Patent Description:
With the constant development of the information age, the interconnection of everything is an inevitable trend. In the future, the Internet of Things connection will be widely applied in various aspect of daily life, such as pet tracking, care for the elderly, intelligent travel and vertical industries (such as industrial manufacturing and intelligent logistics). As an important branch of the technology for interconnection of everything, eMTC is an evolving Internet of Things technique based on the LTE protocol. In the future, eMTC will evolve along with the LTE protocol according to the development of technology, application scenarios, etc..

When deployed in the same cell, eMTC and LTE share the same spectrum resource. Generally, the eMTC function can be enabled in LTE cells of a current network by upgrading base station software, so that the corresponding cells can provide services for both eMTC terminals and LTE terminals.

Since some bits of an original reserved field are enabled as an eMTC-specific field and some early produced LTE terminals did not take the extension of the 3GPP R13 protocol into consideration, the conditions of check and judgment are unreasonable. As a result, such LTE terminals cannot normally decode a master information block (MIB), and therefore cannot access a LTE cell enabling and supporting eMTC.

If such LTE terminals have accessed a LTE cell without supporting eMTC, when a process of handover to a LTE cell supporting eMTC as a target cell occurs, it is inevitable that the LTE terminals cannot be normally handed over to the LTE cell supporting eMTC, that is, the network cell in which such LTE terminals can reside is actually smaller than a planned network.

Since such LTE terminals have been sold in a large number before a network enables and supports eMTC, after some cells or frequency bands in the network enable and support an eMTC, in terms of terminals the number of cells to which users of such LTE terminals can access will be significantly reduced, and as a result, user experience will be compromised. In terms of network side the network performance indicators, such as handover and reestablishment, will be significantly changed, and more seriously, it may cause a large number of user complaints and even affect the progress of eMTC deployment.

<CIT> discloses a detection of faulty wireless terminals in a wireless communication network, and an occurrence of one or more service incidents occurring for a wireless terminal during an observation time period is detected.

<CIT> discloses a method and an apparatus for managing a PDN connection by inducing, by a node, a terminal to autonomously recover a failure situation or detecting the corresponding terminal when the terminal is not capable of generating or maintaining the PDN connection in a wireless communication system.

<CIT> discloses a design of channel raster for narrowband operation, performed by a base station, generally includes determining, based on one or more conditions, an exact frequency location of one or more channels to perform narrowband communications with a user equipment; transmitting an indication of the one or more conditions to the user equipment; and communicating with the UE, based at least in part on the exact frequency location of the one channel.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, a method, device, a storage medium and an electronic device for identifying an abnormal terminal are provided in order to solve at least to a certain extent the problem on how to identify a LTE terminal experiencing abnormal access under a LTE network enabling and supporting eMTC.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, a method for identifying an abnormal terminal is provided, including: determining a cell having an abnormal indicator; identifying an IMSI number of a terminal experiencing abnormal access according to signalings of the cell having an abnormal indicator; and determining the terminal experiencing abnormal access through IMSI number signaling verification, wherein determining the terminal experiencing abnormal access through IMSI number signaling verification comprises: monitoring the IMSI number signaling within a first preset period of time according to the IMSI number of the terminal; in response to a target cell to which the terminal is handed over being a LTE cell enabling eMTC, and the terminal reestablishing connection back to a source cell after handover and the source cell being a LTE cell without enabling eMTC, then determining that the terminal belongs to a terminal experiencing abnormal access.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, a storage medium storing a computer program is also provided, the computer program is configured to carry out the aforementioned method when being executed.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, an electronic device is also provided, including a memory and a processor, where the storage medium stores a computer program which, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to carry out the aforementioned method.

The implementation, functional characteristics and advantages of the embodiments of the present disclosure will be further illustrated with reference to the accompanying drawings.

The present disclosure will be illustrated in detail hereinafter with reference to the drawings and embodiments.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, a method for identifying an abnormal terminal is disclosed. As shown in <FIG>, the method includes the following steps S101 to S103.

In a step of S <NUM>, it is determined that there exists a cell having an abnormal indicator.

In a step of S <NUM>, an IMSI number of a terminal experiencing abnormal access is identified according to signalings of the cell having an abnormal indicator.

In a step of S103, the terminal experiencing abnormal access is determined through IMSI number signaling verification.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, a device for identifying an abnormal terminal is also provided. As shown in <FIG>, the device includes:.

The method for identifying an abnormal terminal according to the embodiment of the present disclosure also includes the following steps.

The abnormality of cell-level handover and reestablishment indicators which are introduced by a terminal experiencing abnormal access is identified, and the related indicators of the number of handovers and the number of reestablishments of the cell before enabling an eMTC are recorded; after the eMTC function is enabled and supported by the cell, if a change ratio of the related indicators compared to the aforementioned recorded indicators exceeds a preset threshold, then the cell having an abnormal indicator is determined, the threshold may be set as <NUM>%, and the threshold belongs to a network KPI (key performance indicator), which is generally less fluctuated with the change of a traffic model and is adjustable.

Signalings of the determined cell having an abnormal indicator are acquired, the terminal causing the abnormality is analyzed, and an IMSI number of the terminal experiencing abnormal access is identified according to the signalings of the cell having an abnormal indicator. By screening out a signaling with reestablishment recurred among the signaling of the cell, from the signaling an identity (ID) of a terminal whose number of reestablishments within a certain preset period of time exceeds a preset threshold is identified, the threshold is adjustable. For example, the number of reestablishments within <NUM> minutes exceeds hundreds of times, but this example does not constitute a specific limitation. The international mobile subscriber identification (IMSI) number of the corresponding terminal is then acquired according to the identified terminal ID and access signaling.

According to the acquired terminal IMSI number, by respectively monitoring the IMSI number signaling for a preset period of time (e.g., <NUM> hour) which is adjustable, judging respectively whether all signalings following the reestablishment of Radio Resource Control (RRC) connections after the reconfiguration of all the RRC connections in each IMSI number signaling meet the following conditions: a target cell to which the terminal is handed over is a LTE cell enabling eMTC; the terminal reestablishes connection back to a source cell immediately after handover and the source cell is a LTE cell without enabling eMTC; then it is determined that the IMSI number belongs to the terminal experiencing abnormal access, or else it is determined that the IMSI number does not belong to the terminal experiencing abnormal access.

According to the IMSI number of the determined abnormal terminal, inquiring a corresponding number and model of the terminal from a core network, informing the user according to a solution corresponding to various abnormal terminal models, and monitoring whether the IMSI number signalings return to normality. The corresponding solution includes updating the terminal version, and if there is no updated terminal version, the operator can inform the user to replace the old terminal with a new one with some discount.

The above steps can be repeated at certain time intervals to continuously perform screening, judgment and accurate identification of abnormal terminals significantly affecting network indicators and inform the user of a specific solution.

Handover and reestablishment indicators of a certain LTE cell are judged, and if the number of handovers and the number of reestablishments of the cell after enabling the eMTC function is increased by over <NUM>% in comparison with the number of handovers and the number of reestablishments of the cell before enabling the eMTC function, then it is determined that the LTE cell belongs to a cell having an abnormal indicator.

According to the analysis of abnormal signalings in the corresponding cell, an abnormal terminal ID at which signalings with reestablishment recurred over <NUM> times within <NUM> minutes that is most concentrated is screened out, and a corresponding IMSI number is identified as No.X1 according to the access signaling.

According to the identified IMSI number (No.X1), monitoring the IMSI number signalings for <NUM> hours, and judging the situation of the signalings following the reestablishment of RRC connections after the reconfiguration (handover command) of all the RRC connections in the IMSI number signalings , then determining whether all the signalings following the reestablishment of the RRC connections after the reconfiguration (handover command) of all the RRC connections meet the following conditions: a target cell to which the terminal is handed over is a LTE cell enabling eMTC, and the terminal reestablishes connection back to a source cell immediately after handover and the source cell is a LTE cell without enabling eMTC; if yes, then it is determined that the terminal with the IMSI number (No.X1) is a terminal experiencing abnormal access.

A corresponding number and model of the terminal are inquired according to the identified IMSI number (No.X1), the user is informed of a solution for the corresponding model of the terminal through a short message, a phone call or the like and monitoring is performed until the user updates terminal version, and if there is no updated terminal version as the solution, the operator can inform the user to replace the old terminal with a new one with some discount.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, an electronic device is also provided, including a processor <NUM> and a memory <NUM> as shown in <FIG>, where the memory <NUM> stores a computer program which, when executed by the processor <NUM>, causes the processor <NUM> to carry out the aforementioned method.

According to the aforementioned embodiments of the present disclosure, through the identification of signaling characteristics, the accurate determination of a terminal experiencing abnormal access and the inquiry of a corresponding number and model of the terminal in combination with a solution for the terminal experiencing abnormal access, the problem that some LTE terminals cannot normally decode a MIB and therefore cannot access a LTE cell enabling and supporting eMTC is solved.

Claim 1:
A method executed by an electronic device
for identifying an abnormal terminal, comprising: determining a cell having an abnormal indicator (S101); identifying an international mobile subscriber identification, IMSI, number of a terminal experiencing abnormal access according to signalings of the cell having an abnormal indicator (S102); and determining the terminal experiencing abnormal access through IMSI number signaling verification (S103),
characterized in that, determining the terminal experiencing abnormal access through IMSI number signaling verification (S103) comprises: monitoring the IMSI number signaling within a first preset period of time according to the IMSI number of the terminal; in response to a target cell to which the terminal is handed over being a Long Term Evolution, LTE, cell enabling Enhancement Machine Type Communication, eMTC, and the terminal reestablishing connection back to a source cell after handover and the source cell being a LTE cell without enabling eMTC, then determining that the terminal belongs to a terminal experiencing abnormal access.