WO2017097349A1

WO2017097349A1 - Control of a radio access network based on transport network capacity

Info

Publication number: WO2017097349A1
Application number: PCT/EP2015/079077
Authority: WO
Inventors: Akbar Khan; Laetitia Falconetti; Giovanni Fiaschi
Original assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson AB
Current assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson AB
Priority date: 2015-12-09
Filing date: 2015-12-09
Publication date: 2017-06-15
Anticipated expiration: 2018-06-09

Abstract

The invention refers to a method for controlling a radio access network (100) connecting to one or to a plurality of radio terminals (101), wherein the radio access network is coupled to a transport network (200) providing access to a further network (300), comprising the steps of receiving at an access node (102) of the a radio access network (100) an information indicative of a transport transmission capacity of the transport network (200), and initiating a control of a radio transmission capacity of the radio access network (100) based on the transport network condition; the invention further refers to an access node and to a computer program to be carried out in the access node.

Description

DESCRIPTION

CONTROL OF A RADIO ACCESS NETWORK BASED ON TRANSPORT NETWORK CAPACITY TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to a method and a system for controlling resources in a radio network, and more specifically to adapt radio resources to transport network conditions.

BACKGROUND

In a typical cellular system, also referred to as a wireless communications network, wireless terminals, also known as mobile stations or user equipments communicate via a radio access network (RAN) to one or more core networks. The radio access network may comprise access nodes, AN, or base stations, BS that communicate with the user equipments by means of radio communications and provide access to the core network(s).

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has established a plurality of generations of mobile communication standards. The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation (3G) mobile communication system, which evolved from the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) to provide mobile communication services based on Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) access technology. Long- Term Evolution (LTE), often being referred to as fourth generation or 4G, has been specified to increase the capacity and speed using a different radio interface together with core network improvements.

The increase of data traffic in mobile networks is expected to outpace the spectrum resources for mobile wireless systems. As a result, radio networks need to increase the spectral efficiency of the already available spectrum, for instance with the usage of multi-antenna transmission techniques.

In 3GPP, radio networks solutions, also being referred to as fifth generation or 5G, are currently studied and specified that provide an increases bandwidth on the air interface. Examples of such solutions are LTE Carrier Aggregation, LTE Licensed Assisted Access, LAA based on LTE Carrier Aggregation, and Dual Connectivity.

Radio networks according to 3GPP admit/activate bandwidth intensive features, e.g. LTE Carrier Aggregation for instance allows additional carriers with low observed interference to be used together with a licensed band carrier, thereby able to provide a much higher data rate on the air interface.

3GPP LTE Release 13 feature "License Assisted Access" (LAA) intends to allow LTE equipment to also operate in the unlicensed (5 GHz) radio spectrum. The unlicensed spectrum is used as a complement to the licensed spectrum. Accordingly, devices connect in the licensed spectrum (primary cell or PCell) and use Carrier Aggregation to benefit from additional transmission capacity in the unlicensed spectrum (secondary cell or SCell). In addition to LAA, LTE Release 13 will increase the limitation of the number of carriers possible to aggregate for a UE from 5 carriers to 32 carriers. With LTE Release 13, it will be possible to change the effective transmission bandwidth to a UE very quickly, e.g. at a 1 ms scale.

Radio networks today admit/activate bandwidth intensive features, e.g., LAA, based on intelligent scheduling algorithms which may consider factors and conditions in the unlicensed band radio networks. However, network conditions (temporal failures, congestions) in the transport network are not taken into consideration in real time by the radio network.

If the radio network admits/activates bandwidth intensive features based on favorable conditions in the licensed or unlicensed band, the transport network may not be able to provide or handle the required data rate, resulting in packet drops and poor Quality of Experience, QoE, for the end users.

SUMMARY It is an object of the present invention to improve resource utilization in a radio network. This object is solved by the subject-matter according to the independent claims. Preferred embodiments are subject of the dependent claims, the description and the figures.

According to an embodiment, a method for controlling a radio network is provided by initiating a control of a transmission capacity within the radio network with respect to one or a plurality of radio terminals based on a condition of the transport network of the radio network.

According to an embodiment, a radio access network coupled to a transport network provides access to a further network, e.g. to a core network of the radio network, serving one or to a plurality of radio terminals, performs the steps of:

• receiving at an access node an information indicative of a transport

transmission capacity of the transport network, and

• initiating a control of a radio transmission capacity of or within the radio access network based on the transport transmission capacity.

According to an embodiment, the information is indicative of transmission capacity between the access node and a gateway providing access to the further network, e.g. to the core network.

According to an embodiment, the radio transmission capacity is controlled to match the radio transmission capacity to the transport transmission capacity. According to an embodiment, controlling the radio transmission capacity comprises matching the radio transmission capacity to the transport transmission capacity with respect to a connection of one or a plurality of radio terminals.

According to an embodiment, initiating the control of the radio transmission capacity comprises initiating activating or deactivating one or a plurality of: a multi-antenna transmission mode, a carrier aggregation, a transmission within an additional spectrum, and a dual connectivity with respect to the one or the plurality of radio terminals.

According to an embodiment, the information indicating the transport transmission capacity is transferred on a control plane between the transport network and the radio access network. According to an alternative embodiment, the information indicating the transport transmission capacity is transferred on a data plane between the transport network and the radio access network.

According to an embodiment, an access node to be employed in a radio access network coupled to a transport network comprises:

• a receiver adapted for receiving an information an information indicative of a transport transmission capacity of the transport network, and

• a controller adapted for initiating a control of a radio transmission capacity to the one or the plurality of radio terminals based on the transport transmission capacity.

According to an embodiment, an access node comprises a memory and a processor, wherein the processor is adapted to perform the steps of:

• receiving an information an information indicative of a transport transmission capacity of the transport network, and · initiating a control of a radio transmission capacity to the one or the plurality of radio terminals based on the transport transmission capacity.

A further embodiment concerns computer programs comprising instructions being adapted to be stored in a memory of the radio node, e.g. the radio access node or a control node controlling the radio access network, which, when executed on at least one processor of the node, cause the at least one processor to carry out or support any of the afore described embodiments.

In the following, detailed embodiments of the present invention shall be described in order to give the skilled person a full and complete understanding. However, these embodiments are illustrative and not intended to be limiting.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Further embodiments may be described with respect to the following Figures, in which:

Fig. 1 shows a schematic view of a radio network with interaction between the radio access network part and the transport network part; Fig. 2 shows the network of Fig. 1 further comprising an interaction managing node;

Fig. 3 shows an exemplary block diagram of the interaction managing node;

Fig. 4 shows an eNB performing radio resource reconfiguration with respect to a UE in response to information received from the interaction managing node;

Fig. 5 shows the eNB of Fig. 4 performing a radio resource control with

respect to the UE without resource reconfiguration;

Fig. 6 shows protocol architecture within a master eNB and a secondary eNB in dual connectivity;

Fig. 7 shows the master eNB and the secondary eNB performing an

exemplary radio resource control in dual connectivity mode;

Fig. 8 shows the master eNB and the secondary eNB performing an

exemplary radio resource control in separate bearer based dual connectivity mode;

Fig. 9 shows an exemplary block diagram of a method for performing a radio resource control with respect to a UE;

Fig. 10 shows an exemplary functional block diagram of a radio access node according to embodiments, and

Fig.1 1 shows an exemplary structural block diagram of a radio access node according to embodiments.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Fig. 1 shows a schematic view of a communications network comprising radio access network 100, a transport network 200 and a core network 300. The radio access network 100 may implement any radio access technology, e.g. wide Code Division Multiple Access, WCDMA or Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing, OFDM. The radio access network 100 comprises a plurality of access nodes 102, also being referred to as radio base stations, or eNBs in the terminology of 4G 3GPP specifications. Access nodes 102 provide radio access to radio terminals or user equipments 101 , such as a mobile phones, computers, or machine type devices, MTC.

The transport network 200 interconnects the radio access network 100 with the core network 300. Thereto, the transport network may comprise any suitable transport network nodes such as switches, routers, and/or aggregators. By way of the example depicted in Fig. 1 , the transport network 200 comprises a number of cell-side (edge) routers CS-PE, 102 that each connect to an eNB 102, and cell-side aggregators 202 that connect to the cell-side routers 102 in order to aggregate the traffic to/from the cell side. The transport network 200 further comprises (central) aggregators 203 and central (edge) routers 204. The further aggregators 203 connect the cell-side aggregators 202, therewith providing connection between the cell-side aggregators 202 and the central routers 204 (that might form a transport ring). The central routers connect to the gateways 209 (S-GW, PGW, RNC) that may be regarded as nodes of the core network 300. The core network may further comprise control nodes (such as mobility management entity nodes, MME) as well as policy nodes (such as the policy and charging rules function nodes, PCRF) not shown in Fig. 1 .

According to embodiments, the transport network 200 provides state information to the radio access network 100. Such state information may be indicative of a transport transmission capacity within the transport network. The radio access network 100 may use this information to adapt its transmission capacity, especially the radio transmission capacity to the transport transmission capacity. This allows e.g. to reduce or deactivate bandwidth intensive radio features within the radio access network 100 in order to avoid an overload or congestion in the transport network 200.

This may allow performing proactive admission control to improve an end to end (E2E) quality of experience (QoE) for the subscribers. End to end transmission capacity may be regarded as the transmission capacity available from the user equipment 101 to the gateway 209 providing access to the operator's or core network.

Fig. 2 in principle shows the communications network of claim 1 additionally comprising a radio access and transport interaction, RTI function 210. Physically, this function may be implemented in one or a plurality of nodes within the transport network 200 and/or the access network 100. By way of example, Fig. 2 shows the RTI function being implemented in a single RTI node 210. Functions of the RTI node 210 may be realized by hardware and/or by software.

The RTI function may collect any state information, e.g. congestion, overload and/or failure information from one or a plurality of nodes of the transport network, and provide corresponding transport transmission capacity information to one or a plurality the access nodes 101 of the radio access network 100. The transport transmission capacity may be reduced e.g. by congestion and/or failures at one or a plurality of network nodes within the transport network 200.

Fig. 3 shows an exemplary functional block diagram of RTI node 210. RTI node by way of example comprises an information collection module 21 1 , an information processing module 212 and an information distribution module 213.

The information collection module 21 1 may collect from appropriate transport network nodes (e.g. the central aggregator nodes 203, but also from other nodes shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2) capacity information such as load or failure information. Such capacity information may also state information such as congestion, congestion, near-to-overload, and overload of particular nodes. The information processing module 212 may process this information and determine transport capacity information, in the following also being referred to as RTI information, for one or a plurality of access nodes 102 of the radio access network 100. Information distribution module 213 may distribute the RTI information to one or a plurality of appropriate access nodes 102.

Upon reception of a RTI message, an access node 102 may decide to adapt the radio traffic to capacity information derived from RTI message, e.g. reducing a usage of bandwidth intensive radio features.

The capacity information may be indicative of an available transmission capacity within the transport network, e.g. the transmission capacity provided to a certain access node 201 (thus between a cell-side router 201 connecting to that certain access node 102 and a gateway 209). The access node may then adapt the radio resources (and thus the actual radio traffic) with respect to one or a plurality of user equipments 101 to the transport capacity. In an embodiment, the access node may decide to apply only multi-antenna transmission modes that induce low to medium user data rate so as to lower the traffic on the IP transport network. Spatial multiplexing will then be avoided. Instead, multi-antenna modes such as single antenna transmission or transmit diversity can be used.

Alternatively or additionally the access node may decide to admit/activate transmission capacity intensive features of the radio network 100 in the transport network 200 by taking up a required additional spectrum in licensed or unlicensed bands to match the available transmission capacity in the transport network 200.

Alternatively or additionally the access node may decide to release spectrum of the radio network 100 it had taken up in licensed or unlicensed bands to match the available transmission capacity in the transport network on the basis of the available end to end transmission capacity in the transport network 200.

LTE Carrier Aggregation allows additional carriers with low observed interference to be used together with a licensed band carrier, thereby able to provide a much higher data rate on the air interface. License Assisted Access (LAA) allows LTE user equipment to also operate in the unlicensed 5 GHz radio spectrum. The unlicensed 5 GHz spectrum is used as a complement to the licensed spectrum. Accordingly, devices connect in the licensed spectrum via a primary cell (PCell) and use Carrier Aggregation to benefit from additional transmission capacity in the unlicensed spectrum via a secondary cell (SCell).

The additional transmission capacity can be large since the 5GHz unlicensed band is wide. This band contains more than 400MHz as available transmission capacity in Europe for instance. In addition to LAA, the limitation of the number of carriers possible to aggregate for a UE from 5 carriers to 32 carriers can be increased. Thus it is possible to change the effective transmission capacity to a user equipment 101 quickly, i.e. in a 1 ms scale (carrier aggregation for a user equipment 101 is a feature implemented in the LTE scheduler, which takes its scheduling decisions for the user equipment 101 on a 1 ms scale).

In an embodiment, the access node may further decide on how to select carrier aggregation for a particular user equipment 101 based on the RTI information and e.g. further based on channel measurements, feedback from user equipment 101 .

Dual connectivity is a feature defined from the perspective of the user equipment 101 . In dual connectivity mode, the user equipment 101 may simultaneously receive and transmit to at least two different network points, i.e. base stations. The user equipment 101 can be enabled to be connected to network points of different radio access technologies, specifically at least one LTE network point and one Wi-Fi network point. With dual connectivity, the data rate of user equipment 101 can be increased substantially, since it receives data from several network points at the same time. The two different network points are usually denoted as master eNB (MeNB) and secondary eNB (SeNB). These network points can operate on different frequencies.

In an embodiment, the access node may decide to restrict scheduling resources of certain configured secondary carriers (LAA or regular LTE carriers). This means that the eNB may decide to only schedule UEs on a single carrier even though carrier aggregation is configured for those UEs. This may reduce the traffic on the IP transport network.

The access node may further decide on how to select the multi-antenna transmission mode and/or dual connectivity for a particular user equipment 101 on the RTI information and further based e.g. on channel measurements, feedback from the user equipment 101 .

Activation or deactivation of the multi-antenna transmission mode, carrier aggregation, Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) and/or dual connectivity can be performed by sending corresponding reconfiguration messages to the user equipment 101 .

Fig. 4 illustrates a radio resource reconfiguration at an access node, in the following being referred to as eNB 102, upon a reception of RTI messages for adaptation of radio resources.

RTI information exchange is for example performed on the control plane (e.g. case that information exchange speed is not critical).

Upon reception of a RTI message from the RTI node 210, in the following also being referred to as RTI manager 210, the eNB 102 can decide to deactivate or activate specific features that influence the radio data rate with respect to one or a plurality of user equipments 101 connected to the eNB 102. Therewith, radio resources controlled by the eNB can be adapted to an actual transmission capacity within the transport network 200. Such features, e.g. carrier aggregation or dual connectivity may be activated or deactivated by exchanging corresponding radio resource control, RRC, protocol messages with the user equipment(s) 101 .

The eNB 102 may activate or deactivate carrier aggregation through a RRC reconfiguration message comprising a so-called Scell activation/deactivation command. The eNB may activate or deactivate dual connectivity through a RRC reconfiguration message comprising a so-called SeNB activation/deactivation command.

The eNB may reconfigure dual connectivity or carrier aggregation, e.g. by reducing or increasing a number of monitored SeNBs or Scells.

The RRC reconfiguration usually occurs on a few hundreds of ms scale. If the RTI message contains an indication of the duration of the current state of the transport network 200, the eNB can take this duration indication into account to decide whether to reconfigure the radio resources or not. If e.g. a capacity down state has a duration shorter than a certain threshold, the eNB may decide to not reconfigure the radio resources but to take a measure as being explained under Fig. 5.

Features such as carrier aggregation and dual connectivity require the base stations 102 to send cell-specific signaling regularly on all configured carriers and user equipment 101 to monitor the configured carriers. This induces extra energy consumption at the eNB 102 and user equipment 101 . The transmission of cell-specific signaling on all configured carriers may also increase interference to neighboring cells, even if no data transmission is scheduled in the configured carriers at a given time.

By deactivating these features with RRC reconfiguration messages, if the transport network 200 cannot handle this traffic, energy consumption of base stations 102 and/or user equipment 101 can be reduced as well as the interference level. Fig. 5 illustrates a further embodiment of radio transmission adaptation. Upon reception of a RTI message from the transport network RTI manager 210, the eNB 102 may decide not to explicitly deactivate specific features (by means of RRC reconfiguration), but rather to adapt their usage for active user equipment 101 .

Decisions related to the radio transmission mode may be taken in the MAC layer as part of the scheduling process. Upon reception of RTI messages, the MAC layer may be informed about the capacity limitations of the transport network 200. For instance, some parameters of the MAC layer can be set to capture the transport network capacity limitations. When the MAC layer decides to schedule user equipment 101 , control information is sent to the user equipment 101 together with data. The control part may inform the user equipment 101 about the transmission parameters such as multi-antenna precoding weights and scheduled time-frequency resources.

In an embodiment, the eNB may decide to apply only multi-antenna transmission modes that induce low to medium user data rate so as to lower the traffic on the transport network 200. Spatial multiplexing may be avoided. But instead, multi-antenna modes such as single antenna transmission or transmit diversity may be used.

The eNB can also decide to restrict scheduling resources of certain configured secondary carriers, like LAA or regular LTE carriers. This means that the eNB may decide to only schedule user equipment 101 on a single carrier even though carrier aggregation is configured for this user equipment 101 . This also lowers the traffic on the transport network 200.

As discussed the scheduling may occurs on fast pace, e.g. on a 1 ms scale in LTE. The eNB 102 can therefore quickly react in adaption the radio transmission (e.g. by changing the transmission mode) to reduce the traffic requirements on the transport network 200, without performing RRC reconfiguration that may take significantly longer. This may be especially suitable in case of short congestion/overload occurrences in the transport network (e.g. below 100 ms).

Further, MAC layer scheduling adaptation (instead of RRC reconfiguration) may be performed, if a short term reactivity of the radio access network 100 is required, e.g. if the RTI message comprises an indication that the radio access network 100 shall adapt within short time (e.g. in the range of 1 ms to 10 ms).

In view of the above, for a reasonable implementation of real time adaptations, fast updates on the status of the transport network 200 are required for the RTI interaction. RTI interworking on the control plane may not be fast enough, e.g. due to a communication length, function centralization as in SDN, shared communication networks and function virtualization. Therefore, direct RTI interworking on the data plane (also known as the user plane, forwarding plane, carrier plane or bearer plane carrying user traffic) may be used for this application.

In case of longer capacity problems in the transport network (e.g. in case of node failures), it may be preferable to deactivate features, such as carrier aggregation or dual connectivity, by means of RRC reconfiguration as described under Fig. 5. Such deactivation may be further advantageous e.g. from a perspective of battery consumption of the user equipment 101 .

Fig. 6 illustrates a protocol architecture in dual connectivity involving two access nodes 102, in the following also being referred to as master eNB, MeNB 102-1 , and secondary eNB, SeNB 102-2. Three types of radio bearer may be supported, namely a bearer served by MeNB (left), a bearer split over both MeNB and SeNB (middle) or a bearer served by SeNB (right). To convey payload data, all bearer types described above may be used. Radio resource control (RRC) signaling may only use bearers served by MeNB. Dual Connectivity may be activated dynamically for the user equipment 101 by means of RRC reconfiguration of an existing MeNB radio bearer. Reconfiguring radio bearers may be performed on a scale of 100 ms up to a few hundreds of ms.

In case of a split bearer, the user equipment 101 may be statically configured by RRC reconfiguration to route PDCP protocol data units (PDUs), to the MeNB or SeNB Radio Link Control (RLC) in the uplink. In downlink however, the eNB may route PDCP PDUs dynamically via MeNB RLC or SeNB RLC or via both, i.e. duplication, to the user equipment 101 . The decision is taken on a Protocol Data Unit (PDU) individual level. This means that the MeNB has the possibility to adapt quickly, e.g. within a few ms, the amount of data sent over the SeNB link to the user equipment 101 .

Fig. 7 shows another embodiment of a capacity adaptation of a split bearer based dual connectivity usage upon reception of RTI messages. Thereto Fig. 7 shows a master eNB, MeNB 102-1 , and a secondary eNB, SeNB 102-2, both communicating with the user equipment 101 by way of dual connectivity mode. Dual Connectivity can be realized with a split bearer that goes through the MeNB 102-1 as shown above. Data traffic is split in the PDCP layer by means of a PDCP splitter. A first part of the corresponding PDCP packets is forwarded, over RLC layer, MAC layer and physical layer of the MeNB 102-1 to be transmitted to the UE 101 . A second part of the PDCP packets is forwarded to the SeNB 102-2 that transmits those packets over the RLC layer, MAC layer and physical layer of the SeNB 102-2 to the UE 101 . Depending on the content of the RTI information received from the RTI manager 210, a fast adaptation can be done by reducing/increasing an amount of PDCP packets forwarded to the SeNB 102-2.

E.g. if the MeNB 102-1 serving a certain user equipment 101 receives an RTI information indicative of a capacity problem within the transport network 200, it can quickly decide to reduce the amount of packets forwarded to the SeNB 102- 2 for transmission to the user equipment 101 , thus quickly reducing the data traffic in the transport network 200.

Fig. 8 shows a variant, wherein RTI information is forwarded from the RTI manager 201 over a second eNB (e.g. the SeNB 102-2 of Fig. 7) to a first eNB 102-1 (e.g. the MeNB 102-1 of Fig. 7). The transport network may comprise a transport aggregation network 205 (depicted as main transport ring), a first transport pre-aggregation network 206 (depicted as first transport subring or subsection) connecting the transport aggregation network 205 to the first eNB 102-1 , and a second pre-aggregation network 207 (depicted as second transport subring or subsection) connecting the transport aggregation network 205 to the second eNB 102-2. In case that transport network 200 of separate bearer based dual connectivity. RTI information exchange is for example performed on the control plane. Dual connectivity can be realized with separate bearers going through the MeNB 102-1 and SeNB 102-2. In that case, a failure may occur in the first subsection 205 of the transport network 200, the first eNB 102-1 may not be directly reached by the RTI manager 210. Upon reception of an RTI message indicating such issue, the second eNB 102-2 may checks whether it is configured as SeNB 102-2 with respect to the user equipment 101 controlled by the first NBs 102-1 . In the affirmative, the second eNB 102-2 may send an information to the first eNB 102-1 about the received RTI message. This may enable the first eNB (MeNB) 102-1 to take action and reduce the SeNB 102-2 usage by applying methods described above.

Fig. 9 illustrates steps for controlling radio resources in the radio access network 100. The method comprises the following steps:

In step S101 , an access node 102 of the a radio access network 100 of receives an information indicative of a transport transmission capacity of the transport network 200,

In step S102, the access node 102 initiatives a control of a transmission capacity of the radio network 100 based on the transport network condition.

The access node 102 may proceed with any of the further steps S103, S104 or S105 or a combination of these steps, in order to match an available transmission capacity of the transport network 200 to the corresponding radio resources in the access network.

In step S103, a multi-antenna transmission mode of the radio network 100 is activated or deactivated based on the transport network condition.

In step S104, a carrier aggregation of the radio network 100 is activated or deactivated based on a transport network condition.

In step S105, a dual connectivity with respect to one or a plurality of user equipments 101 of the radio network 100 is activated or deactivated based on the transport network condition.

Fig. 10 shows an exemplary functional block diagram of an access node or eNB 201 of any of the preceding embodiments. The eNB 201 comprises transport transmission capacity receiver 2010 adapted for receiving an information indicative of a transport transmission capacity of the transport network 200, and transmission capacity adaptation controller for controlling a transmission capacity of the radio network 100 based on the transport network condition.

Fig. 1 1 shows an exemplary structural block diagram of an access node or eNB 201 of any of the preceding embodiments. The eNB 201 comprises a processor 21 1 1 and a memory 21 10, wherein the processor is adapted to carry out instructions loaded from the memory to the processor to carry out the steps S101 , S102, and optionally any of the S103, S104, and S105, as discussed above.

Abbreviation Explanation

3GPP 3rd Generation Partnership Project

BS Base Station

DC Dual Connectivity

eNB eNodeB

GHz Gigahertz

GPRS General Packet Radio Service

IP Internet Protocol

LAA Licensed Assisted Access

LTE Long-Term Evolution

MAC Media Access Control

MeNB Master eNodeB

MME Mobility Management Entity ms Millisecond

PDCP Packet Data Convergence Protocol

PDU Protocol Data Unit

PHY Physical Layer of OS I model

QoE Quality of Experience

RLC Radio Link Control

RRC Radio Resource Control

RTI Radio Transport Interaction

SDN Software Defined Networking

SeNB Secondary eNB

SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node

UE User Equipment

Claims

1 . Method for controlling a radio access network (100) connecting to one or to a plurality of radio terminals (101 ), wherein the radio access network is coupled to a transport network (200), wherein the transport network (200) provides access to a further network (300), comprising the steps of:

• receiving (S101 ) at a radio access node (102) of the a radio

access network (100) an information indicative of a transport transmission capacity of the transport network (200), and

· initiating (S102) a control of a radio transmission capacity of the radio access network (100) based on the information indicative of the transport transmission capacity.

2. Method according to claim 1 , wherein controlling the radio transmission capacity comprises matching the radio transmission capacity to the transport transmission capacity.

3. Method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein controlling the radio

transmission capacity comprises matching the radio transmission capacity to the transport transmission capacity with respect to a connection of one or a plurality of radio terminals (101 ) to the further network (300).

4. Method according to claim 1 or anyone of the preceding claims, wherein initiating (S102) the control of the radio transmission capacity comprises initiating activating or deactivating a multi-antenna transmission mode at the access node (102) the radio access network (100).

5. Method according to claim 1 or to anyone of the preceding claims,

wherein initiating (S102) the control of the radio transmission capacity comprises initiating activating or deactivating a carrier aggregation with respect to the one or the plurality of radio terminals (101 ).

6. Method according to claim 1 or to anyone of the preceding claims,

wherein initiating (S102) the control of the radio transmission capacity comprises initiating activating or deactivating a dual connectivity with respect to the one or the plurality of radio terminals (101 ).

7. Method according to claim 1 or to anyone of the preceding claims, wherein initiating (S102) the control of the radio transmission capacity comprises activating or deactivating a transmission within an additional spectrum of the radio access network (100).

8. Method according to claim 1 or to anyone of the preceding claims, wherein the information indicating the transport transmission capacity is transferred on one of: a control plane and a data plane between the transport network (200) and the radio access network (100).

9. Method according to claim 1 or to anyone of the preceding claims, wherein the information is indicative of a transmission capacity between the access node (102) and a gateway (209) providing access to the further network (300).

10. An access node (102, 102-1 ) of a radio network coupled to one or a plurality of radio terminals (101 ) and to a transport network (200), comprising:

• a receiver (2010) adapted for receiving an information an information indicative of a transport transmission capacity of the transport network (200), and

• a controller (201 1 ) adapted for initiating a control of a radio

transmission capacity to the one or the plurality of radio terminals

(101 ) based on the transport transmission capacity.

1 1 . The access node (102, 102-1 ) according to claim 10, further adapted to initiating activating or deactivating with respect to the one or the plurality of radio terminals (101 ) at least one of:

· a multi-antenna transmission mode,

• a carrier aggregation,

• a dual connectivity,

• an allocation of additional spectrum, and

• an allocation of additional unlicensed spectrum.

12. The access node (102, 102-1 ) according to anyone of the preceding claims 10 and 1 1 , further comprising a resource controller adapted for performing a resource reconfiguration with respect to one or a plurality of radio terminals (101 ) in response to the information.

13. The access node (102, 102-1 ) according to anyone of the preceding claims 10 to 12, further comprising a media access controller adapted for adapting an actual transmission of data to the one or the plurality of radio terminals (101 ) in response to the information.

14. The access node (102, 102-1 ) according to the preceding claim, wherein the media access controller adapted for informing the one or the plurality of radio terminals (101 ) about a radio transmission change in response to the information.

15. The access node (102, 102-1 ) according to anyone of the preceding claims, further comprising adapting forwarding data packets to a secondary access node (102-2) destined for the one or the plurality of radio terminals (101 ).

16. The access node (102, 102-1 ) according to claim 15, being adapted to one of: forwarding a reduced number of data packets and stop forwarding any data packet.

17. An access node (102, 102-1 ) comprising a memory (21 10) and a

processor (21 1 1 ), wherein the processor is adapted to perform the steps of anyone of claims 1 - 9.

18 A computer program comprising instructions being stored in a memory (21 10) of an access node (102, 102-1 ) which, when executed on at least one processor (21 1 1 ) of the access node, cause the at least one processor to carry out the steps of anyone of claims 1 - 9.