Candidate beam selection and control for 5G or other next generation network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11297554-B2
Application number	US-201916367573-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 28, 2019
Priority date	Mar 28, 2019
Publication date	Apr 5, 2022
Grant date	Apr 5, 2022

Abstract

An intelligent determination of a set of candidate handover-beams for a radio access network (RAN) can be facilitated by a RAN intelligent controller (RIC). The RIC can obtain data associated with user equipment devices and their current state, historical patterns, and a current state of serving network node devices and neighboring network node devices. Based on the obtained data, a handover procedure can be optimized by the user equipment by estimating the signal quality from a source cell and neighboring cells. Additionally, the user equipment can send measurement reports to the network to identify and quantify the quality of reference signals transmitted by the network node devices.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
receiving, by network equipment comprising a processor, first measurement data representative of first measurements associated with first user equipment, wherein the first measurement data comprises route data representative of a route previously traversed by the first user equipment;
receiving, by the network equipment, second measurement data representative of second measurements associated with a base station, wherein the second measurement data comprises signal quality estimate data representative of an estimated quality of a signal received by the first user equipment;
receiving, by the network equipment, capability data representative of a capability of the first user equipment based on a user equipment type of the first user equipment;
based on the first measurement data, the second measurement data, and the capability data, labeling, by the network equipment, the signal as a handover signal;
in response to labeling the signal as the handover signal, maintaining, by the network equipment, an active status of the handover signal to facilitate the first measurements;
based on the route and a time that the first user equipment is predicted to be at a location on the route, prompting, by the network equipment, the first user equipment to monitor the handover signal in accordance with the time and the location;
clustering, by the network equipment, the first user equipment with a second user equipment, resulting in a user equipment cluster;
receiving, by the network equipment, beam index data associated with the user equipment cluster relative to the base station and a neighboring base station; and
in response to clustering the first user equipment with the second user equipment and receiving the beam index data, generating, by the network equipment, a measurement beam to be transmitted to the user equipment cluster at the time.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the handover signal is one of a group of handover signals labeled by the network equipment.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
determining, by the network equipment, a number of the group of handover signals for which to maintain the active status.

4. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
facilitating, by the network equipment, monitoring of the group of handover signals by the first user equipment.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein facilitating the monitoring is performed in response to the first user equipment being determined to have been within an area corresponding to coverage of a cell edge associated with a network comprising the network equipment.

6. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
determining, by the network equipment, respective qualities of the group of handover signals to be monitored by the first user equipment.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the handover signal is a first handover signal, and wherein a first quality of the first handover signal is greater than a second quality of a second handover signal of the group of handover signals.

8. A system, comprising:
a processor; and
a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising:
receiving first measurement data representative of first measurements associated with a first user equipment, wherein the first measurement data comprises route data representative of a route previously traversed by the first user equipment;
receiving second measurement data representative of second measurements associated with a base station, wherein the second measurement data comprises signal quality data representative of a quality of a signal received by the first user equipment;
receiving capability data representative of a capability of the first user equipment based on a user equipment type of the first user equipment;
in response to receiving the first measurement data, the second measurement data, and the capability data, labeling the signal as a handover signal;
in response to labeling the signal as the handover signal, maintaining an active status of the handover signal to facilitate the first measurements;
based on the route and a time that the first user equipment is predicted to be at a location on the route, prompting the first user equipment to monitor the handover signal in accordance with the time and the location;
clustering the first user equipment with a second user equipment, resulting in a user equipment cluster;
receiving beam index data associated with the user equipment cluster relative to the base station and a neighboring base station; and
in response to clustering the first user equipment with the second user equipment and receiving the beam index data, generating a measurement beam to be transmitted to the user equipment cluster.

9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the operations further comprise:
modifying the active status of the signal to an inactive status.

10. The system of claim 8 , wherein the first measurements are representative of a previous usage pattern of the signal by the first user equipment.

11. The system of claim 8 , wherein the operations further comprise:
based on a latency associated with the handover signal, identifying the signal.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein identifying the signal is further based on a distribution of different user equipment within a network cell.

13. The system of claim 12 , wherein identifying the signal is further based on a neighboring network cell adjacent to the network cell.

14. The system of claim 8 , wherein the operations further comprise:
in response to modifying the status of the handover signal to an inactive status, transmitting recommendation data, representative of a recommendation, to the second user equipment.

15. The system of claim 14 , wherein the recommendation data is transmitted to the second user equipment via a radio resource configuration reconfiguration message.

16. A non-transitory machine-readable medium, comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising:
receiving first measurement data representative of first measurements associated with a first user equipment, wherein the first measurement data comprises route data representative of a route previously traversed by the first user equipment;
receiving second measurement data representative of second measurements associated with a base station, wherein the second measurement data comprises signal quality estimate data representative of a signal quality estimate received by the first user equipment;
receiving capability data representative of a capability of the first user equipment based on a user equipment type of the first user equipment;
based on the first measurement data, the second measurement data, and the capability data, labeling a signal as a handover signal;
in response to labeling the signal as the handover signal, maintaining an active status of the handover signal to facilitate the first measurements;
based on the route and a time that the first user equipment is predicted to be at a location on the route, prompting the first user equipment to monitor the handover signal in accordance with the time and the location;
clustering the first user equipment with a second user equipment, resulting in a user equipment cluster;
receiving beam index data associated with the user equipment cluster in relation to the base station and a neighboring base station; and
in response to clustering the first user equipment with the second user equipment and receiving the b

Assignees

• At & T Ip I Lp

Inventors

• Tofighbakhsh Mostafa
• Jana Shraboni
• Sharma Deva-Datta
• Jana Rittwik
• Ungureanu Bogdan

Classifications

• H04W36/302

  due to low signal strength · CPC title

• H04W36/0083

  Determination of parameters used for hand-off, e.g. generation or modification of neighbour cell lists · CPC title

• H04W36/0058 Primary

  Transmission of hand-off measurement information, e.g. measurement reports · CPC title

• H04L5/0048

  Allocation of pilot signals, i.e. of signals known to the receiver (allocation of control signalling H04L5/0053; use of control signalling H04L5/0091) · CPC title

• H04W36/04

  Reselecting a cell layer in multi-layered cells · CPC title