Edge device and method for handling service for multiple service providers
An edge device that includes one or more first antenna arrays at a donor side of the edge device, and one or more second antenna arrays at a service side of the edge device. The edge device obtains wireless connectivity enhanced information from a central cloud server. The edge device receives a first donor beam associated with a first wireless carrier network (WCN) from a first base station via the one or more first antenna arrays and receives a second donor beam associated with a second WCN from a second base station. The edge device receives two or more time division duplex (TDD) patterns from two or more base stations of different service providers, finds a common TDD pattern for the received two or more TDD patterns, and follows the common TDD pattern for switching RF signals between different WCNs of different service providers for uplink and downlink communication.
1. An edge device, comprising:
one or more first antenna arrays at a donor side of the edge device;
one or more second antenna arrays at a service side of the edge device; and
a processor configured to:
obtain wireless connectivity enhanced information from a central cloud server
receive a first donor beam associated with a first wireless carrier network (WCN) from a first base station via the one or more first antenna arrays at the donor side of the edge device;
receive a second donor beam associated with a second WCN from a second base station via the one or more first antenna arrays at the donor side of the edge device;
receive two or more time division duplex (TDD) patterns from two or more base stations of different service providers, wherein the two or more base stations comprises the first base station and the second base station; and
find a common TDD pattern for the received two or more TDD patterns and follow the common TDD pattern for switching RF signals between a plurality of different wireless carrier networks (WCNs) of the different service providers for uplink and downlink communication.
2. The edge device according to claim 1 , wherein the two or more TDD patterns of the two or more base stations are received in the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information.
3. The edge device according to claim 1 , wherein the common TDD pattern is indicative of a common timing reference to align the edge device with a 5G New Radio (NR) cell frame for an uplink or a downlink TDD switching of the RF signals for the different service providers.
4. The edge device according to claim 1 , wherein the processor is further configured to utilize the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information to reduce a time to align to a timing offset of a beam reception at the edge device to a frame structure of a 5G New Radio (NR) frame.
5. The edge device according to claim 1 , wherein the processor is further configured to utilize the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information to execute a dynamic partitioning of a plurality of antenna elements of an antenna array of the one or more second antenna arrays at the service side into a plurality of spatially separated antenna sub-arrays to generate multiple beams associated with the plurality of different WCNs in a plurality of different directions at a same time or in a different time slot.
6. The edge device according to claim 1 , wherein the edge device is independent of the plurality of different WCNs such that any one of the plurality of different WCNs is used to service a specific UE in accordance with an association of the specific UE to a specific WCN.
7. The edge device according to claim 1 , wherein the processor is further configured to concurrently direct, from the one or more second antenna arrays at the service side, a first beam of radio frequency (RF) signal in the first WCN to a first user equipment (UE) and a second beam of RF signal in the second WCN to a second UE, based on the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information.
8. The edge device according to claim 1 , wherein the processor is further configured to alternatingly direct, from the one or more second antenna arrays at the service side, a first beam of radio frequency (RF) signal in the first WCN to a first user equipment (UE) and a second beam of RF signal in the second WCN to a second UE, based on the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information.
9. The edge device according to claim 8 , wherein the processor is further configured to form specific beam patterns from the edge device specific to the first UE and the second UE based on the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information.
10. The edge device according to claim 8 , wherein the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information includes selected initial access information to accelerate a UE-specific beam alignment for each of the first UE and the second UE and connectivity to a corresponding base station from the edge device bypassing an initial access-search on the edge device.
11. The edge device according to claim 1 , further comprises one or more filters, wherein the processor is further configured to allow or reject one or more bandwidth parts (BWPs) of one or more New Radio (NR) frequency bands in an uplink and a downlink direction by use of the one or more filters.
12. The edge device according to claim 11 , wherein the processor is further configured to utilize the one or more filters to segregate uplink and downlink communication of RF signals from the first WCN with the second WCN based on the wireless connectivity enhanced information obtained from the central cloud server.
13. The edge device according to claim 1 , further comprises a first plurality of signal processing chains at the donor side of the edge device, wherein the first donor beam from the first base station and the second donor beam from the second base station are processed by the first plurality of signal processing chains.
14. The edge device according to claim 1 , further comprises a second plurality of signal processing chains at the service side of the edge device, wherein a first beam of RF signal in the first WCN and a second beam of RF signal in the second WCN are communicated concurrently or alternatingly by use of the one or more second antenna arrays and the second plurality of signal processing chains at the service side of the edge device.
15. The edge device according to claim 1 , wherein the wireless connectivity enhanced information includes selected initial access information comprising one or more of:
a first decoded Physical Cell Identity (PCID) of the first base station of the first WCN;
a second decoded PCID of the second base station of the second WCN;
a first beam index to switch beam reception and transmission from the one or more first antenna arrays at the donor side of the edge device to the first base station;
a second beam index to switch beam reception and transmission from the one or more first antenna arrays at the donor side of the edge device to the second base station;
a first absolute radio-frequency channel number (ARFCN) or specific base station properties of the first base station to establish a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection in a first 5G New Radio (NR) carrier frequency with the first base station;
a second ARFCN or specific base station properties of the second base station to establish a RRC connection in a second 5G NR carrier frequency with the second base station; and
a first service side beam index and a second service side beam index for a first user equipment (UE) and a second UE, respectively, wherein each of the first service side beam index and the second service side beam index corresponds to a UE-specific beam predetermined for a corresponding location of the first UE and the second UE, respectively.
16. The edge device according to claim 7 , wherein the edge device is one of an edge communication device, an XG-enabled edge repeater device, an XG-enabled relay device, an XG-enabled customer premise equipment (CPE), an XG-enabled small cell, an XG-enabled road-side unit (RSU), or an XG-enabled user equipment (UE) controlled by the central cloud server, and each of the first UE and the second UE is one of a smartphone, a vehicle, an in-vehicle device, an UE within the vehicle, or other XG-enabled UE, wherein the XG refers to 5G or 6G communication.
17. A method for an edge device, the method comprising:
obtaining, by the edge device, wireless connectivity enhanced information from a central cloud server;
receiving, by the edge device, a first donor beam associated with a first wireless carrier network (WCN) from a first base station;
receiving, by the edge device, a second donor beam associated with a second wireless carrier network (WCN) from a second base station; and
receiving, by the edge device, two or more time division duplex (TDD) patterns from two or more base stations of different service providers, wherein the two or more base stations comprises the first base station and the second base station; and
finding, by the edge device, a common TDD pattern for the received two or more TDD patterns and follow the common TDD pattern for switching RF signals between a plurality of different wireless carrier networks (WCNs) of the different service providers for uplink and downlink communication.
18. The method according to claim 17 , further comprising utilizing, by the edge device, the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information to align to a timing offset of a beam reception at the edge device to a frame structure of a 5G New Radio (NR) frame.
19. The method according to claim 17 , further comprising utilizing, by the edge device, the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information to execute a dynamic partitioning of a plurality of antenna elements of an antenna array of one or more second antenna arrays at a service side of the edge device into a plurality of spatially separated antenna sub-arrays to generate multiple beams associated with the plurality of different WCNs in a plurality of different directions at a same time or in a different time slot.
20. The method according to claim 17 , further comprising forming, by the edge device, specific beam patterns from the edge device specific to a first UE and a second UE based on the obtained wireless connectivity enhanced information.