Determining the state of a mobile communications network by monitoring the number of bearers of different types being transmitted

摘要

In a mobile communication system wherein bearers of various types can be created dependent upon the type of data that is to be transmitted on them between a user equipment (UE) and a packet data network (PDN) gateway via a base station (eNodeB) S20-S22. An infrastructure device in the network counts the number of bearers of each type S34 and compares each count to a threshold to determine the state of the network S36. The infrastructure device may determine a congested state wherein low priority or machine type communications (MTC) packets are buffered/discarded S38 or wherein bearers are prevented from communicating packets from some network areas S40.