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Configuring Connected-mode Discontinuous Reception (C-DRX) in 5G ORAN system.
Connected-mode Discontinuous Reception (C-DRX) is essential to preserve user equipment’s (UE) battery while there is no user traffic and UE is in RRC_connected state.
C-DRX was introduced first in LTE and is enhanced a bit in 5G. If C-DRX is enabled for UE and network, the UE, while still in RRC_connected mode, would remain asleep and only wake up for a short interval of time to check if 5G gNB has scheduled some data for it or not. This wake-up period is called UE Active time.
If no data is scheduled, UE would go back to sleep again and would wake up after a certain interval. If, however, any data is scheduled during the Active time, UE would start a timer to remain ACTIVE for a certain duration and gNB would ensure to transfer of as much data as possible during this ACTIVE PERIOD. There is more to C-DRX which this article has explained in a pretty comprehensive manner. We will not be discussing details of C-DRX in this article.
In this article, we will discuss how in an ORAN-enabled system with disintegrated gNB-CU and gNB-DU would enable DRX configuration parameters (DRX-Config) in the gNB and in the UE.
DRX Functionalities at gNB
Fig.1 below shows the flow diagram for UE to configure C-DRX in the UE and the gNB.
