The Effect of Discontinuous Reception and RRC Release Timer Parameterization on Mobility

In 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), enhancements of Diverse Data Applications (eDDA) work item has targeted at improving always-on connectivity for smartphones, identifying and specifying mechanisms at the Radio Access Network (RAN) level to enhance the ability of 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) to handle diverse traffic profiles. The key aspects are the Radio Resource Control (RRC) release timer for User Equipment (UE) state control between connected and idle modes, and Discontinuous Reception (DRX) targeted for minimizing the UE power consumption in connected state. There exist important tradeoffs between UE power consumption, Quality-of-Service and RAN/core network signalling load. What´s more, these tradeoffs may be dependent on the UE mobility/velocity. In this article we study the effect of DRX and RRC release timer parameterization on UE mobility performance in heterogeneous networks. These results can be applied to parameter optimization of DRX and RRC release.