The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has recently initiated the Long Term Evolution (LTE) program to bring new technology, new network architecture and configurations and new applications and services to the wireless cellular network in order to provide improved spectral efficiency, reduced latency, faster user experiences and richer applications and services with less cost. LTE aims at realizing an Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN).
There have been attempts to identify radio resource control (RRC) messages for LTE, as well as the high level structure of the procedural specification. In order to achieve a concise specification, some of those messages have been grouped together to provide similar functionality. Table 1 shows an example of grouping of these messages.
TABLE 1Message GroupingsNoMessageDetailsComment/UMTS equivalents1System Information BlockDownlink(DL),SYSTEM INFORMATION BLOCK 1..N1..nBroadcastChannel (BCH)2PagingDL, PagingPAGING TYPE 1/2Channel (PCH)3Radio connection requestUplink (UL)RRC CONNECTION REQUESTSynch ChannelA specific message seems needed for some scenarios(SCH)considering the size constrains for the initial uplinkmessage4Measurement reportUL-SCHMEASUREMENT REPORTIntroduction of a more general purpose ‘Radioconnection change request’ may still be considered5Radio connection changeDL-SCHRADIO BEARER SETUPcommandRADIO BEARER RELEASERRC CONNECTION SETUPRRC CONNECTION RELEASEXXXX RECONFIGURATIONPossibly also covering:CELL UPDATE CONFIRMHANDOVER FROM UTRAN COMMANDMEASUREMENT CONTROLSECURITY MODE COMMANDUTRAN MOBILITY INFORMATION6Radio connection changeUL-SCHRADIO BEARER SETUP COMPLETEcompleteRADIO BEARER RELEASE COMPLETERRC CONNECTION COMPLETERRC CONNECTION COMPLETEXXXX RECONFIGURATION COMPLETEPossibly also covering:HANDOVER FROM UTRAN COMPLETEHANDOVER TO UTRAN COMPLETESECURITY MODE COMPLETEUTRAN MOBILITY INFORMATION CONFIRM7Handover to LTEDL, other radioSpecific message may be needed because of theaccessconsidering the size limitations in GSMtechnologyHANDOVER TO UTRAN COMMAND(RAT)8WTRU capabilityUL, other RATSpecific message may be needed because of theinformation compactconsidering the size limitations in GSMINTER RAT HANDOVER INFO9DL direct transferDL-SCHSpecific message with no AS integrity (if required)DOWNLINK DIRECT TRANSFER10UL direct transferUL-SCHSpecific message with no AS integrity (if required)UPLINK DIRECT TRANSFER
As shown above, the RRC connection change command groups together a number of commands, (e.g., Setup and Reconfiguration, security mode commands and measurement commands). There are currently no groupings for failure messages. The only failure message is the use of an RRC Connection Change Failure command to indicate Message Failure. Grouping of such messages would require additional factors to be considered, especially in the case of the radio connection change command and the radio connection change complete.
Even though a separate RRC “Connection Change Failure” message has been disclosed, groups of messages, such as security and setup or measurement control and handover, raise a number of issues. One issue is whether the complete procedure fails if one part of the message fails. For example, the radio bearer setup part might fail while the security part passes, or the handover part might pass while the measurement control part might fail. Another issue is the determination of which combination of scenarios the procedure be declared a success. Therefore, there exists a need for a method and apparatus for handling grouped command messages.