Systems and methods for localized and virtualized radio access networks

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10530645-B2
Application number	US-201815996471-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 2, 2018
Priority date	Jun 2, 2018
Publication date	Jan 7, 2020
Grant date	Jan 7, 2020

Abstract

A wireless network provides differentiated service via a first management device that manages and provisions resources that are located in an edge cloud of the wireless network separate from a second management device that manages and provisions resources that are located in a core cloud of the wireless network. The first management device may provision the edge cloud resources to provide various functionalities and services of the wireless network in a localized manner to user equipment (“UEs”) that are associated with low latency or high reliability requirements. The second management device may provision the core cloud resources to provide the same or different functionalities and services of the wireless network in a centralized manner to UEs that are not associated with low latency and high reliability requirements.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A device, comprising:
a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of processor-executable instructions; and
one or more processors configured to execute the set of processor-executable instructions, wherein executing the processor-executable instructions causes the one or more processors to:
determine that a service request, originating from a User Equipment (“UE”) operating in a particular Radio Access Network (“RAN”) of a wireless network, is associated with a set of requirements;
provision, by a first management device, operating in an edge cloud of the wireless network, a first set of resources from a first plurality of configurable resources of the edge cloud in response to at least a first subset of the set of requirements being associated with providing localized access to services of the wireless network from the edge cloud, wherein the edge cloud is located within a threshold geographic proximity of the particular RAN;
provision, by a second management device, operating in a core cloud of the wireless network, a second set of resources from a second plurality of configurable resources of the core cloud in response to at least a second subset of the set of requirements being associated with providing centralized access to services of the wireless network from the core cloud;
provide service access to the UE via the first set of resources and the second set of resources; and
provide a first set of control plane or user plane functionalities with latency below a threshold from virtualized Distributed Units (“DUs”) within the edge cloud, the virtualized DUs executing on the first set of resources based on the provisioning by the first management device.

2. The device of claim 1 , wherein executing the processor-executable instructions further causes the one or more processors to:
provide a different second set of control plane or user plane functionalities with latency above the threshold from virtualized Central Units (“CUs”) within the core cloud, the CUs executing on the second set of resources based on the provisioning by the second management device.

3. A device, comprising:
a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of processor-executable instructions; and
one or more processors configured to execute the set of processor-executable instructions, wherein executing the processor-executable instructions causes the one or more processors to:
determine that a service request, originating from a User Equipment (“UE”) operating in a particular Radio Access Network (“RAN”) of a wireless network, is associated with a set of requirements;
compare the set of requirements against one or more latency thresholds for Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (“URLLC”);
provision, by a first management device, operating in an edge cloud of the wireless network, a first set of resources from a first plurality of configurable resources of the edge cloud in response to at least a first subset of the set of requirements being associated with providing localized access to services of the wireless network from the edge cloud, wherein the edge cloud is located within a threshold geographic proximity of the particular RAN,
wherein provisioning the first set of resources comprises providing the service request or the set of requirements associated with the service request to the first management device in response to the set of requirements comprising a latency requirement that is less than the latency threshold for URLLC;

provision, by a second management device, operating in a core cloud of the wireless network, a second set of resources from a second plurality of configurable resources of the core cloud in response to at least a second subset of the set of requirements being associated with providing centralized access to services of the wireless network from the core cloud,
wherein provisioning the second set of resources comprises providing the service request or the set of requirements associated with the service request to the second management device in response to the set of requirements comprising a latency requirement that is more than the latency threshold for URLLC; and

provide service access to the UE via the first set of resources and the second set of resources.

4. The device of claim 3 , wherein executing the processor-executable instructions, to provision the first set of resources, further causes the one or more processors to provision the first set of resources to implement at least one layer from the set of layers that includes: a Radio Resource Control (“RRC”) layer, a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (“PDCP”) layer, a Radio Link Control (“RLC”) layer, a Medium Access Control (“MAC”) layer, a Physical (“PHY”) layer, and a Radio Frequency (“RF”) layer; and
wherein executing the processor-executable instructions, to provision the second set of resources, further causes the one or more processors to provision the second set of resources to implement the layers, of the set of layers, that are not implemented by the first set of resources.

5. A device, comprising:
a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of processor-executable instructions; and
one or more processors configured to execute the set of processor-executable instructions, wherein executing the processor-executable instructions causes the one or more processors to:
determine that a service request, originating from a User Equipment (“UE”) operating in a particular Radio Access Network (“RAN”) of a wireless network, is associated with a set of requirements;
provision, by a first management device, operating in an edge cloud of the wireless network, a first set of resources from a first plurality of configurable resources of the edge cloud in response to at least a first subset of the set of requirements being associated with providing localized access to services of the wireless network from the edge cloud, wherein the edge cloud is located within a threshold geographic proximity of the particular RAN;
provision, by a second management device, operating in a core cloud of the wireless network, a second set of resources from a second plurality of configurable resources of the core cloud in response to at least a second subset of the set of requirements being associated with providing centralized access to services of the wireless network from the core cloud;
provide service access to the UE via the first set of resources and the second set of resources;
provide a content cache in the edge cloud based on the first management device provisioning a third set of resources from the first plurality of configurable resources in response to the set of requirements being associated with providing localized storage in the edge cloud; and
provide a content cache in the core cloud based on the second management device provisioning a fourth set of resources from the second plurality of configurable resources in response to the set of requirements being associated with providing centralized storage in the core cloud.

6. The device of claim 5 , wherein executing the processor-executable instructions further causes the one or more processors to:
configure one or more of Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (“HARQ”), number of repetitions, Transmit Time Interval (“TTI”) bundling, handover thresholds, data and control channel power, error rate, modulation and coding rate, voice and video codec rate, Physical Hybrid-ARQ Indicator Channel (“PHICH”) timing, or uplink/downlink frequency scheduling parameters of the first set of resources based on the first subset of requirements.

7. A device, comprising:
a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of processor-executable instructions; and
one or more processors configured to execute the

Assignees

• Verizon Patent & Licensing Inc

Inventors

• Yang Jin
• Chan Yee Sin
• Venkatraman Shankar
• Ramamurthi Vishwanath

Classifications

• H04L41/0806 Primary

  for initial configuration or provisioning, e.g. plug-and-play · CPC title

• H04L43/16

  Threshold monitoring · CPC title

• H04L41/5054

  Automatic deployment of services triggered by the service manager, e.g. service implementation by automatic configuration of network components · CPC title

• H04L41/5009

  Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF] · CPC title

• H04L67/2842

  Electricity · mapped topic