A method of efficient data transmission over Evolved Packet System

摘要

Even though Evolved Packet System (EPS) features flat-IP architecture, it is essentially a connection oriented system and establishes logical bearers between the User Equipment (UE) and the core network entities for any user data transmission. EPS was designed assuming high speed real-time bulk multimedia data transfer; so initial cost of bearer setup signaling for user plane data is justified. However, this basic assumption is changed due to very small and infrequent background data transfer by the smartphone's always-on applications most of the time when smartphone is not in active use. To transmit this background data, UE incurs frequent idle to connected state transitions and require costly disproportionate signaling overhead for EPS bearer and Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection setup/release procedure. This paper presents a connectionless transmission (CLT) scheme for efficient exchange of background data without establishing the EPS bearer and RRC connection. In the proposed CLT scheme, the data packets are made self-sustainable by carrying routing information in the packet's header. These self-sustained packets are carried through modified Random Access Channel (RACH) procedure between the UE and the eNodeB. Further, another novel aspect of the CLT scheme is to establish common user plane bearers between the radio access network and packet gateways in the core network, to forward self-sustain data packets using the routing information. Our simulation results show CLT scheme reduces the signaling overhead significantly compared to the traditional connection oriented transmission.