Patent · US Active

Non-access stratum architecture and protocol enhancements for long term evolution mobile units

US8532614B2 · kind B2 · utility

12Cited by
1References
22Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateOct 20, 2008
Grant dateSep 10, 2013
Priority date
Expiry dateApr 5, 2031

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04W80/02
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method and apparatus performs processing of the non-access stratus (NAS) layer (layer 3) in long term evolution (LTE) wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs), which allows the NAS protocol layer to route layer 3 messages to the correct NAS entity, and to encode new NAS message types and information elements. A new architecture is presented that enables NAS security. When a NAS message is generated, a determination is made as to whether or not to cipher, de-cipher and/or integrity check the NAS message based on at least one of a protocol discriminator (PD) of the NAS message, an indicator field in a header of the NAS message, the type of the NAS message, a NAS security state variable, and an indication by an upper layer protocol. The NAS security state variable indicates whether NAS security is currently active or not and may comprise one bit.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.