CN113543362A

CN113543362A - Exception handling method and device for radio bearer establishment

Info

Publication number: CN113543362A
Application number: CN202010290507.0A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 李荣国; 黎亚颖
Original assignee: Chengdu TD Tech Ltd
Current assignee: Chengdu TD Tech Ltd
Priority date: 2020-04-14
Filing date: 2020-04-14
Publication date: 2021-10-22
Anticipated expiration: 2040-04-14
Also published as: CN113543362B

Abstract

The application discloses an exception handling method and device for radio bearer establishment, wherein the method comprises the following steps: when a base station receives a bearer establishment request from a core network side, detecting whether a bearer to be established indicated by the request is an established effective bearer; when the bearer to be established is an established effective bearer, the base station informs the core network of the establishment failure and the reason of the failure of the bearer to be established, and releases the related resources of the bearer to be established in the base station; and the core network releases the related resources of the bearer to be established in the core network according to the notification. The invention can solve the problems of long time delay and possible incapability of establishing the radio bearer due to inconsistent radio bearer context information in the core network and the base station.

Description

Exception handling method and device for radio bearer establishment

Technical Field

The present invention relates to mobile communication technologies, and in particular, to an exception handling method and apparatus for radio bearer establishment.

Background

In the existing 3GPP TS 36.413V15.7.0(2019-09) Release 15 protocol, the evolved radio bearer establishment (E-RAB Setup) procedure is shown in FIG. 1. In the E-RAB Setup procedure, firstly, a Mobility Management Entity (MME) sends an E-RAB Setup REQUEST (E-RAB Setup REQUEST) message to an evolved node B (eNB) to initialize the procedure, and then, after completing corresponding processing according to the E-RAB Setup REQUEST, the MME sends an E-RAB Setup RESPONSE (E-RAB Setup RESPONSE) message to the base station.

The inventor discovers that in the process of implementing the invention: in practical application, the E-RAB Setup process has the defects that the time delay of successful establishment of the E-RAB is long, and even the extreme condition that the E-RAB cannot be established for a long time occurs. In response to the above problems, the inventors have found the following reasons after the present E-RAB Setup procedure is carefully studied and analyzed:

in practical applications, the E-RAB context information in the MME and the eNB may be inconsistent due to channel transmission problems between the MME and the eNB or other reasons. For example, when the MME side needs to delete an E-RAB, under normal conditions, the MME deletes the context information related to the E-RAB in itself, and triggers the eNB to delete the related information of the E-RAB, so as to release the E-RAB. In some cases, the eNB may not receive the notification message for deleting the related information of the E-RAB for some reason, so that the E-RAB that has been released in the eNB is still valid in the eNB. When the MME wants to establish an E-RAB, it selects an E-RAB ID from the invalid E-RAB IDs for the newly created E-RAB, in which case the MME may select the ID of the E-RAB that is still valid in the eNB. According to the existing E-RAB establishment process, after the eNB receives the E-RAB SETUP REQUEST message, if the E-RAB ID IE in the E-RAB to-be-established list IE in the message is found to identify a valid E-RAB, and the valid E-RAB is identified to be valid between the E-RAB SETUP REQUEST messages, the eNB reports the new E-RAB establishment failure in the E-RAB SETUP RESPONSE and reports the reason of the failure (such as 'a plurality of E-RAB ID instances'). After receiving the E-RAB SETUP RESPONSE message from the eNB, the MME determines that the E-RAB establishment failure will clear the context related to the E-RAB. At this time, although the MME deletes the context of the E-RAB, the eNB still has the context of the E-RAB, i.e. the ID of the E-RAB still valid in the eNB. It can be seen that, for the abnormal case that the E-RAB requested to be established is a valid E-RAB already existing in the base station, the current above processing method cannot eliminate the problem of inconsistent E-RAB context information in MME and eNB, thus, when the MME initiates the E-RAB establishment again later, the E-RAB establishment can still fail due to the abnormal condition that the E-RAB requested to be established is the valid E-RAB existing in the base station, this may cause the E-RAB setup to be delayed longer, and in the extreme, there may be a problem due to the irrational E-RAB ID allocation by the MME or only one available E-RAB ID, so that the MME then selects E-RAB creation each time when the context information in MME and eNB is inconsistent, resulting in E-RAB establishment entering dead-loop (as shown in fig. 2).

Disclosure of Invention

In view of the above, the main objective of the present invention is to provide an exception handling method and apparatus for radio bearer establishment, which can solve the problem of long time delay for radio bearer establishment due to inconsistency of radio bearer context information in a core network and a base station.

In order to achieve the purpose, the technical scheme provided by the invention is as follows:

an exception handling method for radio bearer establishment comprises the following steps:

when a base station receives a radio bearer establishment request from a core network side, detecting whether a bearer to be established indicated by the request is an established effective bearer;

when the bearer to be established is an established effective bearer, the base station informs the core network of the establishment failure and the reason of the failure of the bearer to be established, and releases the related resources of the bearer to be established in the base station;

and the core network releases the related resources of the bearer to be established in the core network according to the notification.

Preferably, the notifying, by the base station, the bearer establishment failure to be established and the reason for the failure to the core network includes:

and the base station informs a Mobility Management Entity (MME) of the failure of establishing the bearer to be established and the reason of the failure by sending a radio bearer establishment response.

Preferably, the resource related to the bearer to be established is a context of the bearer to be established.

An exception handling apparatus for radio bearer establishment, which is disposed in a base station, includes:

a receiving detection module, configured to detect, when a base station receives a radio bearer establishment request from a core network side, whether a bearer to be established indicated by the request is an established effective bearer;

and the exception handling module is configured to notify the core network of the failure in establishing the bearer to be established and the reason for the failure when the bearer to be established is an established effective bearer, so as to trigger the core network to release the relevant resources of the bearer to be established and release the relevant resources of the bearer to be established in the base station.

Preferably, the exception handling module is specifically configured to notify the mobility management entity MME of the failure of bearer establishment to be established and the reason for the failure by sending a radio bearer establishment response.

The application also discloses a base station device, comprising a processor and a memory;

the memory stores an application program executable by the processor for causing the processor to execute the method for handling an exception of radio bearer establishment as described above.

The application also discloses a computer readable storage medium, wherein computer readable instructions are stored, and the computer readable instructions are used for executing the exception handling method for establishing the radio bearer.

It can be seen from the above technical solutions that, in the exception handling scheme for establishing a radio bearer provided by the present invention, when the base station receives a radio bearer establishment request from the core network side and a bearer to be established indicated by the request is an established effective bearer, not only a bearer establishment failure caused by the request is notified to the network side to trigger the network side to delete a related bearer resource, but also a resource of a corresponding existing effective bearer is locally cleared at the base station. Therefore, the problem that the bearer contexts in the core network and the base station are inconsistent can be identified and solved through one bearer establishment failure process, so that the bearer establishment failure caused by the same problem when the bearer is established next time is avoided, the bearer establishment delay under the condition that the bearer contexts in the core network and the base station are inconsistent can be shortened, and the condition that a network side enters bearer establishment dead loop is avoided.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a conventional radio bearer establishment procedure;

fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of a conventional bearer establishment dead cycle principle;

FIG. 3 is a schematic flow chart of an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram illustrating a technical effect of an embodiment of the present invention;

fig. 5 is a block diagram of a radio bearer setup apparatus according to the present invention.

Fig. 6 is a structural diagram of a base station apparatus according to the present invention.

Detailed Description

In order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present invention more apparent, the present invention will be described in further detail with reference to the accompanying drawings and specific embodiments.

Fig. 3 is a flowchart illustrating an embodiment of the present invention, and as shown in fig. 3, an exception handling method for establishing a radio bearer according to the embodiment mainly includes:

step 301, when the base station receives a radio bearer establishment request from the core network side, detecting whether a bearer to be established indicated by the request is an established effective bearer.

In practical applications, when the base station receives a radio bearer establishment request from the MME, the base station may detect whether an E-RAB identified by an E-RAB ID IE in an E-RAB to-be-established list Information Element (IE) in a message sending the request is an effective E-RAB, and the specific detection method is the same as that of the conventional system, which is not described herein again.

The radio bearer SETUP REQUEST may be specifically transmitted using an E-RAB SETUP REQUEST message, but is not limited thereto.

Step 302, when the bearer to be established is an established effective bearer, the base station notifies the core network of the failure of establishment of the bearer to be established and the reason of the failure, and releases the resources related to the bearer to be established in the base station.

In this step, when it is detected that the radio bearer requested to be established by the core network is an existing effective bearer in the base station, in order to avoid such an abnormal situation when the core network re-initiates the radio bearer next time, it is necessary to report that the core network triggers the core network to release the radio bearer resource that has failed in the current establishment, and also to locally release the corresponding existing effective bearer in the base station.

Preferably, the base station may notify the core network of the bearer establishment failure to be established and the reason for the failure by using the following methods:

In particular, the failure cause may be indicated in the same manner as in the existing system, i.e. "multiple E-RAB ID instances".

Specifically, the method adopted by the base station to release the relevant resources of the bearer to be established is as follows: and clearing the context associated with the bearer identifier to be established in the base station.

And step 303, the core network releases the related resource of the bearer to be established in the core network according to the notification.

In this step, the core network can know that the corresponding radio bearer is failed to be established according to the notification of the base station, and at this time, it needs to release the relevant resources of the bearer to be established (i.e., the context of the bearer to be established) in the core network.

Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of technical effects based on the above embodiment. As shown in fig. 4, with the above method, after the abnormal condition that the radio bearer requested to be established is an effective bearer already existing in the base station occurs, it can be ensured that the next radio bearer establishment procedure can be performed normally, so as to solve the problem of long radio bearer establishment delay due to inconsistency of the radio bearer context information in the core network and the base station.

Fig. 5 is a structural diagram of an exception handling apparatus for radio bearer establishment implemented according to the present invention, the apparatus is disposed in a base station, and as shown in fig. 5, the apparatus includes:

a receiving and detecting module 501, configured to detect, when a base station receives a radio bearer establishment request from a core network side, whether a bearer to be established indicated by the request is an established effective bearer;

an exception handling module 502, configured to notify the core network of a failure in establishing the bearer to be established and a reason for the failure when the bearer to be established is an established effective bearer, so as to trigger the core network to release a resource related to the bearer to be established and release the resource related to the bearer to be established in the base station.

In an embodiment, the exception handling module 502 is specifically configured to notify, by sending a radio bearer establishment response, a mobility management entity MME of a failure of establishment of the bearer to be established and a reason for the failure.

In an embodiment, the resource related to the bearer to be established is a context of the bearer to be established.

Fig. 6 is a block diagram of a base station apparatus according to the present invention. As shown in fig. 6, the base station apparatus includes: a processor 601 and a memory 602; in which the memory 602 stores an application program executable by the processor 601 for causing the processor 601 to execute the method for exception handling for radio bearer establishment as described in any one of the above.

The memory 602 may be implemented as various storage media such as an Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM), a Flash memory (Flash memory), and a Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM). The processor 601 may be implemented to include one or more central processors or one or more field programmable gate arrays that integrate one or more central processor cores. In particular, the central processor or central processor core may be implemented as a CPU or MCU.

It should be noted that not all steps and modules in the above flows and structures are necessary, and some steps or modules may be omitted according to actual needs. The execution order of the steps is not fixed and can be adjusted as required. The division of each module is only for convenience of describing adopted functional division, and in actual implementation, one module may be divided into multiple modules, and the functions of multiple modules may also be implemented by the same module, and these modules may be located in the same device or in different devices.

The hardware modules in the various embodiments may be implemented mechanically or electronically. For example, a hardware module may include a specially designed permanent circuit or logic device (e.g., a special purpose processor such as an FPGA or ASIC) for performing specific operations. A hardware module may also include programmable logic devices or circuits (e.g., including a general-purpose processor or other programmable processor) that are temporarily configured by software to perform certain operations. The implementation of the hardware module in a mechanical manner, or in a dedicated permanent circuit, or in a temporarily configured circuit (e.g., configured by software), may be determined based on cost and time considerations.

The present invention also provides a machine-readable storage medium storing instructions for causing a machine to perform a method as described herein. Specifically, a system or an apparatus equipped with a storage medium on which a software program code that realizes the functions of any of the embodiments described above is stored may be provided, and a computer (or a CPU or MPU) of the system or the apparatus is caused to read out and execute the program code stored in the storage medium. Further, part or all of the actual operations may be performed by an operating system or the like operating on the computer by instructions based on the program code. The functions of any of the above-described embodiments may also be implemented by writing the program code read out from the storage medium to a memory provided in an expansion board inserted into the computer or to a memory provided in an expansion unit connected to the computer, and then causing a CPU or the like mounted on the expansion board or the expansion unit to perform part or all of the actual operations based on the instructions of the program code.

Examples of the storage medium for supplying the program code include floppy disks, hard disks, magneto-optical disks, optical disks (e.g., CD-ROMs, CD-R, CD-RWs, DVD-ROMs, DVD-RAMs, DVD-RWs, DVD + RWs), magnetic tapes, nonvolatile memory cards, and ROMs. Alternatively, the program code may be downloaded from a server computer or the cloud by a communication network.

"exemplary" means "serving as an example, instance, or illustration" herein, and any illustration, embodiment, or steps described as "exemplary" herein should not be construed as a preferred or advantageous alternative. For the sake of simplicity, the drawings are only schematic representations of the parts relevant to the invention, and do not represent the actual structure of the product. In addition, in order to make the drawings concise and understandable, components having the same structure or function in some of the drawings are only schematically illustrated or only labeled. In this document, "a" does not mean that the number of the relevant portions of the present invention is limited to "only one", and "a" does not mean that the number of the relevant portions of the present invention "more than one" is excluded. In this document, "upper", "lower", "front", "rear", "left", "right", "inner", "outer", and the like are used only to indicate relative positional relationships between relevant portions, and do not limit absolute positions of the relevant portions.

The above description is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention. Any modification, equivalent replacement, or improvement made within the spirit and principle of the present invention should be included in the protection scope of the present invention.

Claims

1. An exception handling method for radio bearer establishment is characterized by comprising the following steps:

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the base station notifying the core network of the failure of bearer establishment to be established and the reason for the failure comprises:

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the resource related to the bearer to be established is a context of the bearer to be established.

4. An exception handling apparatus for radio bearer establishment, configured in a base station, includes:

5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the exception handling module is specifically configured to notify a mobility management entity MME of the failure to establish the bearer to be established and a reason for the failure by sending a radio bearer establishment response.

6. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the resources related to the bearer to be established are a context of the bearer to be established.

7. A base station device comprising a processor and a memory;

the memory stores an application program executable by the processor for causing the processor to perform the method of exception handling for radio bearer establishment according to any one of claims 1 to 3.

8. A computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon computer-readable instructions for performing the method of exception handling for radio bearer establishment according to any one of claims 1 to 3.