An information element, sometimes informally referred to as a field, is an item in Q.931[1] and Q.2931[2] messages, IEEE 802.11 management frames,[3] and cellular network messages sent between a base transceiver station and a mobile phone or similar piece of user equipment.
[4] An information element is often a type–length–value item, containing 1) a type (which corresponds to the label of a field), a length indicator, and a value, although any combination of one or more of those parts is possible.
A single message may contain multiple information elements.
The abbreviation IE is found in many technical specification documents from 3GPP.
It is not uncommon for a single specification document to contain thousands of references to IEs.