FORM 2

THE PATENTS ACT  1970
(39 of 1970)
&
THE PATENTS RULES  2003

COMPLETE SPECIFICATION
(See section 10  rule 13)

“A Method and System of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system”

Tejas Networks Limited
2nd floor  GNR Tech Park  46/4  Garbebhavi Palya 
Kudlu Gate  Hosur main road 
Bangalore 560 068  Karnataka  India

The following specification particularly describes the invention and the manner in which it is to be performed.

Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to wireless communications  and more particularly to Evolved Packet System (EPS) bearers.

Background of the Invention
User equipment (UE) or a user terminal may operate in a wireless communication network that provides high-speed data communications using various network configurations and/or Radio Access Technologies (RATs). For example  the UE may operate in accordance with Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technologies. Today  such a UE may further operate in accordance with Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE)  or Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS) or Enhanced GPRS Phase 2 (EGPRS2). Other wireless networks that UEs may operate include but are not limited to CDMA  UMTS  E-UTRAN  WiMax  and WLAN (e.g. IEEE 802.11). UEs may also operate in fixed network environments such as xDSL  DOCSIS cable networks  Ethernet or optical networks. Some UEs may be capable of multimode operation where they can operate on more than one access network technology either on a single access network technology at a time or in some devices using multiple access network technologies simultaneously.
In wireless telecommunications systems  transmission equipment in a base station transmits signals throughout a geographical region known as a cell. As technology has evolved  more advanced equipment has been introduced that can provide services that were not possible previously. This advanced equipment might include  for example  an evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN) node B (eNB) rather than a base station or other systems and devices that are more highly evolved than the equivalent equipment in a traditional wireless telecommunications system. Such advanced or next generation equipment may be referred to herein as long-term evolution (LTE) equipment  and a packet-based network that uses such equipment can be referred to as an evolved packet system (EPS). As used herein  the term "access device" may refer to any component  such as a traditional base station  eNB  or other LTE access device  that can provide a UE with access to other components in a telecommunications system.
The EPS bearer is actually composed of the three following elements  an S5 bearer which is implemented by a tunnel which transports packets between the Serving and PDN Gateways  secondly an S1 bearer which is implemented by a tunnel which transports packets between the ServingGW and eNodeB and thirdly a Radio Bearer which is implemented by a RLC connection between the eNodeB and the terminal. There is one RLC protocol machine per Radio Bearer.
The elementary data flows being transported by the EPS bearer are known as Service Data Flow (SDF). Each of them is characterized by the IP 5-tuple (source IP address  destination IP address  source port number  destination port number  protocol ID of the protocol above IP)  which identifies both termination points (in the IP sense) as well as the application or service being used. Practically  an SDF may correspond to a connection to a Web or streaming server  or to a mailbox server.
From an Evolved UMTS perspective  an EPS bearer corresponds to one Quality of Service policy applied within the EPC and E-UTRAN. This means that all the SDF flows transported by the EPS bearer will be applied to the same packet scheduling algorithm  using the same priority  the same E-UTRAN RLC configuration  etc.
This notion is the EPS equivalent to the UMTS Bearer Service of 3G/UMTS networks. In addition to those mechanisms  the PDN GW may enforce policy decisions (through packet filters) at the SDF level within an EPS bearer  based on rules provided by the PCRF (Policy and Charging Rules Function) node.
Figure 1 shows an example of two EPS bearers  from a terminal to PDN GW. In the figure 1  there are two bi-directional EPS bearers. The notion of bearer to be bi-directionally congruent comes from 2G tradition where voice call is always provisioned congruently as the circuit carrying the call is supposed to be offering same Quality of Service (QoS).
The QoS or Service level path is not available in both directions on a congruent path  it may be due to congestion  packet loss  radio quality etc. Further  if only one path of the bi-directional path is faulty or down  it is difficult to quickly find bi-directional path that is congruent and this also slows down the process of restoring the paths  as system has to find congruent bidirectional path.

Summary of the Invention
An aspect of the present invention is to address at least the above-mentioned problems and/or disadvantages and to provide at least the advantages described below.
Accordingly  an aspect of the present invention is to provide a method of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system  the method comprising: receiving a request on one of the end points for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes  checking to establish a feasible path between a plurality of intermediate nodes in order to serve the received request and establishing non-congruent path EPS bearer between two end points via intermediate nodes.
In another aspect of the present invention is a system of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system  the system comprising: at least one UE  a plurality of Relay nodes  a plurality of eNodeB  a plurality of serving gateway  at least one packet data network gateway and a mobile management entity includes a processor configured to receive a request on one of the end point for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes and checks to establish a feasible path between a plurality of intermediate nodes in order to serve the received request  wherein the established path is a non-congruent path EPS bearer.
In another aspect of the present invention is an intermediate node for providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system  the node comprising: a processor including a memory; and a network protocol module coupled to the processor  wherein the processor is configured for: receiving a request on one of the end point for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes  checking to establish a feasible path between a plurality of intermediate nodes in order to serve the received request  establishing non-congruent path EPS bearer between two end points via intermediate nodes.
Other aspects  advantages  and salient features of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description  which  taken in conjunction with the annexed drawings  discloses exemplary embodiments of the invention.

Brief description of the drawings
The above and other aspects  features  and advantages of certain exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be more apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
Figure 1 shows an example of two EPS bearers  from a terminal to PDN GW in accordance with the prior art.
Figure 2 illustrates a system of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system  according to one embodiment of the present invention.
Figure 3 is a flow chart of a method of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system according to one embodiment of the present invention.
Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and may have not been drawn to scale. For example  the dimensions of some of the elements in the figure may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure.

Detail description of the Invention
The following description with reference to the accompanying drawings is provided to assist in a comprehensive understanding of exemplary embodiments of the invention as defined by the claims and their equivalents. It includes various specific details to assist in that understanding but these are to be regarded as merely exemplary. Accordingly  those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that various changes and modifications of the embodiments described herein can be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. In addition  descriptions of well-known functions and constructions are omitted for clarity and conciseness.
The terms and words used in the following description and claims are not limited to the bibliographical meanings  but  are merely used by the inventor to enable a clear and consistent understanding of the invention. Accordingly  it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the following description of exemplary embodiments of the present invention are provided for illustration purpose only and not for the purpose of limiting the invention as defined by the appended claims and their equivalents.
It is to be understood that the singular forms “a ” “an ” and “the” include plural referents unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. Thus  for example  reference to “a component surface” includes reference to one or more of such surfaces.
By the term “substantially” it is meant that the recited characteristic  parameter  or value need not be achieved exactly  but that deviations or variations  including for example  tolerances  measurement error  measurement accuracy limitations and other factors known to those of skill in the art  may occur in amounts that do not preclude the effect the characteristic was intended to provide.
Figs. 1 through 3  discussed below  and the various embodiments used to describe the principles of the present disclosure in this patent document are by way of illustration only and should not be construed in any way that would limit the scope of the disclosure. Those skilled in the art will understand that the principles of the present disclosure may be implemented in any suitably arranged communications system. The terms used to describe various embodiments are exemplary. It should be understood that these are provided to merely aid the understanding of the description  and that their use and definitions in no way limit the scope of the invention. Terms first  second  and the like are used to differentiate between objects having the same terminology and are in no way intended to represent a chronological order  unless where explicitly stated otherwise. A set is defined as a non-empty set including at least one element.
Figure 2 illustrates a system of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system  according to one embodiment of the present invention. The system 200 includes a User Equipment (UE)  one or more eNB  one or more Serving Gateway (SGW)  and a PDN-GW. As used herein  the term "terminal or device or User Equipment" can refer to the terms "mobile station" (MS)  "user agent" (UA)  which can include electronic devices such as fixed and mobile telephones  personal digital assistants  handheld or laptop computers  smart phones  printers  fax machines  televisions  set-top boxes  and other video display devices  home audio equipment and other home entertainment systems  home monitoring and control systems (e.g.  home monitoring  alarm systems and climate control systems)  enhanced home appliances such as computerized refrigerators and similar devices that have network communications capabilities. In some configurations  UE may refer to a mobile  wireless device.
UE may also refer to devices that have similar capabilities but that are not readily transportable  such as desktop computers  set-top boxes  TVs  IPTVs or network nodes.
The term "UE" can also refer to any hardware or software component that can terminate a communication session that could include  but is not limited to  a SIP session. Also  the terms "user agent " "UA " "user equipment  "UE " and "node" might be used synonymously herein. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that these terms can be used interchangeably within the application.
Further the system includes a Mobile Management Entity (MME)   where the MME is the key control-node for the LTE access-network. It is responsible for idle mode UE (User Equipment) tracking and paging procedure including retransmissions. It is involved in the bearer activation/deactivation process and is also responsible for choosing the Serving Gateway (SGW) for a UE at the initial attach and at time of intra-LTE handover involving Core Network (CN) node relocation. It is responsible for authenticating the user (by interacting with the Home Subscriber Server (HSS)). The Non Access Stratum (NAS) signaling terminates at the MME and it is also responsible for generation and allocation of temporary identities to UEs. It checks the authorization of the UE to camp on the service provider’s Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) and enforces UE roaming restrictions. The MME is the termination point in the network for ciphering/integrity protection for NAS signaling and handles the security key management. Lawful interception of signaling is also supported by the MME. The MME also provides the control plane function for mobility between LTE and 2G/3G access networks with the S3 interface terminating at the MME from the SGSN.
SGW can connect to or be coupled with a PGW  which provides network access to SGW and/or additional SGWs. PGW can communicate with a PCRF to authenticate/authorize UE to use the network  which can utilize an IMS to provide addressing to the UE and/or relay eNB.
The techniques described herein may be used for various wireless communication systems such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems  Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems  Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems  Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems  Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems  etc. The terms “system” and “network” are often used interchangeably. A CDMA system may implement a radio technology such as Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA)  cdma2000  etc. UTRA includes Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) and Time Division Synchronous CDMA (TD-SCDMA). cdma2000 covers IS-2000  IS-95 and IS-856 standards. A TDMA system may implement a radio technology such as Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). An OFDMA system may implement a radio technology such as Evolved UTRA (E-UTRA)  Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB)  IEEE 802.20  IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX)  Flash-OFDM®  etc. UTRA and E-UTRA are part of Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) is an upcoming release of UMTS that uses E-UTRA  which employs OFDMA on the downlink and SC-FDMA on the uplink. UTRA  E-UTRA  UMTS  LTE and GSM are described in documents from an organization named “3rd Generation Partnership Project” (3GPP). cdma2000 is described in documents from an organization named “3rd Generation Partnership Project 2” (3GPP2). These various radio technologies and standards are known in the art. For clarity  certain aspects of the techniques are described below for UMTS  and 3GPP terminology is used in much of the description below.
In UMTS  data for a UE may be processed as one or more transport channels at a higher layer. The transport channels may carry data for one or more services  e.g.  voice  video  packet data  etc. The transport channels may be mapped to physical channels at a physical layer. The physical channels may be channelized with different channelization codes and may thus be orthogonal to one another in the code domain.
In the 3GPP LTE  each bearer is defined for each interface in order to guarantee independence between the interfaces. The EPS bearers are divided into the radio bearer (RB)  the Si bearer  etc. for each interface. The packet gateway (P-GW) is a network node that connects between the LTE network and other networks. The EPS bearer is defined between a UE and the P-GW. The EPS bearer is more subdivided between respective nodes  such that it is defined as the RB between a UE and a BS  as the S1 bearer between the BS and the S-GW  and as the S5/S8 bearer between the S-GW and the P-GW within the EPC.
In an operation  for an efficient bearer service between two end points (UE and P-GW) in a wireless communication system  the MME_UE (When UE wants bearer  it creates NAS message and sends to MME_UE via eNB. MME_UE checks the plan/rules with PCRF and then initiates bearer setup between UE and PGW. the bearers set up by the present invention is non-congruent.) receives a request for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes. In the figure  the UE sends a packets over the established EPS bearer to one or more enode B via radio bearer which is implemented by a RLC connection. The enode B further transports packets received from the UE to the serving GW via S1 bearer. In one embodiment  the enode B checks to establish a feasible path between a plurality of SGW nodes in order to serve the received request  where the path established between the enode B and SGW is a non-congruent path EPS bearer  the non-congruent EPS bearers which improves resiliency and restoration. The checking to establish the feasible path includes configuring the path based on the request received at Mobile Management Entity (MME) and also the origin of the request at the end points (i.e. between PDN-GW and UE or vice-versa). The checking is done in order to establish the path which facilitates easy and faster protection or restoration of service  if one of the paths is faulty or down. The path followed by the request in the intermediate nodes of the system is based on various parameters including maximum delay  residual error rate  congestion of the path  radio quality etc.  where at each of the intermediate node  the received request is checked and configured a suitable path before forwarding to the other nodes. The non-congruent path followed the transport packets is not limited to any two nodes or any two end nodes.
Figure 3 is a flow chart of a method of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system according to one embodiment of the present invention.
At step 310  the method checks the received request on one of the end points for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes. The end points may be or may include point-to-multipoint EPS bearer.
At step 320  the method checks a feasible path to establish a pathway between a plurality of intermediate nodes in order to serve the received request. The checking includes configuring the path based on the request received at Mobile Management Entity (MME) and also the origin of the request at the end points. Further  checking to establish the path independently facilitates easy and faster protection or restoration of service  if one of the paths is faulty or down.
At step 330  the method establishes a non-congruent path EPS bearer between two end points via intermediate nodes. The establishment of non-congruent path EPS bearer is between any two intermediate nodes between the two end points  wherein the end points are UE and PDN GW. The non-congruent EPS bearer improves resiliency and restoration of the system. Further  at each of the intermediate node  the received request is checked and configured a suitable path before forwarding to the other nodes. The path followed by the request is based on various parameters including maximum delay  residual error rate  congestion of the path  radio quality etc.
The word "exemplary" is used herein to mean serving as an example  instance  or illustration. Any aspect or design described herein as "exemplary" is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other aspects or designs.
Furthermore  the disclosed subject matter may be implemented as a system  method  node  or article of manufacture using standard programming and/or engineering techniques to produce software  firmware  hardware  or any combination thereof to control a computer or processor based device to implement aspects detailed herein. The term "article of manufacture" (or alternatively  "computer program product") as used herein is intended to encompass a computer program accessible from any computer-readable device  carrier  or media. For example  computer readable media can include but are not limited to magnetic storage devices (for example  hard disk  floppy disk  magnetic strips  and the like)  optical disks (for example  compact disk (CD)  digital versatile disk (DVD)  and the like)  smart cards  and flash memory devices (for example  card  stick  and the like). Additionally  it should be appreciated that a carrier wave can be employed to carry computer-readable electronic data such as those used in transmitting and receiving electronic mail or in accessing a network such as the Internet or a local area network (LAN). Of course  those skilled in the art will recognize many modifications may be made to this configuration without departing from the scope or spirit of the claimed subject matter.

We Claim:
1. A method of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system  the method comprising:
receiving a request on one of the end points for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes;
checking to establish a feasible path between a plurality of intermediate nodes in order to serve the received request; and
establishing non-congruent path EPS bearer between two end points via intermediate nodes.

2. The method of claim 1  wherein the step of establishing of non-congruent path EPS bearer is between any two intermediate nodes between the two end points  wherein the end points are UE and PDN GW.

3. The method of claim 1  wherein the step of checking includes configuring the path based on the request received at Mobile Management Entity (MME) and also the origin of the request at the end points.

4. The method of claim 1  wherein the path established for the bearer is based on various parameters including maximum delay  residual error rate  congestion of the path  radio quality etc.

5. The method of claim 1  wherein at each of the intermediate node  the received request is checked and configured a suitable bearer path before forwarding to the other nodes.

6. The method of claim 1  wherein the step of checking to establish the path is independently facilitated for easy and faster protection or restoration of service  if one of the paths is faulty or down.

7. The method of claim 1  wherein the non-congruent EPS bearers improves resiliency and restoration.

8. A system of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system  the system comprising:
at least one UE;
a plurality of Relay node;
a plurality of enode B;
a plurality of serving gateway;
at least one packet data network gateway; and
a mobile management entity includes a processor configured to receive a request on one of the end point for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes and checks to establish a feasible path between a plurality of intermediate nodes in order to serve the received request  wherein the established path is a non-congruent path EPS bearer.

9. An intermediate node for providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system  the node comprising:
a processor including a memory; and
a network protocol module coupled to the processor  wherein the processor is configured for:
receiving a request on one of the end point for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes;
checking to establish a feasible path between a plurality of intermediate nodes in order to serve the received request;
establishing non-congruent path EPS bearer between two end points via intermediate nodes.

10. The node of claim 9 is a User Equipment  Relay Node  eNodeB  SGW  PDN-GW  MME etc.
Dated this the 29th day of March  2012
S Afsar
Agent for the Applicant
Of Krishna & Saurastri Associates
Registration No. IN/PA-1073

Abstract
A Method and System of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system

The present invention relates to a method of providing an efficient bearer service between at least two end points in a wireless communication system. In one embodiment this can be accomplished by receiving a provisioning request on one of the end points for a virtual connection in order to provide a “bearer service” with specific QoS attributes  checking to establish a feasible path between a plurality of intermediate nodes in order to serve the received request and establishing non-congruent path EPS bearer between two end points via intermediate nodes.
Figure 2