US 11,895,549 B2
Enhanced mobility in cellular deployments with network slicing
Ahmad Awada, Munich (DE); Jedrzej Stanczak, Wroclaw (PL); Muhammad Naseer-Ul-Islam, Munich (DE); and Ingo Viering, Munich (DE)
Assigned to Nokia Technologies Oy, Espoo (FI)
Appl. No. 17/424,464
Filed by Nokia Technologies Oy, Espoo (FI)
PCT Filed Jan. 21, 2020, PCT No. PCT/IB2020/050450
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Jul. 20, 2021,
PCT Pub. No. WO2020/165665, PCT Pub. Date Aug. 20, 2020.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/803,845, filed on Feb. 11, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2022/0124587 A1, Apr. 21, 2022
Int. Cl. H04W 36/22 (2009.01); H04W 36/00 (2009.01)
CPC H04W 36/22 (2013.01) [H04W 36/0055 (2013.01); H04W 36/0083 (2013.01)] 24 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method, comprising:
providing, by a source cell and to a target cell in a wireless network, a list of one or more service/slice specific indications for individual ones of one or more network slices in a request for a first handover method of a user equipment from the source cell to the target cell, the providing performed in a handover preparation phase prior to handover of the user equipment;
receiving, by the source cell and from the target cell, indications in a handover request acknowledgement of one or more selected network slices to be handed over from the source cell to the target cell using the first handover method;
for the one or more selected network slices, performing handovers, using the first handover method, that maintain connection with the user equipment to both the source cell and target cell during at least part of the handovers that use the first handover method, to hand over for the user equipment these one or more selected network slices from the source cell to the target cell; and
for one or more other network slices to be handed over for the user equipment from the source cell to the target cell, performing handovers using a second handover method for the one or more other network slices, wherein the user equipment does not maintain two simultaneous connections to the source cell and target cell during the second handover method.