The present invention relates in general to teleservice messages within a telecommunications network. More particularly, the present invention relates to reporting the capabilities and features of a mobile station within such a network.
There are many features defined in the mobile stations specifications, such as the ANSI-136 standard. Some of these features are optional while most of them are required per the standard. Each mobile station within a telecommunications network, such as the ANSI-136 network, supports a protocol version (PV) that defines the capability of the mobile station. The different PVs cover the different revisions and capability sets of the standard.
Different PVs support different items, with some items being xe2x80x9cmandatoryxe2x80x9d and some items being xe2x80x9coptionalxe2x80x9d. Typical features for PV0 and PV1 are shown in Table 1.
Typically, PVs are backward compatible, meaning that if a telephone is PV1, then it has all of the PV1 features as well as the PV0 features.
In order that the mobile network will know what revision of the standard that a mobile station supports, the mobile station provides its PV to the mobile network via an (air) interface message such as a registration message or the capability report. Typically, when a mobile station, such as a telephone, registers on a system, it provides its PV in a message to the system.
Wireless operators and infrastructure vendors need to know what capabilities are supported by the customer premises equipment (CPE), including the mobile station, in order to know what messages, physical channel capabilities, and features can be assigned and sent to the CPE. It is contemplated that each mobile station that is registered as a certain PV supports all of the mandatory features. However, many CPE vendors do not support all xe2x80x9cmandatoryxe2x80x9d capabilities of the standard, and the conventional, standardized capability report does not account for mandatory features, only optional features. Thus, the wireless operator and infrastructure vendor cannot be sure of what features and capabilities a mobile station may or may not support.
In order for a mobile station to indicate that it supports a particular PV, all mandatory items for that particular PV must be supported by the mobile station. However, in commercial practicality there are situations where a infrastructure vendor and a wireless operator may choose to provide support for one or more features in a PV prior to the ability to support all of the other mandatory features of the PV.
Conventionally, the base station sends a message to the mobile station requesting its capability. The mobile station responds with a list of the optional features that it supports. It is assumed that the mobile station supports all the required features. However, oftentimes not all the PV features, even the mandatory ones, are in the telephone. The conventional capability reporting services only allow indication of support for features defined in the standard as optional. They do not allow any indication from the mobile station to the infrastructure of support for standardized feature sets which are mandatory in a particular protocol version.
Also, in the ANSI-136 standard, the conventional capability report is a layer 3 message. The wireless operator is dependent on the infrastructure vendor to provide a conduit from the CPE to the wireless operator""s information database. This leads to development costs to the infrastructure vendor and the wireless operator.
The standard does support many optional capabilities. These optional capabilities are not subject to the requirement of the PVs but rather may be optionally implemented in any revision of the standard later than the revision of the optional capability. In order to know that these features are supported by the mobile station, the standard supports a reporting mechanism called a Capability Report and the Capability Update on the digital control channel (DCCH) and the digital traffic channel (DTC), respectively.
The Capability Report may be requested from the mobile station by the base station by a Capability Request flag on the DCCH. The Capability Update may be requested from the mobile station by the base station by sending a Capability Update Request on the forward DTC. Both of these services indicate the protocol and service capability of the mobile station.
There is a need to allow support for select mandatory features without the mobile station having to indicate complete support for a particular PV level. Therefore, there is a need to determine which features, both mandatory and optional, are implemented in a telephone, and which features are not.
The present invention is directed to a mobile station capability message and a system and method for generating a mobile station capability message. The mobile station capability message comprises data indicative of at least one mandatory feature supported by the mobile station. The capability storage message also can comprise data indicative of at least one optional feature supported by the mobile station. The features are each associated with a protocol version that is either the latest protocol version supported by the mobile station or an earlier protocol version. According to one aspect of the present invention, the features are part of the ANSI-136 standard.
An embodiment of the present invention comprises a system and method for generating a capability request message at a remote site, transmitting the capability request message to the mobile station, and generating a mobile station capability message responsive to the capability request message, the capability message comprising data indicative of at least one mandatory feature supported by the mobile station, the at least one mandatory feature being associated with a protocol version. The remote site is one of a base station, a mobile switching center, and a non-base station entity.
According to further aspects of the invention, the capability message is transmitted to the remote site from the mobile station, via an interface comprising, for example, point to point or broadcast mechanisms. The capability request message and the capability message can be part of respective ANSI-136 R-data messages.
According to other aspects of the invention, the capability message is stored in a storage device that can be accessed by the remote site, and receipt of the capability request message at the mobile station is acknowledged.
The foregoing and other aspects of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.