M2M is going to be big. With the promise of
50 Billion devices by 2020, the networks are already worried about the overloading due to signalling by millions of devices occurring at any given time. To counter this, they have been working on avoiding overloading of the network for quite some time as blogged
about here.
The feature to avoid this overload is known as Extended Access Barring (EAB). For E-UTRAN, in Rel-10, a partial solution was implemented and a much better solution has been implemented in Rel-11. For GERAN a solution was implemented in Rel-10. The following presentation gives a high level overview of EAB for E-UTRAN and GERAN.
In Rel-11, a new System Information Block (SIB 14) has been added that is used specifically for EAB. Whereas in Rel-10, the UE would still send the RRCConnectionRequest, in Rel-11, the UE does not even need to do that, thereby congesting the Random Access messages.
The following is from RRC 36.331 (2012-09)
***
– SystemInformationBlockType14
The IE SystemInformationBlockType14 contains the EAB parameters.
SystemInformationBlockType14 information element
-- ASN1START
SystemInformationBlockType14-r11
::= SEQUENCE {
eab-Param-r11 CHOICE {
eab-Common-r11 EAB-Config-r11,
eab-PerPLMN-List-r11 SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..6)) OF
EAB-ConfigPLMN-r11
} OPTIONAL, -- Need OR
lateNonCriticalExtension OCTET
STRING OPTIONAL, -- Need OP
...
}
EAB-ConfigPLMN-r11 ::= SEQUENCE {
eab-Config-r11 EAB-Config-r11 OPTIONAL -- Need OR
}
EAB-Config-r11 ::= SEQUENCE {
eab-Category-r11 ENUMERATED
{a, b, c, spare},
eab-BarringBitmap-r11 BIT
STRING (SIZE (10))
}
-- ASN1STOP
SystemInformationBlockType14 field descriptions
|
eab-BarringBitmap
Extended access class barring for AC
0-9. The first/ leftmost bit is for AC 0, the second bit is for AC
1, and so on.
|
eab-Category
Indicates the category of UEs for which EAB applies. Value a
corresponds to all UEs, value b corresponds to the UEs that are neither in their HPLMN nor in a
PLMN that is equivalent to it, and value c
corresponds to the UEs that are neither in the PLMN listed as
most preferred PLMN of the country where the UEs are roaming in the
operator-defined PLMN selector list on the USIM, nor in their HPLMN nor in a
PLMN that is equivalent to their HPLMN, see TS 22.011 [10].
|
eab-Common
The EAB parameters applicable for
all PLMN(s).
|
eab-PerPLMN-List
The EAB parameters per PLMN, listed in the same
order as the PLMN(s) occur in plmn-IdentityList
in SystemInformationBlockType1.
|
***
Here is my attempt to explain the difference in overload control mechanism in Rel-8, Rel-10 and Rel-11. Please note that
not actual message names are used.
As usual, happy to receive feedback, comments, suggestions, etc.
