CN116939666A - Method for coverage protection and user grouping of minimization of drive test configuration - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for coverage protection and user grouping of a minimization of drive test configuration, belonging to the technical field of wireless communication. The method is to collect information, receive UE memory information, judge whether can store LTE and NR two kinds of extended configuration information according to UE memory information, if can store LTE and NR two kinds of extended configuration information, send the configuration content of two kinds of configuration information to UE; if both the LTE and NR extended configuration information cannot be stored, judging whether one of the configuration information can be stored. The method is suitable for the large-scale wireless sensor network, and solves the problem of recording MDT configuration coverage to a certain extent.

Description

Method for coverage protection and user grouping of minimization of drive test configuration

Technical Field

The invention belongs to the technical field of wireless communication, and relates to a method for coverage protection and user grouping of a minimization of drive test configuration.

Background

Wireless communication refers to the transmission of information over long distances, which may be anywhere between a few meters to thousands of kilometers, without the aid of wires, cables, or any other form of electrical conductor. Wireless communication technology generally involves the transmission of information without any physical connection between two or more points, which may be used for cellular telephones, wireless internet surfing, wireless home networks, etc. Wireless communication has certain advantages such as low cost, convenience and flexibility, high speed, and the like, as no physical infrastructure exists. In current wireless network planning, performance is affected by many different factors, and in order to effectively evaluate network performance, it cannot be estimated by simple radio measurements, so a drive test method is proposed. Conventional drive test is a manual process in which operators typically need to send engineers directly to the relevant area and manually acquire radio measurement data in order to collect network quality information. However, conventional drive tests take a lot of time and effort to obtain reliable data because, in general, the obtained data covers only specific areas of the network, such as roads and highways. To address these problems and needs, operators introduced a solution known as "Minimization of Drive Tests (MDT)" in Release 10, 3GPP, which involves two Radio Access Technologies (RATs), namely Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). MDT is mainly to collect radio measurement data to evaluate network performance using measurement capability and geographical distribution characteristics of commercial User Equipments (UEs). MDT has several advantages over traditional drive tests, such as: the method can reduce the drive test expense, shorten the optimization period, save energy sources and reduce emission, and collect all area measurement information (such as narrow roads, forests and private places) which cannot be obtained by the traditional drive test method, so that the network optimization and maintenance cost of a mobile communication operation company is reduced.

MDTs can be classified into recordable MDTs and immediate MDTs. Wherein the immediate MDT is an MDT measurement by a UE in an RRC CONNECTED state (RRC-CONNECTED); logged MDT is an MDT measurement made by a UE in either an IDLE state (RRC-IDLE) or an INACTIVE state (rrc_inactive). The immediate MDT is generally used for measuring one or more of data volume, network throughput rate, packet transmission delay, packet loss rate, processing delay and the like of the UE; while logged MDT generally refers to a measurement of the received signal strength by the UE. The above-mentioned logged MDT may be further classified into a signaling-based MDT and a management-based MDT; similarly, the immediate MDT may be classified into a signaling-based MDT and a management-based MDT. From the perspective of core network configuration MDT, signaling-based MDT is MDT for a certain UE, while management-based MDT is not MDT for a certain UE; the MDT based on the signaling is that the core network sends the MDT configuration of the UE to the base station through the interface signaling of the UE corresponding to the base station and the core network, and the MDT based on the management directly sends the configuration information to the base station, and the base station selects the UE to carry out MDT measurement according to the configuration information. Compared with the conventional drive test, the MDT has many advantages, such as reducing the drive test overhead, shortening the optimization period, saving resources, and collecting the whole-area measurement information which cannot be obtained by the conventional drive test method, thereby reducing the network optimization and maintenance cost of the mobile communication operation company. But there are also disadvantages in practical applications.

The network side in the current protocol should ensure that the management-based MDT cannot cover the signaling-based MDT that has been previously configured for the UE in configuring the MDT for the UE, because the logged MDT configuration may be used to ensure that the logged MDT configuration with high priority is not covered by another logged MDT, but when the UE reselects the network, a situation may occur in which it is previously configured to be covered, for example, the eNB (eNodeB) selects the UE to perform the logged MDT, the configuration of the previous gNB (gndeb) and the network measurement result will be lost. Therefore, there is a need to propose a signaling-based logged MDT configuration coverage protection method.

Disclosure of Invention

Accordingly, an objective of the present invention is to provide a method for minimizing drive test configuration coverage protection and user grouping. When the UE reselects the network, the new MDT configuration received by the UE may overwrite the original MDT configuration, causing the previously collected data to be unavailable or lost. The main scenario is a scenario in which signaling-based MDT is configured in E-UTRAN: 1) The terminal reselects the network when collecting the recorded measured values; 2) After collecting the logged measurements but before uploading the logged MDT reports, the terminal reselects to the network. Aiming at the problems, the invention provides a signaling-based recording type MDT configuration coverage protection and user grouping method, which fully considers UE storage performance and MDT configuration process and is suitable for a large-scale wireless sensor network. The network changes the configuration of the logged MDT measurement in the terminal by sending the information loggaedemeasurementconfiguration to the terminal, replacing the configuration before, in Rel-17 by

The method includes the steps that an extension variable is added into the LoggedMeasurementconfiguration information, the variable meaning is of a recorded MDT type, and the extension variable is stored in the terminal, the extension is helpful for the network to decide what type of configuration is used for configuring the terminal, and the terminal can return a mark to the network to inform that the terminal has an effective and preferential MDT configuration, namely the support of the terminal is needed.

In order to achieve the above purpose, the present invention provides the following technical solutions:

a method of minimization of drive test configuration coverage protection and user grouping, the method comprising the steps of:

s1: the method comprises the steps that User Equipment (UE) and a base station are connected, and the UE enters a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection state;

s2: the base station requests to acquire the memory information of the UE, and prepares for judging the configuration extension content;

s3: the UE responds to the base station and sends own memory information;

s4: the base station comprehensively decides the expansion content by comprehensively considering the memory information of the UE and the network coverage condition of the target cell;

s5: transmitting the configuration content decided by the S4 to the UE through Logged Measurement Configuration signaling, wherein the extension content comprises the decided extension configuration content and MDT type;

s6: releasing the RRC connection;

s7: the UE enters an RRC idle state or a non-connected state, and records MDT measurement data according to the configuration content received before;

s8: when the set time is reached or the memory of the UE is full, the measurement is ended, and an RRC connection is established;

s9: the UE enters an RRC connection state;

s10: the UE uploads the previously collected measurement results.

Optionally, the logged MDT measurement data includes measurements from the same RAT type and different RAT types; the release operation of the measurement configuration in the UE is achieved by a configuration replacement when the configuration is overwritten or by a configuration purge if the duration timer is stopped or expired condition is met.

Optionally, the UE is classified according to memory capability:

simultaneously storing both LTE and NR configurations without performing any changes to RRC signaling, network procedures or interfaces;

if the eNB configures the UE as the logged MDT, the UE applies the configuration and continues to execute the configuration;

upon selection to the gNB, the UE does not change any information about participating in the MDT session.

Optionally, the recording the MDT measurement data according to the configuration content received before specifically includes the following steps:

s11: the information collection stage is used for receiving the memory information of the UE;

s12: judging whether two kinds of extended configuration information of LTE and NR can be stored according to the UE memory information;

s13: if the two kinds of extended configuration information of LTE and NR can be stored, the configuration content of the two kinds of configuration information is sent to the UE;

s14: if the two kinds of extended configuration information of LTE and NR can not be stored, judging whether one kind of configuration information can be stored;

s15: if one of the configuration information cannot be stored, indicating that the memory of the UE is insufficient to store the recorded MDT configuration, and feeding back the result to the user;

s16: if one of the configuration information can be stored, judging which configuration information is stored; collecting network service conditions of UE along-way cells and target cells;

s17: after information is collected, judging whether an NR network is larger than an LTE network coverage area or not by calculating the total network coverage area;

s18: if the NR network is larger than the LTE network in coverage area, determining the configuration extension content of the recorded MDT as NR extension information;

s19: if the NR network has smaller coverage area than the LTE network, the configuration extension content of the recorded MDT is determined to be LTE extension information.

The invention has the beneficial effects that: the present invention extends to the solution of Rel-17, where the logged MDT configuration can enhance UE support by storing logged MDT contexts: LTE and NR two-record MDT configurations. Aiming at the situation that part of UE is insufficient in memory and cannot store a lot of configurations, on one hand, the UE is classified according to the capability (such as memory); on the other hand, the use condition of the RAT of the surrounding cells and the memory size of the measurement configuration are comprehensively considered, and the measurement configuration and the information of the RAT are sequenced; finally, the relevant configuration stored by the UE of each category is determined.

Additional advantages, objects, and features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will become apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned from practice of the invention. The objects and other advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the specification.

Drawings

For the purpose of making the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present invention more apparent, the present invention will be described in the following preferred detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a measurement configuration of a logged MDT;

FIG. 2 is a flow chart of the present invention;

fig. 3 is a flow chart of a process for determining the extension content of a logged MDT configuration.

Detailed Description

Other advantages and effects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following disclosure, which describes the embodiments of the present invention with reference to specific examples. The invention may be practiced or carried out in other embodiments that depart from the specific details, and the details of the present description may be modified or varied from the spirit and scope of the present invention. It should be noted that the illustrations provided in the following embodiments merely illustrate the basic idea of the present invention by way of illustration, and the following embodiments and features in the embodiments may be combined with each other without conflict.

Wherein the drawings are for illustrative purposes only and are shown in schematic, non-physical, and not intended to limit the invention; for the purpose of better illustrating embodiments of the invention, certain elements of the drawings may be omitted, enlarged or reduced and do not represent the size of the actual product; it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that certain well-known structures in the drawings and descriptions thereof may be omitted.

The same or similar reference numbers in the drawings of embodiments of the invention correspond to the same or similar components; in the description of the present invention, it should be understood that, if there are terms such as "upper", "lower", "left", "right", "front", "rear", etc., that indicate an azimuth or a positional relationship based on the azimuth or the positional relationship shown in the drawings, it is only for convenience of describing the present invention and simplifying the description, but not for indicating or suggesting that the referred device or element must have a specific azimuth, be constructed and operated in a specific azimuth, so that the terms describing the positional relationship in the drawings are merely for exemplary illustration and should not be construed as limiting the present invention, and that the specific meaning of the above terms may be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art according to the specific circumstances.

In the following embodiments, the terminal may be a mobile terminal (e.g., a cellular phone and a tablet computer), or may be another type of terminal. The operating system running on the terminal may also be various systems such as android system, which is widely used at present, or Windows operating system and iOS system, but is not limited to these systems.

The basic idea of the MDT technology is that an operator performs measurement reporting through a commercial terminal to partially replace the traditional drive test work, so as to automatically collect terminal measurement data to detect and optimize problems and faults in a wireless network. MDTs can be classified into recordable MDTs and immediate MDTs. Wherein the immediate MDT is an MDT measurement by a UE in an RRC CONNECTED state (RRC-CONNECTED); logged MDT is an MDT measurement made by a UE in either an IDLE state (RRC-IDLE) or an INACTIVE state (rrc_inactive). The above-mentioned logged MDT may be further classified into a signaling-based MDT and a management-based MDT; similarly, the immediate MDT may be classified into a signaling-based MDT and a management-based MDT. Wherein from the perspective of core network configuration MDT, the signaling-based MDT is the MDT for a certain UE, whereas the management-based MDT is not the MDT for a certain UE.

At present, rel-17 mentions that the priority of minimization of drive tests based on signaling is higher than the priority of MDTs based on management, that is, the network side should ensure that MDTs based on management cannot cover MDTs based on signaling that have been configured for the terminal device before, and that logged MDT configurations can be used to ensure that logged MDT configurations with high priority are not covered by another logged MDT, but when the UE reselects the network, a covered situation may occur. Rel-17 introduces information in the MDT configuration that records MDT types, which are stored in the UE variables, including other recorded measurement information.

Fig. 1 shows a measurement configuration of a logged MDT, where a base station sends information loggaedemeasurementconfiguration to a logged MDT terminal device through a network, where the information is stored in a UE variable and the information is used to transmit configuration parameters of the logged MDT, so as to implement configuration of changing logged MDT measurement in the terminal. The logged MDT type is extended in Rel-17, which extension helps the network decide not to configure the UE with the logged MDT configuration triggered by the management-based MDT, even though the UE has not managed to collect any data yet. The UE returns a flag to the network to inform the network that there is a valid priority MDT session configuration. The UE uses the stored parameters to indicate signaling-based MDT configuration availability in rrcsetup complete and RRCResumeComplete.

The invention designs a signaling-based recording MDT configuration coverage protection and user grouping method. The invention is mainly directed to two scenarios: 1) The terminal reselects the network when collecting the recorded measured values; 2) After collecting the logged measurements but before uploading the logged MDT reports, the terminal reselects to the network. The invention fully considers the memory condition of the recorded MDT terminal equipment, classifies and sets the measurement configuration extension content of the recorded MDT, and considers the coverage condition of the base station of the target cell and the memory condition of the terminal. To address the situation when the network provides a new configuration, the old configuration is replaced with the new configuration resulting in the measurement record being cleared.

The invention provides a method of MDT, and FIG. 2 shows a flow chart of the invention, the flow chart comprises the following steps:

s1, the UE and the base station establish connection, and the UE enters an RRC connection state.

S2, the base station requests to acquire the memory information of the UE, and prepares for judging the configuration extension content.

S3, the UE responds to the base station and sends the self memory information.

And S4, the base station comprehensively decides the expansion content by comprehensively considering the memory information of the UE and the network coverage condition of the target cell.

And S5, transmitting the configuration content determined in the S4 to the UE through a LoggedMeasurementconfiguration signaling, wherein the extension content not only comprises the determined extension configuration content, but also comprises an MDT type.

S6, releasing the RRC connection.

And S7, the UE enters an RRC idle state or a non-connection state, and records MDT measurement data according to the configuration content received before.

And S8, when the set time is reached or the memory of the UE is full, the measurement is ended, and the RRC connection is established.

S9, the UE enters an RRC connection state.

And S10, the UE uploads the measurement results collected before.

It should be noted that the base station that issues the logged MDT measurement configuration to the UE may be a different base station than the base station that the UE reports the measurement result; and the base station to which the UE is connected when reconnecting the network may also be a different base station than the base station that issued the logged MDT measurement configuration to the UE.

For logged MDT, the configuration will always be done in cells of the same RAT type, and each time the UE reconnects to the network, it may override the previous configuration. The measurements in the logged MDT report include measurements from the same RAT type and different RAT types. The release operation of the measurement configuration in the UE is achieved by a configuration replacement when the configuration is overwritten or by a configuration purge if the duration timer is stopped or expired condition is met.

In addition, there may be a problem in that the management-based MDT covers the signaling-based MDT. The MDT based on signaling and the MDT based on management can be configured to the base station at the same time, but in the existing MDT configuration principle, the base station configures the MDT for the terminal only according to the state of the base station, and the terminal receives the new MDT configuration and applies the latest configuration.

Therefore, the present invention classifies according to the UE memory capabilities. Storing both LTE and NR configurations simultaneously does not perform any changes to RRC signaling, network procedures or interfaces. Once the eNB configures the UE as a logged MDT, the UE applies the configuration and proceeds to perform the configuration. Upon selection to the gNB, the UE does not change any information about participating in the MDT session. Therefore, the simultaneous storage of the two configurations of LTE and NR is more convenient, but the memory requirement of the UE is higher. The stronger the UE capability, the more extension variables that can be added. In view of the above, the present invention provides the following specific implementation procedure, as shown in fig. 3, showing a process flow chart for judging the extended content of the logged MDT configuration, where the flow chart includes the following steps:

s11, in the information collection stage, the memory information of the UE is received.

And S12, judging whether two kinds of extended configuration information, namely LTE and NR, can be stored according to the UE memory information.

S13, if the two kinds of extended configuration information of LTE and NR can be stored, the configuration content of the two kinds of configuration information is sent to the UE.

S14, if the two kinds of extended configuration information of LTE and NR can not be stored, judging whether one kind of configuration information can be stored.

S15, if one of the configuration information cannot be stored, the memory of the UE is insufficient to store the recorded MDT configuration, and the result is fed back to the user.

S16, if one of the configuration information can be stored, we need to judge which configuration information is stored. We therefore need to collect network usage of the UE along-way cells as well as the target cell.

And S17, after information is collected, judging whether the NR network is larger than the LTE network coverage area by calculating the total network coverage area.

S18, if the NR network is larger than the LTE network coverage area, the configuration extension content of the recorded MDT is determined to be NR extension information.

S19, if the NR network has a smaller coverage area than the LTE network, the configuration extension content of the logged MDT is determined as LTE extension information.

Finally, it is noted that the above embodiments are only for illustrating the technical solution of the present invention and not for limiting the same, and although the present invention has been described in detail with reference to the preferred embodiments, it should be understood by those skilled in the art that modifications and equivalents may be made thereto without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention, which is intended to be covered by the claims of the present invention.

Claims (4)

1. A method for minimization of drive test configuration coverage protection and user grouping, characterized in that: the method comprises the following steps:

s1: the method comprises the steps that User Equipment (UE) and a base station are connected, and the UE enters a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection state;

s2: the base station requests to acquire the memory information of the UE, and prepares for judging the configuration extension content;

s3: the UE responds to the base station and sends own memory information;

s4: the base station comprehensively decides the expansion content by comprehensively considering the memory information of the UE and the network coverage condition of the target cell;

s5: transmitting the configuration content decided by the S4 to the UE through Logged Measurement Configuration signaling, wherein the extension content comprises the decided extension configuration content and MDT type;

s6: releasing the RRC connection;

s7: the UE enters an RRC idle state or a non-connected state, and records MDT measurement data according to the configuration content received before;

s8: when the set time is reached or the memory of the UE is full, the measurement is ended, and an RRC connection is established;

s9: the UE enters an RRC connection state;

s10: the UE uploads the previously collected measurement results.

2. The method for minimization of drive test configuration coverage protection and user grouping according to claim 1, wherein: the logged MDT measurement data includes measurements from the same RAT type and different RAT types; the release operation of the measurement configuration in the UE is achieved by a configuration replacement when the configuration is overwritten or by a configuration purge if the duration timer is stopped or expired condition is met.

3. The method for minimization of drive test configuration coverage protection and user grouping according to claim 1, wherein: classifying the UE according to the memory capacity:

simultaneously storing both LTE and NR configurations without performing any changes to RRC signaling, network procedures or interfaces;

if the eNB configures the UE as the logged MDT, the UE applies the configuration and continues to execute the configuration;

upon selection to the gNB, the UE does not change any information about participating in the MDT session.

4. The method for minimization of drive test configuration coverage protection and user grouping according to claim 1, wherein: the recording type MDT measurement data according to the configuration content received before specifically comprises the following steps:

s11: the information collection stage is used for receiving the memory information of the UE;

s12: judging whether two kinds of extended configuration information of LTE and NR can be stored according to the UE memory information;

s13: if the two kinds of extended configuration information of LTE and NR can be stored, the configuration content of the two kinds of configuration information is sent to the UE;

s14: if the two kinds of extended configuration information of LTE and NR can not be stored, judging whether one kind of configuration information can be stored;

s15: if one of the configuration information cannot be stored, indicating that the memory of the UE is insufficient to store the recorded MDT configuration, and feeding back the result to the user;

s16: if one of the configuration information can be stored, judging which configuration information is stored; collecting network service conditions of UE along-way cells and target cells;

s17: after information is collected, judging whether an NR network is larger than an LTE network coverage area or not by calculating the total network coverage area;

s18: if the NR network is larger than the LTE network in coverage area, determining the configuration extension content of the recorded MDT as NR extension information;

s19: if the NR network has smaller coverage area than the LTE network, the configuration extension content of the recorded MDT is determined to be LTE extension information.