Methods and apparatus for indicating user equipment (UE) support for congestion related feedback for scalable throughput services and for using such feedback
In various embodiments an explicit congestion feedback capabilities indication, e.g., information indicating a UE's support or lack of support for low latency, low loss and scalable throughput services (L4S), is communicated in a message sent from a UE to device in a network core. In some embodiments the communicated UE capability information provides information about the capability of the UE sending the message to support the use of feedback (e.g., congestion feedback) for scalable throughput services (e.g., (L4S services) or other explicit congestion notification (ECN) services which use congestion feedback for encoding and/or data rate control). In some embodiments the message or messages communicating the UE capability information include a PDU Session Establishment Request message, a PDU Session Modification Request message, and/or a Registration Request message.
1 . A communications method, the method comprising:
operating a first user equipment (UE) to perform the steps of:
generating a message including UE capability information providing information about the capability of the first UE with regard to supporting feedback for scalable throughput services, wherein said UE capability information indicates protocol information indicating one or more protocols for which feedback for scalable throughput services is supported; and
sending said message to a network device.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the message further includes an explicit request for an L4S (Low Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable Throughput) QoS (Quality of Service) flow.
3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein said message is a Session Establishment Request message or a Session Modification Request message.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said UE capability information includes an explicit indication that feedback is supported for scalable throughput services.
5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein said UE capability information includes an indicator having a first value when indicating that the first UE supports feedback for scalable throughput services and a second value when indicating that the first UE does not support feedback for scalable throughput services, said indicator having the first value.
6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said protocol information indicates that feedback for scalable throughput services is supported by the first UE for one or more of: i) TCP (Transmission Control Protocol); ii) UDP (User Datagram Protocol); iii) DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol); iv) RTCP (Real-Time Transport Control Protocol); or v) an IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) specified transport protocol identified in the message which supports feedback.
7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said message includes an explicit indicator indicating whether the first UE supports L4S (Low Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable Throughput) feedback or does not support L4S feedback, and wherein said explicit indicator indicating whether the first UE supports L4S feedback or does not support L4S feedback indicates that the first UE supports L4S feedback.
8 . The method of claim 7 , wherein said message includes protocol information indicating one or more protocols for which L4S feedback is supported.
9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein said one or more protocols are transport protocols that support the use of L4S feedback.
10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said message is a registration request message.
11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said message is a registration update message.
12 . The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
receiving at the first UE uplink congestion feedback information; and
performing at the first UE, based on the received uplink congestion feedback information, uplink rate adaptation.
13 . The method of claim 7 , further comprising:
receiving at a network device in a network core the message from the first UE indicating whether the first UE supports L4S feedback or does not support L4S feedback, said received message from the first UE indicating that the first UE supports L4S feedback; and
operating a function in the network core to select a user plane function (UPF) which supports the indicated level of first UE support for L4S Service; and
allocating the selected UPF to the first UE.
14 . The method of claim 13 ,
wherein the selecting selects a UPF function which does support L4S feedback; and
and
wherein said message from the first UE includes protocol information indicating multiple protocols for which L4S feedback is supported; and
wherein operating the function in the network core to select the user plane function (UPF) which supports the indicated level of first UE support for L4S feedback includes selecting a UPF function which supports L4S Services for each of the multiple protocols for which L4S feedback is supported by the first UE.
15 . A first user equipment (UE) comprising:
memory storing UE capability information indicating the capability of the first UE to support feedback for scalable throughput services; and
a processor configured to control the first UE to:
generate a message including UE capability information providing information about the capability of the first UE with regard to supporting feedback for scalable throughput services, wherein said UE capability information indicates protocol information indicating one or more protocols for which feedback for scalable throughput services is supported; and
send said message to a network device.
16 . The first UE of claim 15 , wherein the message further includes an explicit request for an L4S (Low Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable Throughput) QoS (Quality of Service) flow.