OVERLOAD HANDLING IN A COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM

摘要

Methods, systems, and arrangements enable the prevention of common channel overload in a wireless communications network. In a Universal Mobile Telecommunications system (UMTS) network environment (100), for example, new Medium Access Control-dedicated (MAC-d) entities (525) are always permitted to transmit data segments in an amount equivalent to their initial credit to a MAC-common (MAC-c) (520) entity. Consequently, the buffer (530) in the MAC-c entity may become overloaded if many new MAC-d entities transmit data segments simultaneously, thus preventing the use of the MAC-c entity (520) by any MAC-d entity (525). In accordance with certain embodiments of the present invention, if the buffer fill level of the MAC-c buffer reaches a predefined fill level, the MAC-c entity (520) is empowered to reject MAC-d entities (525) of new users by discarding incoming data segments therefrom.