WO2024011193A1 - Cell reselection enhancements for non-terrestrial networks - Google Patents

Abstract

This disclosure describes systems, methods, and devices related to dynamic cell reselection management. A device may receive reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information. The device may predict a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information. The device may determine when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory. The device may perform relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, or inter radio access technology (RAT) neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

Description

CELL RESELECTION ENHANCEMENTS FOR NON-TERRESTRIAL NETWORKS

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED PATENT APPLICATION(S)

This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 63/359,116, filed July 7, 2022, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference as if set forth in full.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure generally relates to systems and methods for wireless communications and, more particularly, to cell reselection enhancements for non-terrestrial networks.

BACKGROUND

Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cells, projected by satellites, have broad coverage areas and can dynamically move over time. User Equipment (UE), such as mobile phones, must consistently monitor their connection to the current cell and potential neighboring cells. However, this constant monitoring can be power-intensive. Consequently, a method for efficient and power-saving cell reselection is essential in NTN systems.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIGs. 1-9 depict illustrative schematic diagrams for dynamic cell reselection management, in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 10 illustrates a flow diagram of a process for an illustrative dynamic cell reselection management system, in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example network architecture, in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 12 schematically illustrates a wireless network, in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 13 illustrates components of a computing device, in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following description and the drawings sufficiently illustrate specific embodiments to enable those skilled in the art to practice them. Other embodiments may incorporate structural, logical, electrical, process, algorithm, and other changes. Portions and features of some embodiments may be included in, or substituted for, those of other embodiments. Embodiments set forth in the claims encompass all available equivalents of those claims.

There are two technical problems in NTN (non-terrestrial network, e.g., satellite internet) cell reselection: 1) no cell reselection enhancements for earth moving cell, and 2) no cell reselection enhancements for TN-NTN mobility case. Therefore, NTN UEs follow a legacy cell reselection mechanism, that is based on RRM measurement results, and it leads to unnecessarily large UE power consumption in the NTN scenario.

The previous solutions to network coverage allocation have included methods such as time-based cell reselection and location-based measurement initiation. The first method, timebased cell reselection, operates based on a distinct time framework provided by the network. Under this strategy, the network delineates a common cell stop time, during which all idle or inactive User Equipment (UE) units are instructed to perform cell reselection. This process facilitates efficient network operation by preventing overutilization of individual network cells and promoting balanced network traffic distribution. The second method that has been employed is location-based measurement initiation. In this approach, the network provides a reference location for the serving cell, as well as a predefined distance threshold. The UE’s task is to determine whether the distance between itself and the reference location of its current serving cell exceeds this threshold. If this condition is met, the UE is required to perform a measurement of neighboring cells. This method ensures that the network optimizes its resources and maintains service quality by triggering necessary actions based on the location of the UE relative to its serving cell.

These methods are primarily designed for Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) operating in a quasi-Earth fixed system. In such a system, the coverage area of the NTN cell remains consistent for a specified period of time, before a different cell takes over to provide service to the same geographical region. This alternating pattern allows for efficient use of resources, ensuring continuous and robust connectivity for users within the network’s coverage area.

Example embodiments of the present disclosure relate to systems, methods, and devices for cell reselection enhancements for non-terrestrial networks. In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may include solutions for cell reselection enhancements in Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). These enhancements can involve various approaches such as cell reselection for moving cells and TN-NTN mobility.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may incorporate a cell reselection method for moving cells. This process could include the introduction of a new concept termed a relaxed measurement criterion. This criterion would be applied within the cell serving time duration, essentially permitting a more flexible measurement standard during this period. This method can help optimize the use of network resources and improve user equipment (UE) performance. For instance, it might allow a UE, such as a mobile device or a laptop with cellular capabilities, to maintain a stable connection even as it moves between the coverage areas of different cells.

The method of conducting “relaxed measurements” is used so that a UE, such as a mobile phone, may decrease the frequency or intensity of scans for neighboring cells.

In a standard scenario, the UE continually scans for signal strength and quality from surrounding cells to prepare for possible handover scenarios. This process means that if the signal strength of the current cell is decreasing, the device will know what other cells it could switch to for improved signal quality.

However, under certain circumstances, such as when the UE is determined to be in a state of low mobility (not moving) or not at the cell edge (where handovers are more likely), it can switch to a “relaxed” mode where these measurements are less frequent. The advantages of relaxed measurements include power saving and reduced processing load for the UE, as the task of continually scanning and evaluating neighboring cells can be quite demanding in terms of resources.

The conditions under which the UE can switch to this relaxed mode, and the exact parameters of the relaxed measurements, are ty pically determined by network protocols and can be signaled to the UE by the network.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may also propose solutions for a UE to determine when it leaves the coverage of the current serving cell. These solutions could involve the use of advanced algorithms or sensors in the UE to accurately assess its position relative to the serving cell, thereby enhancing the efficiency of network operations and improving user experience.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may consider cell reselection for Terrestrial Network-Non-Terrestrial Network (TN-NTN) mobility. In the context of UEs operating exclusively in the NTN region, the TN geographical area can be indicated to the UEs. This indication could take various forms such as the center and radius of the TN, or a boundary line composed of a list of two-dimensional locations. A clear example of this is a scenario where a drone (as a UE) operating in a remote area receives information about the TN boundary', allowing it to efficiently manage its network connectivity.

The solutions proposed in this disclosure are not limited to NTN scenarios. They can also be effectively applied in other circumstances where large power consumption during neighbor cell measurements exists during the cell reselection process. By minimizing the need for frequent and energy-intensive measurements, these solutions could significantly reduce power consumption, extending the operational life of battery-powered devices.

The enhancements to cell reselection in NTN outlined in this disclosure play a crucial role in conserving UE power consumption.

This disclosure offers several strategies to address these challenges, further refining UE behavior in idle mode or an inactive state based on the predictability of satellite orbits. For instance, the satellite orbit predictability could be leveraged to schedule cell reselections at optimal times, thus minimizing unnecessary power consumption and enhancing the overall effectiveness of the dynamic cell reselection management system.

The above descriptions are for purposes of illustration and are not meant to be limiting. Numerous other examples, configurations, processes, algorithms, etc., may exist, some of which are described in greater detail below. Example embodiments will now be described with reference to the accompanying figures.

[0001] FIGs. 1-9 depict illustrative schematic diagrams for dynamic cell reselection management, in accordance with one or more example embodiments of the present disclosure.

The architecture of NTN is illustrated in FIG. 1. A satellite could serve as a physical layer repeater between UE and gNB. And the satellite and gateway could be considered as a part of the next generation radio access network (gNB) (in LTE, it is eNB). It is also called transparent architecture.

In one or more embodiments, a cell reselection procedure may include the following: UEs in RRC IDLE state and RRC INACTIVE state need to perform cell reselection.

During the cell reselection procedure, there are mainly two steps, i.e., neighbor cell measurements and cell reselection based on these measurement results. It should be understood that RRC Idle state is when there is no RRC connection. In RRC Inactive state, the UE still has an allocated cell (e.g., the UE AS Inactive Context is stored in that cell), and the RRC connection is suspended, and the network does not keep track of the UE's location on the cell level. This means the UE has some degree of mobility without involving the core network.

For neighbor cell measurements, a UE performs measurements of higher priority NR inter-frequency or inter-radio access technology (RAT) frequencies all the time. For intrafrequency measurements and inter-frequency with an equal or lower reselection priority than the reselection priority of the current NR frequency, if the measurement results of the current serving cell are higher than the preconfigured thresholds, a UE does not perform neighbor cell measurements, otherwise, a UE performs neighbor cell measurements.

For cell reselection, after the measurement results of neighbor cells are available, a UE performs cell reselection as follows:

UE reselects a cell with a higher frequency priority if this cell’s measurement result is higher than a threshold.

UE reselects a cell with a lower frequency priority if this cell’s measurement result is higher than a threshold 1 and the current serving cell’s measurement result is lower than a threshold .

For intra-frequency and equal priority cell reselection, the R-cntenon is applied as below:

The cell-ranking criterion Rs for serving cell and R_n for neighboring cells is defined by:

Rs = Q meas,s + Qhyst - Qoffsettemp

Rn = Q meas,n -Qoffset - Qoffsettemp where:

Then a UE may perform cell reselection to the highest ranked cell if it is not the cunent serving cell.

In some embodiments, there are NTN cell reselection scenarios.

Scenario 1 - The Moving Cell Case: In the moving cell scenario, as the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite moves, its signal footprint on the Earth’s surface, which corresponds to the “cell” of coverage, shifts along with it. This means the location of the cell moves over time.

Imagine the cell as a circle on the Earth’s surface with a diameter of 50 kilometers. The speed at which the satellite (and thus the cell) moves is about 7.56 kilometers per second. Consequently, it will take approximately 6.61 seconds for the entire diameter of the cell to shift from one end to the other.

In practical terms, this means that all idle or inactive user devices (UEs) within this moving cell need to “hand over” or reselect another cell to camp on within this time frame (6.61 seconds). This is because, after this time, they would be outside the coverage area of the original cell due to the satellite’s movement.

Simultaneously, new user devices entering the coverage area of the moving cell would need to camp on this cell, establishing it as their primary serving cell for communication. This process of movement and reselection is illustrated in FIG. 2. FIG. 2 shows the transation of UEs as an NTN cell moves.

Scenario 2 - Terrestrial Network (TN) - Non-Terrestnal Network (NTN) Cell Reselection:

The coverage area of an NTN cell can be exceptionally large due to the fact that the cell’s diameter could be up to 1000 kilometers. For instance, an NTN cell’s coverage could span both oceanic and terrestrial areas, as shown in FIG. 3. FIG. 3 shows an NTN cell coverage area.

Because of this vast coverage, it is possible that many terrestrial network cells could fall within the bounds of a single NTN cell. In areas where these two types of networks overlap, user devices (UEs) will have a choice between the terrestrial network (TN) cells and the NTN cells.

In areas covered solely by the NTN (such as over the ocean), user devices only have the NTN cells to connect with. However, in areas where there’s an overlap between terrestrial cells and the large NTN cells, user devices will need an efficient process to reselect between the TN and NTN cells, depending on factors like signal quality, network load, and user device capabilities. This decision-making process for reselection needs to be optimized to ensure seamless and efficient connectivity for the users.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate cell reselection enhancements for moving cells. In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate a new Relaxed measurement criterion that can be defined, e.g., UE performs relaxed measurements within cell serving time duration.

In one or more embodiments, if the relaxed measurement criterion is fulfilled for a period of time, a UE may choose to perform relaxed measurements for intra-frequency and inter-frequency cells. The existing relaxed measurement criterion includes low mobility evaluation (the difference between the current measurement result and the reference measurement result is less than a threshold for a period of time), and cell edge evaluation (if the measurement result is higher than a threshold, it means a UE is not at the cell edge). Basically, if UE is in a low mobility state or not at the cell edge, a UE may perform relaxed measurements, e.g., neighbor cell measurements with longer intervals for UE power saving.

In the NTN moving cell case, the existing measurement results based on relaxed measurement criterion may not work well due to the fast movement of the NTN cell and the “flat” distribution of radio signal quality in the NTN cell. For example, the cell change may happen every 7 seconds in the cell moving case, but the typical stable period to determine UE is in a low mobility state in the current specification is 10 seconds or 20 seconds. And it is also difficult to set an appropriate threshold to determine whether UE is not at the cell edge, as the difference between RSRP values at the cell edge or not at the cell edge is minor.

In NTN, the serving time based relaxed measurement criterion can be adopted. NTN cell’s reference location (e.g., typically cell center) and cell radius can be broadcast in system information, meanwhile, satellite ephemeris data is also provided in system information. So a UE can predict the trajectory of the cell center according to the serving satellite’s orbital information, then based on UE location, the UE can know when the UE will leave the coverage of the current serving cell. In the moving cell case, the cell reselection is more likely to be triggered due to the movement of the serving satellite, rather than the movement of UE. Upon a UE entering the coverage of an NTN moving cell, it is feasible to consider this UE keeps camping on this cell until it leaves this cell’s coverage. So for UE power saving a UE may choose to perform relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter frequency, and inter radio access technology (RAT) neighbor cell measurements during the service time of the cunent serving cell. Furthermore, if configured/enabled by the network, during the serving time, or within the serving area, a UE does not need to perform any neighbor cell measurements. For example, in some marine areas where there is only NTN service (e.g., no TN cells available and other NTN neighbor cells are far away), UE does not need to perform any neighbor cell measurements for power saving. It should be understood that ephemeris data refers to the set of information that specifies the position and velocity (and other related parameters) of celestial objects such as satellites, stars, or planets at a specific point in time. This data is crucial for navigation and communication systems that rely on the precise location of satellites, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS).

In the context of satellites, ephemeris data ty pically includes the following details:

Satellite’s orbital parameters: These describe the shape, size, and orientation of the satellite’s orbit around the Earth.

Satellite’s position: This is usually given as a set of coordinates in three dimensions (X, Y, Z), specifying the exact location of the satellite at a particular point in time.

Satellite’s velocity: This describes how fast the satellite is moving and in which direction.

Ephemeris data can be either “real-time”, where it describes the satellite’s current position and velocity, or “predictive”, where it predicts the satellite’s position and velocity for some time in the future. Predictive ephemeris data is typically calculated based on the satellite’s past orbits and known laws of physics and is updated regularly to ensure accuracy.

In telecommunications, ephemeris data is used to calculate the relative position and velocity of the satellite and the receiving antenna on Earth. This allows the system to adjust the transmission parameters for optimal signal reception.

The System Information (SI) is data broadcasted by the network (a satellite, in this case) that is used by devices (User Equipment - UEs) to understand the configuration and operational parameters of the NTN cell they are in or plan to connect to. Specifically, the SI may include:

The reference location and radius of the NTN cell: This helps the device determine its position relative to the NTN cell it is connecting to.

Satellite ephemeris data: This includes information about the satellite’s current and predicted locations, allowing devices to anticipate the trajectory of the NTN cell.

Real cell center location: This helps in comparing the estimated trajectory of the cell center with the actual one, aiding in deciding whether the device can continue using prediction for relaxed measurements or not.

Information for neighbor cell measurements: This could be about other terrestrial or non-terrestrial network cells within reach of the device for possible handover scenarios.

Other configuration parameters like offset value, the threshold for estimation accuracy, and serving duration: would guide how the device interacts with the network and manages its power consumption by adjusting its measurement and handover activities. As illustrated in FIG. 4, At TO, UE starts camping on this NTN cell. Along with the movement of the satellite, at Tl, UE leaves this NTN cell. So the service duration of this NTN cell is [TO, Tl], Within this duration, UE may perform relaxed measurements or no perform any neighbor cell measurements.

It is also possible to adjust Tl using an offset, so the service duration is [TO, Tl - offset] . The offset can be configured by the network, and it is used to make UE start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

As different UEs are in different locations, the time lengths of [TO, Tl] are also different. For some UEs, the duration may be too short, so UEs may not perform the relaxed measurements. The duration threshold could be configured by the network. For example, if the service duration is less than the offset value for adjusting Tl, a UE does not apply this relaxed measurement rule.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate solutions for a UE to determine when it leaves the coverage of the current serving cell, e.g., based on UE’s prediction/ estimation (e.g., when the orbital parameters of a satellite are provided).

The premise is that the NTN cell’s reference location (e.g., typically cell center) and cell radius are broadcast in system information, and a UE is able to predict/estimate the trajectory of this reference location. Whether this predication is enabled can be indicated in an implicit way (e.g., the cell radius is provided in SIB), or in an explicit way (e.g., a new indication is configured in SIB).

In the context of cellular networks, SIB stands for System Information Block. System Information Blocks are types of messages that are broadcast by the eNodeB in an LTE network (or gNodeB in a 5G network) to provide vital information for the UEs in the cell. The information in these blocks may include parameters related to intra-frequency, inter-frequency, and inter-RAT (Radio Access Technology) cell reselection, as well as other operating parameters of the network, such as the cell's identity, its neighboring cells, network policies, etc. The UEs need this information to properly function within the network. Different types of SIBs contain different categories of information, and each is scheduled at different times and frequencies, depending on how often the UEs need to receive that specific information

As the cell keeps moving on the earth, the reference location keeps updating too. The network may follow the legacy SIB modification mechanism, e.g., update the cell center location after the SIB modification period boundary. It is also possible that the network can update this information in every SIB periodicity. The updated reference location in system information can be used by UE to verify if the predicted/estimated reference location is in line with the actual location. It should be sufficient/better to use continuous updates of the location in SIB because a new UE coming into the cell can then get the information immediately.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate options to determine whether the UE can estimate the cell center accurately. The approach is to compare the two cell center locations at one or more time instants, e.g., the real cell center location (broadcast in SIB) with the estimated cell center location (estimated by UE based on the initial cell center (UE acquires it when it camps on current serving cell) and the orbital parameters of the serving satellite). For the real cell center location, a UE needs to acquire it from SIB. For the estimated cell center, a UE can calculate the trajectory of the cell center based on the initial cell center location and the satellite’s orbital information. So a UE can draw a line of estimated cell centers (e.g., the dotted line in FIG. 5). Then the UE compares it with the broadcast/real cell center location.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate in Option 1 that if the difference betw een these two locations is larger than a threshold for once, it means this UE cannot make an accurate estimation of the cell center, then the UE should not apply this prediction result, e g., for the relaxed measurement criterion. The threshold is configured by the network, and it is the maximum error value allowed.

Regarding when a UE needs to acquire the updated cell center in SIB since the UE only needs to do the comparison once, UE can acquire the cell center after the next SIB modification period boundary, or after a length of time (the length value can be configured by network).

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate in Option 2 where there is a counter at the UE side. Upon reception of the updated reference location, a UE compares this value with an estimated value. If the difference is larger than a threshold, the counter plus one; and if the difference is smaller than a threshold, the counter is set to zero. When the counter reaches N (another threshold configured by the network), e.g., which means UE cannot estimate an accurate reference location for continuous N times (e.g., N times in a row), the UE should not apply this prediction result, e.g., for relaxed measurement criterion. But during the verification process, a UE can still perform the relaxed measurement.

In one or more embodiments, depending on the calculation result of the distance between them, UE can determine whether to increase this counter or reset this counter to zero. For example, if the distance is larger than the threshold, the counter plus one, otherwise the counter is set to zero. Referring to FIG. 5, there is shown a location comparison between estimated cell center and real cell center. When the UE enters the coverage, it makes the comparison 3 times, e.g., at time TO, Tl, and T2. Since the counter does not reach the threshold, the UE continues to estimate the last cell center for itself. As illustrated in FIG. 5, at time T3 the UE is about to leave this cell’s coverage, e.g., the cell stop time is T3.

Regarding when a UE needs to acquire the updated cell center in SIB, since the UE needs to do the comparison several times, UE can acquire the cell center after each SIB modification period boundary, or after a configured interval (the interval value can be configured by network, e.g., the interval could be several times of SIB modification period).

For both options, when the UE verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center, the UE can estimate the last cell center which corresponds to the timing when the UE is about to leave the cell’s coverage, e.g., the UE can determine the cell stop time. Meanwhile, after verification, a UE does not need to acquire the updated cell center for power saving.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate solutions for a UE to determine when it leaves the coverage of the current serving cell, e.g., based on a list of cell centers and the corresponding time stamps.

In one or more embodiments, when a UE is not able to predict the trajectory of the cell center, e.g., due to the ephemeris data being in PVT format (e.g., only instantaneous position and velocity of the satellite are included, but not orbital parameters).

In this case, the network can broadcast a list of cell centers and the corresponding time stamps (e.g., in UTC format for each cell center, or in SFN + slot number format (and the hyper SFN can also be used to indicate a long time interval), or the starting point UTC time + interval value). It means the network provides information on the trajectory of the cell center to all UEs, and it is better if the duration of information for this trajectory is longer than the longest senrice time of all UEs. For example, if the NTN cell diameter size is 50km, and considering the satellite speed is 7.56km/s, the longest service time is 6.61 seconds. So the duration of the broadcast trajectory should be longer than 6.61 seconds. Then a UE can determine which cell center is the nearest location that corresponds to the UE at the cell edge. So the corresponding time stamp can be used approximately as the cell stop time.

PVT typically refers to Position, Velocity, and Time. The PVT is a set of data provided by satellite navigation systems, such as GPS, which is essential in precisely locating a satellite (or indeed, any object). Position refers to the accurate coordinates of the satellite in the global reference frame. Velocity indicates the speed and direction of the satellite's movement. Time, which is strictly regulated in satellite systems, is used for synchronizing various activities in the network, like estimating the distance between the satellite and the user equipment based on signal travel time. This PVT information can be used by the user equipment to predict the trajectory of an NTN cell, as described in the claim.

Referring to FIG. 6, there is shown a virtual cell center that corresponds to the cell edge of a UE. As illustrated in FIG. 6, there are three cell locations and the corresponding time stamps broadcast in SIB. And at time T2, the UE is already out of coverage, but at time T1 the UE is still within the cell coverage. So the time T1 is considered as the cell stop time for the purpose of power saving for neighbor cell measurements. Or, the UE may be able to calculate more exact time when it would exactly be out of coverage (e.g., it corresponds to a virtual cell center in FIG. 6), by comparing the cunent location to that of the linear interpolation of a list of cell center locations and the associated time stamps broadcasted.

Alternatively, given that the trajectory (e.g. position over time) of satellites is following the pre-planned schedules, a UE may be configured with the trajectory of moving cells around the UE over time, so that the UE can know the reference location and time of cells covering the UE’s area without having to read SI broadcast, and together with its current location, use them for cell reselection purpose. This could be pre-configured to the UE as part of NTN subscription information, or it could be configured to the UE over dedicated signaling such as when RRC is released or over user plane. In the former case, the trajectories of entire satellites of an NTN operator could be pre-configured. In the latter case, only some localized information tailored based on the UE’s current location could be configured by NW to the UE.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate cell reselection enhancements for TN-NTN mobility.

In one or more embodiments, a dynamic cell reselection management system may facilitate that TN geographical area may be indicated to UEs.

As illustrated in FIG. 3, an NTN cell may cover both oceanic and terrestrial areas due to its very large cell size. In terrestrial areas, there may be TN cells available. If one UE is in the common/overlap area of both TN cells and NTN cells, the normal principle is to prioritize TN cells.

To achieve this goal, a TN cell could be set up on a frequency with high priority', while an NTN cell may be deployed at a different frequency with low priority. The UE consistently carries out measurements of neighboring TN cells. If the result of the TN cell measurement surpasses a specified threshold, and the UE is currently camped on an NTN cell, the UE will reselect the TN cell. To accelerate the reselection of a TN cell by the UE, the threshold can be set to a low value.

But, it is also possible that the frequency priorities of TN frequency and NTN frequency are the same, or TN cells and NTN cells are deployed in the same frequency. In this case, a UE reselects a new cell following the R-criterion as described above. For the serving cell and each neighbor cell, a UE calculates a R value respectively with a configured cell specific offset value which can be used to prioritize TN cells.

Since the cell coverage is quite large, some UEs may be in the NTN-only area, e.g., there are no TN cells available, e.g., on the sea or in the dessert. For these UEs, although the TN neighbor cells are configured with high priority or equal priority in system information, it is just a waste of UE power to keep searching for these TN cells as these cells are not deployed in this NTN only area. In this case, it would be beneficial to indicate the TN area within this NTN cell. When a UE is in a TN area, it performs TN neighbor cell measurements; and when a UE is in NTN only-area, it does not perform TN neighbor cell measurements. Note that is not possible for NTN cell to reuse the neighboring cell information in SIB currently to provide information about the presence of TN cells in only part of the NTN cell.

In one or more embodiments, to achieve this goal, the following information should be provided in the system information:

- Cell type of a neighbor cell, e.g., TN cell or NTN cell. It could be done in an explicit way (a new field in system information is used to indicate the cell type) or an implicit way (if there is the corresponding satellite ephemeris data associated with this neighbor cell, it is an NTN cell. Otherwise, it is a TN cell). Instead, it is also possible to provide the type of frequencies in SIB, e.g., TN frequency and NTN frequency, so the corresponding neighbor cells in this frequency are with the same type.

- The TN area. There are several options to describe a geographical area:

Option 1 : for each TN neighbor cell, the corresponding geographical area information is provided by the network, e.g., cell center and cell radius, as illustrated in FIG. 7 there are 3 TN neighbor cells within an NTN cell. Instead of providing the full list of cells, another option is to provide only the list of cells in the boundary' of the TN coverage area as the reselection from NTN to TN will only happen to these boundary cells. This will reduce the size of information in SIB as only a few cells need to be listed.

Option 2: several lists of locations are provided by the network, and the corresponding close shape could be illustrated by a polygon connecting these points within a list, as illustrated in FIG. 8. There could be an explicit indication for the boundary TN neighbor cells (crossing the TN area boundary line) in each TN area (e.g., a list of boundary TN neighbor cells), which can be considered as the target neighbor cells for UEs in NTN-only area for cell reselection. Due to the reduction of the number of neighbor cells, the benefit is the UE power saving during neighbor cell measurements. The other approaches to indicate one TN neighbor cell crosses the boundary line are not excluded.

Option 3: a boundary line is provided by the network in the format of a list of locations, additionally an indication can be used to indicate which side is the TN side (e.g., location coordinates of a TN point), as illustrated in FIG. 9. There could be a list of the boundary TN neighbor cells (crossing the TN area boundary line), which can be considered as the target neighbor cells for UEs in NTN-only area for cell reselection. Due to the reduction of the number of neighbor cells, the benefit is the UE power saving during neighbor cell measurements. The other approaches to indicate one TN neighbor cell crosses the boundary line are not excluded.

In some embodiments, the electronic device(s), network(s), system(s), chip(s) or component(s), or portions or implementations thereof, of FIGs. 11-13, or some other figure herein, may be configured to perform one or more processes, techniques, or methods as described herein or portions thereof. One such process is depicted in FIG. 10.

For example, the process may include, at 1002, receiving reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information.

The process further includes, at 1004, predicting a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information

The process further includes, at 1006, determining when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory.

The process further includes, at 1008, performing relaxed measurements for intrafrequency, inter-frequency, or inter radio access technology (RAT) neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

In the process, no neighbor cell measurements may be performed within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell. The process may involve adjusting a serving duration by an offset, as configured by the network, which can enable the commencement of neighbor cell measurements or cessation of relaxed measurements earlier. Moreover, the process may involve deciding not to apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration is less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration. The trajectory of the NTN cell center may be estimated based on the reference location and orbital parameters of a serving satellite. By comparing an estimated cell center location with the cell center location broadcast in the system information, the process may determine whether the trajectory of the cell center can be accurately estimated. If the difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location is larger than a threshold, the process may cease applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion. If this difference exceeds a threshold for a certain number of continuous times, the process may again cease applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion. The cell stop time may be determined by the process when it verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components set forth in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, processes, and/or methods as set forth in the example section below. For example, the baseband circuitry as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below. For another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc. as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below in the example section.

It is understood that the above descriptions are for purposes of illustration and are not meant to be limiting.

FIGs. 11-13 illustrate various systems, devices, and components that may implement aspects of disclosed embodiments.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example network architecture 1 100 according to various embodiments. The network 1100 may operate in a manner consistent with 3GPP technical specifications for LTE or 5G/NR systems. However, the example embodiments are not limited in this regard and the described embodiments may apply to other networks that benefit from the principles described herein, such as future 3GPP systems, or the like.

The network 1100 includes a UE 1102, which is any mobile or non-mobile computing device designed to communicate with a RAN 1104 via an over-the-air connection. The UE 1102 is communicatively coupled with the RAN 1104 by a Uu interface, which may be applicable to both LTE and NR systems. Examples of the UE 1102 include, but are not limited to, a smartphone, tablet computer, wearable computer, desktop computer, laptop computer, in- vehicle infotainment system, in-car entertainment system, instrument cluster, head-up display (HUD) device, onboard diagnostic device, dashtop mobile equipment, mobile data terminal, electronic engine management system, electron! c/engine control unit, electronic/ engine control module, embedded system, sensor, microcontroller, control module, engine management system, networked appliance, machine-type communication device, machine-to-machine (M2M), device-to-device (D2D), machine-type communication (MTC) device, Internet of Things (loT) device, and/or the like. The network 1100 may include a plurality of UEs 1102 coupled directly with one another via a D2D, ProSe, PC5, and/or sidelink (SL) interface. These UEs 1102 may be M2M/D2D/MTC/IoT devices and/or vehicular systems that communicate using physical sidelink channels such as, but not limited to, PSBCH, PSDCH, PSSCH, PSCCH, PSFCH, etc. The UE 1102 may perform blind decoding attempts of SL channels/links according to the various embodiments herein.

In some embodiments, the UE 1102 may additionally communicate with an AP 1106 via an over-the-air (OTA) connection. The AP 1106 manages a WLAN connection, which may serve to offload some/all network traffic from the RAN 1104. The connection between the UE 1102 and the AP 1106 may be consistent with any IEEE 802. 11 protocol. Additionally, the UE 1102. RAN 1104, and AP 1106 may utilize cellular- WLAN aggregation/integration (e.g., LWA/LWIP). Cellular- WLAN aggregation may involve the UE 1102 being configured by the RAN 1104 to utilize both cellular radio resources and WLAN resources.

The RAN 1104 includes one or more access network nodes (ANs) 1108. The ANs 1108 terminate air-interface(s) for the UE 1102 by providing access stratum (AS) protocols including RRC, PDCP, RLC, MAC, and PHY/L1 protocols. In this manner, the AN 1108 enables data/voice connectivity between CN 1120 and the UE 1102. The ANs 1108 may be a macrocell base station or a low power base station for providing femtocells, picocells or other like cells having smaller coverage areas, smaller user capacity, or higher bandwidth compared to macrocells; or some combination thereof. In these implementations, an AN 1108 be referred to as a BS, gNB, RAN node, eNB, ng-eNB, NodeB, RSU, TRxP, etc.

One example implementation is a “CU/DU split” architecture where the ANs 1108 are embodied as a gNB-Central Unit (CU) that is communicatively coupled with one or more gNB- Distributed Units (DUs), where each DU may be communicatively coupled with one or more Radio Units (RUs) (also referred to as RRHs, RRUs, or the like) (see e g., 3GPP TS 38.401 v 16.1.0 (2020-03)). In some implementations, the one or more RUs may be individual RSUs. In some implementations, the CU/DU split may include an ng-eNB-CU and one or more ng- eNB-DUs instead of, or in addition to, the gNB-CU and gNB-DUs, respectively. The ANs 1108 employed as the CU may be implemented in a discrete device or as one or more software entities running on server computers as part of, for example, a virtual network including a virtual Base Band Unit (BBU) or BBU pool, cloud RAN (CRAN), Radio Equipment Controller (REC), Radio Cloud Center (RCC), centralized RAN (C-RAN), virtualized RAN (vRAN), and/or the like (although these terms may refer to different implementation concepts). Any other ty pe of architectures, arrangements, and/or configurations can be used.

The plurality of ANs may be coupled with one another via an X2 interface (if the RAN 1104 is an LTE RAN or Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) 1110) or an Xn interface (if the RAN 1104 is a NG-RAN 1114). The X2/Xn interfaces, which may be separated into control/user plane interfaces in some embodiments, may allow the ANs to communicate information related to handovers, data/context transfers, mobility, load management, interference coordination, etc.

The ANs of the RAN 1104 may each manage one or more cells, cell groups, component carriers, etc. to provide the UE 1102 with an air interface for network access. The UE 1102 may be simultaneously connected with a plurality of cells provided by the same or different ANs 1108 of the RAN 1104. For example, the UE 1102 and RAN 1104 may use carrier aggregation to allow the UE 1102 to connect with a plurality of component carriers, each corresponding to a Pcell or Scell. In dual connectivity scenarios, a first AN 1108 may be a master node that provides an MCG and a second AN 1108 may be secondary node that provides an SCG. The first/second ANs 1108 may be any combination of eNB, gNB, ng-eNB, etc.

The RAN 1104 may provide the air interface over a licensed spectrum or an unlicensed spectrum. To operate in the unlicensed spectrum, the nodes may use LAA, eLAA, and/or feLAA mechanisms based on CA technology with PCells/Scells. Prior to accessing the unlicensed spectrum, the nodes may perform medium/carrier-sensing operations based on, for example, a listen-before-talk (LBT) protocol.

In V2X scenarios the UE 1102 or AN 1108 may be or act as a roadside unit (RSU), which may refer to any transportation infrastructure entity' used for V2X communications. An RSU may be implemented in or by a suitable AN or a stationary (or relatively stationary) UE. An RSU implemented in or by: a UE may be referred to as a “UE-type RSU”; an eNB may be referred to as an “eNB-type RSU”; a gNB may be referred to as a “gNB-type RSU”; and the like. In one example, an RSU is a computing device coupled with radio frequency circuitry located on a roadside that provides connectivity support to passing vehicle UEs. The RSU may also include internal data storage circuitry to store intersection map geometry, traffic statistics, media, as well as applications/software to sense and control ongoing vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The RSU may provide very low latency communications required for high speed events, such as crash avoidance, traffic warnings, and the like. Additionally or alternatively, the RSU may provide other cellular/WLAN communications services. The components of the RSU may be packaged in a weatherproof enclosure suitable for outdoor installation, and may include a network interface controller to provide a wired connection (e.g., Ethernet) to a traffic signal controller or a backhaul network.

In some embodiments, the RAN 1104 may be an E-UTRAN 1110 with one or more eNBs 1112. The an E-UTRAN 1110 provides an LTE air interface (Uu) with the following characteristics: SCS of 15 kHz; CP-OFDM waveform for DL and SC-FDMA waveform for UL; turbo codes for data and TBCC for control; etc. The LTE air interface may rely on CSI- RS for CSI acquisition and beam management; PDSCH/PDCCH DMRS for PDSCH/PDCCH demodulation; and CRS for cell search and initial acquisition, channel quality measurements, and channel estimation for coherent demodulation/detection at the UE. The LTE air interface may operating on sub-6 GHz bands.

In some embodiments, the RAN 1104 may be an next generation (NG)-RAN 1114 with one or more gNB 1116 and/or on or more ng-eNB 1118. The gNB 1116 connects with 5G- enabled UEs 1102 using a 5G NR interface. The gNB 1116 connects with a 5GC 1140 through an NG interface, which includes an N2 interface or an N3 interface. The ng-eNB 1118 also connects with the 5GC 1140 through an NG interface, but may connect with a UE 1102 via the Uu interface. The gNB 1116 and the ng-eNB 1118 may connect with each other over an Xn interface.

In some embodiments, the NG interface may be split into two parts, an NG user plane (NG-U) interface, which carries traffic data between the nodes of the NG-RAN 1114 and a UPF 1148 (e.g., N3 interface), and an NG control plane (NG-C) interface, which is a signaling interface between the nodes of the NG-RAN 11 14 and an AMF 1 144 (e.g., N2 interface).

The NG-RAN 1114 may provide a 5G-NR air interface (which may also be referred to as a Uu interface) with the following characteristics: variable SCS; CP-OFDM for DL, CP- OFDM and DFT-s-OFDM for UL; polar, repetition, simplex, and Reed-Muller codes for control and LDPC for data. The 5G-NR air interface may rely on CSI-RS, PDSCH/PDCCH DMRS similar to the LTE air interface. The 5G-NR air interface may not use a CRS, but may use PBCH DMRS for PBCH demodulation; PTRS for phase tracking for PDSCH; and tracking reference signal for time tracking. The 5G-NR air interface may operating on FR1 bands that include sub-6 GHz bands or FR2 bands that include bands from 24.25 GHz to 52.6 GHz. The 5G-NR air interface may include an SSB that is an area of a downlink resource grid that includes PSS/SSS/PBCH.

The 5G-NR air interface may utilize BWPs for various purposes. For example, BWP can be used for dynamic adaptation of the SCS. For example, the UE 1102 can be configured with multiple BWPs where each BWP configuration has a different SCS. When a BWP change is indicated to the UE 1102, the SCS of the transmission is changed as well. Another use case example of BWP is related to power saving. In particular, multiple BWPs can be configured for the UE 1102 with different amount of frequency resources (e.g., PRBs) to support data transmission under different traffic loading scenarios. A BWP containing a smaller number of PRBs can be used for data transmission with small traffic load while allowing power saving at the UE 1102 and in some cases at the gNB 1116. A BWP containing a larger number of PRBs can be used for scenarios with higher traffic load.

The RAN 1104 is communicatively coupled to CN 1120 that includes network elements and/or network functions (NFs) to provide various functions to support data and telecommunications services to customers/subscribers (e.g., UE 1102). The components ofthe CN 1120 may be implemented in one physical node or separate physical nodes. In some embodiments, NFV may be utilized to virtualize any or all of the functions provided by the network elements of the CN 1120 onto physical compute/ storage resources in servers, switches, etc. A logical instantiation of the CN 1120 may be referred to as a network slice, and a logical instantiation of a portion of the CN 1120 may be referred to as a network sub-slice.

The CN 1120 may be an LTE CN 1122 (also referred to as an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) 1122). The EPC 1122 may include MME 1124, SGW 1126, SGSN 1128, HSS 1130, PGW 1132, and PCRF 1134 coupled with one another over interfaces (or “reference points”) as shown. The NFs in the EPC 1122 are briefly introduced as follows.

The MME 1124 implements mobility management functions to track a current location of the UE 1 102 to facilitate paging, bearer activation/deactivation, handovers, gateway selection, authentication, etc.

The SGW 1126 terminates an SI interface toward the RAN 1110 and routes data packets between the RAN 1110 and the EPC 1122. The SGW 1126 may be a local mobility anchor point for inter-RAN node handovers and also may provide an anchor for inter-3GPP mobility. Other responsibilities may include lawful intercept, charging, and some policy enforcement.

The SGSN 1128 tracks a location of the UE 1102 and performs security functions and access control. The SGSN 1128 also performs inter-EPC node signaling for mobility between different RAT networks; PDN and S-GW selection as specified by MME 1124; MME 1124 selection for handovers; etc. The S3 reference point between the MME 1124 and the SGSN 1128 enable user and bearer information exchange for inter-3GPP access network mobility in idle/active states. The HSS 1130 includes a database for network users, including subscription-related information to support the network entities’ handling of communication sessions. The HSS 1130 can provide support for routing/roaming, authentication, authorization, naming/ addressing resolution, location dependencies, etc. An S6a reference point between the HSS 1130 and the MME 1124 may enable transfer of subscription and authentication data for authenticating/ authorizing user access to the EPC 1120.

The PGW 11 2 may terminate an SGi interface toward a data network (DN) 1136 that may include an application (app)/content server 1138. The PGW 1132 routes data packets between the EPC 1122 and the datanetwork 1136. The PGW 1132 is communicatively coupled with the SGW 1126 by an S5 reference point to facilitate user plane tunneling and tunnel management. The PGW 1132 may further include anode for policy enforcement and charging data collection (e.g., PCEF). Additionally, the SGi reference point may communicatively couple the PGW 1132 with the same or different data network 1136. The PGW 1132 may be communicatively coupled with a PCRF 1134 via a Gx reference point.

The PCRF 1134 is the policy and charging control element of the EPC 1122. The PCRF 1134 is communicatively coupled to the app/content server 1138 to determine appropriate QoS and charging parameters for service flows. The PCRF 1132 also provisions associated rules into a PCEF (via Gx reference point) with appropriate TFT and QCI.

The CN 1120 may be a 5GC 1140 including an AUSF 1142, AMF 1144, SMF 1146, UPF 1148, NSSF 1150, NEF 1152, NRF 1154, PCF 1156, UDM 1158, and AF 1160 coupled with one another over various interfaces as shown. The NFs in the 5GC 1 140 are briefly introduced as follows.

The AUSF 1142 stores data for authentication of UE 1102 and handle authentication- related functionality. The AUSF 1142 may facilitate a common authentication framework for various access types..

The AMF 1144 allows other functions of the 5GC 1140 to communicate with the UE 1102 and the RAN 1104 and to subscribe to notifications about mobility events with respect to the UE 1102. The AMF 1144 is also responsible for registration management (e.g., for registering UE 1102), connection management, reachability management, mobility management, lawful interception of AMF-related events, and access authentication and authorization. The AMF 1144 provides transport for SM messages between the UE 1102 and the SMF 1146, and acts as a transparent proxy for routing SM messages. AMF 1144 also provides transport for SMS messages between UE 1102 and an SMSF. AMF 1144 interacts with the AUSF 1142 and the UE 1102 to perform various security anchor and context management functions. Furthermore, AMF 1144 is a termination point of a RAN-CP interface, which includes the N2 reference point between the RAN 1104 and the AMF 1144. The AMF 1144 is also a termination point of NAS (Nl) signaling, and performs NAS ciphering and integrity protection.

AMF 1144 also supports NAS signaling with the UE 1102 over an N3IWF interface. The N3IWF provides access to untrusted entities. N3IWF may be a termination point for the N2 interface between the (R)AN 1104 and the AMF 1144 for the control plane, and may be a termination point for the N3 reference point between the (R)AN 1114 and the 1148 for the user plane. As such, the AMF 1144 handles N2 signalling from the SMF 1146 and the AMF 1144 for PDU sessions and QoS, encapsulate/de-encapsulate packets for IPSec and N3 tunnelling, marks N3 user-plane packets in the uplink, and enforces QoS corresponding to N3 packet marking taking into account QoS requirements associated with such marking received over N2. N3IWF may also relay UL and DL control-plane NAS signalling between the UE 1102 and AMF 1144 via an N 1 reference point between the UE 1102and the AMF 1144, and relay uplink and downlink user-plane packets between the UE 1102 and UPF 1148. The N3IWF also provides mechanisms for IPsec tunnel establishment with the UE 1102. The AMF 1144 may exhibit an Narnf service-based interface, and may be a termination point for an N14 reference point between two AMFs 1144 and an N17 reference point between the AMF 1144 and a 5G- EIR (not shown by FIG. 11).

The SMF 1146 is responsible for SM (e.g., session establishment, tunnel management between UPF 1 148 and AN 1 108); UE IP address allocation and management (including optional authorization); selection and control of UP function; configuring traffic steering at UPF 1148 to route traffic to proper destination; termination of interfaces toward policy control functions; controlling part of policy enforcement, charging, and QoS; lawful intercept (for SM events and interface to LI system); termination of SM parts of NAS messages; downlink data notification; initiating AN specific SM information, sent via AMF 1144 over N2 to AN 1108; and determining SSC mode of a session. SM refers to management of a PDU session, and a PDU session or “session” refers to a PDU connectivity service that provides or enables the exchange of PDUs between the UE 1102 and the DN 1136.

The UPF 1148 acts as an anchor point for intra-RAT and inter-RAT mobility, an external PDU session point of interconnect to data network 1136, and a branching point to support multi-homed PDU session. The UPF 1148 also performs packet routing and forwarding, packet inspection, enforces user plane part of policy rules, lawfully intercept packets (UP collection), performs traffic usage reporting, perform QoS handling for a user plane (e.g., packet filtering, gating, UL/DL rate enforcement), performs uplink traffic verification (e.g., SDF-to-QoS flow mapping), transport level packet marking in the uplink and downlink, and performs dow nlink packet buffering and downlink data notification triggering. UPF 1148 may include an uplink classifier to support routing traffic flows to a data network.

The NSSF 1150 selects a set of network slice instances serving the UE 1102. The NSSF 1150 also determines allowed NS SAI and the mapping to the subscribed S-NSSAIs, if needed. The NSSF 1150 also determines an AMF set to be used to serve the UE 1102, or a list of candidate AMFs 1144 based on a suitable configuration and possibly by querying the NRF 1154. The selection of a set of network slice instances for the UE 1102 may be triggered by the AMF 1144 with which the UE 1102 is registered by interacting with the NSSF 1150; this may lead to a change of AMF 1144. The NSSF 1150 interacts with the AMF 1144 via an N22 reference point; and may communicate with another NSSF in a visited network via an N31 reference point (not shown).

The NEF 1152 securely exposes services and capabilities provided by 3GPP NFs for third party, internal exposure/re-exposure, AFs 1160, edge computing or fog computing systems (e.g., edge compute node, etc. In such embodiments, the NEF 1152 may authenticate, authorize, or throttle the AFs. NEF 1152 may also translate information exchanged with the AF 1160 and information exchanged with internal network functions. For example, the NEF 1152 may translate between an AF-Service-Identifier and an internal 5GC information. NEF 1152 may also receive information from other NF s based on exposed capabilities of other NFs. This information may be stored at the NEF 1152 as structured data, or at a data storage NF using standardized interfaces. The stored information can then be re-exposed by the NEF 1152 to other NFs and AFs, or used for other purposes such as analytics.

The NRF 1154 supports service discovery functions, receives NF discovery requests from NF instances, and provides information of the discovered NF instances to the requesting NF instances. NRF 1154 also maintains information of available NF instances and their supported services. The NRF 1154 also supports service discovery functions, wherein the NRF 1154 receives NF Discovery Request from NF instance or an S CP (not shown), and provides information of the discovered NF instances to the NF instance or SCP.

The PCF 1156 provides policy rules to control plane functions to enforce them, and may also support unified policy framework to govern network behavior. The PCF 1156 may also implement a front end to access subscription information relevant for policy decisions in a UDR of the UDM 1158. In addition to communicating with functions over reference points as shown, the PCF 1156 exhibit an Npcf service-based interface. The UDM 1158 handles subscription-related information to support the network entities’ handling of communication sessions, and stores subscription data of UE 1102. For example, subscription data may be communicated via an N8 reference point between the UDM 11 8 and the AMF 1144. The UDM 1158 may include two parts, an application front end and a UDR. The UDR may store subscription data and policy data for the UDM 1158 and the PCF 1156, and/or structured data for exposure and application data (including PFDs for application detection, application request information for multiple UEs 1102) for the NEF 1152. The Nudr service-based interface may be exhibited by the UDR 221 to allow the UDM 1158, PCF 1156, and NEF 1152 to access a particular set of the stored data, as well as to read, update (e.g., add, modify), delete, and subscribe to notification of relevant data changes in the UDR. The UDM may include a UDM-FE, which is in charge of processing credentials, location management, subscription management and so on. Several different front ends may serve the same user in different transactions. The UDM-FE accesses subscription information stored in the UDR and performs authentication credential processing, user identification handling, access authorization, registration/mobility management, and subscription management. In addition to communicating with other NFs over reference points as show n, the UDM 1158 may exhibit the Nudm service-based interface.

AF 1160 provides application influence on traffic routing, provide access to NEF 1152, and interact with the policy framework for policy control. The AF 1160 may influence UPF 1148 (re)selection and traffic routing. Based on operator deployment, when AF 1160 is considered to be a trusted entity, the network operator may permit AF 1 1 0 to interact directly with relevant NFs. Additionally, the AF 1160 may be used for edge computing implementations,

The 5GC 1140 may enable edge computing by selecting operator/3rd party services to be geographically close to a point that the UE 1102 is attached to the network. This may reduce latency and load on the network. In edge computing implementations, the 5GC 1140 may select a UPF 1148 close to the UE 1102 and execute traffic steering from the UPF 1148 to DN 1136 via the N6 interface. This may be based on the UE subscription data, UE location, and information provided by the AF 1160, which allows the AF 1160 to influence UPF (re)selection and traffic routing.

The data network (DN) 1136 may represent various network operator services, Internet access, or third party services that may be provided by one or more servers including, for example, application (app)Zcontent server 1138. The DN 1136 may be an operator external public, a private PDN, or an intra-operator packet data network, for example, for provision of IMS services. In this embodiment, the app server 1138 can be coupled to an IMS via an S- CSCF or the I-CSCF. In some implementations, the DN 1136 may represent one or more local area DNs (LADNs), which are DNs 1136 (or DN names (DNNs)) that is/are accessible by a UE 1102 in one or more specific areas. Outside of these specific areas, the UE 1102 is not able to access the LADN/DN 1136.

Additionally or alternatively, the DN 1136 may be an Edge DN 1136, which is a (local) Data Network that supports the architecture for enabling edge applications. In these embodiments, the app server 1138 may represent the physical hardware systems/devices providing app server functionality and/or the application software resident in the cloud or at an edge compute node that performs server function(s). In some embodiments, the app/content server 1138 provides an edge hosting environment that provides support required for Edge Application Server’s execution.

In some embodiments, the 5GS can use one or more edge compute nodes to provide an interface and offload processing of wireless communication traffic. In these embodiments, the edge compute nodes may be included in, or co-located with one or more RANI 110, 1114. For example, the edge compute nodes can provide a connection between the RAN 1114 and UPF 1148 in the 5GC 1140. The edge compute nodes can use one or more NFV instances instantiated on virtualization infrastructure within the edge compute nodes to process wireless connections to and from the RAN 1114 and UPF 1148.

The interfaces of the 5GC 1140 include reference points and service-based itnterfaces. The reference points include: N1 (between the UE 1 102 and the AMF 1 144), N2 (between RAN 1114 and AMF 1144), N3 (between RAN 1114 and UPF 1148), N4 (between the SMF 1146 and UPF 1148), N5 (between PCF 1156 and AF 1160), N6 (between UPF 1148 and DN 1136), N7 (between SMF 1146 and PCF 1156), N8 (between UDM 1158 and AMF 1144), N9 (between two UPFs 1148), N10 (between the UDM 1158 and the SMF 1146), Ni l (between the AMF 1144 and the SMF 1146), N12 (between AUSF 1142 and AMF 1144), N13 (between AUSF 1142 and UDM 1158), N14 (between two AMFs 1144; not shown). N15 (between PCF 1156 and AMF 1144 in case of a non-roaming scenario, or between the PCF 1156 in a visited network and AMF 1144 in case of a roaming scenario), N16 (between tw o SMFs 1146; not shown), and N22 (between AMF 1144 and NSSF 1150). Other reference point representations not shown in FIG. 11 can also be used. The service-based representation of FIG. 11 represents NFs within the control plane that enable other authorized NFs to access their services. The service-based interfaces (SBIs) include: Namf (SBI exhibited by AMF 1144), Nsmf (SBI exhibited by SMF 1146), Nnef (SBI exhibited by NEF 1152), Npcf (SBI exhibited by PCF 1156), Nudm (SBI exhibited by the UDM 1158), Naf (SBI exhibited by AF 1160), Nnrf (SBI exhibited by NRF 1154), Nnssf (SBI exhibited by NSSF 1150), Nausf (SBI exhibited by AUSF 1142). Other service-based interfaces (e.g., Nudr, N5g-eir, and Nudsl not shown in FIG. 11 can also be used. In some embodiments, the NEF 1152 can provide an interface to edge compute nodes 1136x, which can be used to process wireless connections with the RAN 1114.

In some implementations, the system 1100 may include an SMSF, which is responsible for SMS subscription checking and verification, and relaying SM messages to/from the UE 1102 to/from other entities, such as an SMS-GMSC/IWMSC/SMS-router. The SMS may also interact with AMF 1144 and UDM 1158 for a notification procedure that the UE 1102 is available for SMS transfer (e.g., set a UE not reachable flag, and notifying UDM 1158 when UE 1102 is available for SMS).

The 5GS may also include an SCP (or individual instances of the SCP) that supports indirect communication (see e.g., 3GPP TS 23.501 section 7.1.1); delegated discovery (see e.g., 3GPP TS 23.501 section 7.1.1); message forwarding and routing to destination NF/NF service(s), communication security (e.g., authorization of the NF Service Consumer to access the NF Service Producer API) (see e.g., 3GPP TS 33.501), load balancing, monitoring, overload control, etc.; and discovery and selection functionality for UDM(s), AUSF(s), UDR(s), PCF(s) with access to subscription data stored in the UDR based on UE’s SUPI, SUCI or GPSI (see e.g., 3GPP TS 23.501 section 6.3). Load balancing, monitoring, overload control functionality provided by the SCP may be implementation specific. The SCP may be deployed in a distributed manner. More than one SCP can be present in the communication path between various NF Services. The SCP, although not an NF instance, can also be deployed distributed, redundant, and scalable.

FIG. 12 schematically illustrates a wireless network 1200 in accordance with various embodiments. The wireless network 1200 may include a UE 1202 in wireless communication with an AN 1204. The UE 1202 and AN 1204 may be similar to, and substantially interchangeable with, like-named components described with respect to FIG. 11.

The UE 1202 may be communicatively coupled with the AN 1204 via connection 1206. The connection 1206 is illustrated as an air interface to enable communicative coupling, and can be consistent with cellular communications protocols such as an LTE protocol or a 5GNR protocol operating at mmWave or sub-6GHz frequencies.

The UE 1202 may include a host platform 1208 coupled with a modem platform 1210. The host platform 1208 may include application processing circuitry 1212, which may be coupled with protocol processing circuitry 1214 of the modem platform 1210. The application processing circuitry 1212 may run various applications for the UE 1202 that source/sink application data. The application processing circuitry 1212 may further implement one or more layer operations to transmit/receive application data to/from a data network. These layer operations may include transport (for example UDP) and Internet (for example, IP) operations The protocol processing circuitry 1214 may implement one or more of layer operations to facilitate transmission or reception of data over the connection 1206. The layer operations implemented by the protocol processing circuitry 1214 may include, for example, MAC, RLC, PDCP, RRC and NAS operations.

The modem platform 1210 may further include digital baseband circuitry 1216 that may implement one or more layer operations that are “below” layer operations performed by the protocol processing circuitry 1214 in a network protocol stack. These operations may include, for example, PHY operations including one or more of HARQ acknowledgement (ACK) functions, scrambling/descrambling, encoding/decoding, layer mapping/de-mapping, modulation symbol mapping, received symbol/bit metric determination, multi-antenna port precoding/decoding, which may include one or more of space-time, space-frequency or spatial coding, reference signal generation/detection, preamble sequence generation and/or decoding, synchronization sequence generation/detection, control channel signal blind decoding, and other related functions.

The modem platform 1210 may further include transmit circuitry 1218, receive circuitry 1220, RF circuitry 1222, and RF front end (RFFE) 1224, which may include or connect to one or more antenna panels 1226. Briefly, the transmit circuitry 1218 may include a digital -to-analog converter, mixer, intermediate frequency (IF) components, etc.; the receive circuitry 1220 may include an analog-to-digital converter, mixer, IF components, etc.; the RF circuitry 1222 may include a low-noise amplifier, a power amplifier, power tracking components, etc.; RFFE 1224 may include filters (for example, surface/bulk acoustic wave filters), switches, antenna tuners, beamforming components (for example, phase-array antenna components), etc. The selection and arrangement of the components of the transmit circuitry 1218, receive circuitry 1220, RF circuitry 1222, RFFE 1224, and antenna panels 1226 (referred generically as “transmit/receive components”) may be specific to details of a specific implementation such as, for example, whether communication is TDM or FDM, in mmWave or sub-6 gHz frequencies, etc. In some embodiments, the transmit/receive components may be arranged in multiple parallel transmit/receive chains, may be disposed in the same or different chips/modules, etc. In some embodiments, the protocol processing circuitry 1214 may include one or more instances of control circuitry (not shown) to provide control functions for the transmit/receive components.

A UE 1202 reception may be established by and via the antenna panels 1226, RFFE 1224, RF circuitry 1222, receive circuitry 1220, digital baseband circuitry 1216, and protocol processing circuitry 1214. In some embodiments, the antenna panels 1226 may receive a transmission from the AN 1204 by receive-beamforming signals received by a plurality of antennas/antenna elements of the one or more antenna panels 1226.

A UE 1202 transmission may be established by and via the protocol processing circuitry 1214, digital baseband circuitry 1216, transmit circuitry 1218, RF circuitry 1222, RFFE 1224, and antenna panels 1226. In some embodiments, the transmit components of the UE 1204 may apply a spatial filter to the data to be transmitted to form a transmit beam emitted by the antenna elements of the antenna panels 1226.

Similar to the UE 1202, the AN 1204 may include a host platform 1228 coupled with a modem platform 1230. The host platform 1228 may include application processing circuitry 1232 coupled with protocol processing circuitry' 1234 of the modem platform 1230. The modem platform may further include digital baseband circuitry 1236, transmit circuitry 1238, receive circuitry 1240, RF circuitry 1242, RFFE circuitry 1244, and antenna panels 1246. The components of the AN 1204 may be similar to and substantially interchangeable with like- named components of the UE 1202. In addition to performing data transmission/reception as described above, the components of the AN 1208 may perform various logical functions that include, for example, RNC functions such as radio bearer management, uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management, and data packet scheduling.

FIG. 13 illustrates components of a computing device 1300 according to some example embodiments, able to read instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. Specifically, FIG. 13 shows a diagrammatic representation of hardware resources 1301 including one or more processors (or processor cores) 1310, one or more memory /storage devices 1320, and one or more communication resources 1330, each of which may be communicatively coupled via a bus 1340 or other interface circuitry. For embodiments where node virtualization (e.g., NFV) is utilized, a hypervisor 1302 may be executed to provide an execution environment for one or more network slices/sub-slices to utilize the hardware resources 1301. The processors 1310 include, for example, processor 1312 and processor 1314. The processors 1310 include circuitry such as, but not limited to one or more processor cores and one or more of cache memory, low drop-out voltage regulators (LDOs), interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as SPI, I2C or universal programmable serial interface circuit, real time clock (RTC), timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, general purpose I/O, memory card controllers such as secure digital/multi-media card (SD/MMC) or similar, interfaces, mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) interfaces and Joint Test Access Group (JTAG) test access ports. The processors 1310 may be, for example, a central processing unit (CPU), reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors, Acom RISC Machine (ARM) processors, complex instruction set computing (CISC) processors, graphics processing units (GPUs), one or more Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) such as a baseband processor, Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), an Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), a radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), one or more microprocessors or controllers, another processor (including those discussed herein), or any suitable combination thereof. In some implementations, the processor circuitry 1310 may include one or more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices (e.g., FPGA, complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), etc.), or the like.

The memory /storage devices 1320 may include main memory, disk storage, or any suitable combination thereof. The memory/storage devices 1320 may include, but are not limited to, any ty pe of volatile, non-volatile, or semi-volatile memory such as random access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), static RAM (SRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), Flash memory, solid-state storage, phase change RAM (PRAM), resistive memory such as magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc., and may incorporate three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memories from Intel® and Micron®. The memory/storage devices 1320 may also comprise persistent storage devices, which may be temporal and/or persistent storage of any type, including, but not limited to, non-volatile memory, optical, magnetic, and/or solid state mass storage, and so forth.

The communication resources 1330 may include interconnection or network interface controllers, components, or other suitable devices to communicate with one or more peripheral devices 1304 or one or more databases 1306 or other network elements via a network 1308. For example, the communication resources 1330 may include wired communication components (e.g., for coupling via USB, Ethernet, Ethernet, Ethernet over GRE Tunnels, Ethernet over Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Ethernet over USB, Controller Area Network (CAN), Local Interconnect Network (LIN), DeviceNet, ControlNet, Data Highway+, PROFIBUS, or PROFINET, among many others), cellular communication components, NFC components, Bluetooth® (or Bluetooth® Low Energy) components, WiFi® components, and other communication components. Network connectivity may be provided to/from the computing device 1300 via the communication resources 1330 using a physical connection, which may be electrical (e.g., a “copper interconnect”) or optical. The physical connection also includes suitable input connectors (e g., ports, receptacles, sockets, etc.) and output connectors (e.g., plugs, pins, etc.). The communication resources 1330 may include one or more dedicated processors and/or FPGAs to communicate using one or more of the aforementioned network interface protocols.

Instructions 1350 may comprise software, a program, an application, an applet, an app, or other executable code for causing at least any of the processors 1310 to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. The instructions 1350 may reside, completely or partially, within at least one of the processors 1310 (e.g., within the processor’s cache memory), the memory /storage devices 1320, or any suitable combination thereof. Furthermore, any portion of the instructions 1350 may be transferred to the hardware resources 1301 from any combination of the peripheral devices 1304 or the databases 1306. Accordingly, the memory of processors 1310, the memory /storage devices 1320, the peripheral devices 1304, and the databases 1306 are examples of computer-readable and machine-readable media.

For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components set forth in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, processes, and/or methods as set forth in the example section below. For example, the baseband circuitry as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below. For another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc. as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below in the example section.

Additional examples of the presently described embodiments include the following, non-limiting implementations. Each of the following non-limiting examples may stand on its own or may be combined in any permutation or combination with any one or more of the other examples provided below or throughout the present disclosure.

For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components set forth in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, processes, and/or methods as set forth in the example section below. For example, the baseband circuitry as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below. For another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc. as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below.

The following examples pertain to further embodiments.

Example 1 may include an apparatus comprising receive reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information; predict a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information; determine when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory; and perform relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, or inter radio access technology (RAT) neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

Example 2 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to not perform any neighbor cell measurements within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell.

Example 3 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to adjust a serving duration by an offset, configured by the network, allowing the device to start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

Example 4 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to not apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration may be less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration.

Example 5 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to estimate the trajectory of the NTN cell center based on the reference location and an orbital parameters of a serving satellite.

Example 6 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to compare an estimated cell center location with a cell center location broadcast in the system information to determine whether the device can accurately estimate the traj ectory of the cell center.

Example 7 may include the apparatus of example 6 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to stop applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion when a difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location may be larger than a threshold.

Example 8 may include the apparatus of example 7 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to stop applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion when the difference between the estimated cell center location and the real cell center location may be larger than a threshold for a certain number of continuous times.

Example 9 may include the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example herein, wherein the processing circuitry may be further configured to determine the cell stop time when the device verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

Example 10 may include a computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions which when executed by one or more processors result in performing operations comprising: receiving reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information; predicting a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information; determining when the device will leave a coverage of a cunent serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory; and performing relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, interfrequency, or inter RAT neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

Example 11 may include the computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise not perform any neighbor cell measurements within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell.

Example 12 may include the computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise adjusting a serving duration by an offset, configured by the network, allowing the device to start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

Example 13 may include the computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise not apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration may be less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration.

Example 14 may include the computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise estimate the trajectory of the NTN cell center based on the reference location and an orbital parameters of a serving satellite. Example 15 may include the computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise comparing an estimated cell center location with a cell center location broadcast in the system information to determine whether the device can accurately estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

Example 16 may include the computer-readable medium of example 15 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise stop applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion when a difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location may be larger than a threshold.

Example 17 may include the computer-readable medium of example 16 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise stop applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion when the difference between the estimated cell center location and the real cell center location may be larger than a threshold for a certain number of continuous times.

Example 18 may include the computer-readable medium of example 10 and/or some other example herein, wherein the operations further comprise determining the cell stop time when the device verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

Example 19 may include a method comprising: receiving, by one or more processors, reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information; predicting a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information; determining when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory ; and performing relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, or inter RAT neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

Example 20 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, further comprising not perform any neighbor cell measurements within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell.

Example 21 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, further comprising adjusting a serving duration by an offset, configured by the network, allowing the device to start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

Example 22 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, further comprising not apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration may be less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration. Example 23 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, further comprising estimate the trajectory of the NTN cell center based on the reference location and an orbital parameters of a serving satellite.

Example 24 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, further comprising comparing an estimated cell center location with a cell center location broadcast in the system information to determine whether the device can accurately estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

Example 25 may include the method of example 24 and/or some other example herein, further comprising stop applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion when a difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location may be larger than a threshold.

Example 26 may include the method of example 25 and/or some other example herein, further comprising stop applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion when the difference between the estimated cell center location and the real cell center location may be larger than a threshold for a certain number of continuous times.

Example 27 may include the method of example 19 and/or some other example herein, further comprising determining the cell stop time when the device verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

Example 28 may include an apparatus comprising means for: receiving reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information; predicting a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information; determining when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajector ; and performing relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, or inter RAT neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

Example 29 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, further comprising not perform any neighbor cell measurements within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell.

Example 30 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, further comprising adjusting a serving duration by an offset, configured by the network, allowing the device to start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

Example 31 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, further comprising not apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration may be less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration. Example 32 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, further comprising estimate the trajectory of the NTN cell center based on the reference location and an orbital parameters of a serving satellite.

Example 33 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, further comprising comparing an estimated cell center location with a cell center location broadcast in the system information to determine whether the device can accurately estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

Example 34 may include the apparatus of example 33 and/or some other example herein, further comprising stop applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion when a difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location may be larger than a threshold.

Example 35 may include the apparatus of example 34 and/or some other example herein, further comprising stop applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion when the difference between the estimated cell center location and the real cell center location may be larger than a threshold for a certain number of continuous times.

Example 36 may include the apparatus of example 28 and/or some other example herein, further comprising determining the cell stop time when the device verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

Example 37 may include an apparatus comprising means for performing any of the methods of examples 1-36.

Example 38 may include a network node comprising a communication interface and processing circuitry connected thereto and configured to perform the methods of examples 1- 36.

Example 39 may include an apparatus comprising means to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or any other method or process described herein.

Example 40 may include one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions to cause an electronic device, upon execution of the instructions by one or more processors of the electronic device, to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or any other method or process described herein.

Example 41 may include an apparatus comprising logic, modules, or circuitry to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or any other method or process described herein. Example 42 may include a method, technique, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions or parts thereof.

Example 43 may include an apparatus comprising: one or more processors and one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method, techniques, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof.

Example 44 may include a signal as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions or parts thereof.

Example 45 may include a datagram, packet, frame, segment, protocol data unit (PDU), or message as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions or parts thereof, or otherwise described in the present disclosure.

Example 46 may include a signal encoded with data as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions or parts thereof, or otherwise described in the present disclosure.

Example 47 may include a signal encoded with a datagram, packet, frame, segment, protocol data unit (PDU), or message as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions or parts thereof, or otherwise described in the present disclosure.

Example 48 may include an electromagnetic signal carrying computer-readable instructions, wherein execution of the computer-readable instructions by one or more processors is to cause the one or more processors to perform the method, techniques, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof.

Example 49 may include a computer program comprising instructions, wherein execution of the program by a processing element is to cause the processing element to carry out the method, techniques, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-36, or portions thereof.

Example 50 may include a signal in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

Example 51 may include a method of communicating in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

Example 52 may include a system for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein.

Example 53 may include a device for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein.

An example implementation is an edge computing system, including respective edge processing devices and nodes to invoke or perform the operations of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is a client endpoint node, operable to invoke or perform the operations of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an aggregation node, network hub node, gateway node, or core data processing node, within or coupled to an edge computing system, operable to invoke or perform the operations of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an access point, base station, road-side unit, street-side unit, or on-premise unit, within or coupled to an edge computing system, operable to invoke or perform the operations of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge provisioning node, service orchestration node, application orchestration node, or multi-tenant management node, within or coupled to an edge computing system, operable to invoke or perform the operations of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge node operating an edge provisioning service, application or service orchestration service, virtual machine deployment, container deployment, function deployment, and compute management, within or coupled to an edge computing system, operable to invoke or perform the operations of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system operable as an edge mesh, as an edge mesh with side car loading, or with mesh-to-mesh communications, operable to invoke or perform the operations of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system including aspects of network functions, acceleration functions, acceleration hardware, storage hardware, or computation hardware resources, operable to invoke or perform the use cases discussed herein, with use of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system adapted for supporting client mobility, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-every thing (V2X), or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) scenarios, and optionally operating according to ETSI MEC specifications, operable to invoke or perform the use cases discussed herein, with use of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is an edge computing system adapted for mobile wireless communications, including configurations according to an 3GPP 4G/LTE or 5G network capabilities, operable to invoke or perform the use cases discussed herein, with use of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Another example implementation is a computing system adapted for network communications, including configurations according to an O-RAN capabilities, operable to invoke or perform the use cases discussed herein, with use of the examples above, or other subject matter described herein. Any of the above-described examples may be combined with any other example (or combination of examples), unless explicitly stated otherwise. The foregoing description of one or more implementations provides illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of embodiments to the precise form disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various embodiments.

TERMINOLOGY

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the disclosure. As used herein, the singular forms “a,” “an” and “the” are intended to include plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprises” and/or “comprising,” when used in this specification, specific the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operation, elements, components, and/or groups thereof.

For the purposes of the present disclosure, the phrase “A and/or B” means (A), (B), or (A and B). For the purposes of the present disclosure, the phrase “A, B, and/or C” means (A), (B), (C), (A and B), (A and C), (B and C), or (A, B and C). The description may use the phrases “in an embodiment,” or “In some embodiments,” which may each refer to one or more of the same or different embodiments. Furthermore, the terms “comprising,” “including,” “having,” and the like, as used with respect to embodiments of the present disclosure, are synonymous.

The terms “coupled,” “communicatively coupled,” along with derivatives thereof are used herein. The term “coupled” may mean two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with one another, may mean that two or more elements indirectly contact each other but still cooperate or interact with each other, and/or may mean that one or more other elements are coupled or connected between the elements that are said to be coupled with each other. The term “directly coupled” may mean that two or more elements are in direct contact with one another. The term “communicatively coupled” may mean that two or more elements may be in contact with one another by a means of communication including through a wire or other interconnect connection, through a wireless communication channel or ink, and/or the like. The term “circuitry” as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes hardware components such as an electronic circuit, a logic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), a field-programmable device (FPD) (e.g., a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a programmable logic device (PLD), a complex PLD (CPLD), a high-capacity PLD (HCPLD), a structured ASIC, or a programmable SoC), digital signal processors (DSPs), etc., that are configured to provide the described functionality. In some embodiments, the circuitry may execute one or more software or firmware programs to provide at least some of the described functionality. The term “circuitry” may also refer to a combination of one or more hardware elements (or a combination of circuits used in an electrical or electronic system) with the program code used to carry out the functionality of that program code. In these embodiments, the combination of hardware elements and program code may be referred to as a particular type of circuitry.

The term “processor circuitry” as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes circuitry capable of sequentially and automatically carrying out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations, or recording, storing, and/or transferring digital data. Processing circuitry may include one or more processing cores to execute instructions and one or more memory structures to store program and data information. The term “processor circuitry” may refer to one or more application processors, one or more baseband processors, a physical central processing unit (CPU), a single-core processor, a dual-core processor, a triple-core processor, a quad-core processor, and/or any other device capable of executing or otherwise operating computer-executable instructions, such as program code, software modules, and/or functional processes. Processing circuitry may include more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices, or the like. The one or more hardware accelerators may include, for example, computer vision (CV) and/or deep learning (DL) accelerators. The terms “application circuitry” and/or “baseband circuitry" may be considered synonymous to, and may be referred to as, “processor circuitry.”

The term “memory” and/or “memory circuitry” as used herein refers to one or more hardware devices for storing data, including RAM, MRAM, PRAM, DRAM, and/or SDRAM, core memory, ROM, magnetic disk storage mediums, optical storage mediums, flash memory devices or other machine readable mediums for storing data. The term “computer-readable medium” may include, but is not limited to, memory, portable or fixed storage devices, optical storage devices, and various other mediums capable of storing, containing or carrying instructions or data. The term “interface circuitry” as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes circuitry that enables the exchange of information between two or more components or devices. The term “interface circuitry” may refer to one or more hardware interfaces, for example, buses, I/O interfaces, peripheral component interfaces, network interface cards, and/or the like.

The term “user equipment” or “UE” as used herein refers to a device with radio communication capabilities and may describe a remote user of network resources in a communications network. The term “user equipment” or “UE” may be considered synonymous to, and may be referred to as, client, mobile, mobile device, mobile terminal, user terminal, mobile unit, mobile station, mobile user, subscriber, user, remote station, access agent, user agent, receiver, radio equipment, reconfigurable radio equipment, reconfigurable mobile device, etc. Furthermore, the term “user equipment” or “UE” may include any type of wireless/ wired device or any computing device including a wireless communications interface.

The term “network element” as used herein refers to physical or virtualized equipment and/or infrastructure used to provide wired or wireless communication network services. The term “network element” may be considered synonymous to and/or referred to as a networked computer, networking hardware, network equipment, network node, router, switch, hub, bridge, radio network controller, RAN device, RAN node, gateway, server, virtualized VNF, NFVI, and/or the like.

The term “computer system” as used herein refers to any type interconnected electronic devices, computer devices, or components thereof. Additionally, the term “computer system” and/or “system” may refer to various components of a computer that are communicatively coupled with one another. Furthermore, the term “computer system” and/or “system” may refer to multiple computer devices and/or multiple computing systems that are communicatively coupled with one another and configured to share computing and/or networking resources.

The term “appliance,” “computer appliance,” or the like, as used herein refers to a computer device or computer system with program code (e.g., software or firmware) that is specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. A ’’virtual appliance” is a virtual machine image to be implemented by a hypervisor-equipped device that virtualizes or emulates a computer appliance or otherwise is dedicated to provide a specific computing resource. The term “element” refers to a unit that is indivisible at a given level of abstraction and has a clearly defined boundary, wherein an element may be any type of entity including, for example, one or more devices, systems, controllers, network elements, modules, etc., or combinations thereof. The term “device” refers to a physical entity embedded inside, or attached to, another physical entity in its vicinity, with capabilities to convey digital information from or to that physical entity. The term ■ entity" refers to a distinct component of an architecture or device, or information transferred as a payload. The term “controller” refers to an element or entity that has the capability to affect a physical entity, such as by changing its state or causing the physical entity to move.

The term “cloud computing” or “cloud” refers to a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable computing resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand and without active management by users. Cloud computing provides cloud computing services (or cloud services), which are one or more capabilities offered via cloud computing that are invoked using a defined interface (e.g., an API or the like). The term “computing resource” or simply “resource” refers to any physical or virtual component, or usage of such components, of limited availability within a computer system or network. Examples of computing resources include usage/access to, for a period of time, servers, processor(s), storage equipment, memory devices, memory areas, networks, electrical power, input/output (peripheral) devices, mechanical devices, network connections (e.g., channels/lmks, ports, network sockets, etc ), operating systems, virtual machines (VMs), software/applications, computer files, and/or the like. A “hardware resource” may refer to compute, storage, and/or network resources provided by physical hardware element(s). A “virtualized resource” may refer to compute, storage, and/or network resources provided by virtualization infrastructure to an application, device, system, etc. The term “network resource” or “communication resource” may refer to resources that are accessible by computer devices/systems via a communications network. The term “system resources” may refer to any kind of shared entities to provide services, and may include computing and/or network resources. System resources may be considered as a set of coherent functions, network data objects or services, accessible through a server where such system resources reside on a single host or multiple hosts and are clearly identifiable. As used herein, the term “cloud service provider” (or CSP) indicates an organization which operates typically large-scale “cloud” resources comprised of centralized, regional, and edge data centers (e.g., as used in the context of the public cloud). In other examples, a CSP may also be referred to as a Cloud Service Operator (CSO). References to “cloud computing” generally refer to computing resources and services offered by a CSP or a CSO, at remote locations with at least some increased latency, distance, or constraints relative to edge computing.

As used herein, the term “data center” refers to a purpose-designed structure that is intended to house multiple high-performance compute and data storage nodes such that a large amount of compute, data storage and network resources are present at a single location. This often entails specialized rack and enclosure systems, suitable heating, cooling, ventilation, security, fire suppression, and power delivery systems. The term may also refer to a compute and data storage node in some contexts. A data center may vary in scale between a centralized or cloud data center (e.g., largest), regional data center, and edge data center (e.g., smallest).

As used herein, the term “edge computing” refers to the implementation, coordination, and use of computing and resources at locations closer to the “edge” or collection of “edges” of a network Deploying computing resources at the network’s edge may reduce application and network latency, reduce network backhaul traffic and associated energy consumption, improve service capabilities, improve compliance with security or data privacy requirements (especially as compared to conventional cloud computing), and improve total cost of ownership). As used herein, the term “edge compute node” refers to a real-world, logical, or virtualized implementation of a compute-capable element in the form of a device, gateway, bridge, system or subsystem, component, whether operating in a server, client, endpoint, or peer mode, and whether located at an “edge” of an network or at a connected location further within the network. References to a “node” used herein are generally interchangeable with a “device”, “component”, and “sub-system”; however, references to an “edge computing system” or “edge computing network” generally refer to a distributed architecture, organization, or collection of multiple nodes and devices, and which is organized to accomplish or offer some aspect of services or resources in an edge computing setting.

Additionally or alternatively, the term “Edge Computing” refers to a concept, as described in [6], that enables operator and 3rd party services to be hosted close to the UE’s access point of attachment, to achieve an efficient service delivery through the reduced end-to- end latency and load on the transport network. As used herein, the term “Edge Computing Service Provider” refers to a mobile network operator or a 3rd party service provider offering Edge Computing service. As used herein, the term “Edge Data Network” refers to a local Data Network (DN) that supports the architecture for enabling edge applications. As used herein, the term “Edge Hosting Environment” refers to an environment providing support required for Edge Application Server’s execution. As used herein, the term “Application Server” refers to application software resident in the cloud performing the server function.

The term “Internet of Things” or “loT” refers to a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines capable of transferring data with little or no human interaction, and may involve technologies such as real-time analytics, machine learning and/or Al, embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, control systems, automation (e.g., smarthome, smart building and/or smart city technologies), and the like. loT devices are usually low-power devices without heavy compute or storage capabilities. “Edge loT devices” may be any kind of loT devices deployed at a network’s edge.

As used herein, the term “cluster” refers to a set or grouping of entities as part of an edge computing system (or systems), in the form of physical entities (e.g., different computing systems, networks or network groups), logical entities (e.g., applications, functions, security constructs, containers), and the like. In some locations, a “cluster” is also referred to as a “group” or a “domain”. The membership of cluster may be modified or affected based on conditions or functions, including from dynamic or property -based membership, from network or system management scenarios, or from various example techniques discussed below which may add, modify, or remove an entity in a cluster. Clusters may also include or be associated with multiple layers, levels, or properties, including variations in security features and results based on such layers, levels, or properties.

The term “application” may refer to a complete and deployable package, environment to achieve a certain function in an operational environment. The term “AI/ML application” or the like may be an application that contains some AI/ML models and application-level descriptions. The term “machine learning” or “ML” refers to the use of computer systems implementing algorithms and/or statistical models to perform specific task(s) without using explicit instructions, but instead relying on patterns and inferences. ML algorithms build or estimate mathematical model(s) (referred to as “ML models” or the like) based on sample data (referred to as “training data,” “model training information,” or the like) in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform such tasks. Generally, an ML algorithm is a computer program that leams from experience with respect to some task and some performance measure, and an ML model may be any object or data structure created after an ML algorithm is trained with one or more training datasets. After training, an ML model may be used to make predictions on new datasets. Although the term “ML algorithm” refers to different concepts than the term “ML model,” these terms as discussed herein may be used interchangeably for the purposes of the present disclosure.

The term “machine learning model,” “ML model,” or the like may also refer to ML methods and concepts used by an ML-assisted solution. An “ML-assisted solution” is a solution that addresses a specific use case using ML algorithms during operation. ML models include supervised learning (e.g., linear regression, k-nearest neighbor (KNN), decision tree algorithms, support machine vectors, Bayesian algorithm, ensemble algorithms, etc.) unsupervised learning (e.g., K-means clustering, principle component analysis (PCA), etc.), reinforcement learning (e.g., Q-leaming, multi-armed bandit learning, deep RL, etc.), neural networks, and the like. Depending on the implementation a specific ML model could have many sub-models as components and the ML model may train all sub-models together. Separately trained ML models can also be chained together in an ML pipeline during inference. An “ML pipeline” is a set of functionalities, functions, or functional entities specific for an ML-assisted solution; an ML pipeline may include one or several data sources in a data pipeline, a model training pipeline, a model evaluation pipeline, and an actor. The “actor” is an entity that hosts an ML assisted solution using the output of the ML model inference). The term “ML training host” refers to an entity, such as a network function, that hosts the training of the model. The term “ML inference host” refers to an entity, such as a network function, that hosts model during inference mode (which includes both the model execution as well as any online learning if applicable). The ML-host informs the actor about the output of the ML algorithm, and the actor takes a decision for an action (an “action” is performed by an actor as a result of the output of an ML assisted solution). The term “model inference information” refers to information used as an input to the ML model for determining inference(s); the data used to train an ML model and the data used to determine inferences may overlap, however, “training data” and “inference data” refer to different concepts.

The terms “instantiate,” “instantiation,” and the like as used herein refers to the creation of an instance. An “instance” also refers to a concrete occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code. The term “information element” refers to a structural element containing one or more fields. The term “field” refers to individual contents of an information element, or a data element that contains content. As used herein, a “database object”, “data structure”, or the like may refer to any representation of information that is in the form of an object, attribute-value pair (AVP), key -value pair (KVP), tuple, etc., and may include variables, data structures, functions, methods, classes, database records, database fields, database entities, associations between data and/or database entities (also referred to as a “relation”), blocks and links between blocks in block chain implementations, and/or the like.

An “information object,” as used herein, refers to a collection of structured data and/or any representation of information, and may include, for example electronic documents (or “documents”), database objects, data structures, files, audio data, video data, raw data, archive files, application packages, and/or any other like representation of information. The terms “electronic document” or “document,” may refer to a data structure, computer file, or resource used to record data, and includes various file ty pes and/or data formats such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, multimedia items, webpage and/or source code documents, and/or the like. As examples, the information objects may include markup and/or source code documents such as HTML, XML, JSON, Apex®, CSS, JSP, MessagePack™, Apache® Thrift™, ASN.l, Google® Protocol Buffers (protobuf), or some other document(s)/format(s) such as those discussed herein. An information object may have both a logical and a physical structure. Physically, an information object comprises one or more units called entities. An entity is a unit of storage that contains content and is identified by a name. An entity may refer to other entities to cause their inclusion in the information object. An information object begins in a document entity, which is also referred to as a root element (or “root”). Logically, an information object comprises one or more declarations, elements, comments, character references, and processing instructions, all of which are indicated in the information object (e.g., using markup).

The term “data item” as used herein refers to an atomic state of a particular object with at least one specific property at a certain point in time. Such an object is usually identified by an object name or object identifier, and properties of such an object are usually defined as database objects (e.g., fields, records, etc.), object instances, or data elements (e.g., mark-up language elements/tags, etc.). Additionally or alternatively, the term “data item” as used herein may refer to data elements and/or content items, although these terms may refer to difference concepts. The term “data element” or “element” as used herein refers to a unit that is indivisible at a given level of abstraction and has a clearly defined boundary. A data element is a logical component of an information object (e g., electronic document) that may begin with a start tag (e.g., “<element>“) and end with amatching end tag (e.g., “</element>“), or only has an empty element tag (e.g., “<element />“). Any characters between the start tag and end tag, if any, are the element’s content (referred to herein as “content items” or the like).

The content of an entity may include one or more content items, each of which has an associated datatype representation. A content item may include, for example, attribute values, character values, URIs, qualified names (qnames), parameters, and the like. A qname is a fully qualified name of an element, attribute, or identifier in an information object. A qname associates a URI of a namespace with a local name of an element, attribute, or identifier in that namespace To make this association, the qname assigns a prefix to the local name that corresponds to its namespace. The qname comprises a URI of the namespace, the prefix, and the local name. Namespaces are used to provide uniquely named elements and attributes in information objects. Content items may include text content (e.g., “<element>content item</element>“), attributes (e g., “<element attribute=“attributeValue”>“), and other elements referred to as “child elements” (e.g., “<elementl><element2>content item</element2></elementl>“). An “attribute” may refer to a markup construct including a name-value pair that exists within a start tag or empty element tag. Attributes contain data related to its element and/or control the element’s behavior.

The term “channel” as used herein refers to any transmission medium, either tangible or intangible, which is used to communicate data or a data stream. The term “channel” may be synonymous with and/or equivalent to “communications channel,” “data communications channel,” “transmission channel,” “data transmission channel,” “access channel,” “data access channel,” “link,” “data link,” “carrier,” “radiofrequency carrier,” and/or any other like term denoting a pathway or medium through which data is communicated. Additionally, the term “link” as used herein refers to a connection between two devices through a RAT for the purpose of transmitting and receiving information. As used herein, the term “radio technology” refers to technology for wireless transmission and/or reception of electromagnetic radiation for information transfer. The term “radio access technology” or “RAT” refers to the technology used for the underlying physical connection to a radio based communication network. As used herein, the term “communication protocol” (either wired or wireless) refers to a set of standardized rules or instructions implemented by a communication device and/or system to communicate with other devices and/or systems, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, modulating/demodulating signals, implementation of protocols stacks, and/or the like.

As used herein, the term “radio technology” refers to technology for wireless transmission and/or reception of electromagnetic radiation for information transfer. The term “radio access technology” or “RAT” refers to the technology used for the underlying physical connection to a radio based communication network. As used herein, the term “communication protocol” (either wired or wireless) refers to a set of standardized rules or instructions implemented by a communication device and/or system to communicate with other devices and/or systems, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, modulating/demodulating signals, implementation of protocols stacks, and/or the like. Examples of wireless communications protocols may be used in various embodiments include a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) radio communication technology, a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) radio communication technology, an Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) radio communication technology, and/or a Third Generation Partnership Project (3 GPP) radio communication technology including, for example, 3 GPP Fifth Generation (5G) or New Radio (NR), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Freedom of Multimedia Access (FOMA), Long Term Evolution (LTE), LTE- Advanced (LTE Advanced), LTE Extra, LTE-A Pro, cdmaOne (2G), Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (CDMA 2000), Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), Mobitex, Circuit Switched Data (CSD), High-Speed CSD (HSCSD), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDM), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), HSPA Plus (HSPA+), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA), LTE LAA, MuLTEfire, UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA), Evolved UTRA (E-UTRA), Evolution- Data Optimized or Evolution-Data Only (EV-DO), Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), Digital AMPS (D-AMPS), Total Access Communication System/Extended Total Access Communication System (TACS/ETACS), Push-to-talk (PTT), Mobile Telephone System (MTS), Improved Mobile Telephone System (IMTS), Advanced Mobile Telephone System (AMTS), Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), DataTAC, Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN), Personal Digital Cellular (PDC), Personal Handy-phone System (PHS), Wideband Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (WiDEN), iBurst, Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), also referred to as also referred to as 3GPP Generic Access Network, or GAN standard), Bluetooth®, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), IEEE 802.15.4 based protocols (e.g., IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6L0WPAN), WirelessHART, MiWi, Thread, 802.11a, etc.) WiFi-direct, ANT/ANT+, ZigBee, Z-Wave, 3GPP device-to-device (D2D) or Proximity Services (ProSe), Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), Low-Power Wide- Area-Network (LPWAN), Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRA) or LoRaWAN™ developed by Semtech and the LoRa Alliance, Sigfox, Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) standard, Worldwide Interoperability for Micro wave Access (WiMAX), mmWave standards in general (e g., wireless systems operating at 10-300 GHz and above such as WiGig, IEEE 802. Had, IEEE 802. Hay, etc.), V2X communication technologies (including 3GPP C-V2X), Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) communication systems such as Intelligent- Transport-Systems (ITS) including the European ITS-G5, ITS-G5B, ITS-G5C, etc. In addition to the standards listed above, any number of satellite uplink technologies may be used for purposes of the present disclosure including, for example, radios compliant with standards issued by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), or the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), among others. The examples provided herein are thus understood as being applicable to various other communication technologies, both existing and not yet formulated. The term “access network” refers to any network, using any combination of radio technologies, RATs, and/or communication protocols, used to connect user devices and service providers. In the context of WLANs, an “access network” is an IEEE 802 local area network (LAN) or metropolitan area network (MAN) between terminals and access routers connecting to provider services. The term “access router” refers to router that terminates a medium access control (MAC) service from terminals and forwards user traffic to information servers according to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

The term “SMTC” refers to an SSB-based measurement timing configuration configured by SSB-MeasurementTimingConfiguration. The term “SSB” refers to a synchronization signal/Physical Broadcast Channel (SS/PBCH) block, which includes a Primary Syncrhonization Signal (PSS), a Secondary Syncrhonization Signal (SSS), and a PBCH. The term “a “Primary Cell” refers to the MCG cell, operating on the primary frequency, in which the UE either performs the initial connection establishment procedure or initiates the connection re-establishment procedure. The term “Primary SCG Cell” refers to the SCG cell in which the UE performs random access when performing the Reconfiguration with Sync procedure for DC operation. The term “Secondary Cell” refers to a cell providing additional radio resources on top of a Special Cell for a UE configured with CA. The term “Secondary Cell Group” refers to the subset of serving cells comprising the PSCell and zero or more secondary cells for a UE configured with DC. The term “Serving Cell” refers to the primary cell for a UE in RRC CONNECTED not configured with CA/DC there is only one serving cell comprising of the primary cell. The term “serving cell” or “serving cells” refers to the set of cells comprising the Special Cell(s) and all secondary cells for a UE in RRC_CONNECTED configured with CA. The term “Special Cell” refers to the PCell of the MCG or the PSCell of the SCG for DC operation; otherwise, the term “Special Cell” refers to the Pcell.

The term “Al policy” refers to a type of declarative policies expressed using formal statements that enable the non-RT RIC function in the SMO to guide the near-RT RIC function, and hence the RAN, towards better fulfilment of the RAN intent.

The term “Al Enrichment information” refers to information utilized by near-RT RIC that is collected or derived at SMO/non-RT RIC either from non-network data sources or from network functions themselves.

The term “Al -Policy Based Traffic Steering Process Mode” refers to an operational mode in which the Near-RT RIC is configured through Al Policy to use Traffic Steering Actions to ensure a more specific notion of network performance (for example, applying to smaller groups of E2 Nodes and UEs in the RAN) than that which it ensures in the Background Traffic Steering.

The term “Background Traffic Steering Processing Mode” refers to an operational mode in which the Near-RT RIC is configured through 01 to use Traffic Steering Actions to ensure a general background network performance which applies broadly across E2 Nodes and UEs in the RAN.

The term “Baseline RAN Behavior” refers to the default RAN behavior as configured at the E2 Nodes by SMO

The term “E2” refers to an interface connecting the Near-RT RIC and one or more O- CU-CPs, one or more O-CU-UPs, one or more O-DUs, and one or more O-eNBs.

The term “E2 Node” refers to a logical node terminating E2 interface. In this version of the specification, ORAN nodes terminating E2 interface are: for NR access: O-CU-CP, O- CU-UP, 0-DU or any combination; and for E-UTRA access: 0-eNB.

The term “Intents”, in the context of 0-RAN systems/implementations, refers to declarative policy to steer or guide the behavior of RAN functions, allowing the RAN function to calculate the optimal result to achieve stated objective.

The term “0-RAN non-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller” or “non-RT RIC” refers to a logical function that enables non-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources, AI/ML workflow including model training and updates, and policy-based guidance of applications/features in Near-RT RIC.

The term “Near-RT RIC” or “0-RAN near-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller” refers to a logical function that enables near-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources via fine-grained (e.g., UE basis, Cell basis) data collection and actions over E2 interface.

The term “0-RAN Central Unit” or “O-CU” refers to a logical node hosting RRC, SDAP and PDCP protocols.

The term “0-RAN Central Unit - Control Plane” or “O-CU-CP” refers to a logical node hosting the RRC and the control plane part of the PDCP protocol.

The term “0-RAN Central Unit - User Plane” or “O-CU-UP” refers to a logical node hosting the user plane part of the PDCP protocol and the SDAP protocol

The term “0-RAN Distributed Unit” or “0-DU” refers to a logical node hosting RLC/MAC/High-PHY layers based on a lower layer functional split.

The term “0-RAN eNB” or “0-eNB” refers to an eNB or ng-eNB that supports E2 interface. The term “O-RAN Radio Unit” or “O-RU” refers to a logical node hosting Low-PHY layer and RF processing based on a lower layer functional split. This is similar to 3GPP’s “TRP” or “RRH” but more specific in including the Low-PHY layer (FFT/iFFT, PRACH extraction).

The term “01” refers to an interface between orchestration & management entities (Orchestration/NMS) and O-RAN managed elements, for operation and management, by which FCAPS management. Software management. File management and other similar functions shall be achieved.

The term “RAN UE Group” refers to an aggregations of UEs whose grouping is set in the E2 nodes through E2 procedures also based on the scope of Al policies. These groups can then be the target of E2 CONTROL or POLICY messages.

The term “Traffic Steering Action” refers to the use of a mechanism to alter RAN behavior. Such actions include E2 procedures such as CONTROL and POLICY.

The term “Traffic Steering Inner Loop” refers to the part of the Traffic Steering processing, triggered by the arrival of periodic TS related KPM (Key Performance Measurement) from E2 Node, which includes UE grouping, setting additional data collection from the RAN, as well as selection and execution of one or more optimization actions to enforce Traffic Steering policies.

The term “Traffic Steering Outer Loop” refers to the part of the Traffic Steering processing, triggered by the near-RT RIC setting up or updating Traffic Steering aware resource optimization procedure based on information from Al Policy setup or update, Al Enrichment Information (El) and/or outcome of Near-RT RIC evaluation, which includes the initial configuration (preconditions) and injection of related Al policies, Triggering conditions for TS changes.

The term “Traffic Steering Processing Mode” refers to an operational mode in which either the RAN or the Near-RT RIC is configured to ensure a particular network performance. This performance includes such aspects as cell load and throughput, and can apply differently to different E2 nodes and UEs. Throughout this process, Traffic Steering Actions are used to fulfill the requirements of this configuration.

The term “Traffic Steering Target” refers to the intended performance result that is desired from the network, which is configured to Near-RT RIC over 01.

Furthermore, any of the disclosed embodiments and example implementations can be embodied in the form of various types of hardware, software, firmware, middleware, or combinations thereof, including in the form of control logic, and using such hardware or software in a modular or integrated manner. Additionally, any of the software components or functions described herein can be implemented as software, program code, script, instructions, etc., operable to be executed by processor circuitry. These components, functions, programs, etc., can be developed using any suitable computer language such as, for example, Python, PyTorch, NumPy, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Scala, Smalltalk, Java™, C++, C#, “C”, Kotlin, Swift, Rust, Go (or “Golang”), EMCAScript, JavaScript, TypeScript, Jscript, ActionScript, Server- Side JavaScript (SSJS), PHP, Pearl, Lua, Torch/Lua with Just-In Time compiler (LuaJIT), Accelerated Mobile Pages Script (AMPscript), VBScript, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages (ASP), Node.js, ASP.NET, JAMscript, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), extensible HTML (XHTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), XML User Interface Language (XUL), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML), wiki markup or Wikitext, Wireless Markup Language (WML), Java Script Object Notion (JSON), Apache® MessagePack™, Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), extensible sty lesheet language (XSL), Mustache template language, Handlebars template language, Guide Template Language (GTL), Apache® Thrift, Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN. 1), Google® Protocol Buffers (protobuf). Bitcoin Script, EVM® bytecode. Solidity™, Vyper (Python derived). Bamboo, Lisp Like Language (LLL), Simplicity provided by Blockstream™, Rholang, Michelson, Counterfactual, Plasma, Plutus, Sophia, Salesforce® Apex®, and/or any other programming language or development tools including proprietary programming languages and/or development tools. The software code can be stored as a computer- or processorexecutable instructions or commands on a physical non-transitory computer-readable medium. Examples of suitable media include RAM, ROM, magnetic media such as a hard-drive or a floppy disk, or an optical medium such as a compact disk (CD) or DVD (digital versatile disk), flash memory, and the like, or any combination of such storage or transmission devices.

ABBREVIATIONS

Unless used differently herein, terms, definitions, and abbreviations may be consistent with terms, definitions, and abbreviations defined in 3GPP TR 21.905 v!6.0.0 (2019-06). For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations may apply to the examples and embodiments discussed herein.

Table 1 Abbreviations:

The foregoing description provides illustration and description of various example embodiments, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of embodiments to the precise forms disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various embodiments. Where specific details are set forth in order to describe example embodiments of the disclosure, it should be apparent to one skilled in the art that the disclosure can be practiced without, or with variation of, these specific details. It should be understood, however, that there is no intent to limit the concepts of the present disclosure to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives consistent with the present disclosure and the appended claims.

Claims

CLAIMS What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus for a network node comprising: processing circuitry configured to: receive reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information; predict a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information; determine when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory; and perform relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, or inter radio access technology (RAT) neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the cunent serving cell; and a memoy to store the system information.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to not perform any neighbor cell measurements within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to adjust a serving duration by an offset, configured by the network, allowing the device to start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to not apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration is less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to estimate the trajectory of the NTN cell center based on the reference location and an orbital parameters of a serving satellite.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to compare an estimated cell center location with a cell center location broadcast in the system information to determine whether the device can accurately estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

7 The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to stop applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion when a difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location is larger than a threshold.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to stop applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion when the difference between the estimated cell center location and the real cell center location is larger than a threshold for a certain number of continuous times.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to determine the cell stop time when the device verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

10. A computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions which when executed by one or more processors result in performing operations comprising: receiving reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information; predicting a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information; determining when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory; and performing relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, or inter RAT neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise not perform any neighbor cell measurements within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise adjusting a serving duration by an offset, configured by the network, allowing the device to start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise not apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration is less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise estimate the trajectory of the NTN cell center based on the reference location and an orbital parameters of a serving satellite.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise comparing an estimated cell center location with a cell center location broadcast in the system information to determine whether the device can accurately estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise stop applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion when a difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location is larger than a threshold.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the operations further comprise stop applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion when the difference between the estimated cell center location and the real cell center location is larger than a threshold for a certain number of continuous times.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise determining the cell stop time when the device verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

19. A method comprising: receiving, by one or more processors, reference location and radius of a NonTerrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information; predicting a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information; determining when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory; and performing relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, or inter RAT neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising not perform any neighbor cell measurements within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell.

21. The method of claim 19, further comprising adjusting a serving duration by an offset, configured by the network, allowing the device to start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

22. The method of claim 19, further comprising not apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration is less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration.

23. The method of claim 19, further comprising estimate the trajectory of the NTN cell center based on the reference location and an orbital parameters of a serving satellite.

24. The method of claim 19, further comprising comparing an estimated cell center location with a cell center location broadcast in the system information to determine whether the device can accurately estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

25. The method of claim 24, further comprising stop applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion when a difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location is larger than a threshold.

26. The method of claim 25, further comprising stop applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion when the difference between the estimated cell center location and the real cell center location is larger than a threshold for a certain number of continuous times.

27. The method of claim 19, further comprising determining the cell stop time when the device verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

28. An apparatus comprising means for: receiving reference location and radius of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) cell from system information; predicting a trajectory of an NTN cell center based on the received reference location and satellite ephemeris data from the system information; determining when the device will leave a coverage of a current serving cell based on a device location and the predicted trajectory; and performing relaxed measurements for intra-frequency, inter-frequency, or inter RAT neighbor cell measurements during a service time of the current serving cell.

29. The apparatus of claim 28, further comprising not perform any neighbor cell measurements within the serving time or within a serving area of a current NTN cell.

30. The apparatus of claim 28, further comprising adjusting a serving duration by an offset, configured by the network, allowing the device to start neighbor cell measurements or stop relaxed measurements earlier.

31. The apparatus of claim 28, further comprising not apply a relaxed measurement rule when a service duration is less than an offset value for adjusting an end of the serving duration.

32. The apparatus of claim 28, further comprising estimate the trajectory of the NTN cell center based on the reference location and an orbital parameters of a serving satellite.

33. The apparatus of claim 28, further comprising comparing an estimated cell center location with a cell center location broadcast in the system information to determine whether the device can accurately estimate the trajectory of the cell center.

34. The apparatus of claim 33, further comprising stop applying the prediction result for a relaxed measurement criterion when a difference between the estimated cell center location and a real cell center location is larger than a threshold.

35. The apparatus of claim 34, further comprising stop applying the prediction result for the relaxed measurement criterion when the difference between the estimated cell center location and the real cell center location is larger than a threshold for a certain number of continuous times.

36. The apparatus of claim 28, further comprising determining the cell stop time when the device verifies it is accurate enough to estimate the trajectory of the cell center.