Patent ID: 8706118

Claim:
A method, implemented by a source serving gateway (SGW) in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless communication network, of ensuring in-order delivery of data packets for a session to User Equipment (UE) during intra-E-UTRAN handover involving relocation of the serving gateway function from the source SGW to a target SGW, wherein the interface between the network and at least one of the source SGW and the target SGW is based on Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIP) for the control plane, and Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) for the user plane, the method comprising: receiving one or more data packets associated with a UE session from a core network node; receiving an empty GRE packet from the core network node, the empty GRE packet indicating the end of the data packets associated with the UE session; generating an end marker packet for each bearer of the UE session in response to the empty GRE packet; and sending the data packets, followed by the end marker packet, to a source eNodeB.