RRC States In LTE

UE states and state transitions.

A UE is in RRC_CONNECTED when an RRC connection has been established.

If this is not the case, i.e. no RRC connection is established, the UE is in
RRC_IDLE state.

RRC_IDLE:

A UE specific DRX may be configured by upper layers.

UE controlled mobility;

The UE:

Monitors a Paging channel.

Information change, and for ETWS capable UEs.

Performs neighbouring cell measurements and cell (re-)selection;

Acquires system information.

RRC_CONNECTED:

Transfer of unicast data to/from UE.

At lower layers, the UE may be configured with a UE specific DRX.

Network controlled mobility.

The UE:

Monitors a Paging channel and/ or System Information Block Type 1 contents

to detect system information change, and for ETWS capable UEs, ETWS
notification;

Monitors control channels associated with the shared data channel to

determine if data is scheduled for it;

Provides channel quality and feedback information;

Performs neighbouring cell measurements and measurement reporting;

Acquires system information.

The following figure not only provides an overview of the RRC states in EUTRA, but also illustrates the mobility support between E-UTRAN, UTRAN and
GERAN.

RRC States In LTE

RRC Idle State

RRC IDLE state, UE is known in EPC and has IP address but not known in E-UTRAN/eNB
In this LTE UE can receive broadcast or multi-cast data, it will monitor a paging channel to detect
incoming calls, it will perform neighbor cell measurements and does cell selection as well as
reselection and acquires system information.
In the LTE RRC IDLE state, a UE specific DRX (discontinuous reception) cycle may be configured
by upper layers to enable UE power savings

RRC Connected State

In the LTE RRC CONNECTED state, UE is known to both Evolved Packet Core(EPC) and E-UTRAN
eNB (LTE base sttaion).
Here location of UE is known at the cell level. Mobility is UE assisted and is network controlled.
LTE UE monitors control channels associated with shared data channel to determine if the data is
scheduled for it or not. The Channel quality feedback information is also provided by the UE after
measurements. It also performs neighbor cell measurements of UTRAN,EUTRAN and GSM cells.

LTE RRC Functions