LTE: RRC Connection Reestablishment Request
The purpose of RRC CONNECTION RE-ESTABLISHMENT procedure is to re-establish the RRC connection, which involves the resumption
of SRB1 operation and the re-activation of security (without changing algorithms).
- The UE shall only initiate this procedure when AS security has been activated.
- The connection re-establishment succeeds only if the concerned cell is prepared i.e., has a valid UE context.
In case E-UTRAN accepts the re-establishment, SRB1 operation resumes while the operation of other radio bearers remains suspended.
If AS security has not been activated, the UE doesn’t initiate this procedure, instead, it moves to RRC_IDLE directly.
The UE initiates the RRC CONNECTION RE-ESTABLISHMENT procedure when one of the following conditions is met:
Upon detecting radio link failure; or
Upon handover failure; or
Upon mobility from E-UTRA failure; or
Upon integrity check failure indication from lower layers; or
Upon an RRC CONNECTION RECONFIGURATION failure
RRC Connection Reestablishment Request Message
Direction: UE => E-UTRAN
Signaling Radio Bearer: SRB0
RLC Mode: TM
Logical Channel: CCCH
Transport Channel: UL-SCH
IEs in RRC CONNECTION REESTABLISHMENT REQUEST message are given below:
Temporary C-RNTI
As part of the Random Access procedure, the eNB’s MAC generates a Random Access Response (RAR) as a response to the Random Access Preamble transmitted
by the UE. The MAC RAR contains the Temporary C-RNTI.
C-RNTI (Cell RNTI)
C-RNTI is a unique identification used for identifying the RRC Connection and scheduling which is dedicated to a particular UE.
ue-Identity: UE identity is included to retrieve UE context and to facilitate contention resolution by lower layers. The UE Identity shall be set as
follows:
1. Set the C-RNTI to the C-RNTI used in the source PCell (In case of handover and mobility from E-UTRA failure) or used in the PCell in
which the trigger for the re-establishment occurred (other cases);
2. Set the physCellId to the physical cell identity of the source PCell (handover and mobility from E-UTRA failure) or of the PCell in which
the trigger for the re-establishment occurred (other cases);
3. Set the shortMAC-I to the 16 least significant bits of the calculated MAC-I
reestablishmentCause: This IE indicates the failure cause that triggered the re-establishment procedure and shall be set as follows:
1. If the re-establishment procedure was initiated due to reconfiguration failure (the UE is unable to comply with the reconfiguration sent
in RRC CONNECTION RECONFIGURATION), then set the reestablishmentCause to the value 'reconfigurationFailure';.
2. If the re-establishment procedure was initiated due to handover failure (intra-LTE handover failure or inter-RAT mobility from EUTRA
failure) then, set the reestablishmentCause to the value 'handoverFailure'.
3. Set the reestablishmentCause to the value 'otherFailure' if the re-establishment procedure was triggered due other causes than
indicated in cases 1 and 2
Example: RRC CONNECTION REESTABLISHMENT REQUEST
