Drop Sessions (Part 2 of 2)

Lauro
29 Mar 2012 5:19 PM
Comments 1
In the previous blog, we described the activities that the UE carries out to evaluate the
condition of the radio link to determine if it was in-synch or out of synch. Depending on
the vendors implementation, an out of synch indication may result in a drop session.
In this blog, we will concentrate on the activities carried out by the eNodeB when it
detects that the radio link has failed.
The types of failure that the eNodeB may detect (again, these may be vendor specific)
are:
a) DL failure (RLC failures)
b) UL failure (Physical layer failure).

DL Failure at the RLC layer:
The RLC Layer has a failure when data or signaling that is sent over the air is
unsuccessful and the RLC Layer stops trying. When data is sent over the air, but is
received incorrectly, the receiver will send a NACK. Also, the transmitter can send a
request for an acknowledgement of all received packets, by setting the poll bit. The
receiver will then send a list of all received packets. If a sent packet is not received, it is
considered lost. In either case, the transmitter will retransmit. See figure below.


This procedure can repeat, but at some point the transmitter will give up on the packet.
If that happens, the transmitter declares that the radio link has failed and starts the
procedures to communicate that to the other side.
The parameter MaxRetxThreshold determines the number of times a packet is
retransmitted at the RLC layer in the downlink. If this number is reached, the eNodeB
declares a DL RLC failure and kills the context as shown in the picture below.


UL Failure at the Physical layer:
Not all vendor implementation support this type of failure detection. It essentially
consists in measuring the power of the sounding reference signals (SRS) sent by the
UE in the UL. If the power is below a given SINR threshold, a timer gets started. If the
SINR remains under the stated SINR threshold for the entire duration of the timer, then
the eNodeB declares the UL as out of synch and proceeds to kill the context. If the
SINR of the SRS goes above a second specified threshold during the timer duration, the
UL is said to be in-synch and no actions are carried out.
Below, the actions carried out by eNodeB are shown when an UL Physical Layer failure
is detected.


Yes, you are right!!! But think about the consequences again!
Yes, increasing the value of maxretxthreshold may result in a decrease in the number of
drop sessions due to RLC DL failures.
However, to avoid a large number of drops, the best thing to do is to clean the RF
environment in your network.