Patent ID: 9585178
Date: 2017-02-28
CPC Classifications: H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. A method for handling Proximity-based Service (ProSe) discovery and communication in a wireless communications system including, a base station, a Mobility Management Entity (MME) and a ProSe server, comprising: receiving, by the ProSe server, a location information report including location information of one of a first user equipment (UE) and a second UE in the wireless communications system identified by the ProSe identifiers of the first UE and the second UE from the MME, wherein the first UE and the second UE are served by the base station; determining, by the ProSe server, that the first UE and the second UE are located in a proximity area according to user discovery preference settings of the first UE and the second UE and a proximity criterion associated with location information of the first UE and the second UE; authorizing, by the ProSe server, ProSe discovery and ProSe communication between the first UE and the second UE; transmitting, by the ProSe server, in response to the authorization, a first proximity notification message and a second proximity notification message respectively to the first UE and to the second UE to notify that the first UE and the second UE are located in the proximity area; receiving, by the ProSe server, a first ProSe communication request message from the first UE and a second ProSe communication request message from the second UE for requesting the ProSe server to perform the ProSe communication between the first UE and the second UE, so as to transmit a ProSe communication request message to the MME; receiving, by the MME, the ProSe communication request message transmitted from the ProSe server; transmitting, by the MME, the ProSe discovery request message to the base station for initiating a ProSe communication preparation procedure; performing, by the base station, the ProSe communication preparation procedure, in response to a ProSe discovery request message, with the first UE and the second UE, for guiding ProSe discovery between the first UE and the second UE, one of the first UE and the second UE being an announcing UE, the other of the first UE and the second UE being a monitoring UE, wherein the ProSe discovery request message indicates ProSe identifiers of the first UE and the second UE for ProSe communication and the ProSe communication preparation procedure comprises transmitting a first request message including scheduled information for the first UE and a second request message including scheduled information for the second UE, to the first UE and to the second UE respectively, and receiving response messages from the first UE and the second UE; repeating, by the base station, for an integer number of times, the ProSe communication preparation procedure, using a different respective resource allocation each of the integer number of times, in order to determine optimum radio resource allocation for ProSe communication; determining, by the base station, whether a direct radio link between the first UE and the second UE is feasible for ProSe communication based on the received response messages from the first UE and the second UE; sending, by the base station, a ProSe discovery response indicating the direct radio link is feasable for ProSe communication; and performing, by the MME, following steps in response to the ProSe discovery response: wherein each of the first UE and the second UE further performs following steps after receiving the bearer setup request message: storing the correlation identification in a mapping table, wherein the mapping table includes the correlation identification and corresponding EPS bearer identifier; and transmitting and receiving packets for the ProSe communication via the EPS bearer according to the correlation identification.