Wireless network technologies are commonly and widely used nowadays. In order to provide different quality of services in different environments, various network protocols are developed. One of the popular networks is the long term evolution (LTE) network.
Particularly, the main reason why the LTE network could become popular is because the LTE network has the advantages of higher transmitting speed, wider coverage range, and the most important, lower costs. However, in the LTE network, the hardware modules, protocols and communicating procedures are not efficient since the LTE network is still being developed. One of the issues is the Head-of-Line blocking (HOL) problem during the transmissions.
Please refer to FIG. 1A which depicts a current LTE network 1 without relay nodes. The LTE network 1 comprises a donor evolved NodeB (DeNB) 13 and a core network 15. The DeNB 13 connects with the core network 15 via a stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) association 14 which includes two streams 14a and 14b. Specifically, in the scenario depicted in the current LTE network 1 in FIG. 1A, the DeNB 13 is transmitting signaling message H1, H2, (the messages with higher priorities) L1 and L2 (the messages with lower priorities) to the core network 15. It is clear that, based on the SCTP association 14, the signaling messages H1 and H2 can be transmitted via the stream 14a and the signaling messages L1 and L2 can be transmitted via the stream 14b. Accordingly, the signaling messages H1, H2, L1 and L2 between the DeNB 13 and the core network 15 can be transmitted separately by the different priorities.
However, please refer to FIG. 1B which depicts the current LTE network 1 with a relay node 11. When the LTE network 1 employs the relay node 11, the HOL problem occurs. Specifically, in the scenario depicted in the LTE network 1 with the relay node 11 in FIG. 1B, the relay node 11 is transmitting signaling messages H3, H4 (the messages with higher priorities), L3 and L4 (the messages with lower priorities) to the DeNB 13. However, even if the signaling messages are labeled in different priorities by the relay node 11, the signaling messages with higher priorities (e.g., H3 and H4) still have great chances to be blocked by the signaling messages with lower priorities (e.g., L1 and L2) since there is only one bearer 12 which includes only one stream 12a for transmitting messages between the relay node 11 and the DeNB 13. Accordingly, the signaling messages H3, H4, L3 and L4 from the DeNB 13 to the core network 15 would be transmitted as the same as the order from the relay node 11 to the DeNB 13 even if there are two streams 14a and 14b between the DeNB 13 and the core network 15. Therefore, the blocking problem exists between the DeNB 13 and the core network 15 due to the earlier blocking problem happened between the relay node 11 and the DeNB 13.
As described above, the efficiency of the signaling message transmission is very poor in the current LTE network. Therefore, a mechanism and method for solving the blocking problems described above is needed.