Subscriber-aware paging

A mobility management entity (MME) that communicates with at least one eNodeB in a communication network to page a user equipment (UE), and where the communication network includes a plurality of eNodeBs that are arranged into at least one tracking area, the MME comprising:

• a storage medium configured to store a list of eNodeBs from which the UE was actively communicating with the communication network and a list of eNodeBs identified based on subscriber location activity of the UE within the communication network;
• a physical interface configured to receive a page request for the UE where the page request includes the tracking area where the UE was last registered, and to send page requests to at least one eNodeB;
• and
• a processing unit configured to send page requests selectively to some eNodeBs of the plurality of eNodeBs including initiating a sending of a first page request to at least one eNodeB at least in part based on the list of eNodeBs from which the UE was last actively communicating and initiating a sending of a second page request to a second set of eNodeBs at least in part based on subscriber location activity of the UE, the subscriber location activity including one or more location identifiers associated with the UE, one or more system time stamps of the MME, and a subscriber identifier associated with the UE, and the second set having at least some different eNodeBs than the first set.

An analytics node comprising:

• a storage medium configured to store a list of eNodeBs from which a user equipment (UE) was actively communicating with a communication network, where the communication network includes a plurality of eNodeBs that are arranged into at least one tracking area;
• a physical interface configured to receive, from a remote mobility management entity (MME), a subscriber location activity update, so as to offload analysis of subscriber location activity from the remote MME, where the MME communicates with at least one eNodeB in the communication network to page the UE, and where the subscriber location activity includes one or more location identifiers associated with the UE, one or more system time stamps of the MME, and a subscriber identifier associated with the UE;
• and
• a processing unit configured to
• identify a first set of eNodeBs to receive a paging request from the remote MME at least in part based on the list of eNodeBs from which the UE was last actively communicating;
• identify a second set of eNodeBs to receive a paging request from the remote MME at least in part based on the subscriber location activity, the second set having at least some different eNodeBs than the first set;
• and
• send the first and second sets of eNodeBs over the physical interface to the remote MME.