Long paging cycle and paging enhancement for power saving LTE devices
An enhanced paging mechanism is provided for UEs waking up from a very long paging cycle to improve paging robustness and flexibility. Enhanced paging includes absolute time paging (ATP) and paging with extended wakeup time. For absolute time paging, a UE receives ATP configuration and uses the actual wall time to calculate paging occasion if a condition is satisfied. In one embodiment, the wall time is acquired from at least one of an internal UE clock, a GPS time, information broadcasted from the network, or information from a higher layer signaling. For paging with extended wakeup time, a UE applies a long paging cycle followed by multiple normal paging cycles after waking up from the long paging cycle. In one embodiment, the long paging cycle is infinite and the UE enters normal paging cycle only upon TAU-triggered paging or uplink traffic.
1. A method, comprising:
establishing a radio resource control (RRC) connection by a user equipment (UE) in a mobile communication network, wherein the UE is configured with a normal paging cycle and a long power-saving paging cycle;
entering deep sleep in RRC idle mode with a long power-saving paging cycle length after the UE stays in normal idle for a predefined duration after an RRC connection release;
waking up from the long power-saving paging cycle and thereby monitoring a paging channel;
entering sleep with a normal paging cycle length, wherein the UE monitors the paging channel consecutively but does not receive any paging for multiple normal paging cycles and thereby satisfy a condition; and
returning back to deep sleep in RRC idle mode with the long power-saving paging cycle length upon satisfying the condition, wherein the long power-saving paging cycle length is determined to be infinity upon the condition, wherein the UE does not monitor the paging channel during the long power-saving paging cycle, and wherein the UE wakes up from the long power-saving cycle only for event-triggered paging when there is uplink activity or the UE needs to send a Tracking Area Update (TAU) request to the network.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the long power-saving paging cycle length is at least in the magnitude of minutes or more.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the UE is considered power-off at Access-Stratum (AS) level and does not perform idle mode procedure during the deep sleep of the long power-saving paging cycle.
4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the UE still performs access barring related AS functionality.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the condition comprises counting a maximum number of the multiple normal paging cycles, and wherein the UE restarts the counting upon uplink or downlink activity.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the predefined duration comprises a counting maximum number of the multiple normal paging cycles, and wherein the UE restarts the counting upon uplink or downlink activity.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the condition comprises a timer, and wherein the UE restarts the timer upon uplink or downlink activity.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the predefined duration comprises a timer, and wherein the UE restarts the timer upon uplink or downlink activity.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the UE wakes up from the long power-saving paging cycle to perform the TAU procedure, and wherein the UE attaches data polling in a TAU request to receive buffered downlink data from the network.
10. A user equipment (UE), comprising:
a radio resource control (RRC) module that establishes an RRC connection in a mobile communication network, wherein the UE is configured with a long power-saving paging cycle and a normal paging cycle;
a sleep-mode control module that enables the UE entering deep sleep in RRC idle mode with a long power-saving paging cycle length after the UE stays in normal idle for a predefined duration after an RRC connection release, wherein the UE wakes up from the long power-saving paging cycle and thereby monitoring a paging channel; and
a paging control module that enables the UE entering sleep with a normal paging cycle length and monitors the paging channel consecutively but does not receive any paging for multiple normal paging cycles and thereby satisfy a condition, and wherein the UE returns back to deep sleep in RRC idle mode with the long power-saving paging cycle length upon satisfying the condition, wherein the long power-saving paging cycle length is determined to be infinity upon the condition, wherein the UE does not monitor the paging channel during the long power-saving paging cycle, and wherein the UE wakes up from the long power-saving paging cycle only for event-triggered paging when there is uplink activity or the UE needs to send a Tracking Area Update (TAU) request to the network.
11. The UE of claim 10 , wherein the long power-saving paging cycle length is at least in the magnitude of minutes or more.
12. The UE of claim 10 , wherein the condition comprises counting a maximum number of the multiple normal paging cycles, and wherein the UE restarts the counting upon uplink or downlink activity.
13. The UE of claim 10 , wherein the predefined duration comprises counting a maximum number of the multiple normal paging cycles, and wherein the UE restarts the counting upon uplink or downlink activity.
14. The UE of claim 10 , wherein the condition comprises a timer, and wherein the UE restarts the timer upon uplink or downlink activity.
15. The UE of claim 10 , wherein the predefined duration comprises a timer, and wherein the UE restarts the timer upon uplink or downlink activity.
16. The UE of claim 10 , wherein the UE wakes up from the long power-saving paging cycle to perform the TAU procedure, and wherein the UE attaches data polling in a TAU request to receive buffered downlink data from the network.