US 11,153,272 B2 · Managing bearers in a radio access network

Abstract

Embodiments described herein relate to managing bearers in a radio access network (e.g., next generation RAN (NG-RAN), etc.). In one example, a central-unit control-plane (CU-CP) communicates with a distributed unit (DU) and a CU-UP to exchange transport network layer addresses (TNLAs) and tunnel endpoint identifiers (TEIDs) between the DU and the CU-UP. In this way, the DU becomes resistant to the CU-UP's rejection of a bearer setup request from the CU-CP during a bearer setup procedure. Furthermore, during virtual machine (VM) migration or local problems of the CU-UP, an E1 procedure known as “bearer relocate” can be defined to notify the DU of a new TNLA for one or more affected general packet radio service tunneling protocol (GTP) tunnels that are affected by the VM migration or local problems.

Claims22

Dependent claims

One or more non-transitory, computer-readable storage media including computer executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause a central unit user-plane (CU-UP) of a base station (BS) to:

receive, from a central-unit control-plane (CU-CP) of the BS, a bearer setup request message;
generate and cause transmission of a bearer setup response message that is to include a transport network layer address (TNLA) and a tunnel endpoint identifier (TEID) for F1 uplink (UL) associated with the CU-UP;
and
receive, from the CU-CP of the BS, a bearer modify request message, wherein the bearer modify request message is to include a TNLA and a TEID for F1 downlink (DL) associated with a distributed unit (DU) of the BS.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Managing bearers in a radio access network

Life of this patent

Managing bearers in a radio access network

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims22