Method and apparatus for controlling a small cell on or off procedure for capacity enhancement

摘要

The present invention provides methods and apparatuses for supporting or controlling a small cell on or off procedure. One of the embodiment of the present application, the method comprises steps of receiving, by the MSC from a Source Small Cell (SSC), a cell indication message including a cell state change indication parameter indicating whether the SSC is to be off and a cell off timer parameter indicating a time duration for a cell off process; transmitting, by the MSC to the SSC, a cell off request message in order to accommodate an user equipment (UE) serviced from the SSC based on the cell state change indication parameter; and receiving, by the MSC from the SSC, an aggregated UE context transfer message requesting to perform a radio resource control (RRC) connection switching from the SSC to the MSC during a time duration indicated by the cell off timer parameter.

主权项

1. A method for controlling a small cell off procedure by a Macro Serving Cell (MSC), the method comprising:
receiving, by the MSC from a Source Small Cell (SSC), a cell indication message including a cell state change indication parameter indicating whether the SSC is to be off and a cell off timer parameter indicating a time duration for a cell off process; transmitting, by the MSC to the SSC, a cell off request message in order to accommodate an user equipment (UE) serviced from the SSC based on the cell state change indication parameter; receiving, by the MSC from the SSC, an aggregated UE context transfer message requesting to perform a radio resource control (RRC) connection switching from the SSC to the MSC during a time duration indicated by the cell off timer parameter; receiving, by the MSC from the SSC, an aggregated sequence number (SN) status transfer message representing a packet sequence number to be transmitted to the MSC; and transmitting, by the MSC to the SSC, an UE context release message requesting releasing a context of the UE managed by the SSC after a RRC connection between the MSC and the UE has been established.