, javascript, other scripting language, etc., or a low-level programming language, such as a machine language or assembler.

The implementation of the embodiments is hardware-independent and may be implemented using any known or future developed hardware technology or any hybrid thereof, such as microprocessors or CPUs (central processing units), MOS (metal oxide semiconductors), CMOS (complementary MOS), biMOS (bipolar MOS), biCMOS (bipolar CMOS), ECL (emitter coupled logic), and/or TTL (transistor-transistor logic).

Embodiments may be implemented as a single device, apparatus, unit, component, or function, or in a distributed fashion, e.g., one or more processors or processing functions may be used or shared in a process, or one or more processing segments or portions may be used and shared in a process where one physical processor or more than one physical processor may be used to implement one or more processing portions dedicated to a particular process as described.

The apparatus may be implemented by a semiconductor chip, a chipset, or a (hardware) module comprising such a chip or chipset.

Embodiments may also be implemented as any combination of hardware and software, such as an ASIC (application specific IC (integrated circuit)) component, an FPGA (field programmable gate array) or CPLD (complex programmable logic device) component, or a DSP (digital signal processor) component.

Embodiments may also be implemented as a computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having a computer readable program code embodied therein, the computer readable program code adapted to perform a process as described in the embodiments, wherein the computer usable medium may be a non-transitory medium.

It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that embodiments of the present application may be provided as a method, system, or computer program product. Accordingly, the present application may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects. Furthermore, the present application may take the form of a computer program product embodied on one or more computer-usable storage media (including, but not limited to, magnetic disk storage, optical storage, and the like) having computer-usable program code embodied therein.

The present application is described with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of the application. It will be understood that each flow and/or block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of flows and/or blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, embedded processor, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions specified in the flowchart flow or flows and/or block diagram block or blocks.

These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable memory that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable memory produce an article of manufacture including instruction means which implement the function specified in the flowchart flow or flows and/or block diagram block or blocks.

These computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide steps for implementing the functions specified in the flowchart flow or flows and/or block diagram block or blocks.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made to the present application without departing from the spirit or scope of the application. Thus, it is intended that the present application also include such modifications and alterations insofar as they come within the scope of the appended claims or the equivalents thereof.

Claims

1. The neighbor cell information providing method is characterized by being applied to a network management device side, and comprises the following steps:

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein determining the neighbor information according to the neighbor information acquisition request specifically comprises:

3. The method according to claim 2, characterized in that determining candidate cells from the known neighbor cells, in particular comprises:

4. The method according to claim 2, characterized in that determining a target cell from the candidate cells, in particular comprises:

5. The method according to claim 2, characterized in that determining a target cell from the candidate cells, in particular comprises:

6. The method of claim 5, wherein generating the reference cell center point according to the longitude and latitude of the known neighbor cell carried in the measurement report reported by the serving cell and the terminal specifically includes:

7. The method according to claim 5, characterized in that calculating the distance between each candidate cell and the reference cell center point, in particular comprises:

for each candidate cell:

8. The method for acquiring the neighbor cell information is characterized by comprising the following steps:

Receiving a measurement report reported by a terminal;

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises:

10. The method of claim 8, wherein prior to receiving the measurement report reported by the terminal, the method further comprises: receiving an indication message for starting an automatic neighbor cell adding function, which is sent by the network management equipment;

11. A neighbor cell information providing apparatus, applied to a network management device side, comprising:

12. A neighbor cell information acquisition apparatus, comprising:

13. The apparatus as recited in claim 12, further comprising:

14. A communication system, comprising: the device of claim 11, and/or the device of claim 12.

15. A computing device, comprising:

A memory for storing program instructions;

A processor for invoking program instructions stored in said memory to perform the method of any of claims 1 to 10 in accordance with the obtained program.

16. A computer program product for a computer, characterized in that it comprises software code portions for performing the method according to any of claims 1 to 10 when the product is run on the computer.

17. A computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for causing a computer to perform the method of any one of claims 1 to 10.