US-12627957-B2 - Method and apparatus for performing radio access network function by using dynamic scaling

Abstract

Provided is a 5 th generation (5G) or 6 th generation (6G) communication system for supporting a data rate higher than that of a 4 th generation (4G) communication system such as long term evolution (LTE). A method of performing communication by a first distributed unit (DU) in a wireless communication system may include identifying, based on resource usage amount information of the first DU, whether a connection to at least one second DU is requested, obtaining, based on a result of the identifying, inter-DU interface setup information for connection to the at least one second DU, and performing, based on the obtained inter-DU interface setup information, the connection to the at least one second DU for transmission and reception of a packet.

Inventors

• Seonjun PARK
• Joonhwan KWON

Assignees

• SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.

Dates

Publication Date

20260512

Application Date

20230613

Priority Date

20220831

Claims (18)

1. 1 . A method of performing communication by a first distributed unit (DU) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: identifying, based on resource usage amount information of the first DU, whether a connection to at least one second DU is requested; obtaining, based on a result of the identifying, inter-DU interface setup information for the connection to the at least one second DU; and performing, based on the inter-DU interface setup information, the connection to the at least one second DU for transmission and reception of one or more packets, wherein each of the first DU and the at least one second DU comprises an F1 splitter, and wherein the transmission and reception of the one or more packets is performed via an inter-DU interface by using the F1 splitter of the first DU and the F1 splitter of the at least one second DU.
2. 2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the performing of the connection to the at least one second DU comprises: receiving, from the at least one second DU, a request for the inter-DU interface setup information; transmitting the inter-DU interface setup information to the at least one second DU; and performing the connection to the at least one second DU, based on the inter-DU interface setup information.
3. 3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the inter-DU interface setup information comprises F1 interface setup information received from a centralized unit (CU) connected to the first DU.
4. 4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: based on the one or more packets comprising a user equipment (UE) associated signaling message from among one or more control plane packets, identifying whether to transmit the UE associated signaling message to the at least one second DU based on a UE F1 application protocol identifier (UE F1AP ID) comprised in the UE associated signaling message.
5. 5 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: based on the one or more packets comprising a non-UE associated signaling message from among one or more control plane packets, transmitting the non-UE associated signaling message to the at least one second DU.
6. 6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: based on the one or more packets comprising a user plane packet, identifying whether to transmit the user plane packet to the at least one second DU based on a tunnel endpoint identifier (TEID) comprised in a general packet radio service (GPRS) tunneling protocol user plane (GTP-U) protocol.
7. 7 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: receiving the one or more packets from the at least one second DU; and transmitting the received one or more packets from the at least one second DU to a CU.
8. 8 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: based on the resource usage amount information of the first DU, releasing the connection to the at least one second DU.
9. 9 . A method of performing communication by at least one second distributed unit (DU) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: identifying, based on resource usage amount information of a first DU, whether a connection to the first DU is requested; obtaining, based on a result of the identifying, inter-DU interface setup information for the connection to the first DU; and performing, based on the inter-DU interface setup information, the connection to the first DU for transmission and reception of one or more packets, wherein each of the first DU and the at least one second DU comprises an F1 splitter, and wherein the transmission and reception of the one or more packets is performed via an inter-DU interface by using the F1 splitter of the first DU and the F1 splitter of the at least one second DU.
10. 10 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the performing of the connection to the first DU comprises: transmitting, to the first DU, a request for the inter-DU interface setup information; receiving the inter-DU interface setup information from the first DU; and performing the connection to the first DU, based on the inter-DU interface setup information.
11. 11 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the inter-DU interface setup information comprises F1 interface setup information received from a centralized unit (CU) connected to the first DU.
12. 12 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising: based on the one or more packets comprising a user equipment (UE) associated signaling message from among one or more control plane packets, identifying whether to receive the UE associated signaling message based on a UE F1 application protocol identifier (UE F1AP ID) comprised in the UE associated signaling message.
13. 13 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising: based on the one or more packets comprising a non-UE associated signaling message from among one or more control plane packets, receiving the non-UE associated signaling message from the first DU.
14. 14 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising: based on the one or more packets comprising a user plane packet, identifying whether to receive the user plane packet, based on a tunnel endpoint identifier (TEID) comprised in a general packet radio service (GPRS) tunneling protocol user plane (GTP-U) protocol.
15. 15 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising: transmitting the one or more packets to the first DU, wherein the one or more packets are transmitted to a CU by the first DU.
16. 16 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising: based on the resource usage amount information of the first DU, releasing the connection to the first DU.
17. 17 . A method of performing communication by an operation administration maintenance (OAM) entity in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: identifying, based on resource usage amount information of a first distributed unit (DU), whether a connection to at least one second DU is requested; transmitting, based on a result of the identifying, inter-DU interface setup information for the connection to the first DU or the at least one second DU; and identifying a first radio unit (RU) to be migrated to the at least one second DU from among at least one RU connected to the first DU, wherein a connection for transmission and reception of one or more packets is performed between the first DU and the at least one second DU, based on the inter-DU interface setup information by using an F1 splitter of the first DU and an F1 splitter of the at least one second DU.
18. 18 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the inter-DU interface setup information comprises F1 interface setup information received from a centralized unit (CU) connected to the first DU.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS This application is a by-pass continuation application of International Application No. PCT/KR2023/007365, filed on May 30, 2023, which based on and claims priority to Korean Patent Application No. 10-2022-0110332, filed on Aug. 31, 2022, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, and Korean Patent Application No. 10-2022-0135232, filed on Oct. 19, 2022, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein in their entireties. BACKGROUND 1. Field The disclosure relates to a wireless communication system, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for efficiently performing a radio network function via dynamic scaling in/out. 2. Description of Related Art Based on the development of wireless communication from generation to generation, communication technologies have been developed mainly for services targeting humans, such as voice calls, multimedia services, data services, or any other known services. Following the commercialization of 5th generation (5G) communication systems, it is expected that connected devices that have been exponentially growing in number will be connected to communication networks. Examples of devices connected to networks may include vehicles, robots, drones, home appliances, displays, smart sensors connected to various infrastructures, construction machines, factory equipment, or any other known devices. Mobile devices are expected to evolve in various form-factors such as augmented reality glasses, virtual reality headsets, hologram devices, or any other known wearable device. In order to provide various services by connecting hundreds of billions of devices in the 6th generation (6G) era, there have been ongoing efforts to develop enhanced 6G communication systems. For these reasons, 6G communication systems are referred to as beyond-5G systems. 6G communication systems, which are expected to be commercialized around 2030, will have a peak data rate of tera (i.e., 1,000 giga)-level bps and radio latency less than 100 μsec. For example, the 6G communication systems will be 50 times as fast as 5G communication systems and have 1/10 the radio latency thereof. In order to achieve such a high data rate and ultra-low latency, it has been considered to implement the 6G communication systems in a terahertz band (e.g., 95 GHz to 3 THz bands). However, due to severe path loss and atmospheric absorption in the terahertz bands compared to the path loss in mmWave bands introduced in 5G, technologies capable of securing the signal transmission distance (e.g., coverage), will become more important. It is necessary to develop, as major technologies for securing the coverage, radio frequency (RF) elements, antennas, novel waveforms having better coverage than orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), beamforming and massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO), full dimensional MIMO (FD-MIMO), array antennas, and multiantenna transmission technologies such as large-scale antennas. Furthermore, in order to improve the coverage of terahertz-band signals, there has been exploration of new technologies such as metamaterial-based lenses and antennas, a high-dimensional spatial multiplexing technology using orbital angular momentum (OAM), reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), and other suitable networking technologies. Moreover, in order to improve spectral efficiency and overall network performance, the following technologies have been developed for 6G communication systems: a full-duplex technology for enabling an uplink transmission and a downlink transmission to simultaneously use the same frequency resource at the same time; a network technology for using satellites, high-altitude platform stations (HAPS), and other suitable network components in an integrated manner; an improved network structure for supporting mobile base stations and other suitable network components and enabling network operation optimization and automation and other network performance metrics; a dynamic spectrum sharing technology via collision avoidance based on a prediction of spectrum usage; use of artificial intelligence (AI) in wireless communication for improvement of overall network operation by using AI in a designing phase for developing 6G and internalizing end-to-end AI support functions; and a next-generation distributed computing technology for overcoming the limit of UE computing ability through reachable super-high-performance communication and computing resources (e.g., such as mobile edge computing (MEC), clouds, and other computer resources) over the network. In addition, through designing new protocols to be used in the 6G communication systems, developing mechanisms for implementing a hardware-based security environment and safe use of data, and developing technologies for maintaining privacy, attempts to strengthen the connectivity between devices, optimize the network, promote softwarizatio