CN114765794A

CN114765794A - Measuring method and device

Info

Publication number: CN114765794A
Application number: CN202111581448.3A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 李丽丝; 王弘; 麻晓宁; 汪巍崴
Original assignee: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd
Current assignee: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd
Priority date: 2021-01-13
Filing date: 2021-12-22
Publication date: 2022-07-19

Abstract

The application relates to a measurement method, comprising: the first node or the third node sends a first message to the second node, wherein the first message comprises a configuration related to a second measurement, and the second measurement is used for assisting the first measurement; and the second node starts a second measurement according to the configuration related to the second measurement, or obtains information for aligning the first measurement and the second measurement according to the configuration related to the second measurement.

Description

Measuring method and device

Technical Field

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

Background

In order to meet the increasing demand for wireless data communication services since the deployment of 4G communication systems, efforts have been made to develop improved 5G or quasi-5G communication systems. Accordingly, the 5G or quasi-5G communication system is also referred to as a "super 4G network" or a "post-LTE system".

Wireless communication is one of the most successful innovations in modern history. Recently, the number of subscribers of wireless communication services exceeds 50 billion, and is still rapidly increasing. Due to the increasing popularity of smart phones and other mobile data devices (e.g., tablet computers, notebook computers, netbooks, e-book readers, and machine type devices) among consumers and businesses, the demand for wireless data services is growing rapidly. To meet the high-speed growth of mobile data services and support new applications and deployments, it is important to improve radio interface efficiency and coverage.

Disclosure of Invention

According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, there is provided a measurement method, performed by a second node, including: receiving a first message from a first node, the first message including a configuration relating to a second measurement, the second measurement being used to assist the first measurement; starting a second measurement according to the configuration related to the second measurement or obtaining information for aligning the first measurement and the second measurement according to the configuration related to the second measurement.

In one implementation, the configuration relating to the second measurement includes at least one of:

an indication to the second node whether the first measurement is on;

an indication to the second node whether the first measurement is finished;

an indication for indicating that the second node does not immediately initiate the second measurement;

the reference information of the first measurement is used for identifying a measurement task ID corresponding to the first measurement;

a recording session ID of the first measurement for indicating a recording session identification in which the first measurement is in progress;

the bearing information is used for indicating the bearing needing to be measured to the second node;

cycle time information for indicating to the second node a time or manner of generating the second measurement report;

The measurement configuration information is used for indicating the content to be measured of the second node;

a quality of experience QoE degradation/quality improvement indication for indicating that the user experience of the application layer is degraded or better;

a second measurement start/end instruction for instructing the second node to start/end a second measurement;

information indicating a mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID; and

a reporting pause time of the first measurement.

In one implementation, the measurement configuration information includes one or more of: the method comprises the steps of activating the number of users in a cell, loading a base station, loading the cell, loading Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs), alarming by the base station/cell, the number of error Transmission Blocks (TBs) corresponding to UE, distribution of Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) or Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS), utilization rate of network slice resources, throughput or the number of users.

In one implementation, the measurement method further includes: receiving a first indication sent by the first node or the third node for activating the second measurement; and starting the second measurement according to the first indication.

In one implementation, the first indication includes at least one of: a recording session ID of the first measurement, a start time of the first measurement, a period time indication, DRB information, a QoS flow identification, a QoS class indication, reference information of the first measurement, a recording session start indication of the first measurement, a start indication, an activation indication, a quality of experience QoE degradation indication.

In one implementation, the measurement method further comprises: receiving a second indication sent by the first node or the third node for ending/deactivating the second measurement; and ending the second measurement according to the second indication.

In one implementation, the second indication includes at least one of: a recording session ID of the first measurement, reference information of the first measurement, a recording session end indication, an end indication, a deactivation indication, a QoE quality improvement indication of the first measurement.

In one implementation, the second node is a user equipment UE, and the method further includes: sending, by an application layer of the UE, an indication to an access layer of the UE to start/activate or end/deactivate the second measurement, and the UE starting or ending the second measurement according to the indication.

In one implementation, the second node is a second base station, and the configuration related to the second measurement includes a configuration related to the second measurement of the first node.

In one implementation, the configuration related to the second measurement includes: third indication information indicating whether the first node has activated the second measurement; the method further comprises the following steps: and starting second measurement according to the third indication information.

In one implementation, the first message includes a handover request message or a get UE context feedback message.

In one implementation, the first message further includes a configuration related to the first measurement, wherein the configuration related to the first measurement includes one or more of the following information:

information for requesting transmission of a start or end indication of the first measurement;

information for requesting a period of the first measurement;

requesting reference information indicating a first measurement;

information for requesting recording of a session identification ID;

information for requesting a data radio bearer DRB;

information for requesting a quality of service, QoS, identification;

information for requesting a QoS class; and

and the information is used for requesting to report the pause time.

In one implementation, the first message is an initial context setup request message or a trace start message.

In one implementation, the measurement method further includes: sending a report of the first measurement and/or a report of the second measurement to the fourth node.

In one implementation, wherein the reporting of the second measurement includes one or more of:

a node ID indicating a node performing the second measurement;

A measurement time indicating a time at which the second measurement is performed;

reference information of the first measurement;

a recording session ID of the first measurement; and

the result of the second measurement.

In one implementation, the first measurement is a quality of experience QoE measurement, and the second measurement is a minimization of drive tests MDT measurement.

In another implementation, wherein the first measurement is a QoE measurement, and the second measurement is an operation for evaluating a result of the first measurement, that is, an operation for evaluating a result of the QoE measurement;

there is provided, in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure, a method of measurement, the method performed by a first node, including: and sending a first message to a second node, wherein the first message comprises a configuration related to a second measurement, and the second measurement is used for assisting the first measurement.

an indication to the second node whether the first measurement is on;

an indication to indicate to the second node whether the first measurement is finished;

the measurement configuration information is used for indicating the content to be measured by the second node;

a quality of experience QoE degradation/quality improvement indication for indicating that the user experience of the application layer is getting worse or better;

a second measurement start/end indication for indicating to the second node to start/end the second measurement.

In one implementation, the measurement method further includes: sending a first indication to a second node for activating the second measurement.

In one implementation, the measurement method further includes: sending a second indication to deactivate the second measurement to a second node.

In one implementation, the first node is a first base station, and the configuration related to the second measurement includes a configuration related to the second measurement of the first base station.

In one implementation, the configuration related to the second measurement includes: third indication information indicating whether the first node has activated the second measurement.

In one implementation, the first message includes a configuration related to the first measurement, wherein the configuration related to the first measurement includes one or more of the following information:

Information for requesting a period of the first measurement;

requesting reference information indicating a first measurement;

information for requesting recording of a session identification ID;

information for requesting a data radio bearer DRB;

information for requesting a quality of service, QoS, identification;

information for requesting QoS level.

In one implementation, the measurement method further includes: transmitting a report of the first measurement and/or a report of the second measurement to the second node or the third node or the fourth node, wherein the report of the second measurement comprises one or more of:

a node ID indicating a node performing the second measurement;

reference information of the first measurement;

a recording session ID of the first measurement; and

the result of the second measurement.

There is also provided, in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure, a first node, including: a transceiving unit configured to receive and transmit a signal; a memory configured to store a computer program and related data; and a processor configured to execute the computer program to implement one of the methods according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

There is also provided, in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure, a second node, including: a transceiving unit configured to receive and transmit a signal; a memory configured to store a computer program and related data; and a processor configured to execute the computer program to implement one of the methods according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is an exemplary system architecture for System Architecture Evolution (SAE);

fig. 2 is an exemplary system architecture according to various embodiments of the present disclosure;

fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of a 5G architecture according to various embodiments of the present disclosure;

fig. 4 depicts a QoE Measurement Collection (QMC) configuration and reporting flow diagram;

fig. 5 shows an example schematic diagram of a configuration and reporting process of a measurement method according to one embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 6 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 7 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 8 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

Fig. 8A illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the disclosure.

Fig. 9 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 10 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 11 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 12 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 13 shows a simplified block diagram of an example configuration of hardware components of a communication device, in accordance with various embodiments of the present disclosure;

fig. 14A illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 14B illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

Fig. 15 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 16 illustrates yet another example schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method that facilitates quality of experience optimization in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 17 shows a schematic diagram of a measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

Detailed Description

Figures 1 through 17, discussed below, and the various embodiments used to describe the principles of the present disclosure in this patent document are by way of illustration only and should not be construed in any way to limit the scope of the disclosure. Those skilled in the art will understand that the principles of the present disclosure may be implemented in any suitably arranged system or device.

Fig. 1 is an exemplary system architecture 100 for System Architecture Evolution (SAE). A User Equipment (UE)101 is a terminal device for receiving data. An evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN)102 is a radio access network that includes macro base stations (eNodeB/NodeB) that provide access to a radio network interface for UEs. A Mobility Management Entity (MME)103 is responsible for managing mobility context, session context and security information of the UE. Serving Gateway (SGW)104 mainly provides the function of the user plane, and MME 103 and SGW 104 may be in the same physical node. A packet data network gateway (PGW)105 is responsible for functions such as charging, lawful interception, etc., and may also be in the same physical node as the SGW 104. A Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) node 106 provides quality of service (QoS) policy and charging criteria. The general packet radio service support node (SGSN)108 is a network node device in the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) that provides routing for the transmission of data. The Home Subscriber Server (HSS)109 is the home subsystem of the UE and is responsible for protecting user information including the current location of the user equipment, the address of the serving node, user security information, the packet data context of the user equipment, etc.

Fig. 2 is an exemplary system architecture 200 in accordance with various embodiments of the present disclosure. Other embodiments of the system architecture 200 can be used without departing from the scope of this disclosure.

A User Equipment (UE)201 is a terminal device for receiving data. The next generation radio access network (NG-RAN)202 is a radio access network comprising base stations (the gbb or enbs connected to the 5G core network 5GC, also called NG-gbb) providing access to radio network interfaces for UEs. An access control and mobility management function (AMF) node 203 is responsible for managing the mobility context of the UE, and security information. The User Plane Function (UPF) node 204 mainly provides the functions of the user plane. A Session Management Function (SMF) node 205 is responsible for session management. The Data Network (DN)206 contains services such as the operator, access to the internet, and services for third parties.

Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of a 5G architecture 300 according to various embodiments of the present disclosure. Other embodiments of the 5G architecture 300 can be used without departing from the scope of this disclosure

As shown in fig. 3, the 5G architecture includes a 5G access network and a 5G core network (5 GC). The UE communicates with the data network through an access network and a core network.

Referring to fig. 3, a central Control Unit (CU) may be further divided into a control function node (hereinafter, referred to as a CU-CP node or a CP (control plane) node) and a user plane function node (hereinafter, referred to as a CU-UP node or a UP (user plane) node). The CP node and UP node may be separate physical nodes. The interface between CP and UP is referred to as the E1 interface. There is only control plane between CP and UP, and data plane is established between core network, UP and DU. The CP is connected to the core network via NG-C and to the DU via F1-C. The UP is connected to the core network via NG-U and to the DU via F1-U.

In third Generation (3G) and fourth Generation (4G) mobile communication systems, Quality of Experience (QoE) measurement collection for streaming media services and multimedia telephony services has been standardized by the third Generation Partnership (3rd Generation Partnership Project, 3 GPP). Quality of experience Measurement Collection (QMC) can collect UE application layer Measurement information, which may be Measurement Collection in a certain area or for a specific service or a certain service type of a specific UE (user equipment). The collected information may be sent to a data center (for example, a Measurement Collection Entity (MCE)), and then used to analyze and/or calculate a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to optimize a network and improve user service experience, thereby improving user loyalty and increasing revenue.

Exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure are further described below in conjunction with the appended drawings.

The text and drawings are provided as examples only to aid in understanding the present disclosure. They should not be construed as limiting the scope of the disclosure in any way. While certain embodiments and examples have been provided, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art, based on the disclosure herein, that changes can be made in the embodiments and examples shown without departing from the scope of the disclosure.

It should be understood that in the following description, for the purpose of convenience of description only, expressions such as "activate", "deactivate", "initiate", "start", or "end" are used, however, it should be understood that, unless the context clearly dictates otherwise, when the expression "activate" is used in the embodiments, expressions such as "initiate", "start", or the like may also be used to describe, and vice versa; in addition, when the expression "deactivate" is used in the embodiment, expressions such as "end", "stop", and the like may also be used for description, and vice versa. In this application, "/" denotes "or".

The configuration and reporting process of the measurement method 400 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 4. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the accompanying drawings and description herein in order not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 401, the first node or the third node sends a first message to the second node, where the first message includes a configuration related to a second measurement used to assist the first measurement. The auxiliary first measurement may be management of the auxiliary first measurement, and may refer to assisting the network to further analyze, evaluate or improve the result of the first measurement, or assist in analyzing the problem reflected by the first measurement. The first measurement may be, for example, a first measurement performed by the UE, or a first measurement performed by the base station or another node. For example, the first measurement may be an application layer measurement, or a quality of experience, QoE, measurement. The second measurement may be, for example, a radio related measurement, which may be a measurement on a node serving the UE and/or a measurement on an access stratum of the UE. In some embodiments, the second measurement may be, for example, a minimization of drive tests, MDT, measurement.

The configuration relating to the second measurement may contain one or more of the following information:

-a first indication for indicating to the second node whether the first measurement is on;

-a second indication for indicating to the second node whether the first measurement is ended;

-a third indication for indicating that the second node does not start the second measurement immediately after receiving the configuration content for the second measurement, the second node only needs to save the configuration content and decides whether to start the second measurement according to the first indication or the second indication;

-reference information for the first measurement, the reference information identifying a measurement task ID corresponding to the first measurement, which may be an application layer reference, a QoE reference or a QMC reference;

-a recording session ID of the first measurement for indicating an ongoing recording session identification of the first measurement, for the second node to include said ID in a report of the second measurement and send to the fourth node. The fourth node may be a server for performing network data analysis, and may be a QoE server, a TCE, an MCE, an OAM, or the like;

bearer information to indicate which bearer or bearers the second node needs to measure if the second measurement is turned on, which bearer information may be, for example, information such as a DRB list used by the second measurement, a QoS flow identification or a QoS class;

-cycle time information to indicate how the second node should generate the second measurement report, e.g. to indicate at what time or at what time interval the second node generates the second measurement report, and/or at what time the second measurement report is sent, etc.;

measurement configuration information to indicate which contents the second node needs to measure or collect may include the number of active users in a cell, the base station load, the cell load, the PRB (physical resource block) load, the base station/cell alarm, or the number of erroneous TBs (transport blocks), CQI (channel quality indication) distribution or MCS (modulation and coding scheme) distribution corresponding to the UE, or the utilization, throughput, or number of users of network slice resources;

-a QoE degradation/quality improvement indication for indicating that the user experience of the application layer is getting worse or better, for the second node to decide whether to start the second measurement. The indication may be a simple indication, such as only describing a "quality degradation" or "quality improvement" indication, or may also be a specific QoE score, such as a MOS (mean subjective opinion score) value, or may also be a certain QoE metric, such as the number of video mortars, etc., or may also be one or more specific indication bits or flags, for example, "0" indicates quality degradation or quality degradation, "1" indicates quality improvement, etc.;

-a second measurement start/end indication for indicating to the second node to start/end a second measurement;

-a second measurement description indication, such as a secondary MDT indication, for indicating to the second node that the measurement is not to be started immediately after receiving the second measurement configuration.

The first node, the second node, and the third node may be OAM, core network node, base station, CU-CP, CU-UP, DU, or UE. For example, the first node, the second node, and the third node may have the following cases:

-if the first node is a core network node, e.g. said core network node is an AMF, and the second node is a base station, said first message may be an initial context setup request message, or a tracking initiation message, or a handover request message;

if the first node and the second node are base stations, the first message may be a handover request message, an auxiliary node addition request message, a UE context feedback acquisition message, a tracking start message, or the like;

-if the first node is a CU-CP, the second node may be a CU-UP, said first message may be a bearer context setup request message or a trace-on message;

-if the first node is a CU, the second node may be a DU, and the first message may be a UE context setup request message or a trace-on message.

-if the first node is a base station, the second node may be a UE, the first message may be an RRC message, and the RRC message may be an RRC reconfiguration message.

-if the third node is a UE and the second node is a base station, said first message may be an RRC message, said RRC message may be a MeasReportAppLayer message.

In step 402, the second node may start the second measurement according to the configuration related to the second measurement, and generate a report of the second measurement according to the configuration related to the second measurement, where the report of the second measurement may be, for example, an MDT report, an auxiliary MDT report, a tracking report, or another report, and is used to report the result of the second measurement according to the cycle time information in the configuration. The reporting may be reporting to a fourth node, where the fourth node may be, for example, a server performing network data analysis, and may be, for example, a QoE server, a TCE, an MCE, an OAM, or the like.

The second node may determine, according to a third indication in the configuration related to the second measurement, that the second measurement is related to the first measurement, and the start and end of the second measurement should be related to the first measurement related thereto, so that the second node may decide to start or end the second measurement according to the first indication or the second indication. The second node decides to start or end the second measurement corresponding to the first measurement or the first measurements according to the reference information of the first measurement, and adds the reference information of the first measurement and the recording session ID in the report of the second measurement, so that the data processing center can associate the report of the first measurement and the report of the second measurement. The second node may measure only the bearer associated with the first measurement when performing the second measurement according to the bearer information. The second node may utilize the cycle time information to ensure that the first measurement report and the second measurement report are aligned in time or substantially aligned, whether in a separate architecture or during handover of the UE, thereby facilitating the data processing center to further correlate the first measurement report and the second measurement report. The second node measures or collects the indicated information according to the measurement configuration information included in the configuration related to the second measurement, which is beneficial to further optimizing and analyzing in a more targeted manner.

In step 403, the second node generates a report of the second measurement according to the configuration related to the second measurement, and adds one or more of the following information to the report of the second measurement:

-a node ID, for indicating the node performing the second measurement, which may be in the form of a base station ID or other;

a measurement time indicating the time at which the node performed the second measurement, which may be, for example, a start timestamp and/or an end timestamp;

-a recording session ID of the first measurement indicating the recording session identity for which the first measurement is ongoing, for the second node to include said ID in a report of the second measurement and to send to the fourth node, so that the fourth node can associate the report of the second measurement with the report of the first measurement to which the recording session ID corresponds. The fourth node may be a server for performing network data analysis, and may be a QoE server, a TCE, an MCE, an OAM, or the like;

-a second measurement result indicating a result of a second measurement performed on the node.

The second node sends a report of the second measurements to a fourth node, which may be the same or different from the first node.

If the fourth node is different from the first node, the fourth node may be a server for performing network data analysis, for example, a QoE server, a TCE, an MCE, an OAM, or the like.

If the fourth node is the same as the first node and the fourth node receives the report of the first measurement, the fourth node may send the report of the first measurement and/or the report of the second measurement to a fifth node (e.g., a server performing network data analysis). Possible situations of the second node and the fourth node may include:

-if the second node is a DU, the fourth node is a CU;

-if the second node is CU-UP, the fourth node is CU-CP;

-if the second node is a secondary base station, the fourth node is a primary base station;

-if the second node is a source base station, the fourth node is a target base station;

-if the second node is a UE, the fourth node is a base station.

If the fourth node is the same as the first node, in some implementations, if the second node is a UE and the fourth node is a base station, the UE sends a report of the first measurement and/or a report of the second measurement to the fourth node.

In the method, the second node measures or collects the indicated information according to the measurement configuration information included in the configuration related to the second measurement, which is beneficial to further carrying out optimization analysis more specifically.

For example, if the QoE measurement is based on an area QoE measurement, which is one measurement type of the first measurement, and a cell-level measurement configuration, such as the number of active users, the base station load, and the radio resource load, is added to the configuration related to the second measurement, it may be beneficial to further analyze the cause of QoE degradation in the area, for example, it may be determined whether the QoE degradation is caused by an excessive number of users or insufficient resources.

If the UE-related measurement configuration is added to the UE-related configuration in the QoE measurement for a specific UE, such as an incorrect TB number, CQI distribution, or MCS distribution, the QoE degradation may be further analyzed, for example, it may be determined whether the QoE degradation is caused by a poor radio environment of the user or is caused by unreasonable scheduling of the base station.

If the QoE measurement for a specific network slice is performed, the measurement configuration for the network slice related measurement, such as the resource utilization of the network slice, the average throughput on the network slice, the number of users, and the like, is added to the configuration related to the second measurement, which may be beneficial to further analyzing the cause of QoE degradation, for example, it may be determined whether the QoE degradation is caused by unreasonable network slice resource allocation.

When a plurality of nodes are involved in a second measurement corresponding to a first measurement report, the node receiving the first measurement report may include the second measurement report on the plurality of nodes in the first measurement report, and send the first measurement report and the second measurement report list together to the server, so as to associate the two measurement reports more quickly and optimize the network more quickly.

Wherein the first measurement may be an application layer measurement and the second measurement may be a radio related measurement. For example, the application layer measurement may be a QoE measurement or a QMC measurement, and the second measurement may be an MDT measurement, an auxiliary MDT measurement, or a tracking measurement, etc., which is not limited in this disclosure. Hereinafter, for the purpose of simplicity in description or to facilitate better understanding of the aspects of the present disclosure, description is made taking QoE measurement as the first measurement, MDT measurement, or auxiliary MDT measurement as the second measurement as an example. It should be understood that the description below does not limit the first measurement to only QoE measurements, nor the second measurement to only MDT measurements or secondary MDT measurements.

Also, names of some terms in the present disclosure may also use other names, for example, "auxiliary MDT configuration" may also use "auxiliary MDT measurement configuration" or the like, and "auxiliary MDT report" may also use "auxiliary MDT measurement report" or "MDT report" or the like, all of which modifications, variations, and the like fall within the scope of the present disclosure.

Thus, a description of an embodiment of a measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure is completed. By the method, when QoE measurement is collected, a network node or UE configured for performing auxiliary measurement (for example, second measurement of the auxiliary QoE measurement) and the QoE measurement of an application layer are started and performed synchronously, and an operator can associate the QoE measurement and the auxiliary measurement result more quickly and accurately under any scene through the provided association information, so that QoE problems can be analyzed accurately and quickly, a network is further optimized, and user experience is improved. Meanwhile, the method can also make the process and the object of the auxiliary measurement more targeted, reduce unnecessary measurement overhead and measurement redundancy, so as to improve the utilization rate of the measurement information and save network resources.

Measurement configuration and reporting methods or devices for management of secondary application layer measurements (e.g., for secondary quality of experience, QoE, optimization) provided in the present disclosure may help operators obtain secondary measurement information corresponding to application layer measurements (e.g., QoE measurements) while or during collection of quality of service experience. The operator can utilize the measurement result of the auxiliary measurement for the management of the auxiliary application layer measurement to analyze the cause of the QoE deterioration more quickly and accurately, so as to optimize the network more accurately, improve the quality of user service experience, improve the user loyalty and increase the operator revenue. It should be understood that the various measurement configuration and reporting methods provided by the present disclosure may be applied not only to QoE measurement, but also to other application layer measurements to assist the other application layer measurements, so as to optimize the other application layer measurements. For reasons of simplicity of description only, the following description will be made with QoE measurement or QoE measurement collection (i.e., QMC) as an example of application layer measurement.

QoE measurements in this disclosure may also be referred to as QoE measurement collection (i.e., QMC), both referring to QoE measurements performed by a User Equipment (UE) configured by a 3GPP network. Finally, these measurements are reported to the 3GPP network or operator server. The QMC may be classified into a management-based QoE Measurement (QMC) and a signaling-based QMC according to an initiation manner. According to one implementation, QMC may be initiated by an element management node, this type of QMC is referred to as management-based QMC. In management-based QMC, an access network node receives a QMC configuration message from a network element management node. According to another implementation, QMC may be initiated by a core network node, this type of QMC is referred to as signaling-based QMC. In signaling based QMC, an access network node receives a QMC configuration message from a core network node. In some examples, the core network node may be, for example, an Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF). However, it should be understood that this is merely an example. The core network node sending the QMC configuration message may also be other nodes (e.g., a base station).

Fig. 5 depicts a QoE Measurement Collection (QMC) configuration and reporting flow diagram. As shown in fig. 5, an operation and maintenance node (OAM) 501 sends a QMC configuration message to a 3GPP network 502. The 3GPP network 502 comprises core network nodes or access network nodes. The core network node may comprise a UDM, AMF, SMF or UPF node. The access network node may be an eNB of a 4G system or may also be a gNB or eNB of a 5G system, or may also be a base station in other systems. The QMC configuration message includes QMC configuration information and/or auxiliary measurement configuration information. The auxiliary measurement configuration refers to that while the UE application layer measures the QoE, a node in the 3GPP network and/or the UE access layer also performs associated auxiliary measurement at the same time, so as to assist or help the evaluation and improvement of the QoE and the optimization analysis of the QoE problem. The associated auxiliary measurement refers to an auxiliary measurement that needs to be temporally coincident or aligned with the application layer measurement.

It should be appreciated that in other implementations, the UE application layer measurement QoE and associated auxiliary measurements do not have to be made strictly simultaneously, but rather, a certain offset in time may be allowed. In some implementations, the associated secondary measurements are substantially time-aligned with the application layer measurements, which may allow for a certain time offset, as long as the node processing the received secondary measurement report and the QMC report can correctly match the QMC report for its corresponding associated secondary measurement within the range of the offset. Based on the above description, it should be understood that expressions such as "simultaneous", "temporally coincident", "temporally aligned", and the like, used throughout the description of the present disclosure, do not exclude the case where there is some offset in time. Hereinafter, expressions such as "simultaneously", "temporally coincident", "temporally aligned", and the like are merely employed for the purpose of simplicity of description.

The 3GPP network 502 may initiate an activate QMC procedure, which may be divided into a management-based QMC and a signaling-based QMC according to the activated nodes. If the activation of the QMC is directly triggered by the OAM through the base station, the flow belongs to a QMC process based on management; this procedure belongs to the signalling based QMC procedure if activating QMC is triggered by the core network node. Regardless of the triggering method, the 3GPP network 502 sends the QMC configuration to the UE satisfying the condition. If the QMC configuration includes a configuration for auxiliary measurement, the auxiliary measurement configuration may be for a network node or for a UE. The node configured with the auxiliary measurement needs to store the auxiliary measurement configuration information and activate the auxiliary measurement when appropriate.

The UE 503 decides whether to turn on QoE measurement or not at the beginning of each traffic session according to the configured conditions. Meanwhile, the nodes configured with the auxiliary measurement also need to perform associated auxiliary measurement. Finally, the UE delivers the measurement results, including QoE reports and/or auxiliary measurement results, to the configured QoE data processing center 504 through an access network node in the 3GPP network 502. For example, the QoE data processing center 504 may be a TCE (trace collection node)/MCE (measurement collection node). On the other hand, the node configured with the auxiliary measurement in the 3GPP network 502 also needs to send the result of the auxiliary measurement to the QoE data processing center 504, so that the operator performs further QoE problem analysis and network optimization.

A method 600 for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 6. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the accompanying drawings and description herein in order not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

Step 601, the first node starts the activation of QoE measurement and sends QoE measurement configuration to the second node. The first node may be, for example, a core network node or OAM (operation and maintenance management) and the second node may be a gNB or eNB. The QoE measurement configuration is defined by a UE application layer measurement configuration IE (information element). UE application layer measurements represent measurements in the UE application layer, and QoE measurements are one of the UE application layer measurements. The UE application layer measurement configuration IE may be included in a trace activation IE, which may be included in the first message. If the first node is a core network, the first message may be, for example, an initial context setup request message or a trace start message; if the first node is OAM, the first message may be an activation task from OAM. It should be understood that the specific implementation of the first message is not limited thereto, but may be other messages for communicating QoE measurement configuration.

If there are radio related measurements to assist in the QoE management analysis, then radio related measurement configurations will be transmitted along with the QoE measurement configurations. The radio-related measurements refer to auxiliary measurements used to assist in application layer measurements (e.g., QoE measurements). The radio related measurements may be, for example, MDT (minimization of drive tests) measurements, MDT-like measurements or/and on-node counter measurements. Since radio-related measurements can be used to assist QoE analysis to identify problems with QoE degradation, radio-related measurements should be time-aligned, or substantially time-aligned, with corresponding QoE measurements, as previously described. For example, triggering radio related measurements may use the MDT mechanism. If MDT measurements are used to assist QoE optimization analysis, they may be referred to as assisted MDT. If the secondary MDT indication is included in the MDT configuration, the second node will not immediately start the MDT session. This MDT configuration is activated differently from other MDTs. For example, two methods may be employed to distinguish the assisted MDT configuration from other MDT configurations (e.g., immediate MDT, log MDT, etc.) to indicate that the second node does not start a session for assisted MDT until receiving a corresponding QoE measurement indication:

Method 1 sets a secondary MDT indication in an MDT configuration to indicate that the MDT configuration is a secondary MDT configuration. For example, a secondary MDT indication may be set in the MDT activation IE. The MDT activation IE may be included in a trace activation IE, for example. In one implementation, an exemplary implementation method may be:

if MDT is supported, the second node should:

-if the trace activation IE comprises an MDT activation IE, set to "assisted only MDT" or "assisted MDT", or otherwise indicates "assisted only MDT" or "assisted MDT" (e.g. indicated with one or more bits, flags, etc.), the second node shall ignore the interface to trace IE and the trace depth IE and store the assisted MDT configuration and use it to start or activate an MDT session if needed.

-if the trace activation IE comprises an MDT activation IE, set to "assisted MDT and trace", or otherwise indicates "assisted MDT and trace", the second node shall store the assisted MDT configuration and trace configuration and use it to start/activate MDT sessions and trace sessions if needed;

the "auxiliary MDT" may also be an "auxiliary QoE", "auxiliary UE application layer measurements", or other new description to indicate that such MDT configuration is used for auxiliary UE application layer measurement analysis.

Method 2 includes including the MDT configuration in the UE application layer measurement configuration to implicitly indicate the MDT configuration as an auxiliary MDT configuration. An exemplary implementation may be:

if supported, the second node should:

-if the UE application layer measurement configuration IE contains an MDT configuration IE, it implicitly indicates that this MDT configuration is for assisting UE application layer measurements, and thus the second node should store said MDT configuration and use it to start/activate MDT sessions if needed. The MDT configuration is auxiliary MDT configuration and is associated with the UE application layer measurement. I.e. the auxiliary MDT configuration is associated with a measurement task in an application layer measurement configuration, e.g. with a QoE reference in an application layer measurement configuration.

In the auxiliary MDT configuration of the above method 1, the following information may also be included:

-a QoE reference indicating with which QoE measurement task an auxiliary MDT measurement is associated, for the second node to initiate an auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task. The second node may include a QoE reference into the respective auxiliary MDT report to assist the QoE data processing node in correlating QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports.

To activate or deactivate the radio related auxiliary measurements, an indication from the UE is needed for activating or deactivating radio related auxiliary measurements at the second node. The indication for activation may be, for example, "recording session start indication", "activation indication", "QoE degradation indication", or other indication for activation; the indication for deactivation may be a "recording session end indication", "deactivation indication", "QoE boost indication", or other indication for deactivation.

If there are radio related measurements to assist with QoE management analysis, one or more of the following information may be included in the QoE measurement configuration:

-an indication or request to inform or request the application layer to send a start/end indication for each recording session;

-requesting the application layer to provide a period of QoE measurements requesting the UE to send a period of logging sessions at the same time as the start indication is sent, in order to assist the MDT to use the same period for measurements;

-requesting the application layer to provide a QoE reference for requesting the UE to send a QoE reference at the same time as the start/end indication is sent, to indicate which QoE measurement task or tasks start or end;

-requesting the application layer to provide a recording session ID for requesting the UE to send the recording session ID at the same time as the start indication to indicate which recording session or sessions to start;

-request DRB information for requesting the UE to send a measured DRB list for application layer usage at the same time as the start indication to indicate which DRBs the assisted MDT measurement needs to measure;

-requesting QoS flow identification for requesting UE to send the measured QoS flow identification used by the application layer at the same time as sending the start indication to indicate which QoS flow identification corresponding DRBs the assisted MDT measurement only needs to measure;

-requesting a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI) for requesting the UE to send the measured QCI or 5QI used by the application layer simultaneously with the start indication to indicate which QCI or 5QI corresponding bearers need to be measured for the assisted MDT measurement;

step 602, the second node sends a QoE measurement configuration to the UE. The QoE measurement configuration is sent by a second message, which may be an RRC reconfiguration message, which may contain the QoE measurement configuration, which may be contained in the meanconfigapplayer IE. If the measConfigAppLayer is set to "set", the UE access layer forwards the measConfigAppLayerContainer to the upper layers considering the service type.

In step 603, if the recording session starts, the UE application layer sends a recording session start indication to the UE access layer, indicating that the recording session has started. The UE sends a third message to the second node, where the message is an RRC message, and the message may be a MeasReportAppLayer message, and the message includes the recording session start indication. The message may also include one or more of the following information:

-a QoE reference indicating to which QoE measurement task the initiated recording session belongs, in order for the second node to initiate an auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task.

-a logging session ID indicating which logging session in the QoE measurement task was initiated, the second node may include the logging session ID into the corresponding auxiliary MDT report to assist the QoE data processing node in associating the QoE report with the auxiliary MDT report;

-recording a start time indicating a start time of the QoE measurement, for the second node to use it as a start time of the auxiliary MDT session to help the auxiliary MDT measurement to coincide with the QoE measurement hold time;

-a period indicating a period of QoE measurements, or also a collection period, for the second node to use as a collection period for the auxiliary MDT session to help the auxiliary MDT measurements to keep time-aligned with the QoE measurements;

-a DRB list, which may be one or more DRB IDs, indicating which DRB or DRBs the application layer session of QoE is to be used for the second node to make assisted MDT measurements on said DRB.

-a QoS flow identity indicating which QoS flow is used by an application layer session measuring QoE, for the second node to perform assisted MDT measurements on the DRB corresponding to said QoS flow identity.

-a QoS class indication (5QI or QCI) for indicating the QoS class used by the application layer session for measuring QoE, so that the second node performs the assisted MDT measurement on the QoS class corresponding to said QoS flow identification.

The information may be included according to the request of step 602, or may be included by the UE according to its own configuration.

If the auxiliary MDT configuration has been received from the first node, the trace-logging session for the auxiliary MDT should be initiated at the second node of the given UE when an indication of initiation of the trace-logging session is received from the UE. In particular, the second node, if supported, should:

-if a "start indication" and a QoE reference are contained in the third message, the second node starts a secondary MDT measurement associated with said QoE reference;

-if the third message comprises a "start indication" and a logging start time, the second node may define a start time for the auxiliary MDT measurement according to the logging start time;

-the second node may perform the secondary MDT measurement only on the DRB if the third message comprises the "start indication" and one or more DRB IDs in the DRB list;

-if the third message contains the "start indication" and the QoS flow identification, the second node may perform the auxiliary MDT measurement only on the drb(s) corresponding to said QoS flow identification.

-if the third message contains a "start indication" and a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI), the second node may perform the secondary MDT measurement only for said QoS class.

-if the third message comprises a start indication and a logging session ID, the second node saves and updates the logging session ID and includes said logging session ID in the assisted MDT report;

it should be appreciated that the above-mentioned "start indication" is merely an example of indication information that triggers the second node to start the auxiliary MDT measurement. In other implementations, the indication information may also be, for example, a "recording session start indication", "activation indication", "QoE degradation indication", or other indication for activating MDT measurement.

In step 604, if the application layer finishes recording the session, the UE application layer sends a recording session end prompt to the access layer, which indicates that the recording session is ended. The UE sends a fourth message, which may be a MeasReportAppLayer message, to the second node, including the indication of end of recording session. The fourth message may also include one or more of the following information:

-a QoE reference indicating to which QoE measurement task a recording session end indication belongs, for the second node to deactivate an auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task.

-a logging session ID indicating which logging session of QoE measurement tasks ended in order for the second node to deactivate an auxiliary MDT session associated with the logging session of QoE measurement tasks;

When receiving a logging session end indication for a trace-logging session of the auxiliary MDT session from the UE, the second node should stop the trace-logging session of the auxiliary MDT that is ongoing for the given UE. The second node, if supported, should:

-if an "end indication" and a QoE reference are contained in the fourth message, the second node shall stop the secondary MDT measurement associated with said QoE reference;

-if an "end indication", a QoE reference and a recording session ID are contained in the fourth message, the second node shall stop the assisted MDT measurement associated with the recording session ID in said QoE reference;

it should be appreciated that the above "end indication" is merely an example of indication information that triggers the second node to deactivate the auxiliary MDT measurement. In other implementations, the indication information may also be, for example, "recording session end indication", "deactivation indication", "QoE boost indication", or other indication for deactivating MDT measurement.

The second node places the application layer association information in a trace record along with the auxiliary MDT report, step 605. The application layer association information may include a QoE reference, a recording start time, and/or a recording session ID. The trace record will be sent to the QoE data processing node directly or through OAM. The QoE data processing node is a node or a device used for analyzing and optimizing QoE, and may be, for example, an OAM, a TCE, an MCE, or a node having a QoE analysis function in a 3GPP network. The QoE data processing node may use the application layer correlation information to find an auxiliary MDT report to which the QoE report is correlated, and analyze the cause of QoE degradation with the auxiliary MDT report, thereby identifying network problems.

After receiving all QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports, the QoE data processing node may correlate the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report by the QoE reference and the start time in the report. When multiple application layer sessions are simultaneously performed for one QoE reference corresponding to the QoE measurement task, the QoE data processing node may associate the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report by recording the session ID in the report. In this way it is ensured that in any case a QoE data processing node is able to accurately correlate QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports in order to analyze QoE problems more quickly and accurately.

Thus, a description of an embodiment of a measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure is completed. The method ensures that the QoE measurement of the network node or UE for auxiliary measurement and the QoE measurement of an application layer are started at the same time or basically at the same time and are performed synchronously or basically synchronously when the QoE measurement is collected, and enables an operator to correlate the QoE measurement and the auxiliary measurement result more quickly and accurately through the provided correlation information so as to analyze the QoE problem accurately and quickly, further optimize the network and improve the user experience. Meanwhile, the method can also make the process and the object of the auxiliary measurement more targeted, reduce unnecessary measurement overhead and measurement redundancy, so as to improve the utilization rate of the measurement information and save network resources.

Split1

A method 700 for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 7. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 701, the UE sends a recording session start indication to a first node, where the first node may be a CU-CP or a CU or a base station, the indication is sent by an RRC message, where the message may be a MeasReportAppLayer message, and includes the recording session start indication, and the RRC message may further include one or more of the following information:

-a QoE reference indicating to which QoE measurement task the initiated recording session belongs, for the second node to initiate an auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task.

-a logging session ID indicating which logging session in the QoE measurement task was initiated, the second node may include the logging session ID into the corresponding auxiliary MDT report to facilitate the association of QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports in the QoE data processing node;

-DRB information, which may be one or more DRB IDs, to indicate which DRB or DRBs the application layer session of QoE is measured to use for the second node to make assisted MDT measurements on said DRB.

-a QoS flow identification indicating which QoS flow to use for an application layer session measuring QoE, such that the second node performs assisted MDT measurements on the DRB corresponding to said QoS flow identification.

In step 702, the first node sends the auxiliary MDT configuration to the second node, which may be a CU-UP or DU or a base station, i.e. the possible cases and corresponding messages are:

-if the first node is CU-CP and the second node is CU-UP, the auxiliary MDT configuration information may be sent by a bearer context setup request message or a trace-on message;

-if the first node is a CU and the second node is a DU, the auxiliary MDT configuration information may be sent by a UE context setup request message or a trace-on message;

-if the first node and the second node are base stations, the first node being a master base station and the second node being a secondary base station, said secondary MDT configuration information may be sent by a secondary node add request message or a trace-on message.

The assisted MDT configuration may be similar to the immediate MDT configuration, such that the second node immediately starts MDT measurements. Additionally, the auxiliary MDT configuration may contain one or more of the following information:

-a QoE reference indicating with which QoE measurement task the auxiliary MDT measurement is associated in order for the second node to start an auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task, the second node may include the QoE reference into a corresponding auxiliary MDT report to assist the association of QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports in the QoE data processing node.

-a logging session ID indicating which logging session of the QoE measurement tasks the current auxiliary MDT measurement is associated with, the second node may include the logging session ID into the corresponding auxiliary MDT report to facilitate the association of QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports in the QoE data processing node;

-a DRB list, which may be one or more DRB IDs, for indicating DRBs used by an application layer for configuring assisted MDT measurements, according to which DRB IDs, the second node only needs to perform assisted MDT measurements on the DRBs;

-a QoS parameter, which may be a QCI or a 5QI, indicating a QoS parameter used by the application layer configuring the assisted MDT measurement, from which parameter the second node may only need to perform the assisted MDT measurement on said QCI or 5 QI.

The second node receives the auxiliary MDT configuration and, if supported, should:

-if the assisted MDT configuration comprises a DRB list, the second node only needs to perform assisted MDT measurements on DRBs in said DRB list;

if the auxiliary MDT configuration includes QoS parameters (such as QCI or 5QI), the second node only needs to perform auxiliary MDT measurement on the bearer corresponding to the QoS parameters;

-if a QoE reference is included in the auxiliary MDT configuration, the second node saves said auxiliary MDT configuration and includes said QoE reference in the generated MDT report, so that the QoE processing node can accurately correlate the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report.

-if a logging session ID is included in the auxiliary MDT configuration, the second node saves said information and includes said logging session ID in the generated auxiliary MDT report, so that the QoE handling node can accurately correlate QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports.

In step 703, if the recording session in the application layer is ended, the UE sends a recording session end indication to the first node, where the indication may be sent by an RRC message, where the message may be a MeasReportAppLayer message, and includes the recording session start indication, and the RRC message may further include one or more of the following information:

-a QoE reference indicating for which QoE measurement task the end of the recording session indicates, in order for the first node to deactivate the auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task.

-a recording session ID indicating which recording session in a QoE measurement task ended in order for the second node to deactivate an auxiliary MDT session associated with a recording session in said QoE measurement task;

when receiving a logging session end indication of a trace-logging session of the secondary MDT session from the UE, the second node should stop the trace-logging session of the secondary MDT that the given UE is ongoing. The second node, if supported, should:

-if an "end indication" and a QoE reference are contained in the message, the second node shall stop the secondary MDT measurement associated with said QoE reference;

-if an "end indication", a QoE reference and a recording session ID are contained in the message, the second node shall stop the assisted MDT measurement associated with the recording session ID in said QoE reference;

step 704, the first node sends the deactivation auxiliary MDT measurement to the second node, and the possible situations and corresponding messages are:

-if the first node is a CU-CP and the second node may be a CU-UP, said deactivation secondary MDT measurement information may be sent by a deactivation trace message;

-if the first node is a CU and the second node may be a DU, the deactivation auxiliary MDT measurement information may be sent by a deactivation trace message;

-if the first node and the second node are base stations, the first node being a master base station and the second node being a secondary base station, said deactivation secondary MDT measurement information may be sent by a deactivation trace message.

Additionally, one or more of the following information may be included in the deactivation tracking message:

-a QoE reference indicating with which QoE measurement task an auxiliary MDT measurement is associated, such that the second node deactivates an auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task.

-a recording session ID indicating which recording session in a QoE measurement task ended in order for the second node to deactivate an auxiliary MDT session associated with a recording session in said QoE measurement task; the second node receives the deactivation tracking message, if supported, should:

-if a QoE reference is contained in the message, the second node deactivating the assisted MDT configuration associated with said QoE reference.

-if a QoE reference and a recording session ID are contained in the message, the second node deactivating the assisted MDT configuration associated with the recording session ID in the QoE reference.

In step 705, the second node places application layer association information, which may include QoE references, recording start times, and/or recording session IDs, in a trace record along with the assisted MDT report. The trace record will be sent to the QoE data processing node either directly or through the EM. The QoE data processing node is a node or a device used for analyzing and optimizing QoE, and may be an OAM, a TCE, an MCE, or a node having a QoE analysis function in a 3GPP network. The QoE data processing node may use the application layer association information to find an auxiliary MDT report associated with the QoE report, and analyze the cause of QoE degradation with the auxiliary MDT report, and then identify network problems.

Thus, a description of an embodiment of a measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure is completed. By the method, even under a separated architecture or a multi-connection scene, the QoE measurement of the network node or the UE configured with the auxiliary measurement and the application layer can be started and performed synchronously, and an operator can associate the QoE measurement and the auxiliary measurement result more quickly and accurately through the provided association information so as to analyze the QoE problem, further optimize the network and improve the user experience. Meanwhile, the method can also make the process and the object of the auxiliary measurement more targeted, reduce unnecessary measurement overhead and measurement redundancy, so as to improve the utilization rate of the measurement information and save network resources.

Split2

A method 800 for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 8. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 800, a first node, which may be a CU-CP or a CU or a base station, sends a secondary MDT configuration to a second node, which may be a CU-UP or a DU or a base station, i.e. possible scenarios and corresponding messages may include, for example:

-if the first node is a CU-CP and the second node is a CU-UP, the auxiliary MDT configuration information may be sent by a bearer context setup request message or a trace-on message;

-if the first node is a CU and the second node is a DU, the auxiliary MDT configuration information may be sent by a UE context setup request message or a trace on message;

The second node will not immediately start an MDT session if a secondary MDT indication is included in the MDT configuration, and such an MDT configuration is referred to as a secondary MDT configuration. This auxiliary MDT is activated differently from other MDTs. There are two ways to distinguish the auxiliary MDT configuration from other MDT configurations (e.g., immediate MDT, log MDT, etc.) to indicate to the second node not to start a session for the auxiliary MDT until a corresponding QoE measurement indication is received:

Method 1 a secondary MDT indication is set in an MDT configuration to indicate that the MDT configuration is a secondary MDT configuration. For example, a secondary MDT indication may be set in the MDT activation IE. The MDT activation IE may be included in a trace activation IE, for example. In one implementation, an exemplary implementation may be:

if supported, the second node should:

-if the trace activation IE comprises an MDT activation IE, set to "assisted MDT only", the second node shall ignore the interface to trace IE (trace interface IE) and the trace depth IE, and store the assisted MDT configuration and use it to start the MDT session if needed.

-if the trace activation IE comprises an MDT activation IE, set to "assisted MDT and trace", the second node shall store the assisted MDT configuration and trace configuration and use it to start an MDT session and trace session if needed;

the "auxiliary MDT" may also be an "auxiliary QoE," "auxiliary UE application layer measurement," or other new description to indicate that such MDT configuration is used for auxiliary UE application layer measurement.

If so, the second node should:

-if the UE application layer measurement configuration IE contains an MDT configuration IE, the second node shall store the MDT configuration and use it to start an MDT session if needed. The MDT configuration is an auxiliary MDT configuration and is associated with the UE application layer measurement, i.e. the auxiliary MDT configuration is associated with a QoE reference in an application layer measurement configuration.

-a QoE reference indicating with which QoE measurement task the auxiliary MDT measurement is associated in order for the second node to initiate an auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task, the second node may include the QoE reference into a corresponding auxiliary MDT report to facilitate the association of QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports in the QoE data processing node.

In step 801, the UE sends a recording session start indication to the first node, where the indication is sent by an RRC message, where the message may be a MeasReportAppLayer message, and includes the recording session start indication, and the RRC message may further include one or more of QoE reference, recording session ID, DRB list, QoS flow identification, and \ or QoS parameter, and the specific description is consistent with step 701.

The first node decides to start the secondary MDT measurement based on the received recording session start indication.

Step 802, the first node sends an indication to the second node to activate assisted MDT measurements, i.e. possible situations and corresponding messages include:

The message including the indication to activate assisted MDT measurement may further include one or more of the following information:

The second node receives the message containing the activated secondary measurement indication, and if supported, the second node shall:

if the supplementary MDT configuration includes a QoS parameter (e.g. QCI or 5QI), the second node only needs to perform supplementary MDT measurement on the bearer corresponding to the QoS parameter;

-if a QoE reference is included in the auxiliary MDT configuration, the second node saves said information and includes said QoE reference in the generated MDT report, so that the QoE processing node can accurately correlate the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report.

-if a logging session ID is included in the auxiliary MDT configuration, the second node saves said information and includes said logging session ID in the generated MDT report, so that the QoE handling node can accurately correlate QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports.

In step 803, if the recording session in the application layer is ended, the UE sends an indication of ending the recording session to the first node, where the indication is sent by an RRC message, where the message may be a MeasReportAppLayer message, and includes the indication of starting the recording session, and the RRC message may further include one or more of the following information:

-a QoE reference indicating to which QoE measurement task the end of the recording session indicates belongs, in order for the first node to deactivate the auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task.

-a logging session ID indicating which logging session of QoE measurement tasks ended in order for the first node to deactivate an auxiliary MDT session associated with a logging session of the QoE measurement tasks;

when receiving a logging session end indication of a trace-logging session of the secondary MDT session from the UE, the first node should stop the trace-logging session of the secondary MDT that the given UE is ongoing. The first node, if supported, should:

-if an "end indication" and a QoE reference are contained in the message, determining that the second node should stop the secondary MDT measurement associated with said QoE reference;

Step 804, the first node sends an indication to deactivate the auxiliary MDT measurement to the second node, and possible situations and corresponding messages include:

-if a QoE reference is contained in the message, the second node deactivating the secondary MDT session associated with said QoE reference, but retaining the secondary MDT configuration for use in the establishment of the next session.

-if a QoE reference and a recording session ID are contained in the message, the second node deactivates the auxiliary MDT session associated with the recording session ID in the QoE reference, but retains the auxiliary MDT configuration for use in the establishment of the next session.

In step 805, the second node puts application layer association information, which may include QoE reference, record start time, record session ID, in a trace record along with the auxiliary MDT report. The trace record will be sent to the QoE data processing node either directly or through the EM. The QoE data processing node is a node or a device used for analyzing and optimizing QoE, and may be an OAM, a TCE, an MCE, or a node having a QoE analysis function in a 3GPP network. The QoE data processing node may use the application layer association information to find an auxiliary MDT report associated with the QoE report, and analyze the cause of QoE degradation with the auxiliary MDT report, and then identify network problems.

A method 800A for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 8A. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

Step 8a01, a first node, which may be a base station, a gNB, a CU-CP or a CU, sends a message containing information for requesting auxiliary measurement to a second node, which may be a UE or other node, which may be a core network node or an operation and maintenance node. The secondary measurement is a secondary measurement for secondary QoE measurement, and may be a secondary MDT measurement, an immediate MDT measurement, or other radio related measurement of secondary QoE. If the second node is a UE, the message may be an RRC reconfiguration message or an RRC message for requesting assistance measurement related information, and the first node is a serving node of the current UE. If the second node is a core network node, the message may be an NGAP message for requesting the supplementary measurement related information, and the message for requesting the supplementary measurement related information may include at least one of the following information:

-a QoE reference for indicating a measurement task for a particular QoE to which the request corresponds;

-a request auxiliary measurement information indication for indicating that the QoE measurement configures an auxiliary measurement for the second node to provide auxiliary measurement related information, which may be PDU session related information related to auxiliary measurement, DRB information, QoS flow identification, QoS class information, etc.;

-requesting PDU session related information for requesting the second node to send information related to a PUD session used by the application layer service for the QoE measurement, to indicate that a node responsible for assisting MDT measurement needs and/or measures a DRB corresponding to the PDU session;

-requesting DRB information for requesting the second node to send a DRB list of application layer traffic usage of said QoE measurements to indicate which DRBs the node responsible for assisted MDT measurements need and/or measure for assisted MDT measurements;

-requesting a QoS flow identity for requesting the second node to send a QoS flow identity for application layer traffic of said QoE measurements to indicate that the node responsible for assisting MDT measurements needs to monitor and/or measure said QoS flow identity;

-requesting a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI) for requesting the QCI or 5QI used by the second node for transmitting the application layer traffic for the QoE measurement to indicate that the node responsible for assisting MDT measurement needs to monitor and/or measure the QCI or 5 QI;

Step 8a02, the second node receives the message and information. And when the PDU session corresponding to the application layer service needing QoE measurement is not established, the second node stores the information, checks whether the application layer service needing QoE measurement uses the established or modified PDU session or not when the PDU session is established or modified every time, and if the conditions are met, the second node sends information related to auxiliary measurement to the first node. And when the PDU session corresponding to the application layer service needing QoE measurement is established, the second node sends information related to auxiliary measurement to the first node.

If the second node is a UE, the information related to the secondary measurement is sent by an RRC message, which may be an RRC reconfiguration complete message or a new RRC message, and the message includes the information related to the secondary measurement. The information relating to the auxiliary measurements may be communicated by the NGAP message if the second node is a core network node. The information related to auxiliary measurements comprises at least one of the following information:

-a QoE reference indicating a QoE measurement task associated with the auxiliary measurement;

-PDU session related information for indicating PUD session related information used by the application layer service for QoE measurement to indicate that a node responsible for assisted MDT measurement needs and/or measures a DRB corresponding to the PDU session;

-DRB information, which may be one or more DRB IDs, for indicating a DRB list of application layer traffic usage for said QoE measurements, to indicate which DRBs the node responsible for secondary MDT measurements needs and/or are measured for secondary MDT measurements;

-a QoS flow identity indicating a QoS flow identity used by application layer traffic for said QoE measurements to indicate that a node responsible for assisting MDT measurements needs to monitor and/or measure said QoS flow identity;

-a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI) for indicating the QCI or 5QI used by the application layer traffic for said QoE measurement to indicate that the node responsible for assisting MDT measurement needs to monitor and/or measure said QCI or 5 QI;

the information related to the auxiliary measurement may be sent by the second node according to the request of the first node, or may be initiated by the second node itself.

And the first node receives the information, and if the first node is the base station, the base station monitors or measures the DRB or the QoS flow indicated in the information according to the received information related to the auxiliary measurement. The monitoring means that if there is data transmission or a certain amount of data transmission or continuous data transmission within a certain time in a DRB or QoS flow indicated by the auxiliary measurement related information, the first node may consider that QoE measurement corresponding to the DRB or QoS flow has already started, and then the first node starts auxiliary MDT related measurement; likewise, if there is no data transmission or a certain amount of data transmission or no continuous data transmission in the DRB or QoS flow indicated by the auxiliary measurement related information, the first node may consider that the QoE measurement corresponding to the DRB has ended, and then the first node stops the auxiliary MDT related measurement. The measurement means that the first node performs auxiliary measurement only on the indicated DRB or QoS flow. Therefore, the auxiliary measurement at the first node and the QoE measurement at the UE can be ensured to be synchronous to a certain extent, namely the auxiliary measurement and the QoE measurement are consistent in time, the measured DRB or QoS flow is ensured to be related to the QoE measurement, the QoE analysis can be better assisted, and the network parameters can be optimized.

Step 8a03, if the content of the secondary measurement is related to the third node, the first node sends information related to the secondary measurement to the third node, which information may be obtained by step 8a 02. The third node may be a CU-UP or a DU and the first node may be a CU-CP or a CU, i.e. it is possible that a CU sends information related to auxiliary measurements to a DU or that a CU-CP sends information related to auxiliary measurements to a CU-UP.

If the third node is CU-UP and the first node is CU-CP, the information related to the auxiliary measurement may be delivered by a bearer context setup request message or a bearer context setup modification message or a trace-on message, or may be a message for delivering the information related to the auxiliary measurement.

If the third node is DU and the first node is CU, the information related to the auxiliary measurement may be delivered by a UE context setup request message, a UE context modification request message, or a trace-on message, or may be a message for delivering the information related to the auxiliary measurement.

The information related to the auxiliary measurement is the same as that in step 8a02, and is not described herein again. The information related to the auxiliary measurement may be sent to the third node by the first node together with the configuration of the auxiliary measurement, or may be sent to the third node by the first node after the configuration of the auxiliary measurement is sent to the third node, and then the information related to the auxiliary measurement is sent to the third node by the first node.

The third node receives the information and monitors or measures the DRB or QoS flow indicated in the information according to the received information related to the auxiliary measurement. The monitoring means that if there is data transmission or a certain amount of data transmission or continuous data transmission within a certain time in the DRB indicated by the auxiliary measurement related information, the third node may consider that the QoE measurement corresponding to the DRB or QoS flow has already started, and then the third node starts the auxiliary MDT related measurement; likewise, if there is no data transmission or no certain amount of data transmission or no continuous data transmission within a period of time in the DRB or QoS flow indicated by the auxiliary measurement related information, the third node may consider that the QoE measurement corresponding to the DRB or QoS flow has ended, and then the third node stops the auxiliary MDT related measurement. The measurement means that the third node performs secondary measurement only on the indicated DRB or QoS flow. Thus, it can be ensured that the auxiliary measurement at the third node and the QoE measurement at the UE are performed synchronously to some extent, that is, the auxiliary measurement and the QoE measurement are consistent in time, and it can also be ensured that the measured DRB or QoS flow is related to the QoE measurement, so that the QoE data processing node finally collects QoE report and auxiliary measurement report, and can better and more effectively correlate the two reports, and analyze the cause of QoE degradation with the auxiliary MDT report, thereby identifying network problems. At the same time, the QoE data processing nodes are able to accurately correlate QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports for faster and more accurate analysis of QoE problems.

Thus, a description of an embodiment of a measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure is completed. The method ensures that when QoE measurement collection is frequently started for a plurality of times, the node responsible for auxiliary measurement can monitor and deduce whether the measurement of QoE starts or not through the information related to auxiliary measurement configuration, and the monitoring result starts or ends the auxiliary measurement, so that the network node carrying out auxiliary measurement and the QoE measurement of an application layer can start simultaneously or basically simultaneously without signaling the node responsible for auxiliary measurement by UE every time, and the measurement can be carried out synchronously or basically synchronously. Even if the service is frequently started or closed at the application layer of the UE, the node responsible for auxiliary measurement can monitor whether the measurement of the application layer is started or not through the received information related to the auxiliary measurement without additional network indication, so that an operator can use the least network signaling overhead and more quickly and accurately associate the QoE measurement and the auxiliary measurement result, the QoE problem can be analyzed accurately and quickly, the network is further optimized, and the user experience is improved. Meanwhile, the method can also make the process and the object of the auxiliary measurement more targeted, reduce unnecessary measurement overhead and measurement redundancy, so as to improve the utilization rate of the measurement information and save network resources.

NG handover

A method 900 for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 9. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 901, the first node starts a handover procedure by sending a handover required message to the third node. For example, the first node is a base station, which may be an eNB or a gNB. For example, the third node is a core network, which may be an AMF.

The handover required message may include an application layer measurement configuration and/or an auxiliary MDT configuration, and the specific content of the auxiliary MDT configuration is consistent as described in step 601.

The third node sends a handover request message to a second node, where the second node may be a base station, and the base station may be an eNB or a gNB.

The handover request message may include an application layer measurement configuration and/or an auxiliary MDT configuration, and the specific content of the auxiliary MDT configuration is consistent with the auxiliary MDT configuration in the handover required message.

If the second node supports the auxiliary MDT measurement, there are the following two cases for the processing of the auxiliary MDT configuration:

Case 1: including a secondary MDT indication in the MDT configuration:

-if the trace activation IE comprises an MDT activation IE, set to "assisted MDT only" or "assisted MDT", the second node shall ignore the interface to trace IE (trace interface IE) and the trace depth IE, and store the assisted MDT configuration and use it to start the MDT session if needed.

case 2: the auxiliary MDT configuration is included in the UE application layer configuration:

-if the UE application layer measurement configuration comprises an MDT measurement configuration, the second node shall store the secondary MDT configuration and use it to start an MDT session if needed.

The two cases correspond to the two methods in step 601. I.e. case 1 corresponds to method 1 in step 601 and case 2 corresponds to method 2 in step 601.

The handover request message and the handover request message may also include an auxiliary MDT status, which may be called an application layer measurement status or a logging status, for indicating whether the second node and the first node have started auxiliary MDT measurement, and the status information may be included in the auxiliary MDT configuration or the application layer measurement configuration. If so, the second node starts the requested auxiliary MDT session; if not, the second node saves the auxiliary MDT configuration and starts the auxiliary MDT session when needed. The auxiliary MDT status may also be represented by recording session indication information or in other forms.

In addition, one or more of the following information may be included in the auxiliary MDT configuration:

-a period indicating a period of QoE measurements, or also a collection period, for the second node to use as a collection and measurement period for the auxiliary MDT session to help the auxiliary MDT measurements to keep time with QoE measurements;

-a period time indication, by which the first node needs to inform which time in the measurement period the auxiliary MDT measurement at the first node has proceeded to if the auxiliary MDT measurement and the QoE measurement use the same measurement period, the time indication may be a relative time at which the last period starts or ends, or an absolute time at which the last period starts or ends, from which the second node may calculate or directly derive a generation time of the first auxiliary MDT report at the second node, and if the time derived by the calculation, further needs measurement period information.

-a QoS flow identifier indicating a QoS flow used by an application layer configuring assisted MDT measurement, according to which the second node only needs to perform assisted MDT measurement on one or more DRBs corresponding to the QoS flow.

-a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI) indicating the QoS class used by the application layer configuring the secondary MDT measurement, according to which the secondary MDT measurement only needs to be performed by the second node.

The second node receives the handover request message, and if supported, should:

-if the secondary MDT configuration is included in the message and the secondary MDT status is "started", the second node starts the secondary MDT measurement;

-if the supplementary MDT configuration includes the QoS flow identity and the supplementary MDT status is "activated", the second node only needs to perform supplementary MDT measurements on the DRB corresponding to the QoS flow identity;

-if a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI) is included in the secondary MDT configuration and the secondary MDT status is "enabled", the second node only needs to make secondary MDT measurements on said QoS class;

-if the secondary MDT configuration comprises a period time indication indicating a time from the last secondary QoE report generation, said time being a time within a period, the second node takes said time indication into account when generating the next secondary MDT report in order to maintain time alignment with the QoE report, and if the next secondary MDT report is not generated at the second node, the second node adds the period time indication to the period time indication for the UE to stay at the second node.

-if a recording session ID is included in the auxiliary MDT configuration, the second node saves said information and includes said recording session ID in the generated MDT report, so that the QoE processing node can accurately correlate QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports.

In step 902, the second node sends a handover request acknowledge message to the third node. The third node sends a handover command to the first node.

The second node judges and decides which QoE reference-associated auxiliary MDT measurements need to be started and which QoE reference-associated auxiliary MDT measurements are temporarily not started according to the received auxiliary MDT configuration and status information. For the measurement requiring the opening of the auxiliary MDT, the second node may determine to measure only the drb(s) corresponding to the QoS flow identifier according to the QoS flow identifier, and may determine the time for generating the next auxiliary MDT report according to the cycle time indication and the collection cycle information, where the generation of the MDT report is in one-to-one correspondence with the QoE report associated therewith. If the auxiliary MDT report is generated at the second node, the second node may put application layer association information, which may include a QoE reference, a recording start time, and a recording session ID, together with the auxiliary MDT report in a trace record. The trace record will be sent to the QoE data processing node directly or through the EM. The QoE data processing node is a device for analyzing and optimizing QoE, and may be an OAM, TCE, MCE, or a node having a QoE analysis function in a 3GPP network. The QoE data processing node may use the application layer related information to find an auxiliary MDT report associated with the QoE report, and analyze the cause of QoE degradation with the auxiliary MDT report, and then identify network problems.

After receiving all QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports, the QoE data processing node may correlate the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report by the QoE reference and the start time in the report. When multiple application layer sessions are simultaneously performed for one QoE reference corresponding to the QoE measurement task, the QoE data processing node may associate the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report by using the recording session ID in the report. In this way it is ensured that in any case a QoE data processing node is able to accurately correlate QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports in order to analyze QoE problems more quickly and accurately.

Thus, a description of an embodiment of a measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure is completed. By the method, even in a UE switching scene, the network node or UE configured with auxiliary measurement and QoE measurement of an application layer can be ensured to start and be synchronously performed, and an operator can associate QoE measurement and auxiliary measurement results more quickly and accurately through the provided association information so as to analyze QoE problems, further optimize a network and improve user experience. Meanwhile, the method can also make the process and the object of the auxiliary measurement more targeted, reduce unnecessary measurement overhead and measurement redundancy, so as to improve the utilization rate of the measurement information and save network resources.

RRC reestablishment or recovery

A method 1000 for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 10. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

Step 1001, the second node sends a request message for obtaining UE context to the first node. The first node and the second node are base stations, and may be enbs or gnbs.

In step 1002, the first node sends a message for obtaining UE context feedback to the second node, where the message may include an application layer measurement configuration and/or an auxiliary MDT configuration, and the specific content of the auxiliary MDT configuration is consistent as described in step 601. If the second node supports the auxiliary MDT measurement, there are the following two cases for the processing of the auxiliary MDT configuration:

case 1: including a secondary MDT indication in the MDT configuration:

In the message, an auxiliary MDT status may also be included for indicating whether the second node first node has initiated an auxiliary MDT measurement, and the status information may be included in the auxiliary MDT configuration or in the application layer measurement configuration. If so, the second node starts the requested auxiliary MDT session; if not, the second node saves the auxiliary MDT configuration and starts the auxiliary MDT session when needed. The auxiliary MDT status may also be represented by recording session indication information or in other forms.

In addition to this, one or more of the following information may be included in the auxiliary MDT configuration:

-a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI) indicating the QoS class used by the application layer configuring the assisted MDT measurement, according to which the second node only needs to perform the assisted MDT measurement.

-if the secondary MDT configuration includes a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI) and the secondary MDT status is "activated", the second node only needs to make secondary MDT measurements on said QoS class;

-if the secondary MDT configuration comprises a period time indication indicating a time since the last secondary QoE report generation, said time being a time within a period, the second node needs to take said time indication into account when generating the next secondary MDT report in order to maintain time alignment with the QoE report, and if the next secondary MDT report is not generated at the second node, the second node adds the period time indication to the time the UE stayed at the second node.

-if a QoE reference is contained in the auxiliary MDT configuration, the second node saves the information and includes the QoE reference in the generated MDT report, so that the QoE processing node can accurately correlate QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports.

The second node judges and decides which QoE reference-associated auxiliary MDT measurements need to be started and which QoE reference-associated auxiliary MDT measurements are temporarily not started according to the received auxiliary MDT configuration and status information. For the measurement requiring the opening of the auxiliary MDT, the second node may determine to measure only the drb(s) corresponding to the QoS flow identifier according to the QoS flow identifier, and may determine the time for generating the next auxiliary MDT report according to the cycle time indication and the collection cycle information, where the generation of the MDT report is in one-to-one correspondence with the QoE report associated therewith. If the auxiliary MDT report is generated at the second node, the second node may put application layer association information, which may include a QoE reference, a recording start time, and a recording session ID, in a trace record together with the auxiliary MDT report. The trace record will be sent to the QoE data processing node directly or through the EM. The QoE data processing node is a device for analyzing and optimizing QoE, and may be an OAM, TCE, MCE, or a node having a QoE analysis function in a 3GPP network. The QoE data processing node may use the application layer related information to find an auxiliary MDT report associated with the QoE report, and analyze the cause of QoE degradation with the auxiliary MDT report, and then identify network problems.

Thus, a description of an embodiment of a measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure is completed. By the method, even after the UE RRC connection is reestablished or recovered, the QoE measurement of the network node or the UE configured with the auxiliary measurement and the application layer can be started and performed synchronously, and an operator can associate the QoE measurement and the auxiliary measurement result more quickly and accurately through the provided association information so as to analyze the QoE problem, further optimize the network and improve the user experience. Meanwhile, the method can also make the process and the object of the auxiliary measurement more targeted, reduce unnecessary measurement overhead and measurement redundancy, so as to improve the utilization rate of the measurement information and save network resources.

A method 1100 for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 11. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the accompanying drawings and description herein in order not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 1101, the first node initiates activation of QoE measurement and sends QoE measurement configuration to the second node. The first node may be a core network node or OAM and the second node may be a gNB or eNB. The QoE measurement configuration is defined by a UE application layer measurement configuration IE, the UE application layer measurement represents a measurement in the UE application layer, and the QoE measurement is one of the UE application layer measurements. The UE application layer measurement configuration may be included in a trace activation IE, which may be included in the first message. If the first node is a core network node, the first message may be an initial context setup request message or a trace start message; if the first node is OAM, the first message may be an activation task from OAM.

If there are radio-related measurements to assist with the QoE management analysis, the radio-related measurement configuration will be transmitted with the QoE measurement configuration, which may be an MDT measurement, an MDT-like measurement, or/and an on-node counter measurement. Since radio-related measurements are used to assist QoE analysis to identify problems with QoE degradation, radio-related measurements should be time-aligned with corresponding QoE measurements. The MDT mechanism may be used to trigger radio related measurements, which may be referred to as assisted MDT if MDT measurements are used to assist QoE optimization analysis. If the secondary MDT indication is included in the MDT configuration, the second node will not immediately start the MDT session. This auxiliary MDT is activated differently from other MDTs. There are two ways to distinguish the secondary MDT configuration from other MDT configurations (e.g., immediate MDT, log MDT, etc.) to indicate to the second node not to start a session for the secondary MDT until a corresponding QoE measurement indication is received:

if so, the second node should:

-if the trace activation IE comprises an MDT activation IE, set to "assisted MDT only" or "assisted MDT", the second node shall ignore the interface to trace IE and trace depth IE and store the assisted MDT configuration and use it to start the MDT session if needed.

the "auxiliary MDT" may also be "auxiliary QoE", "auxiliary UE application layer measurement", or a new description to indicate that such MDT configuration is used for auxiliary UE application layer measurement.

If so, the second node should:

-if the UE application layer measurement configuration IE contains an MDT configuration IE, the second node shall store the MDT configuration and use it to start an MDT session if needed. The MDT configuration is an auxiliary MDT configuration, and is associated with the UE application layer measurement, that is, the auxiliary MDT configuration is associated with a QoE reference in an application layer measurement configuration.

Step 1102, the second node sends the QoE measurement configuration and the auxiliary MDT configuration to the UE. The QoE measurement configuration is sent by a second message, which may be an RRC reconfiguration message, which may contain the QoE measurement configuration, which may be contained in the measConfigAppLayer IE, and if the measConfigAppLayer is set to "set", the UE access layer forwards the measConfigAppLayer to the upper layer considering the service type;

If there is a secondary MDT configuration associated with the QoE measurement configuration in the second node, the following information may be included in the QoE measurement configuration:

-requesting the application layer to provide a QoE reference for requesting the UE to send a QoE reference at the same time as the start/end indication is sent, to indicate which QoE measurement task starts or ends;

-requesting the application layer to provide a recording session ID for requesting the UE to send the recording session ID at the same time as the start indication to indicate which recording session to start;

-requesting the QoS flow identity for requesting the UE to send the measured QoS flow identity used by the application layer at the same time as sending the start indication to indicate which QoS flow identities the assisted MDT measurement needs to measure for the DRBs;

-requesting a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI) for requesting the UE to send the measured QCI or 5QI used by the application layer simultaneously with the start indication to indicate which QCI or 5QI corresponding bearers the assisted MDT measurement needs to measure;

if the UE receives the auxiliary MDT configuration, the UE saves the auxiliary MDT configuration, and opens the auxiliary MDT session if necessary, and the UE determines whether the auxiliary MDT configuration is used by the method mentioned in step 601.

In step 1103, if the recording session starts, the UE application layer sends a recording session start indication to the UE access layer, indicating that the recording session has started. The UE access layer starts the auxiliary MDT measurement according to the indication. And the UE sends a third message to the second node, wherein the message is an RRC message, the message can be a MeasReportAppLayer message, and the message comprises the recording session starting indication. The message may also include one or more of the following information:

-DRB information, which may be one or more DRB IDs, indicating which DRB or DRBs to use for application layer sessions measuring QoE, for the second node to make assisted MDT measurements on said DRB;

-a QoS flow identity indicating which QoS flow is used by an application layer session measuring QoE, for the second node to perform an assisted MDT measurement on the DRB corresponding to said QoS flow identity;

The above information may be included according to the request of step 602, or may be included by the UE according to its own configuration.

-if the third message comprises a "start indication" and a logging start time, the second node may define a start time for the assisted MDT measurement according to the logging start time;

-if the third message comprises a "start indication" and one or more DRB IDs in the DRB list, the second node may perform assisted MDT measurements only on said DRB;

-if the third message comprises the "start indication" and the QoS flow identification, the second node may perform the auxiliary MDT measurement only on the drb(s) corresponding to said QoS flow identification.

-if the third message comprises a "start indication" and a QoS class (e.g. QCI or 5QI), the second node may perform the assisted MDT measurement only for said QoS class.

in step 1104, if the application layer finishes the recording session, the UE application layer sends a recording session end prompt to the access layer to indicate that the recording session is ended. And the UE access layer finishes the auxiliary MDT measurement according to the indication. The UE sends a fourth message to the second node, which may be a MeasReportAppLayer message including the recording session end indication. The fourth message may further include the following information:

-a QoE reference indicating to which QoE measurement task the end of the recording session indicates to belong, for the second node to deactivate the auxiliary MDT session associated with said QoE measurement task.

-a logging session ID indicating which logging session of QoE measurement tasks ended in order for the second node to deactivate an auxiliary MDT session associated with a logging session of the QoE measurement tasks;

-if the fourth message comprises an "end indication", a QoE reference and a recording session ID, the second node shall stop the assisted MDT measurement associated with the recording session ID in said QoE reference;

in step 1105, the second node puts application layer association information, which may include QoE reference, record start time, record session ID, in a trace record along with the assisted MDT report. The trace record will be sent to the QoE data processing node either directly or through the EM. The QoE data processing node is a node or a device used for analyzing and optimizing QoE, and may be an OAM, a TCE, an MCE, or a node having a QoE analysis function in a 3GPP network. The QoE data processing node may use the application layer association information to find an auxiliary MDT report associated with the QoE report, and analyze the cause of QoE degradation with the auxiliary MDT report, and then identify network problems.

Thus, a description of an embodiment of a measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure is completed. The method ensures that the network node or UE configured with auxiliary measurement and the QoE measurement of an application layer start simultaneously and synchronously when the QoE measurement is collected, and enables an operator to correlate the QoE measurement and the auxiliary measurement result more quickly and accurately in any scene through the provided correlation information so as to analyze the QoE problem accurately and quickly, further optimize the network and improve the user experience. Meanwhile, the method can also make the process and the object of the auxiliary measurement more targeted, reduce unnecessary measurement overhead and measurement redundancy, so as to improve the utilization rate of the measurement information and save network resources.

Xn handover

A method 1200 for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 12. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 1201, the first node initiates a handover procedure by sending a handover request message to the second node. For example, the first node and the second node may be base stations, and the base stations may be enbs or gnbs. In a handover scenario, the first node is a source base station and the second node is a target base station.

The handover request message may include UE application layer measurement configuration and/or auxiliary MDT configuration, and the specific content of the UE application layer measurement configuration and the auxiliary MDT configuration is consistent as described in step 601. If the second node supports the auxiliary MDT measurement, there are the following two cases for the processing of the auxiliary MDT configuration:

case 1:

-if the trace activation IE comprises an MDT activation IE, set to "assisted MDT and trace", the second node shall store the assisted MDT configuration and trace configuration and use it to start an MDT session and a trace session if needed;

case 2:

The handover request message may also include an auxiliary MDT status, which may also be referred to as an application layer measurement status or a logging status, for indicating to the second node whether the first node has initiated the auxiliary MDT measurement. The information of the state may be included in an auxiliary MDT configuration or in an application layer measurement configuration. If the state is started, the second node starts a supplementary MDT session related to the switching request; if the state is not started, the second node saves the auxiliary MDT configuration and starts the auxiliary MDT session when needed. The auxiliary MDT status may also be represented by recording session indication information or in other forms.

-a logging session ID indicating which logging session in the QoE measurement task the current auxiliary MDT measurement is associated with, the second node may include the logging session ID into the corresponding auxiliary MDT report to assist the QoE data processing node in the association of the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report;

-a period indicating a period of QoE measurements, or also called a collection period, for the second node to use as a collection and measurement period for the auxiliary MDT session to help the auxiliary MDT measurements to coincide with the QoE measurement keeping time;

-if a secondary MDT configuration is included in the message and the secondary MDT status is "started", the second node starts a secondary MDT measurement;

Step 1202, the second node sends a handover request acknowledge message to the first node.

And the second node judges and decides which auxiliary MDT measurement associated with the QoE reference needs to be started and which auxiliary MDT measurement associated with the QoE reference is not started temporarily according to the received auxiliary MDT configuration and state information. For the measurement that the auxiliary MDT needs to be started, the second node may determine to measure only the DRB corresponding to the QoS flow identifier according to the QoS flow identifier, and the second node may also determine the time for generating the next auxiliary MDT report according to the cycle time indication and the collection cycle information, where the generation of the MDT report is in one-to-one correspondence with the QoE report associated therewith. If the auxiliary MDT report is generated at the second node, the second node may place application layer association information, which may include QoE references, recording start times, and/or recording session IDs, in a trace record along with the auxiliary MDT report. The trace record will be sent to the QoE data processing node either directly or through the EM. The QoE data processing node is a device for analyzing and optimizing QoE, and may be an OAM, TCE, MCE, or a node having a QoE analysis function in a 3GPP network. The QoE data processing node may use the application layer related information to find an auxiliary MDT report associated with the QoE report and analyze the cause of QoE degradation with the auxiliary MDT report, thereby identifying network problems.

After receiving all QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports, the QoE data processing node may correlate the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report by the QoE reference and the start time in the report. When multiple application layer sessions are simultaneously performed for one QoE reference corresponding to the QoE measurement task, the QoE data processing node may associate the QoE report and the auxiliary MDT report by recording the session ID in the report. In this way, it is ensured that in any case a QoE data processing node is able to accurately correlate QoE reports and auxiliary MDT reports, in order to analyze QoE problems more quickly and accurately.

This completes the description of another embodiment of the measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure. By the method, even in a UE switching scene, the network node or UE configured with auxiliary measurement and QoE measurement of an application layer can be ensured to start and be synchronously performed, and an operator can associate QoE measurement and auxiliary measurement results more quickly and accurately through the provided association information so as to analyze QoE problems, further optimize a network and improve user experience. Meanwhile, the method can also make the process and the object of the auxiliary measurement more targeted, reduce unnecessary measurement overhead and measurement redundancy, so as to improve the utilization rate of the measurement information and save network resources.

A measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting quality of experience optimization 14A00 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 14A. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 14a01, the first node sends, to the UE, information for requesting a report time suspension, where the information is used to indicate the UE, and when the first measurement report is suspended, the UE needs to record and report a time from generation of the first measurement report to sending of the report by the UE, or may also refer to a time when the first measurement report is cached at the UE side. The first node may be a base station. The information for requesting to report the suspension time may be included in a message configuring the first measurement, or may also be included in a message instructing the UE to suspend reporting the first measurement. The first measurement may be an application layer measurement, such as a QoE measurement.

Step 14a02, the first node sends information for indicating suspension and resumption of the first measurement report to the UE, and the UE receives the information.

Step 14a03, if there is a first measurement report with suspended reporting, the UE sends the first measurement report to the first node, and if the UE receives information requesting reporting of the suspension time in step 14a01 or the UE determines, according to its own configuration, that the reporting suspension time is included in the first measurement report, the first measurement report includes the reporting suspension time, where the reporting suspension time refers to the time elapsed from the time the first measurement report is generated to the time the report is sent out by the UE, or may also refer to the time the first measurement report is buffered on the UE side, and the reporting suspension time is visible or readable by the first node, for example, visible by the RAN. The first node receives a first measurement report including a reporting pause time. The first node may calculate a reporting time of the first measurement according to a time of receiving the first measurement report and a reporting suspension time, where the reporting time is a time when the UE generates the first measurement report. The reporting time may be used for time alignment with a second measurement report, which may be a secondary measurement report, e.g. an MDT report. The first node may directly use the report time and the report of the second measurement for time alignment, or perform alignment of the first measurement and the second measurement, and perform network problem location, or network optimization by combining the aligned first measurement and the second measurement and/or the report of the aligned first measurement and the second measurement.

Step 14a04, if the node performing the alignment of the first measurement report and the second measurement report is performed by the fourth node, the first node sends the first measurement report to the fourth node, the first measurement report includes the reporting time obtained in step 14a03, and the fourth node can perform network problem location or network optimization analysis according to the time alignment of the reporting time and the second measurement report, combining the aligned first measurement report and the aligned second measurement report. The fourth node may be a base station or OAM, and if OAM, may be a TEC or MCE, or may be another node for analyzing the reports of the first measurement and the second measurement.

This completes the description of another embodiment of the measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure. By the method, even if the reporting time of the first measurement report is different from that of the second measurement report, for example, the reporting time is different due to one of the measurements being suspended or the reporting time is different due to factors related to the reference clock, the first measurement report and the second measurement report can be guaranteed to be aligned in time, so that an operator can correlate the QoE measurement and the MDT measurement result more quickly and accurately, so as to analyze the QoE problem, further optimize the network and improve the user experience.

A measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting quality of experience optimization 14B00 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 14B. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 14B01, the first node sends, to the UE, information for requesting a report time suspension, where the information is used to indicate the UE, and when the first measurement report is suspended, the UE needs to record and report the time elapsed from the generation of the first measurement report to the sending of the report by the UE, or may also refer to the time when the first measurement report is cached at the UE side. The first node may be a base station. The information for requesting reporting of the suspension time may be included in a message configuring the first measurement, or may also be included in a message instructing the UE to suspend reporting of the first measurement. The first measurement may be an application layer measurement, such as a QoE measurement.

Step 14B02, the UE is handed over from the first node to the second node.

Step 14B03, the second node sends information for indicating suspension and resumption of the first measurement reporting to the UE, and the UE receives the information.

Step 14B04, if there is a first measurement report with suspended reporting, the UE sends the first measurement report to the second node, and if the UE receives the information requesting reporting of the suspension time in step 14B01 or the UE determines, according to its own configuration, that the reporting suspension time is included in the first measurement report, the first measurement report includes the reporting suspension time, where the reporting suspension time refers to the time that the first measurement report is generated until the report is sent out by the UE, or may also refer to the time that the first measurement report is cached at the UE side, and the reporting suspension time is visible or readable by the second node, for example, readable by the RAN. The second node receives a first measurement report including a reporting pause time. The second node may calculate the reporting time of the first measurement according to the time for receiving the first measurement report and the reporting suspension time, where the reporting time is a time when the UE generates the first measurement report. The reporting time may be used for time alignment with a second measurement report, which may be a report of a secondary measurement, such as an MDT report, used to assist the first measurement.

Step 14B05, the second node sends the first measurement report to the fourth node, where the first measurement report includes a reporting time, and the fourth node may perform network problem location or network optimization according to the time alignment between the reporting time and the second measurement report and by combining the aligned first measurement report and the aligned second measurement report. The fourth node may be a base station or OAM, or, if OAM, a TEC or MCE, or another node for analyzing the first measurement report and the second measurement report.

This completes the description of another embodiment of the measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure. By the method, even if the reporting time of the first measurement report and the reporting time of the second measurement report are different, for example, the reporting time is different due to one measurement being suspended or the reporting time is different due to factors related to a reference clock, the time alignment of the first measurement report and the second measurement report can be ensured, so that an operator can associate a QoE measurement result and an MDT measurement result more quickly and accurately, a QoE problem can be analyzed, a network can be optimized, and user experience can be improved.

A method 1500 of measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 15. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

In step 1501, the first node transmits information indicating a mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID to the second node. The first node may be a core network or a base station and the second node may be a base station. The information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID may be delivered by at least one of the following messages:

-when the first node and the second node are both base stations and the UE is handed over from the first node to the second node, said information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID is included in a handover request message, i.e. said information is conveyed by the handover request message sent by the first node as source base station to the second node as target base station;

-when the first node is a core network and the second node is a base station, the information indicating the mapping between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID is included in a handover request message, i.e. the information is conveyed by a handover request message sent by the first node being a target core network node (e.g. AMF) to the second node being a target base station, in a handover procedure based on the core network, e.g. an NG handover;

-when the UE moves to a second node coverage and initiates an RRC recovery procedure while in an Inactive state, and the first node is the node where the last serving cell (last serving cell) of the UE is located, the information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID is included in a UE context acquisition feedback message, i.e. the information is conveyed by the UE context acquisition feedback message sent by the first node as the last serving base station to the second node of the new access base station;

-when the first Node is to add the second Node as a secondary Node of the UE, said information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID is included in a Secondary Node (SN) add Request message (e.g. an SN Addition Request message), i.e. said message is sent by a SN add Request message sent by the first Node as a Master Node (MN) to the second Node as a SN.

In one example, the first measurement may be a QoE measurement, i.e. the first measurement ID may be at least one of:

-a QoE reference or a QoE reference list;

-an application layer ID or a list of application layer IDs.

The application layer ID and the QoE reference are both identifiers used to indicate a QoE measurement collection task, and a node (e.g., the first node or the second node) serving the UE knows a mapping relationship between the application layer ID and the QoE reference.

In one example, the second measurement is MDT and the second measurement ID may be a Trace ID (Trace ID). That is, the information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID may be at least one of the following cases:

-one Trace ID corresponds to one QoE reference or application layer ID;

-one Trace ID corresponds to one QoE reference list, containing at least two QoE references, or to an application layer ID list, containing at least two application layer IDs.

The second node receives and stores the information.

In step 1502, if the UE configures the first measurement for suspension of reporting and the second node wants to resume the suspension of reporting, the second node may send information indicating the suspension of reporting to the UE. And the UE receives the information, and if the UE has the first measurement report (namely the cached first measurement report) which is suspended from reporting, the UE prepares to send the first measurement report which is suspended from reporting to the second node.

In step 1503, the UE sends a first measurement report to the second node. The second node receives the first measurement report, and according to the first measurement ID in the first measurement report, queries the information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID obtained in step 1501 to obtain the second measurement ID corresponding to the first measurement ID.

Step 1504, the second node sends a first measurement report to the fourth node, said first measurement report including the second measurement ID obtained in step 1503. The fourth node may be a base station or OAM, and if OAM, may be a TEC or MCE, or may be another node for analyzing the first measurement report and the second measurement report. The fourth node finds a second measurement report corresponding to the first measurement report according to a second measurement ID in the first measurement report, that is, the ID association between the first measurement report and the second measurement report can be completed, and then time alignment is completed according to time information in the first measurement report and the second measurement report, so that the association and time alignment between the first measurement report and the second measurement report are completed, and further optimization analysis and problem positioning are performed.

This completes the description of another embodiment of the measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure. By the method, even if the reporting time of the first measurement report and the reporting time of the second measurement report are different, for example, the reporting time is different due to one measurement being suspended or the reporting time is different due to a factor related to a reference clock, the ID association of the first measurement report and the second measurement report can be ensured, so that an operator can associate the QoE measurement and the MDT measurement result more quickly and accurately, so as to analyze the QoE problem, optimize the network and improve the user experience.

A method 1600 of measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 16. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the accompanying drawings and description herein in order not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

Step 1601, the first node sends information indicating a mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID to the second node. The first node is a base station currently serving the UE, the second node is the UE, and the information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID may be transmitted by an RRC message, and the information may be included in a message configuring the first measurement, or may be included in other RRC messages.

The first measurement may be an application layer measurement, e.g. a QoE measurement, and the first measurement ID may be at least one of:

-a QoE reference or a QoE reference list;

-an application layer ID or a list of application layer IDs.

The application layer ID and the QoE reference are both identifiers used to indicate a QoE measurement collection task, and a node serving the UE knows a mapping relationship between the application layer ID and the QoE reference.

The second measurement is an auxiliary measurement for assisting an application layer measurement, such as MDT, and the second measurement ID may be a Trace ID (Trace ID). That is, the information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID may be one of the following cases:

-one Trace ID corresponds to one QoE reference or application layer ID;

The second node receives and stores the information.

When the second node generates the first measurement report, according to the first measurement ID in the first measurement report, querying the information indicating the mapping relationship between the first measurement ID and the second measurement ID obtained in step 1601 to obtain the second measurement ID corresponding to the first measurement ID.

Step 1602, the second node sends a first measurement report to the first node, where the first measurement report includes the second measurement ID obtained in step 1601. The first node may directly use or forward the first measurement report including the second measurement ID to a fourth node, which may be a base station or OAM, or if OAM, a TEC or MCE, or other node for analyzing the reports of the first measurement and the second measurement. The first node or the fourth node finds a second measurement report corresponding to the first measurement report according to a second measurement ID in the first measurement report, so that the ID association of the first measurement ID and the second measurement can be completed, and time alignment is completed according to time information in the first measurement report and the second measurement report, so that the association and time alignment of the first measurement report and the second measurement report are completed, and further optimization analysis and problem positioning are performed.

This completes the description of another embodiment of the measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure. By the method, whether a new base station serves the UE or not can be judged, and even if the reporting time of the first measurement report is different from that of the second measurement report, the ID correlation of the first measurement report and the second measurement report can be ensured, so that an operator can correlate the QoE measurement result and the MDT measurement result more quickly and accurately, the QoE problem can be analyzed, the network can be optimized, and the user experience can be improved.

A method 1700 for measurement configuration and reporting to assist in quality of experience optimization according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is illustrated in fig. 17. Detailed descriptions of steps unrelated to the present disclosure or well known in the art are omitted in the figures and the description herein so as not to obscure the aspects of the present disclosure.

The second node receives information related to the second measurement from the first node, which is included in the first message, step 1701. According to an embodiment, the second measurement refers to an operation for evaluating the result of the first measurement, e.g. the result of the first measurement is a QoE metric (metrics), e.g. an underlying raw metric, and the second measurement may comprise the following operations: the result of the first measurement is input into a specific model or formula (e.g., a MOS model) to calculate or derive a further result, which may be referred to as the result of the second measurement, which may be a QoE assessment value (e.g., a MOS value) and/or some specific assessment value (e.g., a katon-related assessment), representing an overall quality experience and/or an overall quality experience of an aspect, it being understood that the above is merely an example and that the results of the second measurement and the second measurement are not limited thereto.

The first and second nodes may be OAM, core network nodes, base stations, CUs, CU-CPs, CU-UP, DUs, or UEs. According to one embodiment, the first node is a core network node, for example, the core network node is an AMF, the second node is a base station, and the first message may be an initial context setup request message, or a UE context modification request message, or a tracking initiation message, or a handover request message, or a handover required message; according to another embodiment, if the first node and the second node are both base stations, the first message may be a handover request message, an auxiliary node addition request message, a UE context feedback message, a tracking start message, or the like; according to another embodiment, if the first node is a CU-CP, the second node may be a CU-UP, and the first message may be a bearer context setup request message, a bearer context modification request message, or a trace-on message; according to another embodiment, if the first node is a CU, the second node may be a DU, and the first message may be a UE context setup request message, or a UE context modification request message, or a trace-on message. According to another embodiment, if the first node is a base station, the second node may be a UE, the first message may be an RRC message, and the RRC message may be an RRC reconfiguration message or an RRC release message. It should be understood that the above is merely an example, and the first node, the second node or the first message is not limited thereto, for example, the first message may also be passed between other interfaces, and the first node and the second node involved in the interface include, but are not limited to, the network entities listed in the above examples.

The second measurements configured for the second node may be one or more, each identified by a second measurement ID or a first measurement ID (e.g. QoE reference or application layer ID MeasConfigAppLayerId). The information related to the second measurement may include one or more second measurement information, each of which may include at least one of:

-a second measurement ID for indicating a certain second measurement, which may be for example a QoE reference or a MeasConfigAppLayerId;

an evaluation model, which may be a specific model (e.g., International Telecommunication Union (ITU) evaluation Standardization Sector ITU-T MOS model) and/or a label of the model (e.g., mode 0) or may be a submodel in a standard model (e.g., a katon-related model or formula defined in ITU-T i.14) or a calculation formula, which are merely examples, to which specific contents of an evaluation model information item are not limited, and the UE may take a result of a first measurement as an input of the evaluation model and an output of the first measurement through the evaluation model as a result of a second measurement;

-a model input, the input of the evaluation model being a measurement result of the first measurement or a subset of the measurement results of the first measurement (e.g. may be an input defined in i.14 defined by ITU-T, i.e. a katton related input, or a Playlist or InitialPlayoutDelay defined by 3 GPP) for indicating which information of the results derived from the first measurement made by the UE is required as input of the evaluation model;

A sampling time indicating the time to which the first measurement result as input to the model corresponds for one measurement of the second measurement, e.g. for video traffic the sampling time may be the video sequence duration;

-a window length indicating how long a second measurement is taken or calculated, which may be a time interval, such as, but not limited to, 1 minute;

a model output indicating the result of the second measurement, which may be, for example, a 5-point MOS value, or an evaluation of some aspect (e.g., an evaluation related to stuck or buffering, such as the number of stuck events, the duration of a stuck event, the frequency of a stuck event and/or the proportion of stuck duration, etc.)

It should be understood that in the description of the present invention, pause refers to a phenomenon in which the playing of media is paused, typically due to re-buffering. Rebuffering refers to a situation that occurs in a media buffer where the fill level of the buffer is about to run out, which may result in a pause or pause in the media play-out. In the description of the present application, the use of "stuck", "rebuffered", "buffering", "rebuffering", "caching", or similar expressions, is used to indicate that media play is paused, except where the context clearly indicates otherwise. That is, throughout the description of the present application, "stuck," "rebuffered," "buffered," or similar expressions may be used interchangeably to convey the same or similar meaning.

In step 1702, the second node receives and stores the information related to the second measurement, and the second node may be a node (e.g., a UE) performing the first measurement, or the second node may be a node (e.g., a base station) receiving the result of the first measurement (at this time, the result of the first measurement is visible to the base station), and when the second node measures itself or obtains the result of the first measurement from another node, the second node generates or derives the result of the second measurement according to the information related to the second measurement and the result of the first measurement. According to an embodiment, the result of the second measurement may be at least one of:

a MOS value or QoE value (e.g. a RAN visual QoE value) for indicating the result of the evaluation of the first measurement, i.e. how the quality of the service is experienced, e.g. the MOS value or QoE value is a 5-point score, a higher score represents a better QoE, and vice versa;

the number of caltons refers to the total number of caltons in one sampling time, and it can be understood that the greater the number of caltons, the worse the QoE is;

duration of a stuck event, which refers to the sum of the duration of all stuck events in one sample time, it can be understood that the longer the stuck event duration, the worse the QoE;

The frequency of the morton event refers to the number of morton times divided by the time of the service (i.e. the sampling time) in one sampling time, and it can be understood that the more frequent the morton, the worse the QoE;

the proportion of the katon duration refers to the total time of katon divided by the time of service (i.e. the sampling time) in one sampling time, and it can be understood that the larger the proportion of katon is, the worse the QoE is.

Step 1703, if the second node is a UE and the first node is a base station, the second node sends a second measurement report to the first node, where the second measurement report includes a result of the second measurement. If the first node is a base station, after receiving the second measurement report, the first node optimizes and adjusts the functions in the first node according to the second measurement result contained in the second measurement report; if the second node is a base station, the second node may directly use the result of the second measurement to perform optimization adjustment on the function of the second node, or may forward the result of the second measurement to other nodes. For example, the base station may determine, according to the second measurement result fed back by the multiple UEs, which UEs experience worse and which UEs experience better, and need to adjust the priority of service scheduling, so as to ensure the service quality experience of the UE with poor QoE experience, but need to ensure the QoE quality of other UEs.

This completes the description of another embodiment of the measurement configuration and reporting method for assisting in quality of experience optimization according to the present disclosure. By the method, the node (such as a base station) needing to be optimized can collect the measurement result (namely QoE value) obtained by evaluation under the unified standard, so that the node needing to be optimized can make the most suitable optimization scheme according to the measurement result, the user experience with poor QoE quality can be improved while the service experience of other users is ensured, the loyalty of the user is improved, and the income is increased for operators.

Fig. 13 shows a simplified block diagram of an example configuration of hardware components of a communication device 1300 that may be configured to implement any one or more of the methods according to various embodiments of the present disclosure, in accordance with various embodiments of the present disclosure. Thus, it should be understood that the communication device 1300 may be, for example, one or more of the first node, the second node, the third node, the user equipment, the first node, or the second node, or a portion of the various devices, nodes, or nodes described in this disclosure.

As shown in fig. 13, the communication device 1300 includes a transceiving unit 1301, a processor 1302, and a memory 1303.

The transceiving unit 1301 is configured to receive and/or transmit signals.

The processor 1302 is operatively connected to a transceiver unit 1301 and a memory 1303. The processor 1302 may be implemented as one or more processors to operate in accordance with any one or more of the methods described in the various embodiments of the present disclosure.

The memory 1303 is configured to store computer programs and data. Memory 1303 may include non-transitory memory for storing operations and/or code instructions executable by processor 1302. The memory 1303 may include processor-readable non-transitory programs and/or instructions therein that, when executed, cause the processor 1302 to perform the steps of any one or more of the methods according to various embodiments of the present disclosure. Memory 1303 may also include random access memory or buffer(s) to store intermediate processed data from various functions performed by processor 1302.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will realize that the description of the measurement methods of the present disclosure is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting. Other embodiments will readily suggest themselves to such skilled persons having the benefit of this disclosure.

In the interest of clarity, not all of the routine features of the implementations of the measurement methods and apparatus of the present disclosure are shown and described. It will of course be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation of the measurement method and apparatus, numerous implementation-specific decisions may be made in order to achieve the developer's specific goals, such as compliance with application-related, system, network, and business-related constraints, and that these specific goals will vary from one implementation to another and from one developer to another.

The modules, processing operations, and/or data structures described in accordance with this disclosure may be implemented using various types of operating systems, computing platforms, network devices, computer programs, and/or general purpose machines. Further, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that less general purpose devices, such as hardwired devices, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), or the like, may also be used. Where a method comprising a series of operations and sub-operations is implemented by a processor, computer, or machine, and those operations and sub-operations may be stored as a series of non-transitory code instructions readable by the processor, computer, or machine, they may be stored on a tangible and/or non-transitory medium.

The modules of the measurement methods and apparatus described herein may comprise software, firmware, hardware, or any combination(s) of software, firmware, or hardware suitable for the purposes described herein.

In the measurement methods described herein, various operations and sub-operations may be performed in various orders, and some of the operations and sub-operations may be optional.

While the foregoing disclosure of the present application has been made by way of non-limiting illustrative embodiments, these embodiments can be modified at will within the scope of the appended claims without departing from the spirit and nature of the disclosure.

Claims

1. A method of measurement, the method performed by a second node, comprising:

receiving a first message from a first node, the first message including a configuration relating to a second measurement, the second measurement being used to assist the first measurement;

initiating a second measurement according to the configuration related to the second measurement, or

Information for aligning the first measurement and the second measurement is derived based on the configuration associated with the second measurement.

2. The method of claim 1, the configuration related to the second measurement comprising at least one of:

an indication to the second node whether the first measurement is on;

a recording session ID of the first measurement for indicating a recording session identification in which the first measurement is ongoing;

a second measurement start/end indication for indicating the second node to start/end a second measurement;

a reporting pause time of the first measurement.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the measurement configuration information comprises one or more of:

the method comprises the steps of activating the number of users in a cell, loading a base station, loading the cell, loading Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs), alarming by the base station/cell, the number of error Transmission Blocks (TBs) corresponding to UE, distribution of Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) or Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS), utilization rate of network slice resources, throughput or the number of users.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a first indication sent by the first node or the third node for activating the second measurement; and

and starting the second measurement according to the first indication, or monitoring the bearer corresponding to the first measurement according to the information in the first indication, and starting or ending the second measurement according to the monitoring result.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the first indication comprises at least one of:

a recording session ID of the first measurement, a start time of the first measurement, a period time indication, DRB information, a QoS flow identification, a QoS class indication, reference information of the first measurement, a recording session start indication of the first measurement, a start indication, an activation indication, and a quality of experience QoE degradation indication.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a second indication sent by the first node or the third node for deactivating/ending the second measurement; and

and ending the second measurement according to the second indication.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the second indication comprises at least one of:

A recording session ID of the first measurement, reference information of the first measurement, a recording session end indication of the first measurement, an end indication, a deactivation indication, and a QoE quality improvement indication.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the second node is a User Equipment (UE), the method further comprising: sending, by an application layer of the UE, an indication to start/activate or end/deactivate the second measurement to an access layer of the UE, and the UE starting or ending the second measurement according to the indication.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the second node is a second base station,

wherein the configuration related to the second measurement comprises a configuration related to the second measurement of the first node.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the configuration related to the second measurement comprises: third indication information indicating whether the first node has activated the second measurement;

the method further comprises the following steps: and starting second measurement according to the third indication information.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the first message comprises a handover request message or a get UE context feedback message.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the first message further comprises a configuration related to a first measurement,

Wherein the configuration relating to the first measurement comprises one or more of the following information:

information for requesting a period of the first measurement;

requesting reference information indicating a first measurement;

information for requesting recording of a session identification ID;

information for requesting a data radio bearer DRB;

information for requesting a quality of service, QoS, identification;

information for requesting a QoS class; and

and the information is used for requesting to report the pause time.

13. The method of any of claims 1-3, or 12, wherein the first message is an initial context setup request message or a trace start message.

14. The method according to any one of claims 1-12, further comprising:

sending a report of the first measurement and/or a report of the second measurement to the fourth node.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the first and second light sources are selected from the group consisting of,

wherein the reporting of the second measurement comprises one or more of:

a node ID indicating a node performing the second measurement;

reference information of the first measurement;

a recording session ID of the first measurement; and

The result of the second measurement.