Anchor carrier selection in multi-carrier wireless network

The techniques disclosed herein relate to the selection of one or more anchor carriers for user equipment in a wireless network.

The development of cellular systems is expected to significantly improve data speeds of over 1 Gbit / s in the future. Faster data rates usually require more system bandwidth. Bandwidths up to 100MHz have been discussed in advanced IMT (3rd generation mobile communication) systems (ie, 4th generation mobile communication) systems. Unfortunately, the radio spectrum is a limited resource, and many operators and systems need to share the same radio resource, making it difficult to find a free 100MHz continuous spectrum.

One way to address this issue is to aggregate a large number of narrow bandwidths (ie, component carriers), as shown in Figure 1, which can be continuous or discontinuous. This is aggregated to achieve a wide bandwidth. In the example of Figure 1, the 50MHz bandwidth spectrum is achieved by aggregating individual narrow bandwidth component carriers, in this example 20MHz, 20MHz, and 10MHz wide carriers. One advantage of such a solution is that it supports data rates up to 1 Gbit / s or higher, allowing it to generate sufficiently large bandwidth. Moreover, this solution also makes it possible to adapt the spectral portion to different situations and geographic locations, thus making such a solution very flexible.

An easy development in current cellular systems such as LTE (Long Term Evolution) to support continuous and discontinuous spectra is to introduce multi-carriers. That is, a "4G" user device is manufactured capable of receiving a large number of LTE component carriers with different bandwidths transmitted at different carrier frequencies for each spectrum "chunk" representing the carriers of the "legacy LTE" system.

To know where (of frequency or subchannel), when (in time), or when and where data packets are scheduled for the user equipment, the user equipment sends Layer 1 and 2 (L1, L2) control signals. Need to hear. In a single bandwidth system such as GSM or LTE, the control signal is signaled from the serving base station at the single carrier frequency of the serving cell.

<p> The signaling of control signals in a single bandwidth system can be extended to multicarrier scenarios. That is, the user equipment can hear the entire aggregated spectrum of the control signal. While this approach seems simple, it has significant drawbacks in terms of power consumption of user equipment. The spectrum aggregation approach will make the wireless receiver architecture of the user equipment much more complicated than that of the user equipment that can receive only a small number of continuous system bandwidths, especially for non-continuous spectra. Suggest that. The reason is that the front-end radio must be able to suppress blocking signals between spectral "chunks". Different types of wireless architectures are used to address this issue. However, using different radio architectures usually comes with drawbacks in terms of power consumption compared to receivers that receive standard continuous system bandwidth.</p>

<p> One aspect of the invention is that the user equipment is a base station while maintaining at least one of the acceptable levels of reliability and performance while minimizing the power consumption of the user equipment. It is to provide a mechanism for receiving a control signal transmitted from. To achieve this balance, the user equipment will activate minimal receiver capability, achieving at least one of acceptable reliability and performance.</p><p> In the best scenario, a single component carrier would be sufficient for that user equipment. As a result, the user equipment can use a single component carrier as the anchor carrier and put all remaining receiver capabilities in power saving mode. The anchor carrier carries control signals from the base station to the user equipment.</p><p> Under suboptimal conditions, the user equipment operates as much capacity as necessary to maintain an acceptable level of performance. For example, if the user equipment contains multiple receivers, each adapted to listen to different narrow bandwidth component carriers, then activating multiple receivers to listen to control signals from multiple anchor carriers. good. As another example, if the user equipment includes receivers with one or more adaptable bandwidths, the frequency range of one or more receivers may be adjusted to listen to a large number of anchor carriers. ..</p><p> The user equipment can monitor carriers from the base station on a periodic basis-rather than continuously. In periodic monitoring, the receivers for those carriers are not continuously powered on, which helps reduce the power consumption of the user equipment. When a trigger event occurs, the user equipment can request the base station to select (change) the anchor carrier.</p><p> In one embodiment, a trigger event usually occurs when at least one of the current non-anchor carriers is in better condition than at least one of the current anchor carriers. When a trigger event occurs, a change occurs and the current non-anchor carrier becomes one of the new anchor carriers for the user equipment. If the current non-anchor carrier remains sufficient, it can be the only anchor carrier. This allows all other receivers in the user equipment to be in power saving mode so that they are powered off most of the time and powered on only during periodic monitors.</p><p> It should be noted that minimizing the number of anchor carriers of the user equipment has the advantage of increasing the system capacity because less resources (a smaller number of carriers) need to be allocated to the user equipment.</p><p> These concepts can be extended to many base stations. For example, the user equipment can require carriers from other base stations to switch anchor carriers as well as carriers from a single base station. That is, soft handover and softer handover can be requested.</p><p> From another aspect, the base station itself can initiate anchor carrier switching for load management purposes. In addition, carrier hopping, which is a sequence that determines the change over time of the anchor carrier for the user device, can be implemented. Carrier hopping is particularly beneficial for fast-moving user equipment.</p><p> The advantages of these examples include at least the following: By introducing the anchor carrier set selection procedure described above and detailed below, the user equipment-often-remains in a single component carrier to decode the control signal signaling. good. This helps reduce current consumption to a significant extent in the wireless front end. The user equipment can also select multiple component carriers for signaling control signals from a single cell or multiple cells, if it is required for the current radio channel scenario. This provides improved signaling tolerance for control signals. Further, by implementing carrier set hopping, the user equipment moving at high speed realizes resistant control signal signaling while reducing the signaling overhead. Furthermore, by enabling the update of the anchor carrier set, it is possible to efficiently manage the load on the network.</p><p> The above-mentioned, other objectives, features, and advantages of the present invention are described in more detail below for preferred embodiments illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which reference characters refer to the same parts throughout the drawings. Will become clear from. It is not always necessary to scale these drawings properly, but instead the emphasis is on demonstrating the principles of the invention.</p>

<figref num="1">It is a figure which shows the example which aggregated a large number of narrow bandwidth carriers into the aggregated wide bandwidth carriers.</figref><figref num="2">It is a figure which shows the Example of the wireless network which selected anchor carrier as a user equipment.</figref><figref num="3">It is a figure which shows the example of the method of selecting an anchor carrier for a user equipment.</figref><figref num="4">It is a figure which shows the example of the method of requesting the switching of an anchor carrier.</figref><figref num="5">It is a figure which shows another embodiment of the wireless network which selects anchor carrier as a user equipment.</figref><figref num="6">It is a figure which shows the example of the method of selecting an anchor carrier from a large number of base stations for a user equipment.</figref><figref num="7">It is a figure which shows the example of the method which requires switching anchor carriers from a large number of base stations.</figref><figref num="8">It is a figure which shows the example of the method which facilitates possible handoff of a user equipment from one base station to another base station.</figref><figref num="9">It is a figure which shows another embodiment of the wireless network which facilitates carrier hopping.</figref><figref num="10">It is a figure which shows the example of the method which facilitates carrier hopping.</figref><figref num="11">It is a figure which shows the example of the method for load management.</figref><figref num="12">It is a figure which shows the Example of the user equipment.</figref><figref num="13">It is a figure which shows the Example of the base station.</figref>

The following description is for explanatory purposes only, and not to limit the invention, but to provide a complete understanding of the invention, specific details of a particular architecture, interface, technology, etc. will be described. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced in other embodiments that deviate from these specific details. That is, a person skilled in the art will be able to embody the principles of the present invention and invent various configurations within the spirit and scope of the present invention, although not explicitly described or shown here.

In some cases, detailed descriptions of well-known devices, circuits, and methods have been omitted to avoid obscuring the description of the invention with unnecessary details. Along with all the statements listed herein about the principles, aspects and examples of the present invention, those embodiments are intended to include their structural and functional equivalents. In addition, such equivalents include both currently known equivalents and equivalents that will also be developed in the future, i.e. any element developed to perform the same function regardless of structure. Is intended to be.

Thus, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize, for example, that a block diagram of a drawing of the present invention can represent a conceptual diagram of an exemplary circuit that embodies the principles of the art of the present invention. Similarly, any flowchart, state transition diagram, pseudo-code and the like is substantially represented on a computer-readable medium and by such a computer or processor, even if the computer or processor is not explicitly indicated. You will also recognize that it represents the various processes that are performed.

The functionality of various elements, including functional blocks referred to or described as "processors" or "controllers", is provided through the use of dedicated hardware and the use of hardware that can execute the software in connection with the appropriate software. Be done. When provided by a processor, its functionality is provided by a single dedicated processor, a single shared processor, or some of them by multiple separate processors that are shared or distributed. Moreover, the explicit use of the term "processor" or "controller" should not be construed as an exclusive reference to the hardware capable of running the software, and without any limitation, a digital signal processor ( It includes DSP) hardware, read-only memory (ROM) for storing software, random access memory (RAM), and non-volatile storage.

One embodiment introduces a procedure for reselecting one or more L1 / L2 control signal signaling component carriers. This can be achieved in several ways. In one method, the user equipment can measure the signal reliability of each component carrier of the collected bandwidth spectrum on a regular basis (ie, periodically). Signal reliability can be measured from the viewpoints of SIR (signal to interference ratio), RSRP (reference signal reception power), data transfer speed, error rate, retransmission request rate, and the like. In general, any quality of service (QoS) measurement parameter may be used for reliability.

Based on the reliability of the component carrier, the user equipment can request the base station to reselect the anchor carrier. That is, the user equipment can request changes in the anchor carrier set, which is a set of carriers including one or more anchor carriers for the user equipment. Anchor carriers can be seen as carriers that carry control signals from base stations to user equipment, such as L1 / L2 control signals. The control signal is sent to the user equipment with respect to specific downlink and uplink resources (such as identification of component carrier resource blocks) scheduled for the user equipment, the modulation scheme used, the transmit power level, etc. Notify information.

Anchor carrier reselection allows you to select a single component carrier to be included in the anchor carrier set, or you may select multiple component carriers. For example, a single component carrier may have sufficient SIR in terms of user equipment, so the set can be selected as having a single anchor carrier. If a single component carrier does not have sufficient SIR, a large number of carriers can be selected and included in the anchor carrier set to achieve the desired SIR.

The anchor carrier selection procedure may also be initiated for load management purposes. Normally, a base station communicates with a large number of user devices and transmits a control signal to a large number of user devices, so that one component carrier is used by the base station. Similarly, the same component carriers can be used to carry the data signal. In these cases, some component carriers are overused and others are underutilized. To alleviate this problem, different anchor carriers are selected for different user equipment to distribute the load. Also, the anchor carrier set of different user devices may be changed dynamically.

Once the anchor carrier selection procedure is complete, it is usually desirable to change the number of anchor carriers for the user equipment to a smaller number than was before the change.

In another method, a control signal signaling hopping pattern, i.e., an anchor carrier hopping pattern, is provided to the user equipment. The anchor carrier hopping pattern defines the sequence aging of the anchor carrier or the carrier selected for the user equipment. This sequence should be at regular intervals, such as every subframe (1ms), every super frame (10ms), and so on. The introduction of hopping introduces resistance to frequency and time selective fading and reduces the signaling overhead of reselection.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a wireless network 200, which network includes a base station 210 that wirelessly communicates with user devices 220-1, 220-2, 220-3. Also, base station 210 is often referred to as node B or eNB, and examples of user equipment 220 include cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile terminals.

The bidirectional zigzag arrow lines from base station 210 to each user device 220 represent the component carriers of the collected wide bandwidth spectrum (see Figure 1) used as anchor carriers. In Figure 2, a single anchor carrier is in the anchor carrier set for user equipment 220-1, two anchor carriers are included in the anchor carrier set for user equipment 220-2, and three anchor carriers. The carrier is included in the anchor carrier set of user equipment 220-3.

The user device 220 can share a common component carrier as an anchor carrier. For example, one of the anchor carriers of user equipment 220-2 may be the same component carrier used as the anchor carrier of user equipment 220-1.

In FIG. 2, base station 210 is capable of transmitting and user equipment 220 is capable of receiving multiple component carriers, each of which is associated with bandwidth. That is, the wireless network 200 is a multi-carrier system such as multi-carrier LTE or GSM, WCDMA and the like. The plurality of carriers may have at least one gap in the collected frequency spectrum represented by the plurality of carriers as shown in FIG.

FIG. 3 shows an example M300 of a method for selecting one or more anchor carriers for user equipment 220 in terms of user equipment 220. In this method, the user equipment 220 receives information on the component carrier from base station 210, which may be selected as the anchor carrier. For example, if the user equipment 220 first connects to base station 210, base station 210 may broadcast information. At this point, it is assumed that at least one component carrier is used as the anchor carrier for the user equipment 220. In one example, a default carrier may be assigned as the anchor carrier for user equipment 220 during initial connection to base station 210.

Next, on the A320, the user equipment 220 monitors the signal transmitted from the base station 210 by one or more of the plurality of component carriers. It is desirable to monitor these carriers periodically, for example, every 50 to 100 milliseconds. In this way, power consumption is minimized.

On the A330, the user equipment 220 makes a decision as to whether the anchor carrier set should be changed. An anchor carrier set is defined as a set of carriers that includes one or more anchor carriers used by user equipment 220 to receive control signals transmitted from base station 210. The user equipment 220 makes this decision based on the monitor performed on the A320, i.e. it is determined whether a trigger event has occurred.

In one embodiment, if the reliability of the non-anchor component carrier (carrier currently not in the anchor carrier set) is greater than the reliability of the anchor carrier (carrier currently in the anchor carrier set), then the anchor carrier set The user device 220 determines that The reliability comparison is performed from the viewpoint of the user device 220.

The reliability may be determined based on the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) of each carrier, the reference signal reception power (RSRP), the data transfer rate, the error rate, the retransmission request rate, and the like. That is, between the first carrier currently not in the anchor carrier set and the second carrier currently in the anchor carrier set, the first carrier has a higher SIR than the second carrier, the first carrier. If the RSRP of the first carrier is higher than that of the second carrier, the data transfer speed of the first carrier is faster than that of the second carrier, and the error rate of the first carrier is lower than that of the second carrier, the first carrier is It can be determined to be more reliable than the second carrier. Also, the retransmission request rate of the first carrier may be lower than that of the second carrier, for example, the HARQ (Automatic Repeat Request) rate of the first carrier may be lower than that of the second carrier. is there. In general, quality of service (QoS) parameters can be used for reliability measurements.

If the user equipment 220 determines that the anchor carrier set should be changed on the A330, the user equipment 220 can make a request to the base station 210 and change the anchor carrier set on the A340. If not, the user equipment 220 can return to the A320 to monitor the carrier.

Figure 4 shows an example of how to perform the A340 in Figure 3. In FIG. 4, the user equipment 220 determines whether the first carrier, the current non-anchor carrier, meets a predetermined lowest reliability threshold in the A410. That is, the user device 220 determines whether the first carrier is sufficient as it is to serve as the only anchor carrier. If the first carrier meets a predetermined lowest reliability threshold, at A420, user equipment 220 requires base station 210 to include only the first carrier in the anchor carrier set. This allows the receiver of user equipment 220, which is configured to listen to other component carriers, to enter power saving mode. Examples of power saving modes are powering off the receiver, powering on the receiver in DRX (discontinuous reception) mode, narrowing the frequency of the receiver (adaptive bandwidth reception). In the case of a vessel) etc.

On the other hand, if the first carrier does not meet a predetermined lowest reliability threshold in the A410, then in the A430, the user equipment 220 is numerous in the anchor carrier set which can include the first carrier. Request base station 210 to include the carrier of. Here, a large number of carriers are selected from a plurality of carriers that can be heard by the user device 220 so as to minimize the number of anchor carriers of the anchor carrier set required to meet a predetermined minimum reliability threshold. be able to. The predetermined lowest reliability threshold is preferably based on reliability parameters such as the parameters discussed above.

In FIG. 2, the user equipment 220 receives a control signal from a single base station 210. That is, the anchor carriers are all from the same base station 210. However, it is possible to include a large number of base stations. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 5, the anchor carrier set for the user equipment 520 can include component carriers from different base stations 510-1 and 510-2. In this case, the user equipment 520 can monitor the signals carried by the component carriers used by both base stations 510. In FIG. 5, it is assumed that one of the base stations 510, such as base station 510-1, is the serving base station 510 for the user equipment 520.

FIG. 6 shows an example M600 of how to select anchor carriers for user equipment when there are a large number of base stations. In this way, the user equipment 520 can receive information about the component carrier used as the anchor carrier in the A610. In this situation, user equipment 520 receives information about the component carriers of a large number of base stations 510.

On the A620, user equipment 520 monitors the component carriers of each base station 510. Based on this monitor, the user equipment 520 determines whether the anchor carrier set should be changed on the A630, i.e., whether a trigger event has occurred. If the user equipment 520 makes such a decision, the user equipment 520 requests that the anchor carrier set of the A640 be switched. Otherwise, the user equipment 520 returns to the A620 to monitor the carrier. Note that A610, A620 and A630 in FIG. 6 are the same as A310, A320 and A330 in FIG. 3, respectively. The difference is that the large number of base stations 510 in FIG. 6 consider multiple component carriers.

FIG. 7 shows an example of how to execute the A640 of FIG. In FIG. 7, the user equipment 520 determines whether the first carrier meets a predetermined lowest reliability threshold of the A710. If so, user equipment 520 requires that only the first carrier of the A720 anchor carrier set be included. If not, on the A730, the user equipment 520 requires that the anchor carrier set include a large number of carriers. Again, multiple carriers are selected to minimize the number of carriers in order to meet a given minimum reliability threshold. It should be noted that the plurality of carriers do not necessarily have to come from a single base station. Carriers from multiple base stations 510 can be selected to minimize the number of carriers selected while meeting a predetermined lowest reliability threshold.

FIG. 8 shows how to execute the A720 of FIG. 7 in an environment with a large number of base stations. Here, the user equipment 520 has determined that the first carrier is sufficient. Therefore, if the first carrier is not from the current serving base station 510-1, request a handoff.

In the A810, user equipment 520 determines if a handoff is required. That is, it determines whether the first carrier is from a base station that is not the current serving base station. If such a decision is made, the user equipment 520 requires the current serving base station 510-1 to hand off to the new serving base station 510-2 at the A820. Once the handoff is complete, user equipment 520 requires the new serving base station 510-2 to include only the first carrier of the anchor carrier set. If no handoff is required, on the A840, user equipment 520 requires the current serving base station 510-1 to include only the first carrier in the anchor carrier set.

As noted earlier, the advantage of minimizing the number of anchor carriers is that the power of the user equipment is conserved. For example, the user equipment may include multiple receivers that receive a fixed narrow bandwidth, each configured to receive a signal from a particular component carrier. By minimizing the number of anchor carriers, receivers that do not support anchor carriers can be placed in power saving mode. This power saving mode can be one or more of powering off the receiver, putting the receiver in periodic monitor mode, enabling DRX (discontinuous reception) mode, and so on. Can be included.

In another example, the user equipment may include one or more bandwidth-adaptive receivers capable of dynamically adapting the frequency range of each receiver. Here, the reception frequency range of the receiver can be narrowed to exclude non-anchor carriers to save power. Of course, the user equipment can include both fixed and adaptive bandwidth receivers.

The embodiments shown in FIGS. 1-8 can work very well with stationary or slowly moving user equipment. In slow-moving situations, the quality / reliability of component carriers is unlikely to change from the perspective of the user equipment. However, for fast moving user equipment, the situation can be very different, as shown in FIG. As shown, the user equipment 920 is at significantly different positions at time t1 and time t2. An anchor carrier set where time t1 was sufficient may not be sufficient at time t2, and it will be necessary to change this anchor carrier set for user equipment 920 at time t2. If the user equipment 920 is moving very fast, this anchor carrier set will change frequently.

Even under the scenario where the user equipment moves at high speed, the methods outlined in FIGS. 2 to 8 can be used with good results. However, anticipating the need for frequent anchor carrier set changes and providing that information to user equipment 920 in advance may further improve resource efficiency. In one embodiment, the user device 920 is provided with an anchor hopping pattern. This anchor hopping pattern specifies the time sequence of one or more anchor carriers that user equipment 920 should use to receive control signals transmitted by base station 910.

This hopping pattern is unique to the user device and is based on the identification of the user device 920. Further, this hopping pattern may be cell-specific based on some cell-specific hopping patterns. This hopping pattern is such that the user equipment listens to the control channel of a particular component carrier for a superframe (10 ms long in LTE) and then jumps to one or more other component carriers. Anything is fine. The user equipment 520 can then receive the message and detect the control signal of the component carrier that follows this hopping pattern. The advantage of applying the anchor carrier hopping pattern is that it introduces resistance to selective fading of at least one of frequency and time, and at the same time, anchor carrier re-relation related to the method shown in Figures 2-8. Reduce selection signaling overhead.

FIG. 10 shows an example M1000 of methods for carrying out the carrier hopping procedure described above. On the A1010, user equipment 920 receives information about component carriers from base station 910.

This hopping pattern may be provided so that the base station 910 determines that a hopping pattern is needed. For example, the base station can determine that the A1010 needs that hopping pattern because the user equipment 920 is moving at a speed greater than a predetermined minimum speed. In one embodiment, the base station 910 measures the uplink transmission intensity from the user equipment 920 over time to determine the moving speed of the user equipment 920.

Also, this hopping pattern may be provided for the user equipment 920 to determine its need. On the A1030, the user equipment 920 itself can determine that the user equipment is moving at a speed greater than a predetermined minimum speed and therefore requires a hopping pattern. For example, the user device 920 may include a position detection unit such as a GPS unit.

At A1040, base station 920 provides the user equipment 910 with a hopping pattern if the A1020 determines the need for a hopping pattern, or if the user equipment makes a hopping pattern request at the A1030. Next, on the A1050, the user equipment 920 adapts the receiver to receive control signals transmitted from base station 910 by ordering with anchor carriers that follow the anchor carrier hopping pattern.

In the examples and examples of the methods discussed above, the choice of anchor carrier in the anchor carrier set is based on consideration of the user equipment. However, the configuration of the anchor carrier set for the user equipment may also be based on network considerations as a whole. For example, there may be capacity issues in the network. Over time, some component carriers may be overused and others may be underutilized. Excessive use can result not only from transmitting control signals to user equipment, but also from using carriers to carry data between multiple base stations and multiple user equipment.

FIG. 11 shows a method of redistributing anchor carriers, that is, updating the anchor carrier set for load management. In FIG. 11, the base station monitors the load of each of the plurality of component carriers used by the A1110 for communication with the user equipment. Based on this monitor, at the A1120, the base station decides whether the user equipment should update the anchor carrier set. If such a decision is made, then at A1130, the base station notifies one or more user devices to switch anchor carriers, i.e. update the anchor carrier set. That is, a base station provides information to a user device with one or more component carriers that transmit control signals for that particular user device. After that, the base station transmits a control signal accordingly.

There can be many reasons to start updating the anchor carrier set. For example, the SIR of the anchor carrier used by one of the user devices may drop below a predetermined minimum SIR threshold. Another reason is that the error rate of the data carried by the anchor carrier exceeds the predetermined error rate threshold, and the retransmission request rate of the data transmitted by the anchor carrier is less than or equal to the predetermined retransmission request rate threshold. The amount of data transmitted by one carrier is falling, the number of user devices serviced by a base station on one carrier is at least a predetermined number greater than the number of user devices serviced by that base station on another carrier. The amount of data transmitted by another carrier may be at least a predetermined amount larger than the amount of data transmitted.

FIG. 12 shows examples of user devices 220, 520, and 920 including a processing unit 1210, a monitor unit 1220, a communication unit 1230, and a position detection unit 1240. The monitor unit 1220 monitors the quality of carrier signals transmitted by, for example, base stations 210, 510, 910, and a position unit 1240, such as a GPS unit, can determine the current position of user equipment 220, 520, 920. , Also determine the movement speed.

The communication unit 1230 is configured to communicate with base stations 210, 510, 910 and can include any combination of fixed bandwidth receivers and adaptive bandwidth receivers. If only fixed bandwidth receivers are considered, the communication unit 1230 preferably includes a plurality of receivers in which each receiver is configured to listen to one of a plurality of component carriers. If only adaptive bandwidth receivers are considered, it would be nice to have one or more of these receivers. If combinations are considered, it would be nice to have one or more fixed bandwidth receivers and one or more adaptive bandwidth receivers.

To perform the above method, the processing unit 1210 is configured to control the operation of the components of the user equipment 220, 520, 920 including the monitor unit 1220, the communication unit 1230, and the position unit 1240.

FIG. 13 shows examples of base stations 210, 510, and 910 shown in FIGS. 2, 5, and 9. Base stations 210, 510, and 910 include a processing unit 1310, a monitor unit 1320, and a communication unit 1330. For example, the monitor unit 1320 is configured to monitor the load on the component carriers used by base stations 210, 510, 910. In the network, the communication unit 1330 is configured to communicate with the user devices 220, 520, and 920. To perform the above method, the processing unit 1310 is configured to control the operation of the components of base stations 210, 510, 910 including the monitor unit 1320 and the communication unit 1330.

Although the above description includes many technical specifications, it does not limit the scope of the invention and should be construed as merely providing some of the current preferred embodiments of the invention. It will therefore be appreciated that the scope of the invention is sufficient to include other embodiments that will be apparent to those skilled in the art and therefore does not limit the scope of the invention. Structurally and functionally equivalent to the elements of the preferred embodiments described above known to those of skill in the art are expressly incorporated herein by reference and are incorporated herein by reference. Is intended. In addition, it is not always necessary for the device or method to address each and all of the problems described herein or are sought by current technology. Moreover, the elements, components, or methods that serve a role in this disclosure are not intended to be directed to the public.