Method and system for radio service optimization using active probing over transport networks

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9326182-B2
Application number	US-201314042766-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 1, 2013
Priority date	Oct 2, 2012
Publication date	Apr 26, 2016
Grant date	Apr 26, 2016

Abstract

A method and system for determining quality and capacity of a transport monitoring connection between radio service nodes to facilitate local management of subscriber connections are disclosed. One method includes sending first test packets from a first radio service node to a second radio service node via the transport monitoring connection. Second test packets are received from the second radio service node. The second test packets have information added to the first test packets by the second radio service node. The second test packets are analyzed to determine a quality and a bandwidth of the transport monitoring connection. Control and user plane functions are informed when transport monitoring performance is one of degraded and improved based on the quality and bandwidth. The method includes making radio service provisioning decisions based on the quality and bandwidth of the transport monitoring connection.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of monitoring performance of a transport monitoring connection connecting a first radio service node and a second radio service node, the method comprising:
sending outgoing packets to the second radio service node via the transport monitoring connection, the outgoing packets including forward sequence numbers;
receiving incoming packets from the second radio service node via the transport monitoring connection, each incoming packet received in response to the transmission of at least one outgoing packet, the incoming packets including reverse sequence numbers, the reverse sequence numbers being a different sequence from the forward sequence numbers;
processing the incoming packets to determine performance metrics for the transport monitoring connection, the processing including processing the forward and reverse sequence numbers to determine a packet loss ratio in a forward direction and a reverse direction;
verifying, via a control plane entity, a state of the transport monitoring connection based on the performance metrics before one of admitting a subscriber connection and activating a radio feature is performed by the first radio service node; and
informing, via a user plane entity, a radio link scheduler of a state of the transport monitoring connection based on the performance metrics before a scheduling of at least one bearer packet to at least one subscriber is performed by the radio link scheduler.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the performance metrics include determining at least one of a one-way packet delay, a one-way packet delay variation, a one-way packet loss ratio and a one-way available bandwidth.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the performance metrics include determining an average of at least one performance metric over a time interval.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising making packet discard decisions based on one of the determined performance metrics.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing one of admitting a subscriber connection and activating a radio feature based on the determined state of the transport monitoring connection.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising scheduling a bearer packet for a user equipment based on the determined state of the transport monitoring connection.

7. A first radio service node having a capacity to monitor performance of a transport network connecting the first radio service node to a second radio service node, the first radio service node comprising:
a transport monitoring controller, TMC, the TMC configured to:
send outgoing packets to the second radio service node via the transport network, the outgoing packets including forward sequence numbers;
receive incoming packets from the second radio service node via the transport network, each incoming packet being received in response to the transmission of at least one outgoing packet, the incoming packets including reverse sequence numbers, the reverse sequence numbers being a different sequence from the forward sequence numbers; and
process the incoming packets to determine performance metrics for the transport network the processing including processing the forward and reverse sequence numbers to determine a packet loss ratio in a forward and a reverse direction; and

a control plane transport entity configured to:
receive the performance metrics from the TMC;
facilitate verification of a state of a transport network connection based on the performance metrics before one of admitting a subscriber connection and activating a radio feature is performed by the first radio service node; and

a user plane transport entity configured to:
receive the performance metrics from the TMC;
facilitate informing a radio link scheduler of a state of the transport network connection based on the performance metrics before scheduling at least one link to at least one subscriber is performed by the radio link scheduler of the first service network node.

8. The first radio service node of claim 7 , wherein the determined performance metrics include at least one of a packet loss ratio, a packet delay, and a transport network connection bandwidth.

9. The radio service node of claim 7 , wherein the second radio service node is a radio core node.

10. The radio service node of claim 7 , wherein the TMC is further configured to trigger an alarm to a management system when at least one of a quality and capacity of the transport network is such as to one of block access to a subscriber connection and deny usage of a radio feature.

Assignees

• Ericsson Telefon Ab L M

Inventors

• Baillargeon Steve

Classifications

• H04W72/54

  based on quality criteria · CPC title

• H04L43/08

  Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters · CPC title

• H04W28/0236 Primary

  radio quality, e.g. interference, losses or delay · CPC title

• H04W24/06 Primary

  Testing, {supervising or monitoring} using simulated traffic · CPC title

• H04L43/50

  Testing arrangements · CPC title