US 12,224,838 B2
Method of controlling a radio access point
Jonathan Hart, London (GB); and Milan Lalovic, London (GB)
Assigned to BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS public limited company, London (GB)
Appl. No. 18/258,177
Filed by BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY, London (GB)
PCT Filed Nov. 12, 2021, PCT No. PCT/EP2021/081587
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Jun. 16, 2023,
PCT Pub. No. WO2022/128277, PCT Pub. Date Jun. 23, 2022.
Claims priority of application No. 2020120 (GB), filed on Dec. 18, 2020; and application No. 2020140 (GB), filed on Dec. 18, 2020.
Prior Publication US 2024/0056158 A1, Feb. 15, 2024
Int. Cl. H04B 7/06 (2006.01); H04W 16/10 (2009.01)
CPC H04B 7/0691 (2013.01) [H04W 16/10 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of operating a radio access point so as to provide network slicing functionality, said radio access point providing a radio access network for a telecommunications network and said radio access point comprising a plurality of antenna elements, the method comprising the steps of:
reserving a portion of the plurality of antenna elements for use only by a given network slice, the reserved portion of the plurality of antenna elements forming a set of antenna elements;
receiving, at each of the plurality of antenna elements, a wireless signal from a User Equipment (UE) of the telecommunications network;
identifying the UE from the received wireless signal;
determining that the identified UE is allocated to the given network slice;
in response to said determining, the radio access point processing only the wireless signal as received by the set of antenna elements.