eNB functionality. Interfaces overview.

Cell control and MME pool support eNB owns and controls the radio resources of its own cells. Cell resources are requested by and granted to MMEs in an ordered fashion. This arrangement supports the MME pooling concept. S-GW pooling is managed by the MMEs and is not really seen in the eNB.

Mobility control The eNB is responsible for controlling the mobility for terminals in active state. This is done by ordering the UE to perform measurement and then performing handover when necessary.

 Control and User Plane security The ciphering of user plane data over the radio interface is terminated in the eNB. Also the ciphering and integrity protection of RRC signaling is terminated in the eNB. Shared Channel handling Since the eNB owns the cell resources, the eNB also handles the shared and random access channels used for signaling and initial access.

 Segmentation/Concatenation Radio Link Control (RLC) Service Data Units (SDUs) received from the Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) layer consist of whole IP packets and may be larger than the transport block size provided by the physical layer. Thus, the RLC layer must support segmentation and concatenation to adapt the payload to the transport block size. HARQ A Medium Access Control (MAC) Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) layer with fast feedback provides a means for quickly correcting most errors from the radio channel.

 Scheduling A scheduling with support for QoS provides for efficient scheduling of UP and CP data. Multiplexing and Mapping The eNB performs mapping of logical channels onto transport channels.

 Physical layer functionality The eNB handles the physical layer such as scrambling, Tx diversity, beamforming processing and OFDM modulation. The eNB also handles layer one functions like link adaptation and power control. Measurements and reporting eNB provides functions for configuring and making measurements on the radio environment and eNBinternal variables and conditions. The collected data is used internally for RRM but can be reported for the purpose of multi-cell RRM.

RADIO RESOURCE CONTROL (RRC)

Broadcast of System Information related to the nonaccess stratum Broadcast of System Information related to the access stratum Paging Establishment, maintenance and release of an RRC connection between the UE and E-UTRAN including: Allocation of temporary identifiers between UE and EUTRAN Configuration of radio resources for RRC connection including SRBs

Mobility functions including: o UE measurement reporting and control of the reporting for inter-cell and inter-RAT mobility o Inter-cell handover o UE cell selection and reselection and control of cell selection and reselection; o UE Context transfer between eNBs. o NAS direct message transfer to/from NAS from/to UE.