CN117378182A

CN117378182A - Load balancing optimization for 5G systems

Info

Publication number: CN117378182A
Application number: CN202280037594.6A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 乔伊·周; 姚羿志
Original assignee: Intel Corp
Current assignee: Intel Corp
Priority date: 2021-09-24
Filing date: 2022-09-23
Publication date: 2024-01-09
Also published as: WO2023049345A1

Abstract

Systems, methods, and devices related to load balancing optimization are described. A device may create a D-LBO function Management Object Instance (MOI) to model D-LBO functions. The device may send a message to a configuration management service (MnS) to modify an attribute of the D-LBO function MOI to set one or more ranges associated with the D-LBO function. The apparatus can identify a response from the collocated MnS indicating that the D-LBO function MOI has been modified.

Description

Load balancing optimization for 5G systems

Cross Reference to Related Applications

The present application claims the benefit of U.S. provisional application No. 63/248,299, filed 24 at 9 of 2021, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference as if fully set forth.

Technical Field

The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods for wireless communications, and more particularly to load balancing optimization for 5G systems.

Background

Wireless devices are becoming widely popular and increasingly requesting access to wireless channels. In a 5G system (5G system,5 gs), the policy control function (policy control function, PCF) is one of the control plane network functions (control plane network function, NF) of the 5G core network (5G core network,5GC).

Drawings

Fig. 1 depicts an illustrative schematic diagram of load balancing optimization in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 2 depicts an illustrative schematic diagram of load balancing optimization in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 3 depicts an illustrative schematic diagram of load balancing optimization in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 4A-4B depict illustrative diagrams of load balancing optimization in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 5 depicts an illustrative schematic diagram of load balancing optimization in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 6 depicts an illustrative schematic diagram of load balancing optimization in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 7 illustrates a flowchart of an illustrative process for an illustrative load balancing optimization system in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Fig. 8 illustrates an example network architecture in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the disclosure.

Fig. 9 schematically illustrates a wireless network in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 10 illustrates components of a computing device in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

Detailed Description

The following description and the drawings sufficiently illustrate specific embodiments to enable those skilled in the art to practice them. Other embodiments may incorporate structural, logical, electrical, process, algorithm, and other changes. Portions and features of some embodiments may be included in, or substituted for, those of others. The embodiments recited in the claims encompass all available equivalents of those claims.

The goal of load balancing optimization (Load Balancing Optimization, LBO) is to automatically distribute user traffic among neighboring cells to ensure efficient use of radio resources while providing a good end user experience and performance. The following diagram illustrates two ways to implement LBO: distributed LBO (D-LBO) and Centralized LBO (C-LBO).

Example embodiments of the present disclosure relate to systems, methods, and apparatus for load balancing optimization of 5G systems.

Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to, among other things, load Balancing Optimization (LBO) and mobility robustness optimization (Mobility Robustness Optimization, MRO). In particular, the present disclosure provides the following new features for 5G LBO: 1) Self-organizing network (Self-Organizing Network, SON) procedures to support D-LBO and C-LBO; 2) Definition of DLBOFunction information object class (Information Object Class, IOC), including control and Handover (HO) of LBO function and/or scope of reselection parameters to support LBO actions; 3) Enhancement of the notification message to report which SON function is generating the notification; 4) The MRO and PCI configuration procedures are modified to indicate SON functions that generate notifications using the sonFunction attribute.

The above description is intended to be illustrative, and not restrictive. Many other examples, configurations, procedures, algorithms, etc. may exist, some of which are described in more detail below. Example embodiments will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

In some embodiments, the goal of Load Balancing Optimization (LBO) is to automatically distribute user traffic among neighboring cells to ensure efficient use of radio resources while providing a good quality end user experience and performance. The following diagram illustrates two ways to implement LBO: distributed LBO (D-LBO) and centralized LBO (C-LBO).

For D-LBO, the LBO management system configures the range of HO and/or reselection parameters at the D-LBO function in the gNB, which function will collect and analyze load information to determine actions, which may include: 1) UE selection, i.e. the gNB selects and instructs a certain UE(s) to handover to a non-congested neighbor cell, 2) cell reselection, i.e. the gNB directs a certain UE(s) to camp on a less congested neighbor cell; and 3) mobility settings, i.e. the gNB modifies the handover parameters to change the coverage of the congested cell.

For C-LBO, the C-LBO function in OAM will collect and analyze LBO related measurements to determine the act of balancing traffic load among NR cells. These actions are configuring a range of HO and/or reselection parameters at the gNB.

Fig. 2 depicts a process describing how a Distributed Self-organizing network (D-SON) management function manages LBO functions. Assume that the D-SON management function has consumed performance guarantee MnS to create a performance measurement (performance measurement, PM) job to collect handover-related measurements.

The D-SON management function utilizes a modified moiatittributes operation to consume management services provided by a Network Function (NF) to configure the range of HO and/or reselection parameters for the LBO function. The MnS is provided to set the range (note) for the MRO function. If LBO functionality is not enabled for a given NR cell, the D-SON management function consumes NF provisioned MnS to enable LBO functionality with a modifiMOIAttributes operation. MnS is provided to enable LBO functions. The LBO function performs the action of balancing traffic load among NR cells. The LBO function indicates that an LBO action has been performed. The collocated MnS sends notification to the D-SON management function of notify moiattributevalue change, where sourceindicator=son_operation, sourcfunction=d-LBO to indicate that LBO operation has been performed. The D-SON management function collects performance measurements related to LBO. The D-SON management function analyzes the measurements to evaluate LBO performance. If LBO fails to meet expectations, the D-SON management function consumes MnS of the instruction with a modified MOIAttributes operation to update the range of HO and/or reselection parameters. The assigned MnS updates the range of handover parameters. It should be noted that the interface between the provisioning MnS and D-LBO functions has not been standardized.

FIG. 3 depicts a process describing how the C-LBO function performs load balancing between NR units. Assume that a PM job has been created to collect LBO related measurements.

In one or more embodiments, the C-LBO function gathers LBO-related performance measurements. The C-LBO function analyzes the measurements to evaluate LO performance.

When LBO performance fails to meet expectations, the D-SON management function performs the following actions:

the MnS is consumed to update the range of HO and/or reselection parameters using a modifyMOIAttributes operation. The assigned MnS updates the range (note) of the handover parameters. A notification notify moiattributevalue change is received from a producer of the collocated MnS, where sourceIndicator = son_operation, sourcfunction = C-LBO, to indicate that the range of handover parameters has been changed. And (3) injection: the interface between the provisioning MnS and the NR cell(s) has not been standardized.

In one or more embodiments, the load balancing optimization system may facilitate definition of DLBOFunction Information Object Classes (IOCs). Fig. 4A shows NRM segments for DLBO management. Fig. 4B shows an inheritance hierarchy.

In one or more embodiments, the load balancing optimization system may define a DLBOFunction IOC. This IOC contains attributes that support the D-SON function of LBO. In the case where there are multiple DLBO MOIs at different levels of the containment tree, the lower level DLBO MOI is prioritized over the higher level DLBO MOI(s) of the same containment tree.

The DLBOFunction IOC includes the properties inherited from the top IOC, which has the properties in table 1 below:

in one or more embodiments, the generic notification is valid for this IOC with no exceptions or additions, as shown in table 2:

in one or more embodiments, as shown in table 3, the load balancing optimization system may facilitate the following ranges of HO and/or reselection parameters:

in one or more embodiments, the load balancing optimization system may provide enhancements (adding a sonFunction attribute) to the notification message to report which SON function is generating the notification.

In one or more embodiments, the notify MOIAttributeValueChange notifies the subscribing consumer that one or more attributes of the managed object instance in the NRM have changed. Some of the input parameters are shown in table 4:

in one or more embodiments, the load balancing optimization system may modify the MRO and PCI configuration process to indicate SON functions that generate notifications using the sonFunction attribute, as shown in table 5:

In one or more embodiments, in the case of MROs, a producer of provisioning MnS should have the ability to notify authorized consumers that an action has been taken to alleviate the handover problem.

Referring to fig. 5, an MRO process is shown that describes how a D-SON management function may manage the MRO function. Assume that the D-SON management function has consumed performance guarantee MnS to create PM jobs to collect handover-related measurements.

In one or more embodiments, the D-SON management function consumes provisioning MnS with a modifiyMOIAttributes operation to configure targets for the MRO function. MnS is provided to set a target (note) for the MRO function. The D-SON management function consumes management services of NF provisioning with a modifymoittributes operation to configure a range of handover parameters. The MnS is provided to set the range (note) for the MRO function. The D-SON management function consumes NF provisioned management services with a modifymoittributes operation to configure MRO control parameters (e.g., maximum deviation of handover trigger, minimum time between handover trigger changes). The associated MnS sets MRO control parameters (notes) for the MRO function. If the MRO function is not enabled for a given NR cell, the D-SON management function consumes NF provisioned MnS to enable the MRO function with a modifiMOIAttributes operation. MnS is provided to enable MRO functions (notes). The MRO function receives the MRO information report from the UE(s) and analyzes it to determine actions that optimize MRO performance. If the performance does not reach the target, the handover parameters are updated. The MRO function indicates that an MRO action (note) has been taken. The collocated MnS sends a notification to the D-SON management function, notify MOIAttributeValueChange, where sourceindicator=SON_operation, sourcfunction=d-MRO, to indicate that action has been taken to alleviate the HO problem. The D-SON management function collects performance measurements related to the MROs. The D-SON management function analyzes the measurements to evaluate MRO performance. When the MRO performance does not reach the target, the D-SON management function performs one of the following actions:

-consuming the provisioned MnS with a modifymoittributes operation to update the target of the MRO function. The MnS is provided as an MRO function update target (note).

-consuming the provisioned MnS with a modymoiattributes operation to update the range of handover parameters. The assigned MnS updates the range (note) of the handover parameters.

-consuming the collocated MnS with a modifymodialibutes operation to update the control parameters. The MnS provided updates the control parameters (notes). And (3) injection: the interface between the assigned MnS and MRO functions has not been standardized.

Referring to fig. 6, a PCI reconfiguration process is shown that describes how the PCI configuration function reconfigures the PCI of a cell based on a PCI list and notifies D-SON management consumers when a PCI conflict or confusion is detected.

The PCI configuration (D-SON) function detects and corrects PCI collision or PCI confusion problems for NR cells. The PCI configuration (D-SON) function indicates attribute changes to the producer of the provisioning MnS. (note). The producer of the provisioning MnS sends a notification to the D-SON management function, with sourceindicator=son_operation, sourceinfunction=d-PCI, attributeValueChange =new PCI value, to indicate that the new PCI value has been assigned to the NR cell. And (3) injection: the interface between the producer of the collocated MnS and the PCI configuration (D-SON) function has not been standardized.

In some embodiments, the electronic device(s), network(s), system(s), chip(s) or component(s) or portions or implementations thereof of fig. 8-10 or some other figure herein may be configured to perform one or more processes, techniques or methods as described herein, or portions thereof. One such process is depicted in fig. 7.

For example, the process may include creating a D-LBO function Management Object Instance (MOI) at 702 to model the D-LBO function.

The process also includes, at 704, sending a message to a configuration management service (MnS) to modify an attribute of the D-LBO function MOI to set one or more ranges associated with the D-LBO function.

The process also includes, at 706, identifying a response from the provisioning MnS indicating that the D-LBO function MOI has been modified.

For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components recited in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, procedures, and/or methods recited in the following example section. For example, the baseband circuitry described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples set forth below. As another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc., described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures, can be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples recited below in the examples section.

It is to be understood that the above description is intended to be illustrative, and not restrictive.

Fig. 8-10 illustrate various systems, devices, and components that may implement aspects of the disclosed embodiments.

Fig. 8 illustrates an example network architecture 800 in accordance with various embodiments. Network 800 may operate in a manner consistent with the 3GPP technical specifications of LTE or 5G/NR systems. However, the example embodiments are not limited thereto, and the described embodiments may be applied to other networks that benefit from the principles described herein, such as future 3GPP systems, and the like.

The network 800 includes a UE 802, which is any mobile or non-mobile computing device designed to communicate with a RAN 804 via an over-the-air connection. The UE 802 is communicatively coupled with the RAN 804 through a Uu interface, which may be applicable to both LTE and NR systems. Examples of UEs 802 include, but are not limited to, smart phones, tablet computers, wearable computers, desktop computers, laptop computers, in-vehicle infotainment systems, in-vehicle entertainment systems, dashboards, head-up display (HUD) devices, in-vehicle diagnostic devices, dashboard mobile devices, mobile data terminals, electronic engine management systems, electronic/engine control units, electronic/engine control modules, embedded systems, sensors, microcontrollers, control modules, engine management systems, networking appliances, machine-to-machine (M2M), device-to-device (D2D), machine-to-type communication, MTC) devices, internet of things (Internet of Things, ioT) devices, and so forth. The network 800 may include a plurality of UEs 802 directly coupled to each other via a D2D, proSe, PC5 and/or Side Link (SL) interface. These UEs 802 may be M2M/D2D/MTC/IoT devices and/or in-vehicle systems that communicate using physical side link channels, such as, but not limited to PSBCH, PSDCH, PSSCH, PSCCH, PSFCH, etc. UE 802 may perform blind decoding attempts for SL channels/links according to various embodiments herein.

In some embodiments, the UE 802 may also communicate with the AP 806 via an over-the-air (OTA) connection. The AP 806 manages WLAN connections that may be used to load transfer some/all network traffic from the RAN 804. The connection between the UE 802 and the AP 806 may conform to any IEEE 802.11 protocol. Further, the UE 802, RAN 804, and AP 806 may utilize cellular-WLAN aggregation/integration (e.g., LWA/LWIP). cellular-WLAN aggregation may involve the UE 802 being configured by the RAN 804 to utilize both cellular radio resources and WLAN resources.

The RAN 804 includes one or more access network nodes (access network node, AN) 808. The AN 808 terminates the air interface(s) for the UE 802 by providing access plane protocols including RRC, PDCP, RLC, MAC and PHY/L1 protocols. In this way, the AN 808 enables data/voice connectivity between the CN 820 and the UE 802. AN 808 may be a macrocell base station or a low power base station for providing a femtocell, picocell, or other similar cell with a smaller coverage area, smaller user capacity, or higher bandwidth than a macrocell; or some combination of these. In these implementations, the AN 808 is referred to as a BS, gNB, RAN node, eNB, ng-eNB, nodeB, RSU, TRxP, or the like.

One example implementation is a "CU/DU splitting" architecture, wherein AN 808 is embodied as a gNB-Central Unit (CU) communicatively coupled with one or more gNB-Distributed Units (DUs), wherein each DU may be communicatively coupled with one or more Radio Units (RUs) (also known as RRHs, RRUs, etc.) (see, e.g., 3GPP TS 38.401v16.1.0 (2020-03)). In some implementations, one or more RUs may be individual RSUs. In some implementations, instead of or in addition to the gNB-CU and gNB-DU, the CU/DU split may include one ng-eNB-CU and one or more ng-eNB-DUs, respectively. AN 808 employed as a CU may be implemented in a separate device or as part of one or more software entities running on a server computer, for example, as a virtual network including a virtual baseband Unit (BBU) or pool of BBUs, cloud RAN (CRAN), radio equipment controller (Radio Equipment Controller, REC), radio cloud center (Radio Cloud Center, RCC), centralized RAN (C-RAN), virtualized RAN (vRAN), etc. (although these terms may refer to different implementation concepts). Any other type of architecture, arrangement, and/or configuration may also be used.

Multiple ANs may be coupled to each other via AN X2 interface (if RAN 804 is AN LTE RAN or AN evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network, E-UTRAN) 810) or AN Xn interface (if RAN 804 is a NG-RAN 814). The X2/Xn interface (which may be separated into control/user plane interfaces in some embodiments) may allow the AN to communicate information related to handover, data/context transfer, mobility, load management, interference coordination, etc.

The ANs of the RAN 804 may each manage one or more cells, groups of cells, component carriers, etc. to provide AN air interface for network access to the UE 802. The UE 802 may be simultaneously connected with multiple cells provided by the same or different ANs 808 of the RAN 804. For example, the UE 802 and RAN 804 may use carrier aggregation to allow the UE 802 to connect with multiple component carriers, each component carrier corresponding to one Pcell or Scell. In a dual connectivity scenario, the first AN 808 may be a primary node providing AN MCG and the second AN 808 may be a secondary node providing AN SCG. The first/second AN 808 may be any combination of eNB, gNB, ng-enbs, etc.

RAN 804 may provide the air interface over licensed spectrum or unlicensed spectrum. To operate in unlicensed spectrum, a node may use LAA, eLAA and/or feLAA mechanisms based on CA technology with PCell/Scell. Prior to accessing the unlicensed spectrum, the node may perform medium/carrier sense operations based on, for example, listen-before-talk (LBT) protocols.

In a V2X scenario, the UE 802 or AN 808 may be or act as a roadside unit (RSU), which may refer to any traffic infrastructure entity for V2X communications. The RSU may be implemented in or by a suitable AN or a fixed (or relatively fixed) UE. An RSU implemented in or by a UE may be referred to as a "UE-type RSU"; an RSU implemented in or by an eNB may be referred to as an "eNB-type RSU"; an RSU implemented in or by a gNB may be referred to as a "gNB-type RSU"; etc. In one example, the RSU is a computing device coupled with a roadside-located radio frequency circuit that provides connectivity support to passing vehicle UEs. The RSU may also include internal data storage circuitry to store intersection map geometry, traffic flow statistics, media, and applications/software to sense and control ongoing vehicle and pedestrian traffic flow. The RSU may provide extremely low latency communications required for high speed events such as collision avoidance, traffic alerts, and the like. Additionally or alternatively, the RSU may provide other cellular/WLAN communication services. The components of the RSU may be enclosed in a weather-proof enclosure suitable for outdoor installation, and may include a network interface controller to provide a wired connection (e.g., ethernet) to a traffic signal controller or backhaul network.

In some embodiments, the RAN 804 may be an E-UTRAN 810 with one or more enbs 812. The E-UTRAN 810 may provide an LTE air interface (Uu) with the following characteristics: SCS of 15 kHz; a CP-OFDM waveform for DL and an SC-FDMA waveform for UL; turbo coding for data and TBCCs for control; etc. The LTE air interface may rely on CSI-RS for CSI acquisition and beam management; PDSCH/PDCCH demodulation by means of PDSCH/PDCCH DMRS; and rely on CRS for cell search and initial acquisition, channel quality measurements, and channel estimation for coherent demodulation/detection at the UE. The LTE air interface may operate in the frequency band below 6 GHz.

In some embodiments, RAN 804 may be a Next Generation (NG) -RAN 814 with one or more gnbs 816 and/or one or more NG-enbs 818. The gNB 816 connects with 5G enabled UEs 802 using a 5G NR interface. The gNB 816 is connected to the 5GC 840 through an NG interface, which includes an N2 interface or an N3 interface. The NG-eNB 818 also connects with the 5gc 840 over the NG interface, but may connect with the UE 802 via the Uu interface. The gNB 816 and the ng-eNB 818 may be connected to each other through an Xn interface.

In some embodiments, the NG interface may be split into two parts, one being a NG user plane (NG-U) interface that carries traffic data (e.g., an N3 interface) between the node of NG-RAN 814 and UPF 848, and the other being a NG control plane (NG-C) interface that is a signaling interface (e.g., an N2 interface) between the node of NG-RAN 814 and AMF 844.

NG-RAN 814 may provide a 5G-NR air interface (also referred to as the Uu interface) with the following characteristics: a variable SCS; CP-OFDM for DL, CP-OFDM for UL and DFT-s-OFDM; polar codes for control, repetition codes, simplex codes, and Reed-Muller codes, and LDPC codes for data. The 5G-NR air interface may rely on CSI-RS, PDSCH/PDCCH DMRS, similar to the LTE air interface. The 5G-NR air interface may not use CRS but may use PBCH DMRS for PBCH demodulation; PTRS is used for phase tracking of PDSCH; and the tracking reference signal is used for time tracking. The 5G-NR air interface may operate on an FR1 band including a band below 6GHz or an FR2 band including a band from 24.25GHz to 52.6 GHz. The 5G-NR air interface may comprise an SSB, which is a region of the downlink resource grid comprising PSS/SSS/PBCH.

The 5G-NR air interface may utilize BWP for various purposes. For example, BWP may be used for dynamic adaptation of SCS. For example, the UE 802 may be configured with multiple BWP, where each BWP configuration has a different SCS. When a BWP change is indicated to the UE 802, the SCS of the transmission is also changed. Another example of use of BWP relates to power saving. In particular, the UE 802 may be configured with multiple BWPs having different amounts of frequency resources (e.g., PRBs) to support data transmission in different traffic load scenarios. BWP containing a smaller number of PRBs may be used for data transmission with small traffic load while allowing power saving at the UE 802 and in some cases at the gNB 816. BWP comprising a larger number of PRBs may be used for scenarios with higher traffic load.

The RAN 804 is communicatively coupled with a CN 820 that includes network elements and/or Network Functions (NFs) to provide various functions to support data and telecommunications services to clients/subscribers (e.g., UE 802). The components of the CN 820 may be implemented in one physical node or in a separate physical node. In some embodiments, NFV may be utilized to virtualize any or all of the functionality provided by the network elements of CN 820 onto physical computing/storage resources in servers, switches, and the like. The logical instantiation of the CN 820 may be referred to as a network slice, and the logical instantiation of a portion of the CN 820 may be referred to as a network sub-slice.

CN 820 may be an LTE CN 822 (also referred to as evolved packet core (Evolved Packet Core, EPC) 822). EPC 822 may include MME 824, SGW 826, SGSN 828, HSS 830, PGW 832, and PCRF 834, which are coupled to each other through an interface (or "reference point"), as shown. NF in EPC 822 is briefly described as follows.

MME 824 implements mobility management functions to track the current location of UE 802 to facilitate paging, bearer activation/deactivation, handover, gateway selection, authentication, and so forth.

SGW 826 terminates the S1 interface towards RAN 810 and routes data packets between RAN 810 and EPC 822. SGW 826 may be a local mobility anchor point for inter-RAN node handover and may also provide an anchor for inter-3 GPP mobility. Other responsibilities may include lawful interception, charging, and some policy enforcement.

SGSN 828 tracks the location of UE 802 and performs security functions and access control. SGSN 828 also performs EPC inter-node signaling for mobility between different RAT networks; PDN and S-GW are selected as specified by MME 824; selecting an MME 824 for handover; etc. The S3 reference point between MME 824 and SGSN 828 is 3GPP inter-access network mobility enabled user and bearer information exchange in idle/active state.

HSS 830 includes a database for network users including subscription related information to support handling of communication sessions by network entities. HSS 830 may provide support for routing/roaming, authentication, authorization, naming/addressing resolution, location compliance, and so on. The S6a reference point between HSS 830 and MME 824 may enable the transfer of subscription and authentication data to authenticate/authorize user access to EPC 820.

PGW 832 may terminate an SGi interface towards a Data Network (DN) 836, which may include an application (app)/content server 838.PGW 832 routes data packets between EPC 822 and data network 836. PGW 832 is communicatively coupled with SGW 826 by S5 reference point to facilitate user plane tunneling and tunnel management. PGW 832 may also include nodes (e.g., PCEFs) for policy enforcement and charging data collection. Further, the SGi reference point may communicatively couple PGW 832 with the same or different data network 836. PGW 832 may be communicatively coupled with PCRF 834 via a Gx reference point.

PCRF 834 is a policy and charging control element of EPC 822. PCRF 834 is communicatively coupled with application/content server 838 to determine appropriate QoS and charging parameters for service flows. PCRF 832 also configures the associated rules into the PCEF (via Gx reference point) with the appropriate TFTs and QCIs.

CN 820 may be a 5gc 840 including AUSF 842, AMF 844, SMF 846, UPF 848, NSSF 850, NEF 852, NRF 854, PCF 856, UDM 858, and AF 860, coupled to each other through various interfaces as shown. NF in 5gc 840 is briefly described as follows.

The AUSF 842 stores data for authentication of the UE 802 and handles authentication related functions. The AUSF 842 may facilitate a common authentication framework for various access types.

AMF 844 allows other functions of 5GC 840 to communicate with UE 802 and RAN 804 and subscribe to notifications about mobility events for UE 802. The AMF 844 is also responsible for registration management (e.g., for registering the UE 802), connection management, reachability management, mobility management, lawful interception of AMF related events, and access authentication and authorization. The AMF 844 provides transport for SM messages between the UE 802 and the SMF 846 and acts as a transparent proxy for routing SM messages. AMF 844 also provides transmission for SMS messages between UE 802 and SMSF. The AMF 844 interacts with the AUSF 842 and the UE 802 to perform various security anchoring and context management functions. Furthermore, the AMF 844 is an end point of the RAN-CP interface, which includes an N2 reference point between the RAN 804 and the AMF 844. The AMF 844 is also a termination point for NAS (N1) signaling and performs NAS ciphering and integrity protection.

The AMF 844 also supports NAS signaling with the UE 802 over the N3IWF interface. The N3IWF provides access to non-trusted entities. The N3IWF may be the termination point of the N2 interface between the (R) AN 804 and the AMF 844 for the control plane and the termination point of the N3 reference point between the (R) AN 814 and the UPF 848 for the user plane. Thus, AMF 844 handles N2 signaling from SMF 846 and AMF 844 for PDU sessions and QoS, encapsulates/decapsulates packets for IPSec and N3 tunneling, marks the N3 user plane packets in the uplink, and enforces QoS corresponding to the N3 packet mark, taking into account the QoS requirements associated with such mark received over N2. The N3IWF may also relay UL and DL control plane NAS signaling between the UE 802 and the AMF 844 and uplink and downlink user plane packets between the UE 802 and the UPF 848 via the N1 reference point between the UE 802 and the AMF 844. The N3IWF also provides a mechanism for IPsec tunnel establishment with the UE 802. AMFs 844 may present a Namf service-based interface, and may be an end point of an N14 reference point between two AMFs 844 and an N17 reference point between AMFs 844 and a 5G-EIR (not shown in FIG. 8).

SMF 846 is responsible for SM (e.g., session establishment, tunnel management between UPF 848 and AN 808); UE IP address assignment and management (including optional authorization); selection and control of the UP function; configuring traffic manipulation at UPF 848 to route traffic to an appropriate destination; terminating the interface facing the strategy control function; policy enforcement, charging, and QoS control; lawful interception (for SM events and interfaces to LI systems); terminating the SM portion of the NAS message; downlink data notification; AN specific SM information sent to AN 808 via AN AMF 844 over N2 is initiated; and determining the SSC mode of the session. SM refers to the management of PDU sessions, while PDU sessions or "sessions" refer to PDU connectivity services that provide or enable the exchange of PDUs between UE 802 and DN 836.

UPF 848 serves as an anchor point for intra-RAT and inter-RAT mobility, an external PDU session point for interconnection to data network 836, and a branching point to support multi-homing PDU sessions. The UPF 848 also performs packet routing and forwarding, packet inspection, user plane parts that enforce policy rules, lawful interception packets (UP collection), performs traffic usage reporting, performs QoS treatment for the user plane (e.g., packet filtering, gating, UL/DL rate enforcement), performs uplink traffic verification (e.g., SDF to QoS flow mapping), transport level packet marking in the uplink and downlink, and performs downlink packet buffering and downlink data notification triggering. The UPF 848 may include an uplink classifier to support routing traffic flows to the data network.

NSSF 850 selects a set of network slice instances to serve UE 802. NSSF 850 also determines the allowed NSSAI and the mapping to subscribed S-NSSAI, if needed. NSSF 850 also determines the set of AMFs, or list of candidate AMFs 844, to be used to serve UE 802 based on the appropriate configuration and possibly by querying NRF 854. Selecting a set of network slice instances for UE 802 may be triggered by AMF 844 with which UE 802 registers by interacting with NSSF 850; this may result in a change in the AMF 844. NSSF 850 interacts with AMF 844 via the N22 reference point; and may communicate with another NSSF in the visited network via an N31 reference point (not shown).

The NEF 852 securely exposes the services and capabilities provided by the 3GPP NF to third parties, internal exposure/re-exposure, AF 860, edge computing or fog computing systems (e.g., edge computing nodes, etc.). In such embodiments, NEF 852 can authenticate, authorize or throttle AF. NEF 852 can also translate information exchanged with AF 860 and information exchanged with internal network functions. For example, the NEF 852 may translate between an AF service identifier and internal 5GC information. The NEF 852 can also receive information from other NF based on the exposed capabilities of the other NF. This information may be stored as structured data at NEF 852 or at data store NF using a standardized interface. The stored information may then be re-exposed by NEF 852 to other NF and AF, or used for other purposes, such as parsing.

NRF 854 supports service discovery functionality, receives NF discovery requests from NF instances, and provides information of discovered NF instances to requesting NF instances. NRF 854 also maintains information of available NF instances and services supported by it. NRF 854 also supports a service discovery function, where NRF 854 receives NF discovery requests from NF instances or SCPs (not shown) and provides information of discovered NF instances to NF instances or SCPs.

PCF 856 provides policy rules to control plane functions to enforce them and may also support a unified policy framework to constrain network behavior. PCF 856 may also implement a front end to access subscription information related to policy decisions in the UDR of UDM 858. In addition to communicating with functions through reference points as shown, PCF 856 may also present an interface based on the Npcf service.

The UDM 858 handles subscription related information to support handling of communication sessions by network entities and stores subscription data of the UE 802. Subscription data may be communicated, for example, via an N8 reference point between UDM 858 and AMF 844. The UDM 858 may include two parts, an application front-end and a UDR. The UDR may store subscription data and policy data for UDM 858 and PCF 856, and/or store structured data and application data for NEF 852 (including PFD for application detection, application request information for multiple UEs 802) for exposure. The Nudr service-based interface may be exposed by UDR 221 to allow UDM 858, PCF 856, and NEF 852 to access a particular set of stored data, as well as to read, update (e.g., add, modify), delete, and subscribe to notifications of related data changes in the UDR. The UDM may include a UDM-FE that is responsible for handling credentials, location management, subscription management, and so forth. Several different front ends may serve the same user in different transactions. The UDM-FE accesses subscription information stored in the UDR and performs authentication credential processing, user identification handling, access authorization, registration/mobility management, and subscription management. In addition to communicating with other NFs through reference points as shown, the UDM 858 may also present a Nudm service-based interface.

AF 860 provides application impact on traffic routing, provides access to NEF 852, and interacts with the policy framework for policy control. AF 860 may affect UPF 848 (re) selection and traffic routing. Based on the operator deployment, the network operator may allow the AF 860 to interact directly with the associated NF when the AF 860 is considered a trusted entity. In addition, AF 860 may be used for edge calculation implementations.

The 5gc 840 may enable edge computation by selecting an operator/third party service to be geographically close to the point where the UE 802 attaches to the network. This may reduce latency and load on the network. In an edge computing implementation, the 5gc 840 may select a UPF 848 near the UE 802 and perform traffic steering from the UPF 848 to the DN 836 via the N6 interface. This may be based on UE subscription data, UE location and information provided by AF 860, which allows AF 860 to influence UPF (re) selection and traffic routing.

The Data Network (DN) 836 can represent various network operator services, internet access, or third party services, which can be provided by one or more servers including, for example, application (app)/content server 838.DN 836 can be an operator external public network, a private PDN, or an operator internal packet data network, e.g., provisioning for IMS services. In this embodiment, the application server 838 may be coupled to the IMS via an S-CSCF or an I-CSCF. In some implementations, DN 836 can represent one or more Local Area DNs (LADNs), i.e., DN 836 (or DN names (DNNs)) that UE 802 can access in one or more particular areas. Outside these particular areas, the UE 802 cannot access the LADN/DN 836.

Additionally or alternatively, DN 836 can be an edge DN 836, i.e., a (local) data network supporting an architecture for implementing edge applications. In these embodiments, application server 838 may represent a physical hardware system/device providing application server functionality and/or application software residing in the cloud or at an edge computing node performing server function(s). In some embodiments, the application/content server 838 provides an edge hosting environment that provides the support required for the execution of the edge application server.

In some embodiments, the 5GS may use one or more edge computing nodes to provide an interface and load transfer for processing of wireless communication traffic. In these embodiments, the edge computing node may be included in one or more RANs 810, 814 or co-located with one or more RANs 810, 814. For example, an edge computing node may provide a connection between RAN 814 and UPF 848 in 5gc 840. The edge computing node may process wireless connections with RAN 814 and UPF 848 using one or more NFV instances instantiated on a virtualization infrastructure within the edge computing node.

The interface of the 5gc 840 includes a reference point and a service-based interface. The reference points include: n1 (between UE 802 and AMF 844), N2 (between RAN 814 and AMF 844), N3 (between RAN 814 and UPF 848), N4 (between SMF 846 and UPF 848), N5 (between PCF 856 and AF 860), N6 (between UPF 848 and DN 836), N7 (between SMF 846 and PCF 856), N8 (between UDM 858 and AMF 844), N9 (between two UPF 848), N10 (between UDM 858 and SMF 846), N11 (between AMF 844 and SMF 846), N12 (between AUSF 842 and AMF 844), N13 (between AUSF 842 and UDM 858), N14 (between two AMF 844; not shown), N15 (between PCF 856 and AMF 844 in the case of a non-roaming scenario, or between PCF 856 and AMF 844 in the visited network in the case of a roaming scenario), N16 (between two SMF 846; shown), N12 (between AMF 844 and nsf 844). Other reference point representations not shown in fig. 8 may also be used. The service-based representation of fig. 8 represents NFs within the control plane that enable other authorized NFs to access their services. A service-based interface (SBI) includes: namf (SBI shown by AMF 844), nsmf (SBI shown by SMF 846), nnef (SBI shown by NEF 852), npcf (SBI shown by PCF 856), nudm (SBI shown by UDM 858), naf (SBI shown by AF 860), nnrf (SBI shown by NRF 854), nnssf (SBI shown by NSSF 850), nausf (SBI shown by AUSF 842). Other service-based interfaces not shown in fig. 8 (e.g., nudr, N5g-eir, and Nudsf) may also be used. In some embodiments, NEF 852 may provide an interface to edge computing node 836x, which may be used to handle wireless connections with RAN 814.

In some implementations, system 800 may include an SMSF that is responsible for SMS subscription checking and authentication, and relaying SM messages to/from other entities such as SMS-GMSC/IWMSC/SMS router to/from UE 802. SMS may also interact with AMF 842 and UDM 858 to conduct notification procedures regarding UE 802 being available for SMS delivery (e.g., setting a UE unreachable flag, and notifying UDM 858 when UE 802 is available for SMS).

The 5GS may also include an SCP (or individual instances of an SCP) that supports indirect communications (see, e.g., 3gpp ts23.501 section 7.1.1); delegated discovery (see, e.g., 3gpp ts23.501 section 7.1.1); message forwarding and routing to destination NF/(one or more) NF services, communication security (e.g., authorizing NF service consumers to access NF service producer APIs) (see, e.g., 3gpp TS 33.501), load balancing, monitoring, overload control, etc.; and for the UDM(s), AUSF(s), UDR(s), PCF(s), discovery and selection functions that can access subscription data stored in the UDR based on the SUPI, sui, or GPSI of the UE (see, e.g., 3gpp ts23.501 section 6.3). The load balancing, monitoring and overload control functions provided by the SCP may be implementation dependent. The SCPs may be deployed in a distributed manner. There may be more than one SCP in the communication path between the various NF services. SCPs, while not NF instances, may also be deployed in a distributed, redundant, and scalable manner.

Fig. 9 schematically illustrates a wireless network 900 in accordance with various embodiments. The wireless network 900 may include a UE 902 in wireless communication with AN 904. The UE 902 and the AN 904 may be similar to, and substantially interchangeable with, the similarly named components described with reference to fig. 8.

The UE 902 may be communicatively coupled with the AN 904 via a connection 906. Connection 906 is illustrated as an air interface to enable communicative coupling and may conform to a cellular communication protocol, such as the LTE protocol or the 5G NR protocol operating at frequencies below mmWave or 6 GHz.

The UE 902 may include a host platform 908 coupled to a modem platform 910. Host platform 908 may include application processing circuitry 912, which may be coupled with protocol processing circuitry 914 of modem platform 910. The application processing circuitry 912 may run various applications that source/sink application data for the UE 902. The application processing circuitry 912 may further implement one or more layer operations to send and receive application data to and from the data network. These layer operations may include transport (e.g., UDP) and internet (e.g., IP) operations.

Protocol processing circuit 914 may implement one or more layers of operations to facilitate sending or receiving data over connection 906. Layer operations implemented by the protocol processing circuit 914 may include, for example, MAC, RLC, PDCP, RRC and NAS operations.

Modem platform 910 may also include digital baseband circuitry 916, which may implement one or more layer operations in the network protocol stack that are "lower" than the layer operations performed by protocol processing circuitry 914. These operations may include, for example, PHY operations, including one or more of the following: HARQ Acknowledgement (ACK) functions, scrambling/descrambling, encoding/decoding, layer mapping/demapping, modulation symbol mapping, received symbol/bit metric determination, multi-antenna port precoding/decoding (which may include one or more of space-time, space-frequency, or space coding), reference signal generation/detection, preamble sequence generation and/or decoding, synchronization sequence generation/detection, control channel signal blind decoding, and other related functions.

Modem platform 910 may also include transmit circuitry 918, receive circuitry 920, radio frequency circuitry 922, and Radio Frequency Front End (RFFE) 924, which may include or be connected to one or more antenna panels 926. Briefly, transmit circuit 918 may include a digital-to-analog converter, a mixer, an Intermediate Frequency (IF) component, and so on; the receive circuitry 920 may include digital-to-analog converters, mixers, intermediate Frequency (IF) components, and the like; the radio frequency circuitry 922 may include low noise amplifiers, power tracking components, and so forth; RFFE 924 may include filters (e.g., surface/bulk acoustic wave filters), switches, antenna tuners, beam forming components (e.g., phased array antenna components), and so forth. The selection and arrangement of the components of the transmit circuitry 918, receive circuitry 920, radio frequency circuitry 922, RFFE 924, and antenna panel 926 (commonly referred to as the "transmit/receive component") may depend on the specifics of the particular implementation, e.g., whether the communication is TDM or FDM, frequencies below mmWave or 6gHz, etc. In some embodiments, the transmit/receive components may be arranged in multiple parallel transmit/receive chains, may be arranged in the same or different chips/modules, and so on.

In some embodiments, the protocol processing circuit 914 may include one or more instances of control circuitry (not shown) to provide control functions for the transmit/receive components.

UE 902 receives and establishes what may be established by antenna panel 926, RFFE 924, RF circuitry 922, receive circuitry 920, digital baseband circuitry 916, and protocol processing circuitry 914. In some embodiments, the antenna panel 926 may receive transmissions from the AN 904 through receive beamformed signals received by multiple antennas/antenna elements of one or more antenna panels 926.

The UE 902 transmissions may be established by and via the protocol processing circuitry 914, digital baseband circuitry 916, transmit circuitry 918, RF circuitry 922, RFFE 924, and antenna panel 926. In some embodiments, the transmit component of the UE 904 may apply spatial filters to data to be transmitted to form transmit beams that are transmitted by the antenna elements of the antenna panel 926.

Similar to the UE 902, the AN 904 may include a host platform 928 coupled to a modem platform 930. Host platform 928 may include application processing circuitry 932 coupled to protocol processing circuitry 934 of modem platform 930. The modem platform may also include digital baseband circuitry 936, transmit circuitry 938, receive circuitry 940, RF circuitry 942, RFFE circuitry 944, and an antenna panel 946. The components of the AN 904 may be similar to similarly named components of the UE 902 and are substantially interchangeable. In addition to performing data transmission/reception as described above, the components of AN 908 may perform various logic functions including, for example, RNC functions such as radio bearer management, uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management, and data packet scheduling.

Fig. 10 illustrates components of a computing device 1000 capable of reading instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and performing any one or more of the methods discussed herein, according to some example embodiments. In particular, FIG. 10 shows a diagrammatic representation of hardware resources 1000, including one or more processors (or processor cores) 1010, one or more memory/storage devices 1020, and one or more communication resources 1030, each of which may be communicatively coupled via a bus 1040 or other interface circuitry. For embodiments that utilize node virtualization (e.g., NFV), hypervisor (hypervisor) 1002 may be executed to provide an execution environment for one or more network slices/sub-slices to utilize hardware resources 1000.

The processor 1010 includes, for example, a processor 1012 and a processor 1014. The processor 1010 includes circuitry such as, but not limited to, the following: one or more processor cores, one or more of: cache memory, low drop-out (LDO) voltage regulators, interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as SPI, I2C or universal programmable serial interface circuits, real Time Clock (RTC), timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, universal I/O, memory card controllers such as secure digital/multimedia card (SD/MMC), interfaces, mobile industrial processor interface (mobile industry processor interface, MIPI) interfaces, and joint test access group (Joint Test Access Group, JTAG) test access ports. The processor 1010 may be, for example, a central processing unit (central processing unit, CPU), a reduced instruction set computing (reduced instruction set computing, RISC) processor, an acorn RISC machine (Acorn RISC Machine, ARM) processor, a complex instruction set computing (complex instruction set computing, CISC) processor, a graphics processing unit (graphics processing unit, GPU), one or more digital signal processors (Digital Signal Processor, DSP) (e.g., baseband processor), an Application-specific integrated circuit (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, ASIC), a Field-programmable gate array (Field-Programmable Gate Array, FPGA), a radio frequency integrated circuit (radio-frequency integrated circuit, RFIC), one or more microprocessors or controllers, another processor (including those discussed herein), or any suitable combination of these. In some implementations, the processor circuit 1010 may include one or more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices (e.g., FPGAs, complex programmable logic devices (complex programmable logic device, CPLDs), etc.), and the like.

Memory/storage 1020 may include main memory, disk storage, or any suitable combination of these. Memory/storage 1020 may include, but is not limited to, any type of volatile, nonvolatile, or semi-volatile memory such as random access memory (random access memory, RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), static RAM (SRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), erasable programmable read-only memory (erasable programmable read-only memory, EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory, EEPROM), flash memory, solid state storage, phase change RAM (PRAM), resistive memory (e.g., magnetoresistive random access memory (magnetoresistive random access memory, MRAM)), and the like, and may include data fromAnd three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memory. Memory/storage 1020 may also include persistent storage devices, which may be any type of temporary and/or persistent storage, including, but not limited to, non-volatile memory, optical, magnetic, and/or solid-state mass storage, and the like.

The communication resources 1030 may include an interconnection or network interface controller, component, or other suitable device to communicate with one or more peripheral devices 1004 or one or more databases 1006 or other network elements via the network 1008. For example, the communication resources 1030 CAN include wired communication components (e.g., for coupling via USB, ethernet over GRE tunnel, ethernet over multiprotocol Label switching (Multiprotocol Label Switching, MPLS), ethernet over USB, controller area network (Controller Area Network, CAN), local Internet (Local Interconnect Network, LIN), deviceNet, controlNet, dataHighway +, PROFIBUS or PROFINET, etc.), cellular communication components, NFC communication components, etc,(or low energy->) Assembly, & gtof>Components, and other communication components. Network connectivity to/from the computing device 1000 may be provided via communication resources 1030 using physical connections (which may be electrical connections (e.g., "copper cabling") or fiber optic connections). Physical connections also include suitable input connectors (e.g., ports, sockets, jacks, etc.) and output connectors (e.g., plugs, pins, etc.). The communication resources 1030 may include one or more special purpose processors and/or FPGAs to communicate using one or more of the above-described network interface protocols.

The instructions 1050 may include software, programs, applications, applets, apps, or other executable code for causing at least any one of the processors 1010 to perform any one or more of the methods discussed herein. The instructions 1050 may reside, completely or partially, within at least one of the processors 1010 (e.g., within a cache memory of the processor), within the memory/storage 1020, or any suitable combination of these. Further, any portion of instructions 1050 may be transferred from any combination of peripherals 1004 or databases 1006 to hardware resource 1000. Accordingly, the memory of the processor 1010, the memory/storage device 1020, the peripherals 1004, and the database 1006 are examples of computer readable and machine readable media.

Other examples of the presently described embodiments include the following non-limiting implementations. Each of the following non-limiting examples may exist independently or may be combined in any permutation or combination with any one or more of the other examples provided below or throughout this disclosure.

For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components recited in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, procedures, and/or methods recited in the following example section. For example, the baseband circuitry described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples set forth below. As another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc., described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures, can be configured to operate in accordance with one or more examples set forth below.

The following examples relate to further embodiments.

Example 1 may include an apparatus comprising processing circuitry coupled with a storage device, the processing circuitry configured to: creating a D-LBO function using the D-LBO function management object instance; causing a message to be sent to a provisioning management service (MnS) to modify attributes of a distributed load balancing optimization function to set one or more ranges associated with the distributed load balancing optimization function; and identifying a response from the provisioning MnS indicating that the D-LBO function has been modified.

Example 2 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-LBO function may be associated with an attribute that configures a range of Handover (HO) or reselection parameters.

Example 3 may include the apparatus of example 2 and/or some other example herein, wherein the range of HO or reselection parameters includes a maximum deviation of handover trigger properties or a minimum time between handover trigger change properties.

Example 4 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to collect LBO performance related measurements from a producer of performance guaranteed MnS.

Example 5 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-SON management function configures the following attributes to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

Example 6 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-SON management function configures DLBOControl attributes to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

Example 7 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-LBO function management object instance may be created based on a D-LBO function Information Object Class (IOC).

Example 8 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the maximum deviation of the handover trigger attribute defines a maximum allowed absolute deviation of the handover trigger from a default operating point.

Example 9 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein a minimum time between the handover trigger change attributes defines a minimum allowed time interval between two handover trigger changes performed by Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO).

Example 10 may include a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause performance of operations comprising: creating a D-LBO function using the D-LBO function management object instance; causing a message to be sent to a provisioning management service (MnS) to modify attributes of a distributed load balancing optimization function to set one or more ranges associated with the distributed load balancing optimization function; and identifying a response from the provisioning MnS indicating that the D-LBO function has been modified.

Example 11 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-LBO function may be associated with an attribute that configures a range of Handover (HO) or reselection parameters.

Example 12 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 11 and/or some other example herein, wherein the range of HO or reselection parameters includes a maximum deviation of handover trigger properties or a minimum time between handover trigger change properties.

Example 13 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise collecting LBO performance-related measurements from a producer of performance-guaranteed MnS.

Example 14 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-SON management function configures the following attributes to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

Example 15 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-SON management function configures DLBOControl attributes to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

Example 16 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-LBO function management object instance may be created based on a D-LBO function Information Object Class (IOC).

Example 17 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the maximum deviation of the handover trigger attribute defines a maximum allowable absolute deviation of the handover trigger from a default operating point.

Example 18 may include the non-transitory computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein a minimum time between the handover trigger change attributes defines a minimum allowed time interval between two handover trigger changes performed by Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO).

Example 19 may include a method comprising: creating a D-LBO function using the D-LBO function management object instance; causing a message to be sent to a provisioning management service (MnS) to modify attributes of a distributed load balancing optimization function to set one or more ranges associated with the distributed load balancing optimization function; and identifying a response from the provisioning MnS indicating that the D-LBO function has been modified.

Example 20 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-LBO function may be associated with an attribute configuring a range of Handover (HO) or reselection parameters.

Example 21 may include the method of example 20 and/or some other example herein, wherein the range of HO or reselection parameters includes a maximum deviation of handover trigger properties or a minimum time between handover trigger change properties.

Example 22 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, further comprising collecting LBO performance-related measurements from a producer of performance-guaranteed MnS.

Example 23 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-SON management function configures the following attributes to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

Example 24 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-SON management function configures DLBOControl attributes to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

Example 25 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-LBO function management object instance may be created based on a D-LBO function Information Object Class (IOC).

Example 26 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, wherein the maximum deviation of the handover trigger attribute defines a maximum allowed absolute deviation of the handover trigger from a default operating point.

Example 27 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, wherein a minimum time between the handover trigger change attributes defines a minimum allowed time interval between two handover trigger changes performed by Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO).

Example 28 may include an apparatus comprising means for: creating a D-LBO function using the D-LBO function management object instance; causing a message to be sent to a provisioning management service (MnS) to modify attributes of a distributed load balancing optimization function to set one or more ranges associated with the distributed load balancing optimization function; and identifying a response from the provisioning MnS indicating that the D-LBO function has been modified.

Example 29 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-LBO function may be associated with an attribute to configure a range of Handover (HO) or reselection parameters.

Example 30 may include the apparatus of example 29 and/or some other example herein, wherein the range of HO or reselection parameters includes a maximum deviation of handover trigger properties or a minimum time between handover trigger change properties.

Example 31 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, further comprising collecting LBO performance-related measurements from a producer of performance-guaranteed MnS.

Example 32 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-SON management function configures the following attributes to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

Example 33 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-SON management function configures DLBOControl attributes to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

Example 34 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, wherein the D-LBO function management object instance may be created based on a D-LBO function Information Object Class (IOC).

Example 35 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, wherein the maximum deviation of the handover trigger attribute defines a maximum allowed absolute deviation of the handover trigger from a default operating point.

Example 36 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, wherein a minimum time between the handover trigger change attributes defines a minimum allowed time interval between two handover trigger changes performed by Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO).

Example 37 may include an apparatus comprising means for performing any of the methods described in examples 1-36.

Example 38 may include a network node comprising a communication interface and processing circuitry coupled thereto, the processing circuitry configured to perform the methods of examples 1-36.

Example 39 may include an apparatus comprising means for performing one or more elements of the method described in or associated with any of examples 1-36 or any other method or process described herein.

Example 40 may include one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, cause the electronic device to perform one or more elements of the methods described in or related to any of examples 1-36 or any other method or process described herein.

Example 41 may include an apparatus comprising logic, modules, or circuitry to perform one or more elements of the methods described in or related to any of examples 1-36 or any other method or process described herein.

Example 42 may include a method, technique, or process as described in any of examples 1-36 or in connection with any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof.

Example 43 may include an apparatus comprising: one or more processors and one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method, technique, or process as described in any one of examples 1-36 or in connection with any one of examples 1-36, or some portion thereof.

Example 44 may include signals as described in any of examples 1-36 or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof.

Example 45 may include a datagram, packet, frame, fragment, protocol Data Unit (PDU), or message as described in any of examples 1-36 or in relation to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof, or other described datagrams, packets, frames, fragments, protocol Data Units (PDUs), or messages in this disclosure.

Example 46 may include a signal encoded with data as described in any of examples 1-36 or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof, or other described data in this disclosure.

Example 47 may include a signal encoded with a datagram, packet, frame, fragment, protocol Data Unit (PDU), or message as described in any one of examples 1-36 or related to any one of examples 1-36, or portions thereof, or other described datagrams, packets, frames, fragments, protocol Data Units (PDUs), or messages in this disclosure.

Example 48 may include an electromagnetic signal carrying computer-readable instructions, wherein execution of the computer-readable instructions by one or more processors causes the one or more processors to perform the method, technique, or process as described in any one of examples 1-36 or in connection with any one of examples 1-36, or some portion thereof.

Example 49 may include a computer program comprising instructions, wherein execution of the program by a processing element causes the processing element to perform a method, technique, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or some portion thereof.

Example 50 may include signals in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

Example 51 may include a method of communicating in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

Example 52 may include a system for providing wireless communications as shown and described herein.

Example 53 may include a device for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein.

An example implementation is an edge computing system that includes various edge processing devices and nodes to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is a client endpoint node operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an aggregation node, hub node, gateway node, or core data processing node within or coupled to an edge computing system operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an access point, base station, roadside unit, street unit, or in-field unit within or coupled to an edge computing system operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge provisioning node, a service orchestration node, an application orchestration node, or a multi-tenant management node within or coupled to an edge computing system operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge node that operates an edge provisioning service, an application or service orchestration service, a virtual machine deployment, a container deployment, a function deployment, and a computing management, within or coupled to an edge computing system, operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system operable as an edge grid, an edge grid with side car loading, or with grid-to-grid communications operable to invoke or perform the operations of the above examples or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system that includes aspects of network functionality, acceleration hardware, storage hardware, or computing hardware resources operable to invoke or execute the use cases discussed herein, utilizing the examples described above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system adapted to support client mobility, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-everything (V2X), or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) scenarios, and optionally operating in accordance with ETSIMEC specifications, operable to invoke or execute the use cases discussed herein, utilizing the examples described above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system adapted for mobile wireless communications, including configurations according to 3gpp 4G/LTE or 5G network capabilities, operable to invoke or execute the use cases discussed herein, utilizing the examples described above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is a computing system adapted for network communication, including in accordance with a configuration of O-RAN capabilities, operable to invoke or execute the use cases discussed herein, utilizing the examples described above, or other subject matter described herein.

Any of the above examples may be combined with any other example (or combination of examples) unless explicitly stated otherwise. The foregoing description of one or more implementations provides illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of the embodiments to the precise form disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various embodiments.

Terminology

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the disclosure. As used herein, the singular forms "a," "an," and "the" are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms "comprises" and/or "comprising," when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof.

For the purposes of this disclosure, the phrase "a and/or B" means (a), (B), or (a and B). For purposes of this disclosure, the phrase "A, B and/or C" means (a), (B), (C), (a and B), (a and C), (B and C), or (A, B and C). The description may use the phrases "in an embodiment" or "in some embodiments," which may each refer to one or more of the same or different embodiments. Furthermore, the terms "comprising," "including," "having," and the like, as used with respect to embodiments of the present disclosure, are synonymous.

The terms "coupled," "communicatively coupled," and their derivatives are used herein. The term "coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other, may mean that two or more elements are in indirect contact with each other but still co-operate or interact with each other, and/or may mean that one or more other elements are coupled or connected between the elements purportedly coupled to each other. The term "directly coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in direct contact with each other. The term "communicatively coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in contact with each other through communication means, including by wire or other interconnection connection, by wireless communication channels or links, and so forth.

The term "circuitry" as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes, hardware components such as the following configured to provide the described functionality: electronic circuitry, logic circuitry, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group), an application specific integrated circuit (Application Specific Integrated Circuit, ASIC), a field-programmable device (FPD) (e.g., field-programmable gate array, FPGA), a programmable logic device (programmable logic device, PLD), a Complex PLD (CPLD), a high-capacity PLD (hcpll), a structured ASIC, or programmable SoC), a digital signal processor (digital signal processor, DSP), and so forth. In some embodiments, circuitry may execute one or more software or firmware programs to provide at least some of the described functions. The term "circuitry" may also refer to a combination of one or more hardware elements (or circuitry for use in an electrical or electronic system) and program code for performing the functions of the program code. In these embodiments, the combination of hardware elements and program code may be referred to as a particular type of circuit.

The term "processor circuit" as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes the following circuitry: the circuitry is capable of sequentially and automatically performing a sequence of operations or logic operations, or recording, storing, and/or transmitting digital data. The processing circuitry may include one or more processing cores to execute instructions and one or more memory structures to store program and data information. The term "processor circuit" may refer to one or more application processors, one or more baseband processors, a physical Central Processing Unit (CPU), a single core processor, a dual core processor, a tri-core processor, a quad-core processor, and/or any other device capable of executing or otherwise operating computer executable instructions such as program code, software modules, and/or functional processes. The processing circuitry may include further hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices, or the like. The one or more hardware accelerators may include, for example, computer Vision (CV) and/or Deep Learning (DL) accelerators. The terms "application circuitry" and/or "baseband circuitry" may be considered synonymous with "processor circuitry" and may be referred to as "processor circuitry".

The terms "memory" and/or "memory circuitry" as used herein refer to one or more hardware devices for storing data, including RAM, MRAM, PRAM, DRAM and/or SDRAM, core memory, ROM, magnetic disk storage media, optical storage media, flash memory devices, or other machine-readable media for storing data. The term "computer-readable medium" can include, but is not limited to, memory, portable or fixed storage devices, optical storage devices, and various other mediums capable of storing, containing or carrying instruction(s) or data.

The term "interface circuit" as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes a circuit that enables the exchange of information between two or more components or devices. The term "interface circuit" may refer to one or more hardware interfaces, such as a bus, an I/O interface, a peripheral component interface, a network interface card, and so forth.

The term "user equipment" or "UE" as used herein refers to a device that has radio communication capabilities and may describe a remote user of network resources in a communication network. The term "user equipment" or "UE" may be considered synonymous with, and may be referred to as, the following terms: a client, mobile phone, mobile device, mobile terminal, user terminal, mobile unit, mobile station, mobile user, subscriber, user, remote station, access agent, user agent, receiver, radio, reconfigurable mobile device, etc. In addition, the term "user equipment" or "UE" may include any type of wireless/wired device or any computing device that includes a wireless communication interface.

The term "network element" as used herein refers to a physical or virtualized device and/or infrastructure for providing wired or wireless communication network services. The term "network element" may be considered synonymous with and/or referred to by the following terms: networked computers, networking hardware, network devices, network nodes, routers, switches, hubs, bridges, radio network controllers, RAN devices, RAN nodes, gateways, servers, virtualized VNFs, NFVI, and so forth.

The term "computer system" as used herein refers to any type of interconnected electronic device, computer device, or component thereof. Furthermore, the terms "computer system" and/or "system" may refer to components of a computer that are communicatively coupled to each other. Furthermore, the terms "computer system" and/or "system" may refer to a plurality of computer devices and/or a plurality of computing systems communicatively coupled to each other and configured to share computing and/or networking resources.

The terms "appliance," "computer appliance," and the like, as used herein, refer to a computer device or computer system having program code (e.g., software or firmware) specifically designed to provide a particular computing resource. A "virtual appliance" is a virtual machine image to be implemented by a hypervisor-equipped device that virtualizes or emulates a computer appliance or is otherwise dedicated to providing specific computing resources. The term "element" refers to a unit that is indivisible at a given level of abstraction and has well-defined boundaries, wherein an element may be any type of entity, including, for example, one or more devices, systems, controllers, network elements, modules, etc., or a combination of these. The term "device" refers to such a physical entity: which is embedded within or attached to another physical entity in its vicinity, has the ability to communicate digital information from or to that physical entity. The term "entity" refers to a unique component of an architecture or device, or information conveyed as a payload. The term "controller" refers to an element or entity that has the ability to affect a physical entity, for example, by changing its state or causing the physical entity to move.

The term "cloud computing" or "cloud" refers to a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and resilient pool of shareable computing resources with on-demand self-service provisioning and management, and without active management by users. Cloud computing provides cloud computing services (or cloud services) that are provided via cloud computing one or more capabilities that are invoked using defined interfaces (e.g., APIs, etc.). The term "computing resource" or simply "resource" refers to any physical or virtual component within a computer system or network that has limited availability, or the use of such a component. Examples of computing resources include use/access to servers, processor(s), storage devices, memory areas, networks, power, input/output (peripheral) devices, mechanical devices, network connections (e.g., channels/links, ports, network sockets, etc.), operating systems, virtual Machines (VMs), software/applications, computer files, etc., over a period of time. "hardware resources" may refer to computing, storage, and/or network resources provided by physical hardware element(s). "virtualized resources" may refer to computing, storage, and/or network resources provided by a virtualization infrastructure to applications, devices, systems, and the like. The term "network resource" or "communication resource" may refer to a resource that is accessible by a computer device/system via a communication network. The term "system resource" may refer to any kind of shared entity that provides a service and may include computing and/or network resources. A system resource may be considered a collection of coherent functions, network data objects, or services accessible through a server, where such system resource resides on a single host or multiple hosts and is clearly identifiable. As used herein, the term "cloud service provider" (cloud service provider) (or CSP) refers to an organization that operates generally large-scale "cloud" resources that consist of centralized, regional, and edge data centers (e.g., used in the context of a public cloud). In other examples, CSP may also be referred to as cloud service operator (Cloud Service Operator, CSO). References to "cloud computing" generally refer to computing resources and services provided by CSP or CSO at remote locations with at least some increase in latency, distance, or constraint relative to edge computing.

As used herein, the term "data center" refers to a specially designed structure intended to accommodate multiple high performance computing and data storage nodes such that there are a large amount of computing, data storage, and network resources at a single location. This often requires specialized rack and enclosure systems, appropriate heating, cooling, ventilation, security, fire suppression, and power delivery systems. In some contexts, the term may also refer to compute and data storage nodes. The size of the data center may vary between a centralized or cloud data center (e.g., maximum), an area data center, and an edge data center (e.g., minimum).

As used herein, the term "edge computation" refers to the implementation, coordination, and use of computing and resources at locations closer to the "edge" or "set of edges" of the network. Deploying computing resources at the edge of a network may reduce application and network latency, reduce network backhaul traffic and associated energy consumption, improve service capabilities, improve compliance with security or data privacy requirements (especially as compared to traditional cloud computing), and improve overall ownership costs. As used herein, the term "edge computing node" refers to a real-world, logical, or virtualized implementation of computing capable elements in the form of devices, gateways, bridges, systems or subsystems, components, whether operating in server, client, endpoint, or peer-to-peer mode, or whether located at the "edge" of a network or at a more distant connection location within a network. References herein to "nodes" are generally interchangeable with "devices," "components," and "subsystems"; however, references to "edge computing systems" or "edge computing networks" generally refer to a distributed architecture, organization, or collection of multiple nodes and devices, and are organized to accomplish or provide some aspect of a service or resource in an edge computing environment.

Additionally or alternatively, the term "edge computation" refers to a concept, as described in [6], that enables operators and third party services to be hosted close to the UE's attached access point to achieve efficient service delivery by reducing end-to-end latency and load on the transport network. As used herein, the term "edge computing service provider" refers to a mobile network operator or third party service provider that provides edge computing services. As used herein, the term "edge Data Network" refers to a local Data Network (DN) that supports an architecture for implementing edge applications. As used herein, the term "edge hosting environment" refers to an environment that provides the support required for the execution of edge application servers. As used herein, the term "application server" refers to application software residing in the cloud that performs server functions.

The term "internet of things" or "IoT" refers to systems of interrelated computing devices, machines, and digital machines capable of transmitting data with little or no human-machine interaction, and may involve technologies such as real-time analysis, machine learning and/or AI, embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, control systems, automation (e.g., smart home, smart building, and/or smart city technologies), and so forth. IoT devices are typically low power devices that do not have powerful computing or storage capabilities. An "edge IoT device" may be any kind of IoT device that is deployed at the edge of a network.

As used herein, the term "cluster" refers to a collection or grouping of entities as part of an edge computing system(s) in the form of physical entities (e.g., different computing systems, networks, or groups of networks), logical entities (e.g., applications, functions, security constructs, containers), and so forth. In some locations, a "cluster" is also referred to as a "group" or "domain. Membership of a cluster may be modified or affected based on conditions or functions, including from dynamic or attribute-based membership, from a network or system management scenario, or from various example techniques discussed below, which may add, modify, or remove entities in the cluster. Clusters may also include or be associated with multiple layers, levels, or attributes, including security functions and variations in results based on such layers, levels, or attributes.

The term "application" may refer to a complete, deployable packaging environment for implementing a function in an operating environment. The term "AI/ML application" or similar terms may be an application that contains some AI/ML model and application-level descriptions. The term "machine learning" or "ML" refers to the use of a computer system implementing algorithms and/or statistical models to perform a particular task(s), without the use of explicit instructions, but rather relies on patterns and reasoning. The ML algorithm builds or estimates mathematical model(s) (referred to as "ML model" or the like) based on sample data (referred to as "training data", "model training information" or the like) in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform such tasks. Generally, an ML algorithm is a computer program that learns from experience with a certain task and a certain performance metric, and an ML model may be an object or data structure created after training the ML algorithm with one or more training data sets. After training, the ML model can be used to make predictions on the new dataset. Although the term "ML algorithm" refers to a different concept than the term "ML model", these terms may be used interchangeably for purposes of this disclosure as described herein.

The terms "machine learning model", "ML model" or similar terms may also refer to ML methods and concepts used by ML-assisted solutions. An "ML-assisted solution" is a solution that uses an ML algorithm to solve a particular use case during operation. The ML model includes supervised learning (e.g., linear regression, K-nearest neighbor (KNN), decision tree algorithms, support machine vectors, bayesian algorithms, lumped algorithms, etc.), unsupervised learning (e.g., K-means clustering, principal component analysis (principal component analysis, PCA), etc.), reinforcement learning (e.g., Q-learning, multi-arm robbery learning, deep RL, etc.), neural networks, and the like. Depending on the implementation, a particular ML model may have many sub-models as components, and the ML model may train all sub-models together. During reasoning, separately trained ML models can also be chained together in the ML pipeline. An "ML pipeline" is a set of functions, or functional entities that depend on an ML auxiliary solution; the ML pipeline may include one or several of a data source in a data pipeline, a model training pipeline, a model evaluation pipeline, and an actor. An "actor" is an entity that uses the output of ML model reasoning to host ML auxiliary solutions. The term "ML training host" refers to an entity, such as a network function, that hosts the training of a model. The term "ML inference host" refers to an entity, such as a network function, that hosts a model during an inference mode (which includes both model execution and any online learning (if applicable)). The ML host informs the actor of the output of the ML algorithm and the actor makes a decision for the action (the "action" is performed by the actor as a result of the output of the ML assistance solution). The term "model reasoning information" refers to information that is used as input to the ML model to determine the reasoning(s); the data used to train the ML model and the data used to determine reasoning may overlap, however, "training data" and "reasoning data" refer to different concepts.

The term "instantiation" and the like as used herein refers to the creation of an instance. "instance" also refers to a specific occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code. The term "information element" refers to a structural element that contains one or more fields. The term "field" refers to the individual content of an information element, or a data element containing content. As used herein, a "database object," "data structure," or similar terminology may refer to any representation of information in the form of objects, attribute-value pairs (AVPs), key-value pairs (KVP), tuples, etc., and may include variables, data structures, functions, methods, classes, database records, database fields, database entities, associations (also referred to as "relationships") between data and/or database entities, blocks in a blockchain implementation, links between blocks, etc.

As used herein, "information object" refers to a collection of structured data and/or any representation of information, and may include, for example, an electronic document (or "text)File "), database objects, data structures, files, audio data, video data, raw data, archive files, application packages, and/or any other similar representation of information. The term "electronic document" or "document" may refer to a data structure, computer file, or resource for recording data, and includes various file types and/or data formats, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, multimedia items, web pages and/or source code documents, and the like. For example, the information object may include a markup and/or source code document, such as HTML, XML, JSON, CSS、JSP、MessagePack ^TM 、/>Thrift ^TM 、ASN.1、/>Protocol Buffer (Protocol Buffer) or some other document/format, such as those discussed herein. The information object may have both a logical structure and a physical structure. Physically, an information object comprises one or more units called entities. An entity is a unit of storage that contains content and is identified by a name. An entity may refer to other entities such that it is included in an information object. The information object starts with a document entity, also called a root element (or "root"). Logically, an information object includes one or more declarations, elements, annotations, character references, and processing instructions, all of which are indicated in the information object (e.g., using tags).

The term "data item" as used herein refers to an atomic state of a particular object having at least one particular attribute at a point in time. Such objects are typically identified by object names or object identifiers, and the attributes of such objects are typically defined as database objects (e.g., fields, records, etc.), object instances, or data elements (e.g., markup language elements/tags, etc.). Additionally or alternatively, the term "data item" as used herein may refer to data elements and/or content items, although these terms may refer to different concepts. The term "data element" or "element" as used herein refers to a unit that is indivisible at a given level of abstraction and has well-defined boundaries. A data element is a logical component of an information object (e.g., an electronic document) that may start with a start tag (e.g., "< element >") and end with a matching end tag (e.g., "</element >") or only an empty element tag (e.g., "< element/>). Any character, if any, between the start tag and the end tag is the content of the element (referred to herein as a "content item" or the like).

The content of the entity may include one or more content items, each having an associated data type representation. The content items may include, for example, attribute values, character values, URIs, qualifying names (qnames), parameters, and so forth. qname is a fully qualified name of an element, attribute, or identifier in an information object. The qname associates the URI of the namespace with the local name of the element, attribute, or identifier in the namespace. To establish such an association, the qname would assign a prefix to the local name that corresponds to its namespace. qname includes the URI of the namespace, the prefix, and the local name. Namespaces are used to provide uniquely named elements and attributes in an information object. The content items may include text content (e.g., "< element > content item </element >"), attributes (e.g., "< element attribute =" attributeValue ">") and other elements referred to as "sub-elements" (e.g., "< element1> < element2> content item </element2> </element1 >"). An "attribute" may refer to a tag structure that includes name-value pairs that exist within a start tag or a null element tag. Attributes contain data related to their elements and/or control the behavior of the elements.

The term "channel" as used herein refers to any transmission medium, whether tangible or intangible, used to convey data or data streams. The term "channel" may be synonymous and/or equivalent to "communication channel," "data communication channel," "transmission channel," "data transmission channel," "access channel," "data access channel," "link," "data link," "carrier wave," "radio frequency carrier wave," and/or any other similar term that refers to a channel or medium through which data is communicated. Furthermore, the term "link" as used herein refers to a connection that occurs between two devices via a RAT in order to send and receive information. As used herein, the term "radio technology" refers to a technology for wireless transmission and/or reception of electromagnetic radiation for information transfer. The term "radio access technology" or "RAT" refers to a technology for underlying physical connection with a radio-based communication network. As used herein, the term "communication protocol" (wired or wireless) refers to a standardized set of rules or instructions implemented by a communication device and/or system for communicating with other devices and/or systems, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, modulating/demodulating signals, implementing a protocol stack, and the like.

As used herein, the term "radio technology" refers to a technology for wireless transmission and/or reception of electromagnetic radiation for information transfer. The term "radio access technology" or "RAT" refers to a technology for underlying physical connection with a radio-based communication network. As used herein, the term "communication protocol" (wired or wireless) refers to a standardized set of rules or instructions implemented by a communication device and/or system for communicating with other devices and/or systems, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, modulating/demodulating signals, implementing a protocol stack, and the like. Examples of wireless communication protocols that may be used in various embodiments include global system for mobile communications (Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM) radio communication technology, general packet radio service (General Packet Radio Service, GPRS) radio communication technology, enhanced data rates for GSM evolution (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution, EDGE) radio communication technology, and/or third generation partnership project (Third Generation Partnership Project,3 GPP) radio communication technologyTechniques including, for example, 3GPP Fifth Generation (5G) or New Radio (NR), universal mobile telecommunications system (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, UMTS), multimedia access free (Freedom of Multimedia Access, FOMA), long term Evolution (Long Term Evolution, LTE), LTE Advanced (LTE Advanced), LTE Extra, LTE-a Pro, cdmaOne (2G), code Division multiple access 2000 (Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA 2000), cellular Digital packet Data (Cellular Digital Packet Data, CDPD), mobitex, circuit switched Data (Circuit Switched Data, CSD), high-Speed CSD (High-Speed CSD, HSCSD), universal mobile telecommunications system (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, UMTS), wideband code Division multiple access (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, W-CDM), high Speed packet access (High Speed Packet Access, HSPA), HSPA enhancements (hspa+), time Division-code Division multiple access (Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access, TD-CDMA), time Division-synchronous code Division multiple access (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access, TD-SCDMA), LTE LAA, muLTEfire, UMTS terrestrial Radio access (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access, UTRA), evolved UTRA (E-UTRA), evolved Data optimized or Evolved Data Only (Evolution-Data Optimized or Evolution-Data Only, EV-DO), advanced mobile telephone system (Advanced Mobile Phone System, AMPS), digital AMPS (Digital AMPS, D-AMPS), full access communication System/extended full access communication System (Total Access Communication System/Extended Total Access Communication System, TACS/ETACS), push-to-talk (PTT), mobile phone System (Mobile Telephone System, MTS), modified mobile phone System (Improved Mobile Telephone System, IMTS), advanced mobile phone System (Advanced Mobile Telephone System, AMTS), cellular digital packet data (Cellular Digital Packet Data, CDPD), dataTAC, integrated digital enhanced network (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network, iDEN), personal digital cellular (Personal Digital Cellular, PDC), personal Handy phone System (Personal Handy-phone System, PHS), broadband integrated digital enhanced network (Wideband Integrated Digital Enhanced Network, wiDEN), iBurst, unlicensed mobile access (Unlicensed Mobile Access, UMA) (also known as a 3GPP generic Access network, or standard GAN),low energy bluetooth (Bluetooth Low Energy, BLE), IEEE 802.15.4 based protocols (e.g., IPv6 (IPv 6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks,6 LoWPAN), wirelessHART, miWi, thread,802.11a, etc.), wiFi direct connection, ANT/ant+, zigBee, Z-Wave,3GPP device-to-device (D2D) or proximity services (Proximity Service, proSe), universal plug and play (Universal Plug and Play, UPnP), low Power Wide Area Network (Low-Power wire-Area-Network, LPWAN), long Cheng Anyu networks (Long Range Wide Area Network, loRa) or lowwan developed by Semtech and lowra alliance ^TM Sigfox, the Wireless gigabit alliance (Wireless Gigabit Alliance, wigig) standard, worldwide interoperability for microwave Access (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, wiMAX), the general mmWave standard (e.g., wireless Systems operating at 10-300GHz and above, such as Wigig, IEEE 802.11ad, IEEE 802.11ay, and the like), V2X communication technologies (including 3GPP C-V2X), dedicated short-range communication (Dedicated Short Range Communications, DSRC) communication Systems, such as Intelligent-Transport-Systems (ITS), including European ITS-G5, ITS-G5B, ITS-G5C, and the like. In addition to the standards listed above, any number of satellite uplink technologies may be used for purposes of this disclosure, including, for example, radios conforming to standards promulgated by the international telecommunications union (International Telecommunication Union, ITU) or the european telecommunications standards institute (European Telecommunications Standards Institute, ETSI), among other organizations. The examples provided herein are thus understood to apply to various other communication techniques, both existing and yet to be established.

The term "access network" refers to any network for connecting user equipment and service providers using any combination of radio technologies, RATs, and/or communication protocols. In the context of a WLAN, an "access network" refers to an IEEE 802 local area network (local area network, LAN) or metropolitan area network (metropolitan area network, MAN) between a terminal and an access router connected to a provider service. The term "access router" refers to such routers: it terminates the medium access control (medium access control, MAC) service from the terminal and forwards the user traffic to the information server according to the internet protocol (Internet Protocol, IP) address.

The term "SMTC" refers to an SSB-based measurement timing configuration configured by SSB-measurementtiming configuration. The term "SSB" refers to a synchronization signal/physical broadcast channel (synchronization signal/Physical Broadcast Channel, SS/PBCH) block that includes a primary synchronization signal (Primary Syncrhonization Signal, PSS), a secondary synchronization signal (Secondary Syncrhonization Signal, SSs), and a PBCH. The term "primary cell" refers to an MCG cell operating on a primary frequency, wherein the UE either performs an initial connection establishment procedure or initiates a connection re-establishment procedure. The term "primary SCG cell" refers to an SCG cell in which a UE performs random access when performing a reconfiguration procedure with synchronization for DC operation. The term "secondary cell" refers to a cell that provides additional radio resources for a CA-configured UE over a special cell. The term "secondary cell group" refers to a subset of serving cells for a DC configured UE that includes PSCell and zero or more secondary cells. The term "serving cell" refers to a primary cell for a UE in rrc_connected that is not configured with CA/DC, and only one serving cell is composed of the primary cell. The term "serving cell" refers to a set of cells including special cell(s) and all secondary cells for a UE in rrc_connected configured with CA. The term "special cell" refers to a PCell of an MCG or a PSCell of an SCG for DC operation; otherwise, the term "special cell" refers to a Pcell.

The term "A1 policy" refers to a declarative policy expressed using formal statements that enables non-RT RIC functions in SMO to direct near RT RIC functions, thereby directing the RAN to better achieve RAN intent.

The term "A1 rich information" refers to information utilized by near RT RIC collected or derived at SMO/non-RT RIC from non-network data sources or from the network function itself.

The term "A1 policy based flow manipulation process mode" refers to one such mode of operation: in this mode, the near RT RIC is configured with an A1 policy to use traffic steering actions to ensure a more specific notion of network performance than it ensures in background traffic steering (e.g., applicable to a smaller group of E2 nodes and UEs in the RAN).

The term "background flow manipulation processing mode" refers to such an operation mode: in this mode, the near RT RIC is configured through O1 to use traffic steering actions to ensure general background network performance, which is widely applicable to E2 nodes and UEs in the RAN.

The term "baseline RAN behavior" refers to the default RAN behavior configured by SMO at the E2 node.

The term "E2" refers to an interface that connects a near RT RIC and one or more O-CU-CPs, one or more O-CU-UPs, one or more O-DUs and one or more O-eNBs.

The term "E2 node" refers to a logical node that terminates an E2 interface. In this version of the specification, the ora node terminating the E2 interface is: for NR access: O-CU-CP, O-CU-UP, O-DU or any combination thereof; for E-UTRA access: O-eNB.

In the context of an O-RAN system/implementation, the term "intent" refers to a declarative policy for manipulating or directing the behavior of RAN functions that allows the RAN functions to calculate optimal results to achieve a given goal.

The term "O-RAN non-real-time RAN intelligent controller" or "non-RT RIC" refers to a logic function that enables non-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources, AI/ML workflows including model training and updating, and policy-based guidance of applications/features in near RT RIC.

The term "near RT RIC" or "O-RAN near real time RAN intelligent controller" refers to a logic function that enables near real time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources via fine-grained (e.g., UE-based, cell-based) data collection and actions over the E2 interface.

The term "O-RAN central unit" or "O-CU" refers to a logical node hosting RRC, SDAP and PDCP protocols.

The term "O-RAN central unit-control plane" or "O-CU-CP" refers to a logical node that hosts the control plane portion of the RRC and PDCP protocols.

The term "O-RAN central unit-user plane" or "O-CU-UP" refers to the logical node hosting the user plane part of the PDCP protocol and the SDAP protocol.

The term "O-RAN distributed unit" or "O-DU" refers to a logical node hosting RLC/MAC/higher PHY layers based on lower layer functional segmentation.

The term "O-RAN eNB" or "O-eNB" refers to an eNB or a ng-eNB supporting an E2 interface.

The term "O-RAN radio unit" or "O-RU" refers to a logical node that hosts the lower PHY layer and RF processing based on underlying functional partitioning. This is similar to the "TRP" or "RRH" of 3GPP, but is more specific in terms of including low PHY layers (FFT/ift, PRACH extraction).

The term "O1" refers to the interface between the orchestration and management entity (orchestration/NMS) and the O-RAN managed elements for operation and management through which FCAPS management, software management, file management, and other similar functions should be implemented.

The term "RAN UE group" refers to an aggregation of UEs whose packets are also set in the E2 node by the E2 procedure based on the scope of the A1 policy. These groups may then be the targets of E2 CONTROL or POLICY messages.

The term "traffic handling actions" refers to using a mechanism to alter RAN behavior. Such actions include E2 procedures such as CONTROL and POLICY.

The term "traffic handling inner loop" refers to the portion of the traffic handling process triggered by the arrival of periodic TS-related KPMs (key performance measures) from the E2 node, including UE grouping, setting up additional data collection from the RAN, and selecting and performing one or more optimization actions to implement the traffic handling policy.

The term "traffic handling outer loop" refers to the part of the traffic handling process triggered by the near RT RIC setting or updating the traffic handling aware resource optimization procedure based on information from A1 policy settings or updates, A1 rich information (Enrichment Information, EI) and/or the results of near RT RIC evaluation, including initial configuration (pre-conditions) and related A1 policy injection, TS changed trigger conditions.

The term "flow manipulation process mode" refers to such an operation mode: in this mode, the RAN or near RT RIC is configured to ensure specific network performance. Such performance includes aspects such as cell load and throughput, and may be applicable differently for different E2 nodes and UEs. Throughout this process, a "flow manipulation action" is used to meet the requirements of this configuration.

The term "traffic steering objective" refers to the expected performance result that is desired to be obtained from the network, which is configured to a near RT RIC by O1.

Furthermore, any of the embodiments and example implementations disclosed may be embodied in various types of hardware, software, firmware, middleware, or a combination thereof, including in the form of control logic, and the use of such hardware or software in a modular or integrated manner. Furthermore, any software components or functions described herein may be implemented as software, program code, scripts, instructions, etc. that are operable to be executed by processor circuitry. These components, functions, programs, etc. may be developed using any suitable computer language, e.g., python, pyTorch, numPy, ruby, ruby on Rails, scala, smalltalk, java ^TM C++, C#, "C", kotlin, swift, rust, go (or "Golang"), EMCAScript, javaScript, typeScript, jscript, actionScript, server-Side JavaScript (Server-Side JavaScript, SSJS), PHP, pearl, lua, torch/Lua with Just-In-Time compiler, luaJIT, accelerated Mobile Page script (Accelerated Mobile Pages Script, AMPscript), VBScript, javaServer pages (JavaServer Page, JSP), active Server pages (Active Server Page, ASP), node.js, ASP.NET, JAMscript, hyperText markup language (Hypertext Markup Language, HTML), extensible H TML (extensible HTML, XHTML), extensible markup language (Extensible Markup Language, XML), XML user interface language (XML User Interface Language, XUL), scalable vector graphics (Scalable Vector Graphics, SVG), RESTful API modeling language (RESTful API Modeling Language, RAML), wikiest or wikiest, wireless markup language (Wireless Markup Language, WML), java Script object concepts (Java Script Object Notion, JSON), java Script object concepts (XSON), XML user interface language (SVG), and the like,MessagePack ^TM Cascading style sheets (Cascading Stylesheet, CSS), extensible style sheet language (extensible stylesheet language, XSL), musche template language, handlebars template language, guide template language (Guide Template Language, GTL), and->Thread, abstract syntax notation one (Abstract Syntax Notation One, ASN.1),/>Protocol Buffer (Protocol Buffer), bitcoin script, </i >>Byte code, resolution ^TM Vyper (Python derivative), bamroo, lisp-like language (Lisp Like Language, LLL), blockstream ^TM Simplicity, rholang, michelson, counterfactual, plasma, plutus, sophia, & gt, provided>And/or any other programming language or development tool, including proprietary programming languages and/or development tools. The software code may be stored as computer or processor executable instructions or commands on a physical non-transitory computer readable medium. Examples of suitable media include RAM, ROM, magnetic media (e.g., hard or floppy disks) or optical media (e.g., compact Discs (CDs) or DVDs (digital ve) A digital versatile disk), flash memory, or the like, or any combination of such storage or transmission devices.

Abbreviations (abbreviations)

Unless used differently herein, terms, definitions, and abbreviations may be consistent with terms, definitions, and abbreviations defined in 3GPP TR 21.905v16.0.0 (2019-06). For purposes of this document, the following abbreviations may apply to the examples and embodiments discussed herein.

Table 6 abbreviation:

/>

the foregoing description provides illustration and description of various example embodiments, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of the embodiments to the precise form disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various embodiments. Where specific details are set forth in order to describe example embodiments of the disclosure, it should be apparent to one skilled in the art that the disclosure can be practiced without, or with variation of, these specific details. It should be understood, however, that there is no intention to limit the concepts of the present disclosure to the specific forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the disclosure and the appended claims.

Claims

1. An apparatus of a New Radio (NR) network, the apparatus comprising: a memory; and processing circuitry configured to operate as a distributed SON (D-SON) management function, wherein when configured to support distributed load balancing optimization (D-LBO), the processing circuitry is to:

creating a D-LBO function Management Object Instance (MOI) to model the D-LBO function;

sending a message to a provisioning management service (MnS) to modify an attribute of the D-LBO function MOI to set one or more ranges associated with the D-LBO function; and is also provided with

Identifying a response from said collocated MnS, the response indicating that said D-LBO function MOI has been modified.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the D-LBO function is associated with an attribute that configures a range of Handover (HO) or reselection parameters.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the range of HO or reselection parameters comprises a maximum deviation of handover trigger properties or a minimum time between handover trigger change properties.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processing circuit is further configured to collect LBO performance related measurements from a producer of performance guaranteed MnS.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the D-SON management function configures a DLBOControl attribute to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the D-LBO function MOI is created based on a D-LBO function Information Object Class (IOC).

7. The apparatus of claim 1 or 3, wherein a maximum deviation of the handover trigger attribute defines a maximum allowable absolute deviation of a handover trigger from a default operating point.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 or 3, wherein a minimum time between the handover trigger change attributes defines a minimum allowed time interval between two handover trigger changes performed by Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO).

9. A computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause performance of operations comprising:

decoding a first message received from a producer of provisioning management service (MnS) to modify an attribute of a D-LBO function Management Object Instance (MOI) to set one or more ranges associated with the D-LBO function;

decoding a second message received from a producer of the provisioning management service (MnS) to enable the D-LBO function;

enabling the D-LBO function based on receipt of the second message; and is also provided with

And executing load balancing optimization by using the D-LBO function.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the D-LBO function is associated with an attribute that configures a range of Handover (HO) or reselection parameters.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the range of HO or reselection parameters comprises a maximum deviation of handover trigger properties or a minimum time between handover trigger change properties.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise decoding a message to update a range of HO.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the D-LBO function is enabled or disabled by setting a dlbocontrol attribute to true or false, respectively.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the D-LBO function MOI is created based on a D-LBO function Information Object Class (IOC).

15. The computer readable medium of claim 9 or 11, wherein a maximum deviation of the handover trigger attribute defines a maximum allowable absolute deviation of a handover trigger from a default operating point.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 9 or 11, wherein a minimum time between the handover trigger change attributes defines a minimum allowed time interval between two handover trigger changes performed by Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO).

17. A method for operating a distributed SON (D-SON) management function configured to support distributed load balancing optimization (D-LBO), the method comprising:

creating, by one or more processors, D-LBO function Management Object Instances (MOIs) to model the D-LBO functions;

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the D-LBO function is associated with an attribute that configures a range of Handover (HO) or reselection parameters.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the range of HO or reselection parameters comprises a maximum deviation of handover trigger properties or a minimum time between handover trigger change properties.

20. The method of claim 17, further comprising: LBO performance-related measurements were collected from the producers of performance-guaranteed MnS.

21. The method of claim 17, wherein the D-SON management function configures a DLBOControl attribute to enable or disable the D-LBO function.

22. The method of claim 17, wherein the D-LBO function MOI is created based on a D-LBO function Information Object Class (IOC).

23. The method of claim 17 or 19, wherein a maximum deviation of the handover trigger attribute defines a maximum allowed absolute deviation of a handover trigger from a default operating point.

24. The method of claim 17 or 19, wherein a minimum time between the handover trigger change attributes defines a minimum allowed time interval between two handover trigger changes performed by Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO).

25. An apparatus comprising means for performing the method of any one of claims 14-24.