KR20020065186A - Method for recovering booter code in update fail state of cellular system - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for updating program codes of processors constituting a cellular base station system. The present invention relates to a software update method of a processor having a flash boot ROM, wherein the first and second redundant code storage areas are configured in the flash boot ROM. And storing the codes from the same version, respectively, downloading the new versions of the code from the upper processor, and sequentially updating the codes from the first and second codes storage areas. From the first and second code storage areas, recovering from the previous version of the code by using the code stored in the code storage area from which the failure does not occur, starting from the code when the code is normally updated or the recovery is completed. Perform boot operation by It includes a step. As a result, the present invention can recover a code update failure from itself and continuously provide a service, thereby improving the stability and reliability of the system and providing an operator's convenience of operation.

Description

How to recover code from an update failure in a cellular system {METHOD FOR RECOVERING BOOTER CODE IN UPDATE FAIL STATE OF CELLULAR SYSTEM}

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to cellular systems and, more particularly, to a method of updating program codes of a base station and a base station controller.

As is commonly known, a cellular system includes a base station system providing a service to a mobile communication terminal in an allocated service area (cell) and a mobile switching center (MSC) connecting the base station system to another subscriber system. The base station system includes a plurality of base transceiver stations (BTSs), a plurality of base station controllers (BSCs), and a base station manager (BSM).

In the above-described base station system, the base station and the base station controller include a plurality of processors hierarchically configured, and each of the processors includes a flash read-only memory for storing an operation program code during system initialization. . Processors operate by downloading an application program block from a higher processor and perform multiloading to reduce the system load and save download time. To this end, processors have a firmware program, Booter, for performing downloading of an application program at system initialization. The program code from the processor is stored in a boot ROM area of a flash ROM. 1 illustrates a program code stored in a flash ROM according to the prior art. As shown in FIG. 1, a flash ROM includes a boot code, redundant first and second operating system (OS) codes, and hardware checks. Save the code.

When the firmware is updated, the processors must download a new version of the firmware from the upper processor. However, when the download is abnormally terminated due to a failure during downloading, the ROM operating system is duplicated. Therefore, if one ROM operating system fails during the update, the other ROM operating system can continue to operate. However, since the code is not recoverable from the previous version of the code. That is, since only one code is stored in the flash ROM, it cannot be backed up, and even if a code update failure occurs, the corresponding processor cannot recover from the failure itself. Therefore, the operator had to replace the corresponding processor board.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention, which was devised to solve the problems of the prior art operating as described above, is to provide a method for recovering from an existing version of code when a firmware update of a processor fails.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of storing duplicated codes from a flash ROM in which firmware is stored so as to recover codes from an existing version.

In order to achieve the above object, an embodiment of the present invention provides a software update method of a processor having a flash boot ROM.

Constructing redundant first and second code storage regions in the flash boot ROM and storing codes from the same version, respectively;

Downloading a new version of the code from an upper processor and sequentially updating the code from the first and second code storage areas;

If a failure occurs during the updating, recovering the previous code from the previous version by using the code stored in the code storage area from which the failure has not occurred among the duplicated first and second code storage areas;

And if the code is normally updated or the recovery is completed, performing a boot operation by the code.

1 illustrates a program code stored in a flash ROM according to the prior art.

2 is a diagram showing program code stored in a flash ROM according to the present invention;

3 is a processor hierarchical structure diagram of a base station controller in a CDMA 200 system to which the present invention can be applied.

4 is a diagram illustrating a base station processor hierarchy in a CDMA 2000 system to which the present invention can be applied.

5 is a flowchart showing a method for recovering a code from the present invention.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings will be described in detail the operating principle of the preferred embodiment of the present invention. Like reference numerals are used to designate like elements even though they are shown in different drawings, and detailed descriptions of related well-known functions or configurations are not required to describe the present invention. If it is determined that it can be blurred, the detailed description thereof will be omitted. Terms to be described later are terms defined in consideration of functions in the present invention, and may be changed according to intentions or customs of users or operators. Therefore, the definition should be made based on the contents throughout the specification.

Figure 2 shows the program code stored in the flash ROM according to the present invention, as shown in the flash ROM is the first and second redundant codes, the duplicated first and second ROM operating system codes, hardware check code Each storage area has a storage area. As described above, the present invention includes storage areas for storing duplicated first and second codes in a flash memory to provide an uninterrupted service by restoring a code to an earlier version even when the code fails to update. .

3 is a diagram illustrating a processor hierarchy of a base station controller in a code division multiple access (CDMA) 200 system to which the present invention can be applied. Referring to FIG. 2, a top processor of a base station controller is a BSC (BSC Main Processor), and a lower processor of the BMP is an ATM E1 Processor (AEP), an Air Termination Processor (ATP), a TransCoder Processor (TCP), and an AOP (ATM Optic). STM Processor).

4 is a diagram illustrating a base station processor hierarchy of a CDMA 2000 system to which the present invention can be applied. Referring to FIG. 3, a top-level processor of a base station is a BTS (BTS Control Processor), and a lower processor of the BCP is a BTS (BTS Interface Processor), a BAP (BTS Alarm Processor), a CIP (Channel Interface Processor), and a BOP (BTS Optic). Processor (CIP) is a sub-processor of the CIP (Channel Element Processor).

Each of the processors has a flash bootrom and has a redundant storage area for code within the flash bootrom as shown in FIG. As a prerequisite for recovery in the event of an update failure, the code storage area of the bootrom must not be fused until either code from the duplicated code is fused to a complete state.

5 is a flowchart illustrating a recovery method from the present invention. Hereinafter, an operation example according to the present invention will be described in detail with reference to FIG. 5.

First, in step S10, the processor duplicates an area from the flash boot ROM to configure the redundant first and second code storage areas.

In step S20, the processor performs software update. Referring to step S20 in more detail as follows.

The processor determines whether to replace the Booter Code version currently stored in the boot ROM with the version of the code that is included in the package software of the higher processor. If the code versions do not match, the firmware code is fused from the upper processor to the flash memory of each lower processor. The update is performed sequentially with respect to the redundant first and second code storage areas so that the first and second code from which the update has been performed will be fused to the same version in the flash memory.

In step S30, if a failure occurs in updating the code from step S40, the processor recovers itself to the code from the previous version using the code stored in the redundant code storage area. At this time, the service state of the processor is maintained.

If the code is normally updated or the recovery is completed, the stored code from step S50 performs a boot operation. The step S50 will be described in more detail as follows.

In order to perform the boot operation, the load request message is transmitted to the upper processor. When the upper processor downloads an operating system (OS) and an application program block in response to the load request message, it copies the downloaded operating system and application block to a memory, that is, a DRAM. The checksum value for the software blocks to be loaded into the processor requesting the memory is read from the memory and sent to. From then, the checksum values of the software blocks are received and compared sequentially. In this case, if the checksum value is the same, it is skipped without being reloaded because it is an unchanged software block. However, if the checksum value is a different software block, the software block is deleted from memory and the upper processor is reloaded. The corresponding software block to be transferred is recorded in the pre-allocated memory area. After reloading all the software blocks corresponding to the above-described procedures, if the loading is completed normally, the operating system is restarted by restarting the processor. The performed operating system executes the respective software blocks to start performing normal service operations.

As such, the present invention does not stop the service by performing self-recovery to the previous version even when an abnormal situation occurs in which the code is broken from the firmware update of the C750 board, the C8260 board, and the C860 board in the base station system of the CDMA 2000. Do not

Meanwhile, in the detailed description of the present invention, specific embodiments have been described, but various modifications are possible without departing from the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention should not be limited to the described embodiments, but should be defined not only by the scope of the following claims, but also by those equivalent to the scope of the claims.

In the present invention operating as described in detail above, the effects obtained by the representative ones of the disclosed inventions will be briefly described as follows. The present invention has the effect of improving the stability and reliability of the system by providing a service continuously by repairing the code update failures from itself to provide the operator's convenience of operation.

Claims (1)

In the software update method of a processor having a flash boot ROM, Constructing redundant first and second code storage regions in the flash boot ROM and storing codes from the same version, respectively; Downloading a new version of the code from an upper processor and sequentially updating the code from the first and second code storage areas; If a failure occurs during the updating, recovering the previous code from the previous version by using the code stored in the code storage area from which the failure has not occurred among the duplicated first and second code storage areas; And if the code is normally updated or if the recovery is completed, performing a boot operation by the code from the cellular system.