User equipment characteristics

Abstract

A method of providing an indication of ambient operational characteristics of user equipment to a network control node in a wireless communication network, and a method of configuring radio resource allocation to user equipment in a wireless communication network in response to an indication of ambient operational characteristics of said user equipment. The method of providing an indication of ambient operational characteristics of user equipment to a network control node in a wireless communication network comprises: determining how many cell boundaries the user equipment has crossed within a monitoring period; assessing an operational parameter indicative of a relationship between the user equipment and each cell visited during the monitoring period; and communicating an indication of how many cell boundaries have been crossed together with an indication of the operational parameter to the network control node. The method of configuring radio resource allocation to user equipment in a wireless communication network in response to an indication of ambient operational characteristics of said user equipment comprises: receiving an indication of how many cell boundaries have been crossed by the user equipment in a monitoring period, together with an indication of an operational parameter indicative of a relationship between the user equipment and each cell visited by the user equipment during the monitoring period; and configuring an inactivity timer to apply to the user equipment in response to the received indications. Aspects and embodiments described provide mobility information to a network in order to allow a network to configure radio parameters for user equipment such to achieve better battery consumption and reduced signaling load within a network. Techniques described may be useful to smart phones operating with background applications running.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.