Earthquake and tsunami cellular warning system

The present invention discloses methods and devices for improving warnings in cellular communication systems.

In the cellular communication project called 3GPP, which is a third-generation partnership project, the so-called earthquake and tsunami warning system, the ETWS system, is defined.

As the name implies, the function of ETWS is to notify users of 3GPP systems of earthquakes, tsunamis and, if possible, other disasters, as well as what to do. is there.

ETWS has two types of notifications, called primary notifications and secondary notifications. The main purpose of the primary notification is to promptly alert the user of an earthquake, tsunami, or, if possible, the occurrence of another disaster, while the main purpose of the secondary notification is, for example, to blame a building or the like. To provide the user with some information about the steps to be taken.

Due to the nature and purpose of the ETWS system, the time requirement for sending a primary notification to a user in a region is as strictly as 4 seconds, and within this time the primary notification will be for all targeted users. Must be sent to.

In addition, the primary notifications sent within the ETWS system should have a built-in mechanism to prevent ETWS messages, especially primary notification messages, from being sent to unauthorized users.

<p> As mentioned above, the ETWS system in a cellular communication system needs a solution that allows it to send primary notifications to a large number of users within a fairly short time limit. In addition, this solution should allow the ETWS system to send primary notifications in a secure manner that avoids unauthorized users of the ETWS system.</p>

<p> Such a solution is proposed by the present invention. The present invention discloses a method for use in a cellular communication system. The method of the present invention includes a step of transmitting a primary warning notification and a predetermined message including verification information related to the primary warning notification to a user terminal in one or more cells of a cellular communication system.</p><p> According to the method of the present invention, a predetermined message is simultaneously transmitted to a plurality of user terminals in the cellular communication system on a physical channel in the cellular communication system, which is dedicated to the message group to the single user group. Will be done.</p><p> In one embodiment of the invention, the physical channel used for that given message is a paging channel within a cellular communication system.</p><p> In one embodiment of the invention, a given message causes the user to detect a secondary warning notification in subsequent messages on the same physical channel.</p><p> In one embodiment of the invention, a predetermined message is a type of message that causes a user terminal that identifies and receives the predetermined message to handle the predetermined message in a predetermined manner.</p><p> In one embodiment of the invention, the predetermined message is a dedicated message type for the primary warning notification and verification information.</p><p> In one embodiment, the primary warning notification and verification information are composed of information elements of a predetermined message.</p><p> Suitably, the method of the invention applies to WCDMA, which is wideband code division multiple access, or TD SCDMA, which is time division synchronous code division multiple access.</p><p> The present invention further discloses an RNC which is a wireless network controller and a UE which is a user terminal, and these are used in the system applied to the present invention.</p>

<figref num="1">It is a figure which shows the overview of the system applied to this invention.</figref><figref num="2">It is a figure which shows the overview of the system applied to this invention.</figref><figref num="3">It is a figure which shows the sequence of the event group of Embodiment 1 of this invention.</figref><figref num="4">It is a figure which shows the message of Embodiment 1 of this invention.</figref><figref num="5">It is a figure which shows the sequence of the event group of Embodiment 2 of this invention.</figref><figref num="6">It is a figure which shows the message of Embodiment 2 of this invention.</figref><figref num="7">It is a flowchart which shows the method of this invention.</figref><figref num="8">It is a block diagram which shows the RNC of this invention.</figref><figref num="9">It is a block diagram which shows the UE of this invention.</figref>

The present invention is hereinafter referred to as a cellular system known as WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), which is a wideband code division multiple access, and TD SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), which is a time division synchronous code division multiple access. It will be explained using the terminology of the cellular system. This is primarily due to the invention being intended for such systems, but this term limits the scope of protection envisioned for the invention or given to the invention. It should not be interpreted as a thing. This is because the present invention can be applied to other cellular systems in which similar situations or problems exist.

FIG. 1 shows an overview of the system 100 to which the present invention can be applied. System 100 is a cellular system, which comprises several cells, one of which is shown at 105 in FIG. Cell 105 can accommodate several user terminals, the UE, one of which is shown at 110 as an example.

For each cell in this system, there are further control node 115 and node B, and this node B has a role of controlling traffic to the UE group in cell 105 as one of its roles. .. System 100 also includes RNC120, a wireless network controller, SGSN125, a serving GPRS support node, and CBC130, a cell broadcast center. The functions and roles of RNC, SGSN and CBC are well known to those skilled in the art and will not be described in detail here.

As described above, the present invention is directed to ETWS, which is an earthquake and tsunami warning system in a cellular system such as system 100 in FIG. An object of the present invention is to enable the operator of system 100 to send so-called ETWS primary warning notifications to users in one or more cells of the system as quickly and reliably as possible within a time limit of 4 seconds. It is to be. This primary warning notification should be sent securely to prevent unauthorized use of the ETWS system.

In order to obtain the speed required for sending the primary warning notification, the present invention presents a physical that will be detected more frequently by the UEs in the cell than a physical channel that will be detected by the UEs less frequently. Use channels. It is appropriate that the physical channel utilized by the present invention for transmitting the primary warning notification is the so-called paging channel PCH in the system 100.

To ensure the required security for the ETWS system, UEs according to the present invention receive an ETWS authentication key. This is used to verify that the primary notification warning is authentic. This key is first given to the UE when it first registers with the SGSN.

Appropriately, the ETWS authentication key is changed or updated by the system at certain intervals and stored by the UE during those intervals. Optionally, for greater security, different groups of users or different groups of cells in different cells are given different keys.

As mentioned above, for security reasons, it may be required to replace or update the key on a regular basis. For example, suppose a UE registers with SGSN at 23:50 local time and is given the key k1. Also assume that the key is replaced with key k2 at 00:00 local time.

Further assume that an earthquake occurs at 00:05 and a primary notification warning is generated at 00:09 local time. If this warning is protected by k2, the UE will not be able to verify it. That is, it may be necessary to send the same primary warning notification twice with different keys. On the other hand, this can be confusing as to which key is the message to try to validate. Key indicators can be used to achieve this goal. This is a simple "version number" for the key, which is "periodic" every time the key is updated, for example v = 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1. Increases in morphology. Given the version number of the key to the UE, that version number is added to the message containing the security bulletin.

Focusing on the specific mechanism of how the primary alert notification is sent to the relevant UE, the system uses a (physical) paging channel to simultaneously address one or more cells. Send a primary alert notification, using a given message type.

According to the present invention, the UE is programmed to treat a paging message of this message type as an ETWS message, and the UE user is notified in a predetermined manner or as defined in the message. It will be. Here, the defined method includes, for example, blinking a message on the display of the UE, or generating a beep when a text message (SMS) is received.

The situation in which the group of UE110-113 exists in the cell 105 of FIG. 1 is shown in FIG. The system 100 operator must send an ETWS primary warning notification to UE110-113 in cell 105.

The ETWS primary alert notification is initiated at CBC130. The CBC130 communicates this to the RNC120 (bypassing the SGSN125, which is transparent to ETWS messages). The RNC120 then sends the corresponding message to node B115, which node B115 sends a paging message of a given message type to UE110-113 in cell 110.

The present invention discloses two embodiments in which the ETWS primary warning notification and the accompanying validation information can be transmitted to the UE. In Embodiment 1 shown in FIG. 3, messages exchanged between different nodes in the system 100 are shown. Steps 1 and 2 (arrows) must be completed within the time limit for the ETWS primary alert notification.

1: So-called write-replacement messages are sent from the CBC to the RNC with the SGSN "transparent" in this situation.

2: The RNC interprets the write-replace message from the CBC as an instruction to send an ETWS primary warning notification to the UEs in one or more cells that the RNC "controls". In the embodiment of the present invention, the message transmitted to the UE group is a dedicated message, which is, for example, ETWS_Primary_Notification (ETWS_Primary_Notification). The use of dedicated messages prevents the message from being required to compose such data. Such data includes, for example, MCC, which is a mobile region code, or MNC, which is a mobile network code, which helps speed up transmission. Dedicated messages also have appropriate validation information.

Steps 3-5 relate to secondary ETWS notifications, which are briefly described below.

3: The RNC sends a so-called BMC (Broadcast Multicast Control) schedule message to the UE or UE group. The BMC schedule message describes the time location for each BMC CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) message and the time location of the BMC schedule message within the subsequent CBS schedule period.

4: The BMC CBS message sent from the RNC to the UE or UE group carries the secondary warning message to the UE group.

5: The RNC reports to the CBC that it has received a warning message and, if possible, the number of such messages broadcast within a particular area. This report may be modified between different systems, for example, the report may include an "ACK" indicating that the message was received by the RNC from the CBC, or node B may be in that area. It may be an "ACK" from the RNC, which indicates that the RNC has once determined the number of times the message has been broadcast within.

An example of an embodiment of a dedicated message sent from RNC120 to UE110-113 via node B115 is shown in FIG. This message is a so-called radio resource control RRC message, and includes the field group shown in FIG. The abbreviations in the fields of the RRC message in Figure 4 should be interpreted as follows:

MP: Required CH: Historical conditions OP: Optional As shown in Figure 4, the following fields are indicated in the RRC message.

-Message type, MP Consistency check information, MP ETWS information: Warning type, MP Message ID, MP Serial number, MP ETWS warning security information, OP In this embodiment, as described above, the message is transmitted on the physical channel, which is the paging channel PCH. The logical channel used for this may be CCCH for a UE in idle mode or connection mode URA_PCH, CELL_PCH or CELL_FACH state. Alternatively, this message may be sent to the UE over a DCCH channel in connection mode CELL_DCH state.

Embodiment 2 disclosed by the present invention for transmitting the ETWS primary warning notification message and the accompanying verification information is shown in FIG. Here, several arrows with the same number in FIG. 3 are shown because of the similarities between the messages sent.

The difference between these embodiments is the message by number 2'in FIG. 5, which is the message transmitted from the RNC to the UE group. The difference between message 2'and message 2 in Figure 3 is that message 2'is not dedicated to the ETWS primary notification message. Instead, this message 2'is a message on the paging channel that exists in the IE group, which is a group of information elements. This group of IEs contains ETWS primary notification messages and validation information.

FIG. 6 shows the following group of fields configured in the RRC message of this embodiment.

· Message type, MP, in this case paging type 1 Paging record list, CH Paging record, MP BCCH correction, OP ETWS information: ETWS information warning type, MP Message ID, MP Serial number, MP ETWS warning security information, OP As mentioned above, only two IE groups in the RRC message of FIG. 6 are related to ETWS and are substantially the same as those described in connection with FIG. The rest of the IE group of RRC messages is well known to those of skill in the art and will not be discussed here.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of the method 700 of the present invention. Alternative or optional steps are shown by the dashed lines in Figure 7.

As mentioned above, Method 700 is intended for use in a cellular communication system such as System 100 shown in FIG. 1, which comprises step 705 and a predetermined message with a primary warning notification. It comprises step 710, which sends to a group of user terminals in one or more cells of the system, and step 715, which sends validation information related to the primary warning notification.

In one embodiment, step 720 shows a predetermined message for causing the user terminal group to detect the secondary warning notification in the subsequent message group on the same channel. Step 725 shows, in one embodiment, that a given message is a message type that identifies the given message and that the receiving user terminal handles the given message in a given way. ..

Step 730 indicates that, in one embodiment, the given message is a dedicated message for the primary warning notification and verification information, while step 735, in one embodiment, indicates that the primary warning notification and verification information is a dedicated message. Indicates that it is composed of information elements of a predetermined message.

As shown in step 740, a given message is sent to multiple user terminals at the same time, which in step 745 is dedicated to the message to a single user group on the physical channel of the system. ..

At step 750, in one embodiment, the physical channel used for a given message is indicated to be the system paging channel.

As mentioned above, Method 700 applies to WCDMA systems, i.e. wideband code division multiple access systems, or TD SCDMA systems, i.e. time division synchronous code division multiple access systems.

FIG. 8 shows a block diagram of the RNC800, which is the wireless network controller of the present invention, and FIG. 8 mainly focuses on the functions of the RNC800 added or corrected by the present invention.

The RNC of the present invention is configured to receive write-replace requests / instructions from the CBC, which comprises the parameter "paging ETWS indicator" and the parameter "warning type", which includes the parameters. "Warning security information" is attached or not attached. The RNC800 is configured to handle these requests / instructions from the CBC, where the RNC800 forwards them to the appropriate node B identified by the CBC.

The write-replace request / instruction is one of two methods configured in the present invention and is processed by the RNC800. These two methods are dedicated message types for the primary warning notification and verification information, that is, sending the information in the request / instruction to node B, or sending the primary warning notification and verification information in a given message. It is to be configured in the IE group, which is an information element group. Either of these two methods used by the RNC800 of the present invention is system dependent and both are encompassed by the present invention.

The present invention further discloses a block diagram of the UE with reference number 900, shown in FIG. FIG. 9 shows only some parts of the UE 900 that are primarily relevant to the present invention.

The UE 900 of the present invention includes a function 905 for receiving a message on a physical channel used for a message to a single user, such as a paging channel PCH. In addition, the UE 900 includes, for example, a function 910 that recognizes a message on a paging message or other message normally transmitted on a physical channel of interest as an ETWS message. Such recognition identifies one or more individual IEs within a message, such as those made by the message type disclosed by one embodiment of the invention or disclosed by another embodiment of the invention. It is done by. Both embodiments are described in detail herein.

The present invention is not limited to the above embodiments and some of the examples shown in the figures, and can be freely modified within the scope of the appended claims.