Measurement gap pattern usage and management for wireless communication systems

Abstract

A user equipment (UE) is configured to perform signal measurements for wireless communication in a New Radio (NR) network. The UE is configured to determine the frequency range (FR) of a serving cell configured to transmit signals measured by the UE using signal measurements. The UE configures a measurement gap (MG) mode to perform the signal measurements. Configuring the measurement gap includes: determining that the frequency range of the serving cell includes frequencies of a second frequency range (FR2); determining that a measurement object (MO) configuration for the FR2 is available; setting a measurement gap repetition periodicity (MGRP) value for the signal measurements; and setting a measurement gap length (MGL) value for the signal measurements. The UE performs the signal measurements using the MGRP value and the MGL value.

Description

[0001] CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0002] This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62 / 842,416, filed May 2, 2019, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. Technical Field

[0003] The present disclosure generally relates to configuring communications between a radio link control entity and user equipment. Background Art

[0004] The use of wireless communication systems is growing rapidly. In addition, wireless communication technology has evolved from voice-only communications to also include the transmission of data (such as the Internet and multimedia content) to various devices. In order to accommodate the increasing number of devices that transmit both voice and data signals, many wireless communication systems share available communication channel resources between devices. Summary of the invention

[0005] The present disclosure describes UE configuration for measurement gap (MG) mode usage and management for next generation (5G) wireless communication systems. More specifically, the present disclosure describes several solutions for MG mode usage. First, a mandatory MG mode for a communication device (e.g., UE) is described. Second, MG capability reporting from LTE radio access technology (RAT) and NR RAT is described. Third, UE measurement capabilities from the MG table are shown.

[0006] In a general aspect, a process for configuring one or more measurement gap patterns by a user equipment (UE) for wireless communication in a new radio (NR) network includes determining a frequency range (FR) of a serving cell configured to send a signal measured by the UE using signal measurement. The process includes configuring a measurement gap (MG) pattern to perform the signal measurement. Configuring the measurement gap includes determining that the frequency range of the serving cell includes a frequency of a second frequency range (FR2). Configuring the measurement gap includes determining that a measurement object (MO) configuration for the FR2 is available. Configuring the measurement gap includes setting a measurement gap repetition periodicity (MGRP) value for the signal measurement in response to determining that the configuration for the MO for the FR2 is available; configuring the measurement gap includes setting a measurement gap length (MGL) value for the signal measurement in response to determining that the configuration for the MO for the FR2 is available; the process includes performing signal measurement using the MGRP value and the MGL value.

[0007] In one embodiment, the MG mode comprises a mandatory MG mode, wherein the MGRP value is one of 40 milliseconds or 80 milliseconds. In some implementations, the MGL is 6 milliseconds. In some implementations, the MGRP value is one of 20 milliseconds, 40 milliseconds, or 80 milliseconds, and wherein the MGL value is 5.5 milliseconds.

[0008] In some implementations, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that no other MO configurations are available. In some implementations, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for FR2, an MO configuration for the first frequency range (FR1) is available. In some implementations, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for the FR2, an MO configuration for an Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) scenario is available. In some implementations, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for the FR2, an MO configuration for a non-NR radio access technology (non-NR RAT) is available.

[0009] In some embodiments, the process includes determining, by the UE, an operating mode and generating an MG mode capability report based on the operating mode, the MG mode capability report indicating that any MG mode including an MGL value less than or equal to 6 milliseconds and an MGRP value less than 160 milliseconds is supported for the signal measurement. In some specific implementations, the operating mode includes one of E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity (EN-DC), NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity (NE-DC), independent new air interface (NR SA), new air interface carrier aggregation (NR CA), new air interface dual connectivity (NR-DC), or independent long term evolution (LTE SA). In some specific implementations, the operating mode includes EN-DC, and wherein generating the MG mode capability report includes: disabling bits 2 to 11 in a supportedGapPattern message. In some specific implementations, the operating mode includes EN-DC, and wherein generating the MG mode capability report includes: reporting the same MG capability data between bits 2 to 11 of a "shortMeasurementGap+measGapPatterns" message and a supportedGapPattern message.

[0010] In general terms, a UE device configured to perform signal measurements for wireless communications in a new radio (NR) network includes one or more processors and a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations. The operations include configuring a measurement gap (MG) mode to perform the signal measurements. Configuring the measurement gap includes determining that the frequency range of the serving cell includes a frequency of a second frequency range (FR2). Configuring the measurement gap includes determining that a measurement object (MO) configuration for the FR2 is available. Configuring the measurement gap includes setting a measurement gap repetition periodicity (MGRP) value for the signal measurement in response to determining that the configuration for the MO for the FR2 is available; configuring the measurement gap includes setting a measurement gap length (MGL) value for the signal measurement in response to determining that the configuration for the MO for the FR2 is available; the operations include performing signal measurements using the MGRP value and the MGL value.

[0011] In one embodiment, the MG mode comprises a mandatory MG mode, wherein the MGRP value is one of 40 milliseconds or 80 milliseconds. In some implementations, the MGL is 6 milliseconds. In some implementations, the MGRP value is one of 20 milliseconds, 40 milliseconds, or 80 milliseconds, and wherein the MGL value is 5.5 milliseconds.

[0012] In some implementations, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that no other MO configurations are available. In some implementations, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for FR2, an MO configuration for the first frequency range (FR1) is available. In some implementations, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for the FR2, an MO configuration for an Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) scenario is available. In some implementations, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for the FR2, an MO configuration for a non-NR radio access technology (non-NR RAT) is available.

[0013] In some embodiments, the operation includes determining, by the UE, an operating mode and generating an MG mode capability report based on the operating mode, the MG mode capability report indicating that any MG mode including an MGL value less than or equal to 6 milliseconds and an MGRP value less than 160 milliseconds is supported for the signal measurement. In some specific implementations, the operating mode includes one of E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity (EN-DC), NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity (NE-DC), independent new air interface (NR SA), new air interface carrier aggregation (NR CA), new air interface dual connectivity (NR-DC), or independent long term evolution (LTE SA). In some specific implementations, the operating mode includes EN-DC, and wherein generating the MG mode capability report includes: disabling bits 2 to 11 in a supportedGapPattern message. In some specific implementations, the operating mode includes EN-DC, and wherein generating the MG mode capability report includes: reporting the same MG capability data between bits 2 to 11 of a "shortMeasurementGap+measGapPatterns" message and a supportedGapPattern message.

[0014] The details of one or more embodiments are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the detailed description which follow. Other features and advantages will be apparent from the detailed description and drawings, and from the claims. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0015] Figure 1 An example of a wireless communication system is shown.

[0016] Figure 2 An example of infrastructure equipment is shown.

[0017] Figure 3 Examples of platforms or devices are shown.

[0018] Figure 4 Exemplary components of baseband circuitry and radio front-end circuitry are shown.

[0019] Figure 5 Exemplary protocol functions that may be implemented in a wireless communication system are shown.

[0020] Figure 6 An exemplary computer system is shown.

[0021] Figures 7 and 8

[0026] Example procedures for measurement gap pattern usage and management for a wireless communication system in accordance with various embodiments are shown.

[0022] Like reference symbols in the various drawings indicate like elements. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0023] The present disclosure describes measurement gap (MG) mode usage and management for next generation (5G) wireless communication systems. More specifically, the present disclosure describes several solutions for MG mode usage. A UE may use a mandatory MG mode for a communication device (e.g., a user equipment UE), wherein the UE is configured to use an existing mandatory MG mode or a new mandatory MG mode in response to detecting an operating mode and a serving cell frequency. The UE may change its MG capability reporting from LTE radio access technology (RAT) and NRRAT to accommodate additional MG modes that may be used for certain operating modes. A new MG table of UE measurement capabilities from a MG table is provided.

[0024] Figure 1 An exemplary wireless communication system 100 is shown. For convenience and not limitation, the exemplary system 100 is described in the context of LTE and 5G NR communication standards defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specifications. However, the techniques described herein may also be implemented in other communication systems using other communication standards such as other 3GPP standards or IEEE 802.16 protocols (e.g., WMAN or WiMAX).

[0025] System 100 includes UE 101a and UE 101b (collectively referred to as "UE 101"). In this example, UE 101 is shown as a smartphone (eg, a handheld, touch-screen mobile computing device that can connect to one or more cellular networks). In other examples, any of the multiple UEs 101 may include other mobile computing devices or non-mobile computing devices, such as consumer electronic devices, cellular phones, smart phones, feature phones, tablet computers, wearable computer devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers, wireless handheld devices, desktop computers, laptop computers, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), in-car entertainment (ICE) devices, instrument clusters (ICs), heads-up display (HUD) devices, on-board diagnostic (OBD) devices, on-board mobile equipment (DME), mobile data terminals (MDTs), electronic engine management systems (EEMS), electronic / engine control units (ECUs), electronic / engine control modules (ECMs), embedded systems, microcontrollers, control modules, engine management systems (EMS), networked or "smart" appliances, machine type communication (MTC) devices, machine-to-machine (M2M) devices, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, or combinations thereof, etc.

[0026] In some examples, any of the plurality of UEs 101 may be an IoT UE, which may include a network access layer designed for low-power IoT applications utilizing short-term UE connections. The IoT UE may utilize technologies such as M2M or MTC to exchange data with an MTC server or device utilizing, for example, a public land mobile network (PLMN), a short-range service (ProSe), a device-to-device (D2D) communication, a sensor network, an IoT network, or a combination thereof. The M2M or MTC data exchange may be a machine-initiated data exchange. The IoT network describes interconnected IoT UEs, which may include uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices (within the Internet infrastructure) with short-lived connections. The IoT UE may execute background applications (e.g., keep-alive messages or status updates) to facilitate connectivity to the IoT network.

[0027] UE 101 is configured to connect (e.g., be communicatively coupled) to an access network (AN) or radio access network (RAN) 110. In some examples, RAN 110 may be a next generation RAN (NG RAN), an evolved UMTS terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN), or a legacy RAN, such as a UMTS terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN) or a GSM EDGE radio access network (GERAN). As used herein, the term "NG RAN" may refer to a RAN 110 operating in a 5G NR system 100, while the term "E-UTRAN" may refer to a RAN 110 operating in an LTE or 4G system 100.

[0028] In order to connect to RAN 110, multiple UEs 101 utilize connections (or channels) 103 and 104, respectively, each of which may include a physical communication interface or layer, as described below. In this example, connections 103 and 104 are shown as air interfaces to achieve communication coupling, and may be consistent with cellular communication protocols, such as global system for mobile communications (GSM) protocols, code division multiple access (CDMA) network protocols, push-to-talk (PTT) protocols, cellular PTT (POC) protocols, universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) protocols, 3GPP LTE protocols, 5G NR protocols, or combinations thereof, as well as other communication protocols. In some examples, multiple UEs 101 may use interfaces 105 such as ProSe interfaces to directly exchange communication data. Interface 105 may alternatively be referred to as sidelink interface 105 and may include one or more logical channels, such as physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH), physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH), physical sidelink downlink channel (PSDCH) or physical sidelink broadcast channel (PSBCH) or combinations thereof, etc.

[0029] UE 101b is shown configured to access access point (AP) 106 (also referred to as "WLAN node 106", "WLAN 106", "WLAN termination 106", "WT 106", etc.) using connection 107. Connection 107 may include a local wireless connection, such as a connection consistent with any IEEE 802.11 protocol, wherein AP 106 will include wireless fidelity Router. In this example, AP 106 is shown connected to the Internet without being connected to the core network of the wireless system, as described in further detail below. In various examples, UE 101b, RAN 110 and AP 106 may be configured to use LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA) operation or LTW / WLAN radio level operation integrated with IPsec tunnel (LWIP). LWA operation may involve UE 101b in RRC_CONNECTED state being configured by RAN nodes 111a, 111b to utilize radio resources of LTE and WLAN. LWIP operation may involve UE 101b using IPsec protocol tunnel to use WLAN radio resources (e.g., connection 107) to authenticate and encrypt packets (e.g., IP packets) sent through connection 107. IPsec tunnel transmission may include encapsulating the entire original IP packet and adding a new packet header, thereby protecting the original header of the IP packet.

[0030] The RAN 110 may include one or more AN nodes or RAN nodes 111a and 111b (collectively referred to as "RAN nodes 111") that enable connections 103 and 104. As used herein, the terms "access node", "access point", etc. may describe equipment that provides radio baseband functions for data or voice connections or both between a network and one or more users. These access nodes may be referred to as base stations (BS), gNodeBs, gNBs, eNodeBs, eNBs, NodeBs, RAN nodes, road side units (RSUs), transmit receive points (TRxPs or TRPs), etc., and may include ground stations (e.g., terrestrial access points) or satellite stations that provide coverage within a geographic area (e.g., a cell), etc. As used herein, the terms "NG RAN nodes" and the like may refer to RAN nodes 111 (e.g., gNBs) operating in a 5G NR system 100, while the term "E-UTRAN node" may refer to RAN nodes 111 (e.g., eNBs) operating in an LTE or 4G system 100. In some examples, multiple RAN nodes 111 may be implemented as one or more of dedicated physical devices such as macrocell base stations or low power (LP) base stations for providing femtocells, picocells, or other similar cells with smaller coverage areas, smaller user capacity, or higher bandwidth than macrocells.

[0031] In some examples, some or all of the multiple RAN nodes 111 may be implemented as one or more software entities running on a server computer as part of a virtual network that may be referred to as a cloud RAN (CRAN) or a virtual baseband unit pool (vBBUP). The CRAN or vBBUP may implement RAN functional partitioning, such as a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) partitioning, where the radio resource control (RRC) and PDCP layers are operated by the CRAN / vBBUP, and other layer 2 (e.g., data link layer) protocol entities are operated by individual RAN nodes 111; a medium access control (MAC) / physical layer (PHY) partitioning, where the RRC, PDCP, MAC, and radio link control (RLC) layers are operated by the CRAN / vBBUP, and the PHY layer is operated by individual RAN nodes 111; or a "lower PHY" partitioning, where the RRC, PDCP, RLC, and MAC layers and the upper portion of the PHY layer are operated by the CRAN / vBBUP, and the lower portion of the PHY layer is operated by individual RAN nodes 111. This virtualization framework allows idle processor cores of the RAN nodes 111 to execute, for example, other virtualized applications. In some examples, individual RAN nodes 111 may represent nodes using respective F1 interfaces ( Figure 1 In some examples, the gNB-DU may include one or more remote radio heads or RFEMs (see, e.g., Figure 2 ), and the gNB-CU may be operated by a server (not shown) located in RAN 110 or by a server pool in a manner similar to CRAN / vBBUP. In addition or alternatively, one or more of the RAN nodes 111 may be a next generation eNB (ng-eNB), including a RAN node that provides E-UTRA user plane and control plane protocol terminals to UE 101 and is connected to a 5G core network (e.g., core network 120) using a next generation interface.

[0032] In a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) scenario, one or more of the RAN nodes 111 may be or act as an RSU. The term "roadside unit" or "RSU" refers to any traffic infrastructure entity used for V2X communication. The RSU may be implemented in or by a suitable RAN node or a stationary (or relatively stationary) UE, wherein an RSU implemented in or by a UE may be referred to as a "UE-type RSU", an RSU implemented in or by an eNB may be referred to as an "eNB-type RSU", an RSU implemented in or by a gNB may be referred to as a "gNB-type RSU", and so on. In some examples, the RSU is a computing device coupled to a radio frequency circuit located on the road side that provides connectivity support to a passing vehicle UE 101 (vUE 101). The RSU may also include internal data storage circuitry for storing intersection map geometry, traffic statistics, media, and applications or other software for sensing and controlling ongoing vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The RSU may operate on the 5.9 GHz Direct Short Range Communications (DSRC) band to provide extremely low latency communications required for high-speed events, such as collision avoidance, traffic warnings, and the like. In addition or alternatively, the RSU may operate on the cellular V2X band to provide the aforementioned low latency communications as well as other cellular communications services. In addition or alternatively, the RSU may operate as a Wi-Fi hotspot (2.4 GHz band) or provide connectivity to one or more cellular networks to provide uplink and downlink communications, or both. Some or all of the computing device and the RSU's RF circuitry may be packaged in a weather-resistant enclosure suitable for outdoor installation, and may include a network interface controller to provide a wired connection (e.g., Ethernet) to a traffic signal controller or a backhaul network, or both.

[0033] Any of the RAN nodes 111 may serve as an endpoint for the air interface protocol and may be the first point of contact for the UE 101. In some examples, any of the multiple RAN nodes 111 may perform various logical functions of the RAN 110, including but not limited to functions of a radio network controller (RNC), such as radio bearer management, uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management and data packet scheduling, and mobility management.

[0034] In some examples, multiple UEs 101 may be configured to communicate with each other or with any of multiple RAN nodes 111 over a multi-carrier communication channel using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication signals according to various communication techniques, such as, but not limited to, OFDMA communication techniques (e.g., for downlink communications) or SC-FDMA communication techniques (e.g., for uplink and ProSe or sidelink communications), although the scope of the techniques described herein is not limited in this respect. The OFDM signal may include multiple orthogonal subcarriers.

[0035] In some examples, a downlink resource grid may be used for downlink transmissions from any of a plurality of RAN nodes 111 to a plurality of UEs 101, while uplink transmissions may utilize similar techniques. The grid may be a time-frequency grid, referred to as a resource grid or a time-frequency resource grid, which is a physical resource in the downlink in each time slot. For OFDM systems, such a time-frequency plane representation is common practice, which makes wireless resource allocation intuitive. Each column and each row of the resource grid corresponds to an OFDM symbol and an OFDM subcarrier, respectively. The duration of the resource grid in the time domain corresponds to a time slot in a radio frame. The smallest time-frequency unit in the resource grid is represented as a resource element. Each resource grid includes a plurality of resource blocks, which describe the mapping of certain physical channels to resource elements. Each resource block includes a set of resource elements; in the frequency domain, this may represent the minimum amount of resources that can currently be allocated. Such resource blocks are used to transmit several different physical downlink channels.

[0036] In some examples, multiple UEs 101 and multiple RAN nodes 111 communicate (e.g., transmit and receive) data over a licensed medium (also referred to as a "licensed spectrum" or "licensed band") and an unlicensed shared medium (also referred to as an "unlicensed spectrum" and / or "unlicensed band"). The licensed spectrum may include channels operating in a frequency range of approximately 400 MHz to approximately 3.8 GHz, and the unlicensed spectrum may include a 5 GHz band.

[0037] In order to operate in the unlicensed spectrum, multiple UEs 101 and multiple RAN nodes 111 may operate using licensed assisted access (LAA), enhanced LAA (eLAA), or another enhanced LAA (feLAA) mechanism. In these embodiments, multiple UEs 101 and multiple RAN nodes 111 may perform one or more known medium sensing operations or carrier sensing operations or both to determine whether one or more channels in the unlicensed spectrum are unavailable or otherwise occupied before transmitting in the unlicensed spectrum. The medium / carrier sensing operation may be performed according to a listen-before-talk (LBT) protocol. LBT is a mechanism for equipment (e.g., multiple UEs 101, multiple RAN nodes 111) to sense a medium (e.g., a channel or carrier frequency) and transmit when the medium is sensed to be idle (or when a specific channel in the medium is sensed to be unoccupied). The medium sensing operation may include a clear channel assessment (CCA), which uses energy detection to determine whether there are other signals on the channel in order to determine whether the channel is occupied or clear. The LBT mechanism allows cellular / LAA networks to coexist with existing systems in unlicensed spectrum and with other LAA networks. Energy detection may include sensing RF energy over an intended transmission band over a period of time and comparing the sensed RF energy to a predefined or configured threshold.

[0038] The existing system in the 5 GHz band may be a WLAN based on IEEE 802.11 technology. The WLAN adopts a contention-based channel access mechanism (e.g., CSMA with collision avoidance (CSMA / CA). In some examples, when a WLAN node (e.g., a mobile station (MS) such as UE 101, AP 106, etc.) intends to transmit, the WLAN node may first perform CCA before transmitting. In addition, in the case where more than one WLAN node senses the channel as idle and transmits at the same time, a backoff mechanism is used to avoid conflicts. The backoff mechanism can be a counter randomly drawn within the contention window size (CWS), which increases exponentially when a conflict occurs and is reset to a minimum value when the transmission is successful. In some examples, the LBT mechanism designed for LAA is similar to CSMA / CA for WLAN. In some examples, the LBT process for a DL or UL transmission burst (including PDSCH or PUSCH transmission) may have a LAA contention window of variable length between X and Y extended CAA (ECCA) time slots, where X and Y are the minimum and maximum values ​​of the CWS for LAA. In one example, the minimum CWS for LAA transmission may be 9 microseconds (μs); however, the size of the CWS and the maximum channel occupancy time (e.g., transmission burst) may be based on government regulatory requirements.

[0039] In some examples, the LAA mechanism is built on the carrier aggregation technology of the LTE-Advanced system. In CA, each aggregated carrier is called a component carrier. In some examples, the component carrier may have a bandwidth of 1.4MHz, 3MHz, 5MHz, 10MHz, 15MHz, or 20MHz, and up to five component carriers may be aggregated to provide a maximum aggregate bandwidth of 100MHz. In a frequency division duplex (FDD) system, the number of aggregated carriers may be different for DL ​​and UL. For example, the number of UL component carriers may be equal to or less than the number of DL component carriers. In some cases, each component carrier may have a different bandwidth from other component carriers. In a time division duplex (TDD) system, the number of component carriers and the bandwidth of each component carrier are typically the same for DL ​​and UL.

[0040] Carrier aggregation may also include separate serving cells to provide separate component carriers. The coverage of the serving cells may be different, for example, because component carriers on different frequency bands may experience different path losses. The primary serving cell (PCell) may provide a primary component carrier for both UL and DL, and may handle RRC and non-access stratum (NAS) related activities. Other serving cells are referred to as secondary component carriers (SCells), and each SCell may provide a separate secondary component carrier for both UL and DL. Secondary component carriers may be added and removed as needed, and changing the primary component carrier may require UE 101 to undergo switching. In LAA, eLAA, and feLAA, some or all of the SCells may operate in an unlicensed spectrum (referred to as "LAA SCells"), and the LAA SCells are assisted by the PCells operating in a licensed spectrum. When a UE is configured with more than one LAA SCell, the UE may receive UL authorizations on the configured LAA SCells, indicating different PUSCH start positions within the same subframe.

[0041] The PDSCH carries user data and higher layer signaling to multiple UEs 101. The PDCCH carries, among other information, information about the transport format and resource allocation related to the PDSCH channel. It may also inform the UE 101 about the transport format, resource allocation, and hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) information related to the uplink shared channel. Downlink scheduling (e.g., allocating control and shared channel resource blocks to UE 101b within a cell) may be performed at any of the RAN nodes 111 based on channel quality information fed back from any of the UEs 101. Downlink resource allocation information may be sent on the PDCCH for (e.g., allocated to) each of the UEs 101.

[0042] PDCCH uses control channel elements (CCE) to transmit control information. Before being mapped to resource elements, the PDCCH complex-valued symbols can first be organized into quadruplets, which can then be arranged using a sub-block interleaver for rate matching. In some examples, one or more of these CCEs can be used to transmit each PDCCH, where each CCE can correspond to four sets of nine physical resource elements, collectively referred to as resource element groups (REGs). Four quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) symbols can be mapped to each REG. Depending on the size of the downlink control information (DCI) and channel conditions, one or more CCEs can be used to transmit the PDCCH. In LTE, there may be four or more different PDCCH formats defined with different numbers of CCEs (e.g., aggregation levels, L=1, 2, 4, or 8).

[0043] Some embodiments may use the concept of resource allocation for control channel information, which is an extension of the above concept. For example, some embodiments may utilize an enhanced PDCCH (EPDCCH) that uses PDSCH resources for control information transmission. One or more enhanced CCEs (ECCEs) may be used to transmit EPDCCH. Similar to the above, each ECCE may correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements, collectively referred to as enhanced REGs (EREGs). In some examples, ECCEs may have other numbers of EREGs.

[0044] The RAN nodes 111 are configured to communicate with each other using an interface 112. In an example, such as when the system 100 is an LTE system (e.g., when the core network 120 is an evolved packet core (EPC)), the interface 112 may be an X2 interface 112. The X2 interface may be defined between two or more RAN nodes 111 (e.g., two or more eNBs, etc.) connected to the EPC 120, or between two eNBs connected to the EPC 120, or both. In some examples, the X2 interface may include an X2 user plane interface (X2-U) and an X2 control plane interface (X2-C). The X2-U may provide a flow control mechanism for user packets transmitted over the X2 interface, and may be used to transmit information about the delivery of user data between eNBs. For example, X2-U may provide specific sequence number information about user data transmitted from the primary eNB to the secondary eNB; information about successful in-sequence delivery of PDCP protocol data units (PDUs) from the secondary eNB to the UE 101 for user data; information about PDCP PDUs that were not delivered to the UE 101; information about the current minimum expected buffer size at the secondary eNB for transmitting user data to the UE; etc. X2-C may provide intra-LTE access mobility functions, including context transfer from a source eNB to a target eNB, or user plane transmission control; load management functions; inter-cell interference coordination functions; etc.

[0045] In some examples, such as when the system 100 is a 5G NR system (e.g., when the core network 120 is a 5G core network), the interface 112 may be an Xn interface 112. The Xn interface may be defined between two or more RAN nodes 111 (e.g., two or more gNBs, etc.) connected to the 5G core network 120, between a RAN node 111 (e.g., a gNB) and an eNB connected to the 5G core network 120, or between two eNBs connected to the 5G core network 120, or a combination of the above. In some examples, the Xn interface may include an Xn user plane (Xn-U) interface and an Xn control plane (Xn-C) interface. The Xn-U may provide non-guaranteed delivery of user plane PDUs and support / provide data forwarding and flow control functions. The Xn-C may provide management and error handling functions for managing functions of the Xn-C interface; mobility support for UE 101 in a connected mode (e.g., CM-CONNECTED), including functions for managing UE mobility in a connected mode between one or more RAN nodes 111; and the like. Mobility support may include context transfer from the old (source) service RAN node 111 to the new (target) service RAN node 111, and control of the user plane tunnel between the old (source) service RAN node 111 and the new (target) service RAN node 111. The protocol stack of Xn-U may include a transport network layer built on an Internet Protocol (IP) transport layer, and a GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP-U) layer for carrying user plane PDUs on top of a user datagram protocol (UDP) or IP layer or both. The Xn-C protocol stack may include an application layer signaling protocol (referred to as the Xn Application Protocol (Xn-AP)) and a transport network layer built on a stream control transmission protocol (SCTP). SCTP may be on top of the IP layer and may provide guaranteed delivery of application layer messages. In the transport IP layer, point-to-point transport is used to deliver signaling PDUs. In other embodiments, the Xn-U protocol stack or the Xn-C protocol stack or both may be the same or similar to the user plane and / or control plane protocol stacks shown and described herein.

[0046] RAN 110 is shown as being communicatively coupled to a core network 120 (referred to as "CN 120"). CN 120 includes one or more network elements 122 configured to provide various data and telecommunication services to customers / subscribers (e.g., users of UE 101) connected to CN 120 using RAN 110. Components of CN 120 may be implemented in one physical node or separate physical nodes and may include components for reading and executing instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium). In some examples, network function virtualization (NFV) may be used to virtualize some or all of the network node functions described herein using executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable storage media, as will be described in further detail below. A logical instance of CN 120 may be referred to as a network slice, and a logical instance of a portion of CN 120 may be referred to as a network sub-slice. NFV architecture and infrastructure may be used to virtualize one or more network functions onto physical resources comprising a combination of industry-standard server hardware, storage hardware, or switches (alternatively performed by proprietary hardware). In other words, a NFV system may be used to perform virtual or reconfigurable implementations, or both, of one or more network components or functions.

[0047] In general, the application server 130 may be an element that provides applications that use IP bearer resources with the core network (e.g., UMTS packet service (PS) domain, LTE PS data service, etc.). The application server 130 may also be configured to utilize the CN 120 to support one or more communication services for the UE 101 (e.g., VoIP sessions, PTT sessions, group communication sessions, social network services, etc.).

[0048] In some examples, CN 120 may be a 5G core network (referred to as "5GC 120"), and RAN 110 may be connected to CN 120 using a next generation interface 113. In some examples, next generation interface 113 may be divided into two parts: a next generation user plane (NG-U) interface 114, which carries traffic data between multiple RAN nodes 111 and a user plane function (UPF); and an S1 control plane (NG-C) interface 115, which is a signaling interface between the RAN node 111 and an access and mobility management function (AMF).

[0049] In some examples, CN 120 may be an EPC (referred to as “EPC 120” or the like), and RAN 110 may be connected to CN 120 using an S1 interface 113. In some examples, S1 interface 113 may be divided into two parts: an S1 user plane (S1-U) interface 114, which carries traffic data between RAN node 111 and a serving gateway (S-GW); and an S1-MME interface 115, which is a signaling interface between RAN node 111 and a mobility management entity (MME).

[0050] Figure 2 An example of infrastructure equipment 400 is shown. Infrastructure equipment 400 (or "system 400") can be implemented as a base station, a radio head, a RAN node (such as the RAN node 111 or AP 106 shown and described previously), an application server 130, or any other component or device described herein. In other examples, system 400 can be implemented in or by a UE.

[0051] System 400 includes: application circuit 405, baseband circuit 410, one or more radio front end modules (RFEM) 415, memory circuit 420, power management integrated circuit (PMIC) 425, power tee circuit 430, network controller circuit 435, network interface connector 440, satellite positioning circuit 445 and user interface circuit 450. In some examples, system 400 may include additional elements such as, for example, memory, storage, display, camera, one or more sensors or input / output (I / O) interface or a combination thereof. In other examples, the components described with reference to system 400 may be included in more than one device. For example, various circuits may be separately included in more than one device for CRAN, vBBU or other embodiments.

[0052] The application circuit 405 may include circuits such as, but not limited to, one or more processors (or processor cores), cache memory, one or more of the following: a low dropout regulator (LDO), an interrupt controller, a serial interface such as SPI, I2C or a general programmable serial interface module, a real-time clock (RTC), a timer-counter including an interval timer and a watchdog timer, a general input / output (I / O or IO), a memory card controller such as a secure digital (SD) multimedia card (MMC) or similar products, a universal serial bus (USB) interface, a mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) interface, and a joint test access group (JTAG) test access port. The processor (or core) of the application circuit 405 may be coupled to or may include a memory or storage element, and may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory or storage element to enable various applications or operating systems to run on the system 400. In some examples, the memory or storage element may include an on-chip memory circuit, which may include any suitable volatile or non-volatile memory, such as DRAM, SRAM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash memory, solid-state memory, or a combination thereof, etc.

[0053] The processor of the application circuit 405 may include, for example, one or more processor cores (CPUs), one or more application processors, one or more graphics processing units (GPUs), one or more reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors, one or more Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processors, one or more complex instruction set computing (CISC) processors, one or more digital signal processors (DSPs), one or more FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more microprocessors or controllers, or a combination thereof, etc. In some examples, the application circuit 405 may include or may be a dedicated processor or controller configured to perform various techniques described herein. As an example, the processor of the application circuit 405 may include one or more Intel FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more microprocessors or controllers, or a combination thereof. or Processor: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Processor, Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) or processors; ARM-based processors licensed by ARM Holdings, Ltd., such as the ARM Cortex-A series processors provided by Cavium(TM), Inc. and MIPS-based designs from MIPS Technologies, Inc., such as the MIPS Warrior P-class processor; etc. In some examples, system 400 may not utilize application circuit 405, and instead may include a dedicated processor or controller to process IP data received, for example, from an EPC or 5GC.

[0054] In some examples, the application circuit 405 may include one or more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices, etc. The one or more hardware accelerators may include, for example, computer vision (CV) or deep learning (DL) accelerators or both. In some examples, the programmable processing device may be one or more field programmable devices (FPDs), such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), etc.; programmable logic devices (PLDs), such as complex PLDs (CPLDs) or high-capacity PLDs (HCPLDs); ASICs, such as structured ASICs; programmable SoCs (PSoCs), or combinations thereof, etc. In such embodiments, the circuits of the application circuit 405 may include logic blocks or logic architectures, as well as other interconnected resources that can be programmed to perform various functions such as the processes, methods, functions described herein. In some examples, the circuitry of application circuit 405 may include memory cells (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, static memory (e.g., static random access memory (SRAM), or anti-fuse)) for storing logic blocks, logic architectures, data, or other data in a look-up table (LUT), etc.

[0055] Baseband circuit 410 may be implemented, for example, as a solder-in substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board, or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. Figure 4 Various hardware electronic components of baseband circuit 410 are discussed.

[0056] The user interface circuit 450 may include one or more user interfaces designed to enable a user to interact with the system 400 or a peripheral component interface designed to enable a peripheral component to interact with the system 400. The user interface may include, but is not limited to, one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), one or more indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)), a physical keyboard or keypad, a mouse, a touch pad, a touch screen, a speaker or other audio transmitting device, a microphone, a printer, a scanner, a headset, a display screen or display device, or a combination thereof, etc. The peripheral component interface may include, but is not limited to, a non-volatile memory port, a universal serial bus (USB) port, an audio jack, a power interface, etc.

[0057] The radio front end module (RFEM) 415 may include a millimeter wave (mmWave) RFEM and one or more sub-millimeter wave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some examples, the one or more sub-millimeter wave RFICs may be physically separated from the mmWave RFEM. The RFIC may include connections to one or more antennas or antenna arrays (see, e.g., Figure 4 The antenna array 611) can be connected to multiple antennas, and the RFEM can be connected to multiple antennas. In some examples, both millimeter wave and sub-millimeter wave radio functions can be implemented in the same physical RFEM 415 that combines both millimeter wave antennas and sub-millimeter waves.

[0058] The memory circuit 420 may include one or more of the following: a volatile memory, such as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) or a synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM); and a non-volatile memory (NVM), such as a high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as flash memory), a phase change random access memory (PRAM), or a magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), or a combination thereof. In some examples, the memory circuit 420 may include a memory device obtained from and For example, the memory circuit 420 may be implemented as one or more of the following: a solder-in package integrated circuit, a socket memory module, and a plug-in memory card.

[0059] The PMIC 425 may include a voltage regulator, a surge protector, a power alarm detection circuit, and one or more backup power sources, such as a battery or capacitor. The power alarm detection circuit may detect one or more of a brownout (undervoltage) and a surge (overvoltage) condition. The power tee circuit 430 may provide power extracted from the network cable to provide both power and data connections for the infrastructure equipment 400 using a single cable.

[0060] The network controller circuit 435 may provide connectivity to the network using a standard network interface protocol such as Ethernet, Ethernet based on a GRE tunnel, Ethernet based on a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), or some other suitable protocol. Network connectivity may be provided to and from the infrastructure equipment 400 using a network interface connector 440 using a physical connection, which may be an electrical connection (commonly referred to as a "copper interconnect"), an optical connection, or a wireless connection. The network controller circuit 435 may include one or more dedicated processors or FPGAs, or both, for communicating using one or more of the aforementioned protocols. In some examples, the network controller circuit 435 may include multiple controllers for providing connectivity to other networks using the same or different protocols.

[0061] The positioning circuit 445 includes a circuit for receiving and decoding signals transmitted or broadcast by a positioning network of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Examples of GNSS include the Global Positioning System (GPS) of the United States, the Global Navigation System (GLONASS) of Russia, the Galileo system of the European Union, the Beidou Navigation Satellite System of China, a regional navigation system or a GNSS augmentation system (e.g., using the Indian constellation (NAVIC), the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) of Japan, the Doppler Orbit Chart and Satellite Integrated Radio Positioning (DORIS) of France for navigation), etc. The positioning circuit 445 may include various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, etc. for facilitating OTA communication) to communicate with components of the positioning network such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. In some examples, the positioning circuit 445 may include a micro technology (micro PNT) IC for positioning, navigation and timing, which uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking and estimation without GNSS assistance. The positioning circuit 445 may also be part of or interact with the baseband circuit 410 or RFEM 415 or both to communicate with nodes and components of the positioning network. The positioning circuitry 445 may also provide data (eg, location data, time data) to the application circuitry 405 , which may use the data to synchronize operations with various infrastructure (eg, RAN node 111 , etc.).

[0062] Figure 2 The components shown can communicate with each other using interface circuits that can include any number of bus or interconnect (IX) technologies, such as industry standard architecture (ISA), extended ISA (EISA), peripheral component interconnect (PCI), peripheral component interconnect extended (PCIx), PCI express (PCIe), or any number of other technologies. The bus or IX can be a proprietary bus, for example, used in a SoC-based system. Other bus or IX systems can be included, such as an I2C interface, an SPI interface, a point-to-point interface, and a power bus, etc.

[0063] Figure 3 An example of a platform 500 (or "device 500") is shown. In some examples, the computer platform 500 may be suitable for use as a UE 101, 201, 301, an application server 130, or any other component or device discussed herein. The platform 500 may include any combination of the components shown in the examples. The components (or portions thereof) of the platform 500 may be implemented as integrated circuits (ICs), discrete electronic devices, or other modules, logic, hardware, software, firmware, or combinations thereof adapted in the computer platform 500, or as components otherwise incorporated within the chassis of a larger system. Figure 3The block diagram is intended to show a high-level view of the components of platform 500. However, in some examples, platform 500 may include fewer, additional, or alternative components, or include Figure 3 Different arrangements of components are shown.

[0064] The application circuit 505 includes circuits such as, but not limited to, one or more processors (or processor cores), cache memory, and one or more LDOs, interrupt controllers, serial interfaces (such as SPI), I2C or general programmable serial interface modules, RTCs, timers-counters (including interval timers and watchdog timers), general I / Os, memory card controllers (such as SD MMC or similar controllers), USB interfaces, MIPI interfaces, and JTAG test access ports. The processor (or core) of the application circuit 505 may be coupled to or may include a memory / storage element, and may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory or storage device to enable various applications or operating systems to run on the system 500. In some examples, the memory or storage element may be an on-chip memory circuit, which may include any suitable volatile or non-volatile memory, such as DRAM, SRAM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash memory, solid-state memory, or a combination thereof.

[0065] The processor of application circuit 405 may include, for example, one or more processor cores, one or more application processors, one or more GPUs, one or more RISC processors, one or more ARM processors, one or more CISC processors, one or more DSPs, one or more FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more microprocessors or controllers, multi-threaded processors, ultra-low voltage processors, embedded processors, some other known processing elements, or any suitable combination thereof. In some examples, application circuit 405 may include or may be a dedicated processor / controller for performing techniques described herein.

[0066] As an example, the processor of the application circuit 505 may include a processor based on Architecture TM Processors such as Quark TM 、Atom TM , i3, i5, i7 or MCU class processors, or available from Santa Clara, CA The processor of application circuit 505 may also be one or more of the following: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Processor or Accelerated Processing Unit (APU); from Inc.'s A5-A9 processors, Snapdragon by Technologies, Inc. TM Processor, Texas Instruments, Open Multimedia Applications Platform(OMAP) TM processors; MIPS-based designs from MIPS Technologies, Inc., such as the MIPS Warrior M-class, Warrior I-class, and Warrior P-class processors; ARM-based designs licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd., such as the ARM Cortex-A, Cortex-R, and Cortex-M series processors; etc. In some examples, application circuit 505 can be part of a system on a chip (SoC), in which application circuit 505 and other components are formed as a single integrated circuit or a single package, such as company( Edison Corporation TM or Galileo TM SoC board.

[0067] Additionally or alternatively, the application circuit 505 may include circuits such as, but not limited to, one or more field programmable devices (FPDs) such as FPGAs; programmable logic devices (PLDs), such as complex PLDs (CPLDs), high capacity PLDs (HCPLDs); ASICs, such as structured ASICs; programmable SoCs (PSoCs), or combinations thereof, etc. In some examples, the application circuit 505 may include logic blocks or logic structures, and other interconnected resources that may be programmed to perform various functions such as the processes, methods, functions described herein. In some examples, the application circuit 505 may include memory cells (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, static memory (e.g., static random access memory (SRAM) or antifuse)) for storing logic blocks, logic structures, data or other data in a lookup table (LUT), etc.

[0068] Baseband circuit 510 may be implemented, for example, as a solder-in substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board, or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. Figure 4 The various hardware electronic components of baseband circuit 510 are discussed.

[0069] The RFEM 515 may include a millimeter wave (mmWave) RFEM and one or more sub-millimeter wave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some examples, the one or more sub-millimeter wave RFICs may be physically separated from the mmWave RFEM. The RFIC may include connections to one or more antennas or antenna arrays (see, e.g., Figure 4 The antenna array 611) can be connected to multiple antennas, and the RFEM can be connected to multiple antennas. In some examples, both millimeter wave and sub-millimeter wave radio functions can be implemented in the same physical RFEM 515 that combines both millimeter wave antennas and sub-millimeter waves.

[0070] The memory circuit 520 may include any number and type of memory devices for providing a fixed amount of system memory. As an example, the memory circuit 520 may include one or more of the following: volatile memory, such as random access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM) or synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM); and non-volatile memory (NVM), such as high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as flash memory), phase change random access memory (PRAM), or magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) or a combination thereof. The memory circuit 520 may be developed according to the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) based low power double data rate (LPDDR) design such as LPDDR2, LPDDR3, LPDDR4, etc. The memory circuit 520 may be implemented as one or more of the following: a solder-in package integrated circuit, a single die package (SDP), a dual die package (DDP) or a quad die package (Q17P), a socketed memory module, a dual in-line memory module (DIMM) including a micro DIMM or a mini DIMM, or soldered to a motherboard using a ball grid array (BGA). In low-power embodiments, memory circuit 520 may be on-chip memory or registers associated with application circuit 505. To provide persistent storage of information such as data, applications, operating systems, etc., memory circuit 520 may include one or more mass storage devices, which may include, for example, a solid-state disk drive (SSDD), a hard disk drive (HDD), a micro HDD, a resistive change memory, a phase change memory, a holographic memory, or a chemical memory, etc. In some examples, computer platform 500 may be combined with a computer obtained from and Three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memory.

[0071] The removable memory circuit 523 may include a device, circuit, housing, casing, port or socket, etc., for coupling a portable data storage device to the platform 500. These portable data storage devices may be used for mass storage and may include, for example, flash memory cards (e.g., Secure Digital (SD) cards, micro SD cards, xD picture cards), as well as USB flash drives, optical disks, or external HDDs, or combinations thereof, etc.

[0072] The platform 500 may further include an interface circuit (not shown) for connecting external devices to the platform 500. External devices connected to the platform 500 using the interface circuit include a sensor circuit 521 and an electromechanical component (EMC) 522, and a removable memory device coupled to a removable memory circuit 523.

[0073] Sensor circuit 521 includes a device, module, or subsystem that is intended to detect events or changes in its environment and send information about the detected events (e.g., sensor data) to one or more other devices, modules, or subsystems. Examples of such sensors include: an inertial measurement unit (IMU), such as an accelerometer, gyroscope, or magnetometer; a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) or nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) including a three-axis accelerometer, a three-axis gyroscope, or a magnetometer; a liquid level sensor; a flow sensor; a temperature sensor (e.g., a thermistor); a pressure sensor; a barometric pressure sensor; a gravity meter; an altimeter; an image capture device (e.g., a camera or a lensless aperture); a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor; a proximity sensor (e.g., an infrared radiation detector, etc.), a depth sensor, an ambient light sensor, an ultrasonic transceiver; a microphone or other audio capture device, or a combination thereof, etc.

[0074] The EMC 522 includes devices, modules or subsystems that are intended to enable the platform 500 to change its state, position, or orientation or to move or control a mechanism, system or subsystem. In addition, the EMC 522 may be configured to generate messages or signaling and send messages or signaling to other components of the platform 500 to indicate the current state of the EMC 522. Examples of EMC 522 include one or more power switches, relays (such as electromechanical relays (EMRs) or solid-state relays (SSRs)), actuators (e.g., valve actuators), audible sound generators, visual warning devices, motors (e.g., DC motors or stepper motors), wheels, thrusters, propellers, claws, clamps, hooks, or combinations thereof, in addition to other electromechanical components. In some examples, the platform 500 is configured to operate one or more EMCs 522 based on one or more capture events, instructions or control signals received from a service provider or client or both.

[0075] In some examples, the interface circuit may connect the platform 500 to the positioning circuit 545. The positioning circuit 545 includes a circuit for receiving and decoding signals transmitted or broadcast by a positioning network of a GNSS. Examples of GNSS may include the United States' GPS, Russia's GLONASS, the European Union's Galileo system, China's Beidou navigation satellite system, a regional navigation system or a GNSS augmentation system (e.g., NAVIC), Japan's QZSS, France's DORIS, etc. The positioning circuit 545 includes various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, etc. for facilitating OTA communications) to communicate with components of the positioning network such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. In some examples, the positioning circuit 545 may include a micro PNT IC that uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking or estimation without GNSS assistance. The positioning circuit 545 may also be part of or interact with the baseband circuit 410 or RFEM 515 or both to communicate with nodes and components of the positioning network. Positioning circuitry 545 may also provide data (eg, position data, time data) to application circuitry 505, which may use the data to synchronize operations with various infrastructure (eg, radio base stations), for turn-by-turn navigation applications, and the like.

[0076] In some examples, the interface circuit may connect the platform 500 with a near field communication (NFC) circuit 540. The NFC circuit 540 is configured to provide contactless short-range communication based on the radio frequency identification (RFID) standard, wherein a magnetic field is sensed to enable communication between the NFC circuit 540 and an NFC-enabled device (e.g., an "NFC touch point") external to the platform 500. The NFC circuit 540 includes an NFC controller coupled to an antenna element and a processor coupled to the NFC controller. The NFC controller may be a chip or IC that provides NFC functionality to the NFC circuit 540 by executing an NFC controller firmware and an NFC stack. The NFC stack may be executed by the processor to control the NFC controller, and the NFC controller firmware may be executed by the NFC controller to control the antenna element to transmit a short-range RF signal. The RF signal may power a passive NFC tag (e.g., a microchip embedded in a sticker or wristband) to transfer stored data to the NFC circuit 540, or initiate data transfer between the NFC circuit 540 and another active NFC device (e.g., a smart phone or an NFC-enabled POS terminal) close to the platform 500.

[0077] The driver circuit 546 may include software and hardware elements for controlling specific devices embedded in, attached to, or otherwise communicatively coupled to the platform 500. The driver circuit 546 may include various drivers to allow other components of the platform 500 to interact with or control various input / output (I / O) devices that may be present in or connected to the platform 500. For example, the driver circuit 546 may include: a display driver for controlling and allowing access to a display device, a touch screen driver for controlling and allowing access to a touch screen interface of the platform 500, a sensor driver for obtaining sensor readings of the sensor circuit 521 and controlling and allowing access to the sensor circuit 521, an EMC driver for obtaining an actuator position of the EMC 522 or controlling and allowing access to the EMC 522, a camera driver for controlling and allowing access to an embedded image capture device, and an audio driver for controlling and allowing access to one or more audio devices.

[0078] A power management integrated circuit (PMIC) 525 (also referred to as “power management circuit 525”) may manage power provided to various components of the platform 500. Specifically, the PMIC 525 may control power selection, voltage scaling, battery charging, or DC-DC conversion with respect to the baseband circuit 510. The PMIC 525 may be included when the platform 500 is capable of being powered by a battery 530, for example, when the device is included in a UE 101, 201, 301.

[0079] In some examples, the PMIC 525 may control or otherwise be part of various power saving mechanisms of the platform 500. For example, if the platform 500 is in the RRC_Connected state, in which the platform is still connected to the RAN node because it expects to receive traffic soon, then after a period of inactivity, the platform may enter a state known as discontinuous reception mode (DRX). During this state, the platform 500 may be powered off for short time intervals, thereby saving power. If there is no data traffic activity for a longer period of time, the platform 500 may transition to the RRC_Idle state, in which it is disconnected from the network and does not perform operations such as channel quality feedback or switching. This may allow the platform 500 to enter a very low power state in which it periodically wakes up to listen to the network and then powers off again. In some examples, the platform 500 may not receive data in the RRC_Idle state, but must transition back to the RRC_Connected state to receive data. Additional power saving modes may prevent the device from using the network for longer than the paging interval (ranging from a few seconds to a few hours). During this period, the device may not be able to connect to the network and may be completely powered off. Any data sent during this period may be significantly delayed, and it is assumed that the delay is acceptable.

[0080] Battery 530 can power platform 500, but in some examples, platform 500 can be deployed in a fixed location and can have a power source coupled to a power grid. Battery 530 can be a lithium-ion battery, a metal-air battery such as a zinc-air battery, an aluminum-air battery, or a lithium-air battery, etc. In some examples, such as in V2X applications, battery 530 can be a typical lead-acid car battery.

[0081] In some examples, the battery 530 may be a "smart battery" that includes or is coupled to a battery management system (BMS) or a battery monitoring integrated circuit. The BMS may be included in the platform 500 to track the state of charge (SoCh) of the battery 530. The BMS may be used to monitor other parameters of the battery 530, such as the state of health (SoH) and state of function (SoF) of the battery 530 to provide fault prediction. The BMS may transmit information about the battery 530 to the application circuit 505 or other components of the platform 500. The BMS may also include an analog-to-digital (ADC) converter that allows the application circuit 505 to directly monitor the voltage of the battery 530 or the current from the battery 530. The battery parameters may be used to determine actions that the platform 500 may perform, such as transmission frequency, network operation, sensing frequency, etc.

[0082] A power block or other power source coupled to the grid can be coupled to the BMS to charge the battery 530. In some examples, the power block 530 can be replaced with a wireless power receiver to obtain power wirelessly, for example, through a loop antenna in the computer platform 500. In these examples, a wireless battery charging circuit can be included in the BMS. The specific charging circuit selected can depend on the size of the battery 530 and therefore the required current. Charging can be performed using the aviation fuel standard published by the Aviation Fuel Alliance, the Qi wireless charging standard published by the Wireless Power Alliance, or the Rezence charging standard published by the Wireless Power Alliance.

[0083] The user interface circuit 550 includes various input / output (I / O) devices present in or connected to the platform 500, and includes one or more user interfaces designed to implement user interaction with the platform 500 or peripheral component interfaces designed to implement interaction with peripheral components of the platform 500. The user interface circuit 550 includes input device circuits and output device circuits. The input device circuit includes any physical or virtual means for accepting input, including one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), a physical keyboard, a keypad, a mouse, a touchpad, a touch screen, a microphone, a scanner, or a headset, or a combination thereof, etc. The output device circuit includes any physical or virtual means for displaying information or otherwise conveying information (such as sensor readings, actuator positions, or other information). The output device circuitry may include any number or combination of audio or visual displays, including one or more simple visual outputs or indicators (e.g., binary state indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)), multi-character visual outputs, or more complex outputs, such as a display device or touch screen (e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD), an LED display, a quantum dot display, or a projector), where the output of characters, graphics, or multimedia objects is generated or produced by the operation of the platform 500. The output device circuitry may also include a speaker or other audio emitting device, or a printer. In some examples, the sensor circuitry 521 may be used as an input device circuit (e.g., an image capture device or a motion capture device) and one or more EMCs may be used as an output device circuit (e.g., an actuator for providing tactile feedback). In another example, an NFC circuit may be included to read an electronic tag or connect to another NFC-enabled device, the NFC circuitry including an NFC controller and a processing device coupled to an antenna element. The peripheral component interface may include, but is not limited to, a non-volatile memory port, a USB port, an audio jack, or a power interface.

[0084] Although not shown, the components of platform 500 can communicate with each other using a suitable bus or interconnect (IX) technology, which can include any number of technologies, including ISA, EISA, PCI, PCIx, PCIe, time-triggered protocol (TTP) systems, FlexRay systems, or any number of other technologies. The bus or IX can be a proprietary bus or IX, for example, used in a SoC-based system. Other bus or IX systems can be included, such as an I2C interface, an SPI interface, a point-to-point interface, and a power bus, etc.

[0085] Figure 4 6 and 615. The baseband circuit 610 may correspond to Figure 2 The baseband circuit 410 and Figure 3The baseband circuit 510 of FIG. RFEM 615 may correspond to Figure 2 RFEM415 and Figure 3 RFEM 515. As shown in the figure, RFEM 615 may include a radio frequency (RF) circuit 606, a front end module (FEM) circuit 608, and an antenna array 611 coupled together.

[0086] The baseband circuit 610 includes circuits or control logic components or both, which are configured to execute various radio or network protocols and control functions that enable communication with one or more radio networks using the RF circuit 606. The radio control functions may include, but are not limited to, signal modulation and demodulation, encoding and decoding, and radio frequency shifting. In some examples, the modulation and demodulation circuits of the baseband circuit 610 may include fast Fourier transform (FFT), precoding or constellation mapping and demapping functions. In some examples, the encoding and decoding circuits of the baseband circuit 610 may include convolution, tail-biting convolution, turbo, Viterbi, or low-density parity check (LDPC) encoder and decoder functions. The modulation and demodulation and encoder and decoder functions are not limited to these examples and may include other suitable functions in other examples. The baseband circuit 610 is configured to process baseband signals received from the receive signal path of the RF circuit 606 and generate baseband signals for the transmit signal path of the RF circuit 606. The baseband circuit 610 is configured to communicate with application circuits (e.g., Figure 2 and Figure 3 The application circuits 405 and 505 are shown to interact to generate and process baseband signals and control the operation of the RF circuit 606. The baseband circuit 610 can handle various radio control functions.

[0087] The aforementioned circuits and control logic components of the baseband circuit 610 may include one or more single-core or multi-core processors. For example, the one or more processors may include a 3G baseband processor 604A, a 4G or LTE baseband processor 604B, a 5G or NR baseband processor 604C, or some other baseband processors 604D for other existing generations, generations under development or generations to be developed in the future (e.g., the sixth generation (6G)). In some examples, some or all of the functions of the baseband processors 604A-604D may be included in a module stored in the memory 604G and executed using a central processing unit (CPU) 604E. In some examples, some or all of the functions of the baseband processors 604A-604D may be provided as a hardware accelerator (e.g., FPGA or ASIC) loaded with an appropriate bitstream or logic block stored in a corresponding memory unit. In some examples, the memory 604G may store program code of a real-time OS (RTOS), which, when executed by the CPU 604E (or other baseband processor), is used to enable the CPU 604E (or other baseband processor) to manage resources of the baseband circuit 610, schedule tasks, or perform other operations. Examples of RTOS may include Operating System Embedded (OSE) provided TM , by Mentor Nucleus RTOS provided TM , by Mentor Versatile Real-Time Executive (VRTX) provided by Express Provided by ThreadX TM ,Depend on FreeRTOS and REX OS provided by OpenKernel (OK) OKL4 is provided, or any other suitable RTOS, such as those discussed herein. In addition, the baseband circuit 610 includes one or more audio digital signal processors (DSPs) 604F. The audio DSP 604F includes elements for compression and decompression and echo cancellation, and may include other suitable processing elements in some examples.

[0088] In some examples, each of processors 604A-604E includes a corresponding memory interface to send data to and receive data from memory 604G. Baseband circuit 610 may also include one or more interfaces for communicatively coupling to other circuits or devices, such as an interface for sending data to and receiving data from a memory external to baseband circuit 610; an interface for sending data to and receiving data from a memory external to the baseband circuit; Figure 2 and Figure 4The application circuit interface for sending data to and receiving data from the application circuit 405, 505; Figure 4 RF circuit 606 to send data and receive data from the RF circuit; an RF circuit interface for receiving data from one or more wireless hardware elements (e.g., near field communication (NFC) components, Low power consumption components, components, etc.) to send data and receive data from these wireless hardware elements; and a power management interface for sending power or control signals to the PMIC 525 and receiving power or control signals from the PMIC.

[0089] In some examples (which may be combined with the above examples), the baseband circuit 610 includes one or more digital baseband systems, which are coupled to each other and to the CPU subsystem, the audio subsystem, and the interface subsystem using an interconnection subsystem. The digital baseband subsystem may also be coupled to the digital baseband interface and the mixed signal baseband subsystem using another interconnection subsystem. Each of the interconnection subsystems may include a bus system, a point-to-point connector, a network on chip (NOC) structure, or some other suitable bus or interconnection technology, such as those discussed herein. The audio subsystem may include a DSP circuit, a buffer memory, a program memory, a voice processing accelerator circuit, a data converter circuit such as an analog-to-digital converter circuit and a digital-to-analog converter circuit, an analog circuit including one or more of an amplifier and a filter, etc. In some examples, the baseband circuit 610 may include a protocol processing circuit having one or more control circuit instances (not shown) to provide control functions for a digital baseband circuit or a radio frequency circuit (e.g., a radio front end module 615).

[0090] although Figure 4Not shown, but in some examples, the baseband circuit 610 includes various processing devices (e.g., a "multi-protocol baseband processor" or "protocol processing circuit") to operate one or more wireless communication protocols and various processing devices to implement PHY layer functions. In some examples, the PHY layer functions include the aforementioned radio control functions. In some examples, the protocol processing circuit operates or implements various protocol layers or entities of one or more wireless communication protocols. For example, when the baseband circuit 610 or the RF circuit 606 or both are part of a millimeter wave communication circuit or some other suitable cellular communication circuit, the protocol processing circuit may operate an LTE protocol entity or a 5G NR protocol entity or both. In this example, the protocol processing circuit may operate MAC, RLC, PDCP, SDAP, RRC, and NAS functions. In some examples, when the baseband circuit 610 or the RF circuit 606 or both are part of a Wi-Fi communication system, the protocol processing circuit may operate one or more IEEE-based protocols. In this example, the protocol processing circuit may operate Wi-Fi MAC and logical link control (LLC) functions. The protocol processing circuitry may include one or more memory structures (e.g., 604G) for storing program code and data for operating protocol functions, and one or more processing cores for executing program code and performing various operations using data. The baseband circuitry 610 may also support radio communications for more than one wireless protocol.

[0091] The various hardware elements of the baseband circuit 610 discussed herein may be implemented as, for example, a solder-in substrate including one or more integrated circuits (ICs), a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board, or a multi-chip module containing two or more ICs. In some examples, the components of the baseband circuit 610 may be appropriately combined in a single chip or a single chipset, or disposed on the same circuit board. In some examples, some or all of the components of the baseband circuit 610 and the RF circuit 606 may be implemented together, such as, for example, a system on a chip (SoC) or a system-level package (SiP). In some examples, some or all of the components of the baseband circuit 610 may be implemented as a separate SoC communicatively coupled to the RF circuit 606 (or multiple instances of the RF circuit 606). In some examples, some or all of the components of the baseband circuit 610 and the application circuits 405, 505 may be implemented together as a separate SoC mounted to the same circuit board (e.g., a "multi-chip package").

[0092] In some examples, baseband circuitry 610 may provide communications compatible with one or more radio technologies. For example, baseband circuitry 610 may support communications with E-UTRAN or other WMANs, WLANs, or WPANs. Examples in which baseband circuitry 610 is configured to support radio communications of more than one wireless protocol may be referred to as multi-mode baseband circuitry.

[0093] RF circuit 606 can use modulated electromagnetic radiation to achieve communication with a wireless network through a non-solid medium. In some examples, RF circuit 606 may include components such as switches, filters, or amplifiers to facilitate communication with a wireless network. RF circuit 606 may include a receive signal path, which may include circuits for down-converting RF signals received from FEM circuit 608 and providing baseband signals to baseband circuit 610. RF circuit 606 may also include a transmit signal path, which may include circuits for up-converting baseband signals provided by baseband circuit 610 and providing RF output signals for transmission to FEM circuit 608.

[0094] The receive signal path of the RF circuit 606 includes a mixer circuit 606a, an amplifier circuit 606b, and a filter circuit 606c. In some examples, the transmit signal path of the RF circuit 606 may include a filter circuit 606c and a mixer circuit 606a. The RF circuit 606 also includes a synthesizer circuit 606d for synthesizing frequencies used by the mixer circuit 606a for the receive signal path and the transmit signal path. In some examples, the mixer circuit 606a of the receive signal path may be configured to down-convert the RF signal received from the FEM circuit 608 based on the synthesized frequency provided by the synthesizer circuit 606d. The amplifier circuit 606b may be configured to amplify the down-converted signal, and the filter circuit 606c may be a low pass filter (LPF) or a band pass filter (BPF) configured to remove unwanted signals from the down-converted signal to generate an output baseband signal. The output baseband signal may be provided to the baseband circuit 610 for further processing. In some examples, the output baseband signal can be a zero frequency baseband signal, although this is not required.In some examples, the mixer circuit 606a of the receive signal path can include a passive mixer.

[0095] In some examples, mixer circuit 606a of the transmit signal path can be configured to upconvert an input baseband signal based on a synthesized frequency provided by synthesizer circuit 606d to generate an RF output signal for FEM circuit 608. The baseband signal can be provided by baseband circuit 610 and can be filtered by filter circuit 606c.

[0096] In some examples, the mixer circuit 606a of the receive signal path and the mixer circuit 606a of the transmit signal path may include two or more mixers and may be arranged for orthogonal down-conversion and up-conversion, respectively. In some examples, the mixer circuit 606a of the receive signal path and the mixer circuit 606a of the transmit signal path may include two or more mixers and may be arranged for image suppression (e.g., Hartley image suppression). In some examples, the mixer circuit 606a of the receive signal path and the mixer circuit 606a of the transmit signal path may be arranged for direct down-conversion and direct up-conversion, respectively. In some examples, the mixer circuit 606a of the receive signal path and the mixer circuit 606a of the transmit signal path may be configured for superheterodyne operation.

[0097] In some examples, the output baseband signal and the input baseband signal may be analog baseband signals. In some examples, the output baseband signal and the input baseband signal may be electronic baseband signals, and the RF circuit 606 may include an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) circuit, and the baseband circuit 610 may include a digital baseband interface to communicate with the RF circuit 606.

[0098] In some dual-mode examples, separate radio IC circuits may be provided to process signals for each spectrum, but the techniques described herein are not limited in this respect.

[0099] In some examples, synthesizer circuit 606d can be a fractional-N synthesizer or a fractional N / N+1 synthesizer, although other types of frequency synthesizers can be used. For example, synthesizer circuit 606d can be a delta-sigma synthesizer, a frequency multiplier, or a synthesizer including a phase-locked loop with a frequency divider.

[0100] Synthesizer circuit 606d can be configured to synthesize an output frequency based on the frequency input and the divider control input for use by mixer circuit 606a of RF circuit 606. In some examples, synthesizer circuit 606d can be a fractional-N / N+1 synthesizer.

[0101] In some examples, the frequency input may be provided by a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), although this is not required. The divider control input may be provided by the baseband circuit 610 or the application circuit 405 / 505 according to the desired output frequency. In some examples, the divider control input (e.g., N) may be determined from a lookup table based on the channel indicated by the application circuit 405, 505.

[0102] The synthesizer circuit 606d of the RF circuit 606 may include a frequency divider, a delay locked loop (DLL), a multiplexer, and a phase accumulator. In some examples, the frequency divider may be a dual-mode frequency divider (DMD), and the phase accumulator may be a digital phase accumulator (DPA). In some examples, the DMD may be configured to divide the input signal by N or N+1 (e.g., based on a carry) to provide a fractional division ratio. In some examples, the DLL may include a cascaded, tunable, delay element, a phase detector, a charge pump, and a set of D-type flip-flops. The delay element may be configured to divide the VCO cycle into Nd equal phase groups, where Nd is the number of delay elements in the delay line. In this way, the DLL provides negative feedback to help ensure that the total delay through the delay line is one VCO cycle.

[0103] In some examples, the synthesizer circuit 606d can be configured to generate a carrier frequency as an output frequency, while in other examples, the output frequency can be a multiple of the carrier frequency (e.g., twice the carrier frequency, four times the carrier frequency) and can be used with a quadrature generator and divider circuit to generate multiple signals with multiple different phases relative to each other at the carrier frequency. In some examples, the output frequency can be an LO frequency (fLO). In some examples, the RF circuit 606 can include an IQ or polarity converter.

[0104] FEM circuitry 608 may include a receive signal path that may include circuitry configured to operate on RF signals received from antenna array 611, amplify the received signals, and provide an amplified version of the received signals to RF circuitry 606 for further processing. FEM circuitry 608 may also include a transmit signal path that may include circuitry configured to amplify transmit signals provided by RF circuitry 606 for transmission by one or more antenna elements in antenna array 611. Amplification by either the transmit signal path or the receive signal path may be accomplished only in RF circuitry 606, only in FEM circuitry 608, or in both RF circuitry 606 and FEM circuitry 608.

[0105] In some examples, FEM circuit 608 may include a TX / RX switch to switch between transmit mode and receive mode operation. FEM circuit 608 may include a receive signal path and a transmit signal path. The receive signal path of FEM circuit 608 may include an LNA to amplify a received RF signal and provide the amplified received RF signal as an output (e.g., to RF circuit 606). The transmit signal path of FEM circuit 608 may include a power amplifier (PA) for amplifying an input RF signal (e.g., provided by RF circuit 606), and one or more filters for generating an RF signal for subsequent transmission by one or more antenna elements of antenna array 611.

[0106] The antenna array 611 includes one or more antenna elements, each of which is configured to convert an electrical signal into a radio wave to travel through the air and convert the received radio wave into an electrical signal. For example, a digital baseband signal provided by the baseband circuit 610 is converted into an analog RF signal (e.g., a modulated waveform), which is amplified and transmitted using the antenna elements of the antenna array 611 including one or more antenna elements (not shown). The antenna elements may be omnidirectional, directional, or a combination thereof. The antenna elements may be formed into a variety of arrangements as known and / or discussed herein. The antenna array 611 may include a microstrip antenna or a printed antenna fabricated on the surface of one or more printed circuit boards. The antenna array 611 may be formed as a patch of metal foil (e.g., a patch antenna) of various shapes and may be coupled to the RF circuit 606 and / or the FEM circuit 608 using a metal transmission line or the like.

[0107] The processors of the application circuits 405 / 505 and the processors of the baseband circuits 610 may be used to execute elements of one or more instances of the protocol stack. For example, the processor of the baseband circuit 610 may be used alone or in combination to perform layer 3, layer 2, or layer 1 functions, while the processors of the application circuits 405, 505 may utilize data received from these layers (e.g., packet data) and further perform layer 4 functions (e.g., TCP and UDP layers). As mentioned herein, layer 3 may include an RRC layer, which will be described in further detail below. As mentioned herein, layer 2 may include a MAC layer, an RLC layer, and a PDCP layer, which will be described in further detail below. As mentioned herein, layer 1 may include a PHY layer of a UE / RAN node, which will be described in further detail below.

[0108] Figure 5 Various protocol functions that can be implemented in a wireless communication device are shown. Specifically, Figure 5 An arrangement 800 is included to illustrate the interconnection between various protocol layers / entities. Various protocol layers and entities operating in conjunction with the 5G NR system standard and the LTE system standard are provided. Figure 5 The following description, but Figure 5 Some or all aspects of the invention may also be applicable to other wireless communication network systems.

[0109] In addition to other higher layer functions not shown, the protocol layers of arrangement 800 may also include one or more of PHY 810, MAC 820, RLC 830, PDCP 840, SDAP 847, RRC 855, and NAS layer 857. These protocol layers may include one or more service access points (e.g., Figure 5Items 859, 856, 850, 849, 845, 835, 825 and 815).

[0110] PHY 810 can transmit and receive physical layer signals 805, which can be received from or transmitted to one or more other communication devices. Physical layer signals 805 may include one or more physical channels, such as those discussed herein. PHY 810 may also perform link adaptation or adaptive modulation and coding (AMC), power control, cell search (e.g., for initial synchronization and switching purposes) and other measurements used by higher layers (e.g., RRC 855). PHY 810 may further perform error detection on transmission channels, forward error correction (FEC) encoding and decoding of transmission channels, modulation and demodulation of physical channels, interleaving, rate matching, mapping to physical channels, and MIMO antenna processing. In some examples, an instance of PHY 810 may use one or more PHY-SAP 815 to process requests from an instance of MAC 820 and provide instructions thereto. In some examples, requests and instructions transmitted using PHY-SAP 815 may include one or more transmission channels.

[0111] An instance of MAC 820 may process requests from and provide indications to an instance of RLC 830 using one or more MAC-SAPs 825. These requests and indications transmitted using MAC-SAPs 825 may include one or more logical channels. MAC 820 may perform mapping between logical channels and transport channels, multiplexing MAC service data units (SDUs) from one or more logical channels onto transport blocks (TBs) to be delivered to PHY 810 using transport channels, demultiplexing MAC SDUs from TBs delivered from PHY 810 using transport channels to one or more logical channels, multiplexing MAC SDUs onto TBs, scheduling information reporting, error correction through HARQ, and logical channel prioritization.

[0112] An instance of RLC 830 may utilize one or more radio link control service access points (RLC-SAPs) 835 to process requests from an instance of PDCP 840 and provide indications thereto. These requests and indications transmitted using RLC-SAPs 835 may include one or more logical channels. RLC 830 may operate in a variety of operating modes, including: transparent mode (TM), unacknowledged mode (UM), and acknowledged mode (AM). RLC 830 may perform transmission of upper layer protocol data units (PDUs), error correction through automatic repeat request (ARQ) for AM data transmission, and concatenation, segmentation, and reassembly of RLC SDUs for UM and AM data transmission. RLC 830 may also perform resegmentation of RLC data PDUs for AM data transmission, reorder RLC data PDUs for UM and AM data transmission, detect duplicate data for UM and AM data transmission, discard RLC SDUs for UM and AM data transmission, detect protocol errors for AM data transmission, and perform RLC re-establishment.

[0113] An instance of PDCP 840 may utilize one or more Packet Data Convergence Protocol Service Access Points (PDCP-SAP) 845 to process requests from an instance of RRC 855 or an instance of SDAP 847, or both, and provide indications thereto. These requests and indications transmitted using PDCP-SAP 845 may include one or more radio bearers. PDCP 840 may perform header compression and decompression of IP data, maintain PDCP sequence numbers (SNs), perform in-order delivery of higher layer PDUs when lower layers are reestablished, eliminate duplication of lower layer SDUs when lower layers are reestablished for radio bearers mapped on RLC AM, encrypt and decrypt control plane data, perform integrity protection and integrity verification on control plane data, control timer-based data discard, and perform security operations (e.g., encryption, decryption, integrity protection, or integrity verification).

[0114] An instance of SDAP 847 may utilize one or more SDAP-SAPs 849 to process requests from one or more higher layer protocol entities and provide instructions thereto. These requests and instructions transmitted using SDAP-SAPs 849 may include one or more QoS flows. SDAP 847 may map QoS flows to data radio bearers (DRBs) and vice versa, and may also mark QoS flow identifiers (QFIs) in DL and UL packets. A single SDAP entity 847 may be configured for a separate PDU session. In the UL direction, NG-RAN 110 may control the mapping of QoS flows to DRBs in two different ways (reflective mapping or explicit mapping). For reflective mapping, SDAP 847 of UE 101 may monitor the QFI of the DL packets of each DRB, and may apply the same mapping to packets flowing in the UL direction. For DRBs, SDAP 847 of UE 101 may map UL packets belonging to a QoS flow corresponding to the QoS flow ID and PDU session observed in the DL packets of the DRB. To implement reflective mapping, NG-RAN 310 may mark DL packets with a QoS flow ID over the Uu interface. Explicit mapping may involve RRC 855 configuring SDAP 847 with explicit mapping rules for QoS flows to DRBs, which may be stored and followed by SDAP 847. In some examples, SDAP 847 may be used only in NR implementations and may not be used in LTE implementations.

[0115] The RRC 855 may configure aspects of one or more protocol layers using one or more management service access points (M-SAPs), which may include one or more instances of PHY 810, MAC 820, RLC 830, PDCP 840, and SDAP 847. In some examples, instances of the RRC 855 may process requests from one or more NAS entities 857 using one or more RRC-SAPs 856 and provide indications thereto. The main services and functions of the RRC 855 may include broadcasting of system information (e.g., included in a master information block (MIB) or system information block (SIB) related to NAS), broadcasting of system information related to the access stratum (AS), paging, establishment, maintenance, and release of an RRC connection between the UE 101 and the RAN 110 (e.g., RRC connection paging, RRC connection establishment, RRC connection modification, and RRC connection release), establishment, configuration, maintenance, and release of point-to-point radio bearers, security functions including key management, inter-RAT mobility, and measurement configuration for UE measurement reporting. The MIB and SIB may include one or more information elements, each of which may include separate data fields or data structures.

[0116] NAS 857 may form the highest layer of the control plane between UE 101 and AMF 321. NAS 857 may support the mobility and session management procedures of UE 101 to establish and maintain an IP connection between UE 101 and P-GW in the LTE system.

[0117] In some examples, one or more protocol entities of arrangement 800 may be implemented in UE 101, RAN node 111, AMF 321 in NR implementation or MME 221 in LTE implementation, UPF 302 in NR implementation or S-GW 222 and P-GW 223 in LTE implementation, etc., for control plane or user plane communication protocol stacks between the aforementioned devices. In some examples, one or more protocol entities that may be implemented in one or more of UE 101, gNB 111, AMF 321, etc. may communicate with corresponding peer protocol entities that may be implemented in or on another device (using services of corresponding lower layer protocol entities to perform such communication). In some examples, the gNB-CU of gNB 111 may host the gNB's RRC 855, SDAP 847, and PDCP 840 that control operations of one or more gNB-DUs, and the gNB-DUs of gNB 111 may each host the RLC 830, MAC 820, and PHY 810 of gNB 111.

[0118] In some examples, the control plane protocol stack may include, in order from the highest layer to the lowest layer, NAS 857, RRC 855, PDCP 840, RLC 830, MAC 820, and PHY 810. In this example, upper layers 860 may be built on top of NAS 857, which includes an IP layer 861, SCTP 862, and an application layer signaling protocol (AP) 863.

[0119] In some examples such as NR implementations, AP 863 can be an NG application protocol layer (NGAP or NG-AP) 863 for the NG interface 113 defined between the NG-RAN node 111 and the AMF 321, or AP 863 can be an Xn application protocol layer (XnAP or Xn-AP) 863 for the Xn interface 112 defined between two or more RAN nodes 111.

[0120] The NG-AP 863 may support the functionality of the NG interface 113 and may include an elementary procedure (EP). The NG-AP EP may be an interaction unit between the NG-RAN node 111 and the AMF 321. The NG-AP 863 services may include two groups: UE-associated services (e.g., services related to the UE 101) and non-UE-associated services (e.g., services related to the entire NG interface instance between the NG-RAN node 111 and the AMF 321). These services may include functions such as, but not limited to: a paging function for sending a paging request to the NG-RAN node 111 involved in a specific paging area; a UE context management function for allowing the AMF 321 to establish, modify or release the UE context in the AMF 321 and the NG-RAN node 111; a mobility function for the UE 101 in ECM-CONNECTED mode, for intra-system HO to support mobility within the NG-RAN, and for inter-system HO to support mobility from / to the EPS system; a NAS signaling transport function for transporting or rerouting NAS messages between the UE 101 and the AMF 321; a NAS node selection function for determining the association between the AMF 321 and the UE 101; an NG interface management function for setting up the NG interface and monitoring errors over the NG interface; a warning message transport function for providing a means to transport a warning message using the NG interface or to cancel an ongoing warning message broadcast; a function for utilizing the CN 120 is a configuration transmission function for requesting and transmitting RAN configuration information (eg, SON information, or performance measurement (PM) data) between two RAN nodes 111; or a combination thereof, etc.

[0121] The XnAP 863 may support the functions of the Xn interface 112 and may include XnAP basic mobility procedures and XnAP global procedures. The XnAP basic mobility procedures may include procedures for handling UE mobility within the NG RAN 111 (or E-UTRAN 210), such as handover preparation and cancellation procedures, SN state transfer procedures, UE context retrieval and UE context release procedures, RAN paging procedures, or procedures related to dual connectivity, etc. The XnAP global procedures may include procedures not related to a specific UE 101, such as Xn interface setup and reset procedures, NG-RAN update procedures, or cell activation procedures, etc.

[0122] In an LTE implementation, AP 863 may be an S1 application protocol layer (S1-AP) 863 for an S1 interface 113 defined between an E-UTRAN node 111 and an MME, or AP 863 may be an X2 application protocol layer (X2AP or X2-AP) 863 for an X2 interface 112 defined between two or more E-UTRAN nodes 111.

[0123] The S1 application protocol layer (S1-AP) 863 may support the functionality of the S1 interface, and similar to the NG-AP discussed previously, the S1-AP may include an S1-AP EP. The S1-AP EP may be an interaction unit between the E-UTRAN node 111 and the MME 221 within the LTE CN 120. The S1-AP 863 services may include two groups: UE-associated services and non-UE-associated services. The functions performed by these services include, but are not limited to: E-UTRAN Radio Access Bearer (E-RAB) management, UE capability indication, mobility, NAS signaling transmission, RAN Information Management (RIM), and configuration transmission.

[0124] The X2AP 863 may support the functions of the X2 interface 112 and may include an X2AP basic mobility procedure and an X2AP global procedure. The X2AP basic mobility procedure may include a procedure for handling UE mobility within the E-UTRAN 120, such as a handover preparation and cancellation procedure, an SN state transfer procedure, a UE context retrieval and a UE context release procedure, a RAN paging procedure, or a procedure related to dual connectivity, etc. The X2AP global procedure may include a procedure not related to a specific UE 101, such as an X2 interface setup and reset procedure, a load indication procedure, an error indication procedure, or a cell activation procedure, etc.

[0125] The SCTP layer (alternatively referred to as the SCTP / IP layer) 862 can provide guaranteed delivery of application layer messages (e.g., NGAP or XnAP messages in NR implementations, or S1-AP or X2AP messages in LTE implementations). SCTP 862 can ensure reliable delivery of signaling messages between the RAN node 111 and the AMF 321 / MME 221 based in part on the IP protocol supported by IP 861. The Internet Protocol layer (IP) 861 can be used to perform packet addressing and routing functions. In some embodiments, the IP layer 861 can deliver and transmit PDUs using point-to-point transport. In this regard, the RAN node 111 may include L2 and L1 layer communication links (e.g., wired or wireless) with the MME / AMF to exchange information.

[0126] In some examples, the user plane protocol stack may include, in order from the highest layer to the lowest layer, SDAP 847, PDCP 840, RLC 830, MAC 820, and PHY 810. The user plane protocol stack may be used for communication between UE 101, RAN node 111, and UPF 302 in NR implementations, or communication between S-GW 222 and P-GW 223 in LTE implementations. In this example, the upper layer 851 may be built on top of SDAP 847 and may include a user datagram protocol (UDP) and IP security layer (UDP / IP) 852, a general packet radio service (GPRS) tunneling protocol layer (GTP-U) 853 for the user plane, and a user plane PDU layer (UP PDU) 863.

[0127] The transport network layer 854 (also referred to as the "transport layer") may be built on top of the IP transport, and the GTP-U 853 may be used on top of the UDP / IP layer 852 (including the UDP layer and the IP layer) to carry the user plane PDU (UP-PDU). The IP layer (also referred to as the "Internet layer") may be used to perform packet addressing and routing functions. The IP layer may assign IP addresses to user data packets, for example, in any of the IPv4, IPv6, or PPP formats.

[0128] GTP-U 853 may be used to carry user data within the GPRS core network and between the radio access network and the core network. For example, the transmitted user data may be packets in any of the IPv4, IPv6 or PPP formats. UDP / IP 852 may provide a checksum for data integrity, port numbers for addressing different functions at the source and destination, and encryption and authentication of selected data flows. The RAN node 111 and the S-GW 222 may utilize the S1-U interface to exchange user plane data using a protocol stack including an L1 layer (e.g., PHY 810), an L2 layer (e.g., MAC 820, RLC 830, PDCP 840 and / or SDAP 847), a UDP / IP layer 852, and a GTP-U 853. The S-GW 222 and the P-GW 223 may utilize an S5 / S8a interface to exchange user plane data using a protocol stack including an L1 layer, an L2 layer, a UDP / IP layer 852, and a GTP-U 853. As previously discussed, the NAS protocol may support mobility of UE 101 and session management procedures to establish and maintain an IP connection between UE 101 and P-GW 223 .

[0129] In addition, despite Figure 5Not shown, but an application layer may exist above AP 863 and / or transport network layer 854. The application layer may be a layer where a user of UE 101, RAN node 111, or other network element interacts with a software application, for example, executed by application circuitry 405 or application circuitry 505, respectively. The application layer may also provide one or more interfaces for the software application to interact with a communication system (such as baseband circuitry 610) of UE 101 or RAN node 111. In some examples, the IP layer or the application layer, or both, may provide functionality the same or similar to layers 5 to 7 of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, or portions thereof (e.g., OSI layer 7—application layer, OSI layer 6—presentation layer, and OSI layer 5—session layer).

[0130] Figure 6 is a block diagram illustrating components for reading instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and performing any one or more of the techniques described herein. Specifically, Figure 6 A schematic diagram of hardware resources 1100 is shown, including one or more processors (or processor cores) 1110, one or more memories or storage devices 1120, and one or more communication resources 1130, each of which may be communicatively coupled using a bus 1140. For embodiments in which node virtualization (e.g., NFV) is utilized, a hypervisor 1102 may be executed to provide an execution environment for one or more network slices or sub-slices to utilize the hardware resources 1100.

[0131] Processor 1110 may include processor 1112 and processor 1114. Processor 1110 may be, for example, a central processing unit (CPU), a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) processor, a graphics processing unit (GPU), a DSP such as a baseband processor, an ASIC, an FPGA, a radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), another processor (including those discussed herein), or any suitable combination thereof.

[0132] The memory / storage device 1120 may include main memory, disk storage, or any suitable combination thereof. The memory / storage device 1120 may include, but is not limited to, any type of volatile or non-volatile memory, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, or solid-state storage devices, or combinations thereof.

[0133] The communication resources 1130 may include an interconnect or network interface component or other suitable device to communicate with one or more peripheral devices 1104 or one or more databases 1106 using the network 1108. For example, the communication resources 1130 may include a wired communication component (e.g., for coupling using USB), a cellular communication component, an NFC component, (or Low power consumption) components, components and other communication components.

[0134] The instructions 1150 may include software, programs, applications, applet, applications, or other executable code for causing at least any one of the processors 1110 to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. The instructions 1150 may reside in whole or in part in at least one of the processor 1110 (e.g., in a cache memory of the processor), the memory / storage device 1120, or any suitable combination thereof. In addition, any portion of the instructions 1150 may be transmitted to the hardware resources 1100 from any combination of the peripheral device 1104 or the database 1106. Thus, the memory of the processor 1110, the memory / storage device 1120, the peripheral device 1104, and the database 1106 are examples of computer-readable and machine-readable media.

[0135] The present disclosure describes a process 1200 that is shown as a measurement gap (MG) pattern usage and management for a next generation (5G) wireless communication system. Process 1200 may be performed for a system that is compatible with frequency range one (FR1) and / or frequency range two (FR2). In some applications, the higher frequency bands in range FR2 are intended to provide short-range very high data rate capabilities for 5G radios. In situations where 5G wireless technology is configured to carry higher speed data relative to conventional wireless networks, the additional bandwidth of these higher frequency bands is needed. Generally speaking, FR2 includes frequencies in the range of 24250–52600 megahertz (MHz), while FR1 communications use frequencies between 410 MHz-7125 MHz.

[0136] The present disclosure includes improvements to MG applicable mechanisms (such as FR1 and / or FR2 scenarios). For example, when the Pcell is FR2, and when E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity (EN-DC) is enabled with per-FR measurements and FR2 measurement objects (MOs) configured for the device (e.g., UE, gNB, etc.), the MG mode usage described later may be applied (e.g., by the UE). In some embodiments, for a standalone operation (SA) mode, if the UE indicates support for any measurement mode (e.g., modes 0-11 described later) with a measurement gap length (MGL) of less than 6 milliseconds (ms) and a measurement gap repetition periodicity (MGRP) of less than 160 ms, the UE is capable of performing both new radio (NR) and NR+LTE measurements. In addition, a communication device (e.g., a UE) may be configured for EN-DC communications in a standalone LTE context, where the MG mode usage is described later.

[0137] More specifically, the present disclosure describes several solutions for MG mode usage. First, a mandatory MG mode for a communication device (e.g., UE) is described. Second, MG capability reporting from LTE radio access technology (RAT) and NR RAT is described. Third, UE measurement capabilities from the MG table are shown.

[0138] UEs and other communications devices may be configured for mandatory MG modes, as now described. The mandatory MG modes may differ based on the context in which the communications device is performing measurements. In one example, for the LTE standalone case, the UE does not have a FR2 serving cell. Since the UE does not have a FR 2 serving cell, MG modes 0 and 1 may be enforced, as shown in Tables 1 and 3 below. This is also true when a UE with per-FR MG capability has a FR2 serving cell and is configured with a FR2 MO, in addition to MG modes 12-23 that were previously enforced for the EN-DC and NE-DC cases.

[0139] Table 1: Applicability of gap pattern configurations supported by E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity UE or NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity UE

[0140]

[0141] In general, in E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity mode, if GSM or UTRA TDD or UTRA FDD inter-RAT frequency layers are configured to be monitored, only measurement gap patterns #0 and #1 can be used for per-FR gaps in E-UTRA and FR1 (if configured), or for per-UE gaps. In E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity mode, non-NR RATs include E-UTRA, UTRA and / or GSM. In NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity mode, non-NR RAT means E-UTRA. In E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity mode, UEs supporting shortMeasurementGap-r14 support gap patterns with short MGL (e.g., gap patterns #2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10). In NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity mode, UEs supporting measurement gap patterns #2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10 indicate capability signaling of supported gap patterns (e.g., supportedGapPattern) to the network. Generally speaking, only gap pattern #0 may be used when E-UTRA inter-frequency RSTD measurements are configured and the UE requires measurement gaps to perform such measurements.

[0142] For new radio standalone (NR SA), new radio carrier aggregation (NR CA), and NR-DC cases, MG modes 12-23 are applied in Table 9.1.2-3 of 3GPP TS 38.133, Version 15.4.0 Release 15, published in January 2019, without any definition of mandatory MGs. For example, a UE with per-UE MG capability has only a FR2 serving cell and is configured with only a FR2 MO. In another example, a UE with per-FR MG capability has a FR2 serving cell and is configured with a FR2 MO. As described subsequently and as shown in Table 2, mandatory MG modes #0, #1 are included in these and other scenarios.

[0143] Mandatory MG modes may be specified for these scenarios as follows. When a UE with per-FR MG capability has a FR2 serving cell and is configured with a FR2 MO, or when a UE with per-UE MG capability has only a FR2 serving cell and is configured with only a FR2 MO, the MG modes #0 and #1 are applicable for measurements. These are shown in Table 2.

[0144] In some embodiments, when a UE with per-FR MG capability has a FR2 serving cell and is configured with a FR2 MO, or when a UE with per-UE MG capability has only a FR2 serving cell and is configured with only a FR2 MO, an additional MG mode is introduced and enforced to support measurements. The introduced mandatory MG mode may be, for example, a MG with 20ms Measurement Gap Repetition Periodicity (MGRP) + 5.5ms Measurement Gap Length (MGL), 40ms MGRP + 5.5ms MGL, 80ms MGRP + 5.5ms MGL, or any combination thereof or similar combinations.

[0145] Table 2: Gap pattern configurations supported by UE with NR standalone operation (with single carrier, NRCA and NR-DC configurations) Applicability

[0146]

[0147] In general, only gap pattern #0 may be used when E-UTRA inter-RAT RSTD measurements are configured and the UE requires measurement gaps to perform such measurements. Measurement purposes that include E-UTRA measurements also include inter-RAT EUTRA RSRP and RSRQ measurements for E-CID. Measurement gap patterns #2, 3, 6, 7, 8 and 10 are supported by UEs that indicate the supportedGapPattern capability signaling to the network. If per-UE measurement gaps are configured with MG timing advance T MG ms, then the measurement gap is the time T before the end of the latest subframe of all serving cell subframes that occur immediately before the configured measurement gap. MG ms. If each FR measurement gap of FR1 is configured with MG timing advance T MG ms, then the measurement gap of FR1 is the time T before the end of the latest subframe in the serving cell subframe in FR1 that occurs immediately before the configured measurement gap. MG ms. If each FR measurement gap of FR2 is configured with MG timing advance T MG ms, then the measurement gap of FR2 is the time T before the end of the latest subframe in the serving cell subframe in FR2 that occurs immediately before the configured measurement gap. MG Start at ms. MG is the MG timing advance value provided in mgta. When determining the measurement gap starting point, the UE shall use the DL timing of the latest subframe occurring immediately before the configured measurement gap between serving cells. Generally speaking, NR-DC in Rel-15 only includes scenarios where all serving cells in MCG are in FR1 and all serving cells in SCG are in FR2.

[0148] LTE RAT and NR RAT can be configured to provide MG capability reporting for UE. For the intra-EN-DC scenario, the reporting of MG capabilities is as follows. First, the LTE RRC signaling message shortMeasurementGap is used to signal whether the UE supports gap patterns #2 and #3, such as FR1 gaps for each UE capability and each FR gap. Secondly, the LTE RRC signaling message measGapPatterns is used to signal whether the UE supports gap patterns 4 to 11, such as FR1 gaps for each UE capability and each FR gap. Thirdly, the NR RRC signaling message supportedGapPattern (22 bits) can be used to signal whether the UE supports gap patterns 2 to 23, such as FR2 gaps for each FR gap.

[0149] In some embodiments, a UE with per-FR MG capability may be configured to report the message shortMeasurementGap+measGapPatterns for FR1 MG using LTE Radio Resource Control (RRC). In addition, the UE may be configured to report the message supportedGapPattern for FR2 MG using NR RRC. However, there are 22 bits in the message supportedGapPattern, which may have some UE capability information that overlaps with the RRC signaling information of the LTE RAT. Generally speaking, the UE does not report different capabilities for MG through LTE and through NR RRC signaling. Therefore, there are two options for the EN-DC scenario. First, during the EN-DC scenario, the UE may be configured to disable or silence bits 2 to 11 in the message supportedGapPattern for UEs with per-FR capability. The network is configured to reply only to indications of shortMeasurementGap+measGapPatterns using LTE RRC signaling. In the second option, for the EN-DC scenario, the UE is forced to report the same MG capability information for the message shortMeasurementGap+measGapPatterns and bits 2 to 11 of the message supportedGapPattern.

[0150] In one aspect, the UE measurement capability can be determined from the MG table. In the NR standalone scenario, if the UE indicates support for any mode 0-11 of MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms, the UE is therefore configured for both NR and NR+LTE measurements. The MG mode can be seen in the applicability of Table 2 above, which is based on Table 9.1.2-3 of 3GPP TS 38.133 Version 15.4.1 Release 15 published in April 2019. Changes to Table 9.1.2-3 included in Table 2 have been discussed previously. Based on its capabilities, the UE can be configured to use MG modes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10 (MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms) for LTE+NR measurements. In some embodiments, the UE may be configured to use those MG modes to perform NR measurements because in Table 2, MG modes 0-11 can be used for NR measurements of UEs with per-UE MG capabilities, and also because NR FR1 measurements can be used for UEs with per-FR MG capabilities. For a UE with per-UE MG capability, modes (e.g., any modes 0-11 with MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms) may be used by the UE for both LTE+NR measurements and NR measurements, unless both the serving cell and the MO are only in FR2. Additionally or alternatively, for a UE with per-FR MG capability, those modes (e.g., any modes 0-11 with MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms) may be used for LTE+NR FR1 measurements and NR-only FR1 measurements with a FR1 serving cell.

[0151] In general, in both EN-DC and NE-DC scenarios, Table 1 shows that if a UE can support any MG mode in modes #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, the UE can perform LTE+NR measurements and NR measurements by using those supported MG modes. In general, MG modes #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10 indicate MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms. In some embodiments, for UEs with per-UE MG capability, MG modes (e.g., any modes 0-11 with MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms) can be used for LTE+NR measurements and NR measurements. In addition or alternatively, for UEs with per-FR MG capability, MG modes (e.g., any modes 0-11 with MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms) can be used for LTE+NR FR1 measurements and NR FR1 measurements only.

[0152] In general, for the LTE standalone scenario shown in Table 3 (which corresponds to Table 8.1.2.1-1 in 3GPP TS 36.133 Version 15.4.0 published in January 2019, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety), for UEs with per-UE MG capability, MG modes (e.g., any modes 0-11 with MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms) may be used for LTE+NR measurements and NR measurements. In addition or alternatively, for UEs with per-FR MG capability, MG modes (e.g., any modes 0-11 with MGL<6ms and MGRP<160ms) may be used for LTE+NR FR1 measurements and NR FR1 measurements only.

[0153] Table 3: Gap pattern configurations supported by UE

[0154]

[0155] In general, when Tinter1 is used to determine the UE requirements for GP2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, Tinter1 =

[60] is used for GP2, GP4, GP6, GP7, GP10, and Tinter1 =

[30] is used for GP3 and GP8. In general, when the UE supports shortMeasurementGap-r14, gap mode 2 or 3 may be configured for E-UTRA measurements, or may be configured for only inter-RAT NR measurements. In general, NR measurement requirements may not be scaled by Tinter. In general, gap modes 6, 7, 8 and 10 are supported by a UE that is configured to perform both E-UTRA inter-frequency measurements and inter-RAT NR measurements when the UE supports shortMeasurementGap-r14 or by a UE that is configured to perform only inter-RAT NR measurements. In general, gap mode 4 is supported by a UE that is configured to perform both E-UTRA inter-frequency measurements and inter-RAT NR measurements, or by a UE that is configured to perform only inter-RAT NR measurements. Generally speaking, when gap pattern 6 is used, the Tinter measured by E-UTRA frequency is 48 ms corresponding to the first 3 ms of the 4 ms gap. Generally speaking, when gap pattern 7 is used, the Tinter measured by E-UTRA frequency is 24 ms corresponding to the first 3 ms of the 4 ms gap. Generally speaking, when gap pattern 8 is used, the Tinter measured by E-UTRA frequency is 12 ms corresponding to the first 3 ms of the 4 ms gap.

[0156] In general terms, the use case of MG mode with MGL < 6 ms and MGRP < 160 ms can be based on Table 4 below.

[0157] Table 4: MG modes and use cases

[0158]

[0159] return Figure 7 The process 1200 for use and management of measurement gap patterns for a wireless communication system is now described. When operating in a specific scenario, the UE may be configured to use a mandatory MG mode. For example, the UE is configured for a per-FR MG mode. In another example, the UE is configured for a per-UE MG mode. In some embodiments, the process 1200 is performed for configuring one or more measurement gap patterns by a user equipment (UE) for wireless communication in a new radio (NR) network.

[0160] In a general aspect, process 1200 includes determining a frequency range (FR) of a serving cell configured to transmit a signal measured by a UE using signal measurement (1202). The process includes configuring a measurement gap (MG) pattern to perform the signal measurement (1204). Configuring the measurement gap pattern includes determining that the frequency range of the serving cell includes a frequency of a second frequency range (FR2). Configuring the measurement gap pattern includes determining that a measurement object (MO) configuration for the FR2 is available (1206). In response to determining that the configuration for the MO for the FR2 is available, the UE is configured to set a measurement gap repetition periodicity (MGRP) value for the signal measurement (1208). In addition, in response to determining that the configuration for the MO for the FR2 is available, the UE is configured to set a measurement gap length (MGL) value for the signal measurement (1210). The process includes performing signal measurements using the MGRP value and the MGL value (1212).

[0161] In some embodiments, the MG mode comprises a mandatory MG mode, wherein the MGRP value is one of 40 milliseconds or 80 milliseconds, and wherein the MGL is 6 milliseconds. In some embodiments, the MGRP value is one of 20 milliseconds, 40 milliseconds or 80 milliseconds, and wherein the MGL value is 5.5 milliseconds.

[0162] In some embodiments, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that no other MO configurations are available. In some embodiments, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for FR2, an MO configuration for the first frequency range (FR1) is available. In some embodiments, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for the FR2, an MO configuration for an Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) scenario is available. In some embodiments, determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available includes determining that, in addition to the MO configuration for the FR2, an MO configuration for a non-NR radio access technology (non-NR RAT) is available.

[0163] In some embodiments, the process 1200 includes determining an operating mode of the UE. The process includes generating, by the UE, an MG mode capability report based on the operating mode. Generally, the MG mode capability report indicates that any MG mode including an MGL value less than or equal to 6 milliseconds and an MGRP value less than 160 milliseconds is supported for the signal measurement. In some embodiments, the operating mode includes one of E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity (EN-DC), NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity (NE-DC), independent new air interface (NRSA), new air interface carrier aggregation (NR CA), new air interface dual connectivity (NR-DC), or independent long term evolution (LTE SA). In some embodiments, the operating mode includes EN-DC. Generating the MG mode capability report includes: disabling bits 2 to 11 in a supportedGapPattern message. In some embodiments, the operating mode includes EN-DC. Generating the MG mode capability report includes reporting the same MG capability data between bits 2 to 11 of a shortMeasurementGap+measGapPatterns message and a supportedGapPattern message.

[0164] Go to Figure 8, a process 1300 for measurement gap pattern usage and management for a wireless communication system is now described. The UE is configured to determine capabilities and serving cell frequencies (1302). The UE determines whether the UE has per-FR MG capability (1304) or has per-UE MG capability (1312). The UE determines whether the serving cell is FR2 (1306) or FR2-only (1314). The UE determines that MO FR2 is received (1308) or only MO FR2 is received (1316), and no other MO is received. The UE uses MG mode #0, 1, or a new mandatory MG mode defined subsequently (1310, 1318). In other words, when a UE with per-FR MG capability has a FR2 serving cell and is configured with a FR2 MO (measurement object), the UE is configured to use MG modes #0 and 1 applicable to measurement. Alternatively, when the UE has per-UE MG capability and has a FR2-only serving cell, and the UE is configured with only FR2 MO, MG mode #0 or 1 is applicable. Alternatively, when the UE is a UE with per-FR MG capability, has a FR2 serving cell and is configured with a FR2 MO, another MG mode is mandatory for supporting measurements. In some embodiments, when the UE is a UE with per-UE MG capability, when the UE has only a FR2 serving cell, and when the UE is configured with only a FR2 MO, an additional mandatory MG mode may be used. In some embodiments, the additional mandatory MG mode includes a MG with 20ms MGRP+5.5ms MGL, 40ms MGRP+5.5ms MGL, and / or 80ms MGRP+5.5ms MGL.

[0165] In general terms, when the UE is in EN-DC mode, the UE is configured to disable or silence bits 2 to 11 in supportedGapPattern for UEs with per FR capabilities when generating the capability report. The network only replies with indications about shortMeasurementGap+measGapPatterns via LTE RRC signaling. Alternatively, when operating in EN-DC, the UE is forced to disable or silence bits 2 to 11 in the shortMeasurementGap+measGapPatterns message and supportedGapPattern Bits 2 to 11 of the message report the same MG capability information.

[0166] In general aspects, the UE may use any of MG patterns #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 for modes EN-DC and NE-DC, for modes NR SA, NR CA, and NR-DC, and for mode LTE SA. For EN-DC and NE-DC, gap patterns #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 are used for UEs with per-UE MG capability for LTE+NR measurements and NR measurements. In some embodiments, for EN-DC and NE-DC, gap patterns #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 are used for UEs with per-FR MG capability for LTE+NR FR1 measurements and NR FR1 measurements only.

[0167] In some embodiments, for modes including NR SA, NR CA, and NR-DC, any of MG modes #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 are used for UEs with per-UE MG capability for LTE+NR measurements and NR measurements, except when both the serving cell and MO are in FR2 only. In some embodiments, for modes including NR SA, NR CA, and NR-DC, any of MG modes #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 are used for UEs with per-FR MG capability, which modes may be used for LTE+NRFR1 measurements and NR FR1-only measurements with FR1 serving cells.

[0168] In some embodiments, for LTE SA mode, the UE may use any one of MG modes #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 for UEs with per-UE MG capability for LTE+NR measurements and NR measurements. In some embodiments, for LTE SA mode, the UE may use any one of MG modes #0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 for UEs with per-FR MG capability for LTE+NR FR1 measurements and NR FR1 measurements only.

[0169] In some examples, at least one of the components shown in one or more of the foregoing figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, processes, and / or methods described in the Examples section below. For example, the baseband circuitry described above in conjunction with one or more of the foregoing figures may be configured to operate according to one or more of the embodiments described below. In some examples, circuitry associated with the UE, base station, network element, or other components described above in conjunction with one or more of the foregoing figures may be configured to operate according to one or more of the examples shown in the Examples section below.

[0170] It is understood that the use of personally identifiable information should be subject to privacy policies and practices that are generally recognized to meet or exceed industry or government requirements for maintaining user privacy. Specifically, personally identifiable information data should be managed and processed to minimize the risk of unintentional or unauthorized access or use, and the nature of the authorized use should be clearly stated to users.

[0171] In different embodiments, the methods described herein can be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination thereof. In addition, the order of the blocks of the method can be changed, and various elements can be added, reordered, combined, omitted, modified, etc. Various modifications and changes can be made, which will be apparent to those skilled in the art who benefit from the present disclosure. The various embodiments described herein are intended to be illustrative and not restrictive. Many variations, modifications, additions, and improvements are possible. Therefore, multiple examples can be provided for the components described herein as a single example. The boundaries between the various components, operations, and data repositories are arbitrary to a certain extent, and specific operations are shown in the context of a specific exemplary configuration. Other allocations of functions are contemplated, and they may fall within the scope of the appended claims. Finally, the structure and function presented as discrete components in the exemplary configuration may be implemented as a combined structure or component.

[0172] The following terms and definitions may apply to the examples described herein.

[0173] As used herein, the term "circuit" refers to, is part of, or includes a hardware component such as an electronic circuit, a logic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and / or a memory (shared, dedicated, or group) configured to provide the described functions, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a field programmable device (FPD) (e.g., a field programmable gate array (FPGA), a programmable logic device (PLD), a complex PLD (CPLD), a high capacity PLD (HCPLD), a structured ASIC, or a programmable SoC), a digital signal processor (DSP), etc. In some embodiments, the circuit may execute one or more software or firmware programs to provide at least some of the described functions. The term "circuit" may also refer to a combination of one or more hardware elements and a program code for performing the functions of the program code (or a combination of circuits used in an electrical or electronic system). In these embodiments, the combination of hardware elements and program code may be referred to as a specific type of circuit.

[0174] As used herein, the term "processor circuit" refers to, is part of, or includes a circuit capable of sequentially and automatically performing a series of arithmetic or logical operations or recording, storing, and / or transmitting digital data. The term "processor circuit" may refer to one or more application processors, one or more baseband processors, a physical central processing unit (CPU), a single-core processor, a dual-core processor, a triple-core processor, a quad-core processor, and / or any other device capable of executing or otherwise operating computer-executable instructions (such as program code, software modules, and / or functional processes). The terms "application circuit" and / or "baseband circuit" may be considered synonymous with "processor circuit" and may be referred to as "processor circuit".

[0175] As used herein, the term "interface circuit" refers to a circuit that enables, is a part of, or includes information exchange between two or more components or devices. The term "interface circuit" may refer to one or more hardware interfaces, such as a bus, an I / O interface, a peripheral component interface, a network interface card, etc.

[0176] As used herein, the term "user equipment" or "UE" refers to a device that has radio communication capabilities and can describe a remote user of network resources in a communication network. In addition, the terms "user equipment" or "UE" may be considered synonymous and may be referred to as a client, mobile phone, mobile device, mobile terminal, user terminal, mobile unit, mobile station, mobile user, subscriber, user, remote station, access agent, user agent, receiver, radio equipment, reconfigurable radio equipment, reconfigurable mobile device, etc. In addition, the term "user equipment" or "UE" may include any type of wireless / wired device or any computing device that includes a wireless communication interface.

[0177] As used herein, the term "network element" refers to physical or virtualized equipment and / or infrastructure for providing wired or wireless communication network services. The term "network element" may be considered synonymous with and / or referred to as a networked computer, networking hardware, network equipment, network node, router, switch, hub, bridge, radio network controller, RAN equipment, RAN node, gateway, server, virtualized VNF, NFVI, etc.

[0178] As used herein, the term "computer system" refers to any type of interconnected electronic devices, computer devices, or components thereof. Additionally, the terms "computer system" and / or "system" may refer to various components of a computer that are communicatively coupled to one another. Furthermore, the terms "computer system" and / or "system" may refer to multiple computer devices and / or multiple computing systems that are communicatively coupled to one another and configured to share computing and / or networking resources.

[0179] As used herein, the terms "appliance", "computer appliance", etc. refer to a computer device or computer system with program code (e.g., software or firmware) that is specifically designed to provide specific computing resources. A "virtual appliance" is a virtual machine image to be implemented by a device equipped with a hypervisor that virtualizes or emulates a computer appliance or is otherwise dedicated to providing specific computing resources.

[0180] As used herein, the term "resource" refers to a physical or virtual device, a physical or virtual component within a computing environment, and / or a physical or virtual component within a specific device, such as a computer device, a mechanical device, a memory space, a processor / CPU time and / or a processor / CPU usage rate, a processor and accelerator load, a hardware time or usage rate, a power supply, an input / output operation, a port or a network socket, a channel / link allocation, throughput, memory usage rate, storage, a network, a database and an application, a unit of work, etc. "Hardware resources" may refer to computing, storage and / or network resources provided by physical hardware elements. "Virtualized resources" may refer to computing, storage and / or network resources provided by a virtualized infrastructure to an application, a device, a system, etc. The term "network resources" or "communication resources" may refer to resources that a computer device / system can access via a communication network. The term "system resources" may refer to any kind of shared entity that provides a service, and may include computing resources and / or network resources. System resources may be considered as a set of coherent functions, network data objects or services that can be accessed through a server, wherein such system resources reside on a single host or multiple hosts and can be clearly identified.

[0181] As used herein, the term "channel" refers to any tangible or intangible transmission medium for transmitting data or data streams. The term "channel" may be synonymous and / or equivalent to "communication channel", "data communication channel", "transmission channel", "data transmission channel", "access channel", "data access channel", "link", "data link", "carrier", "radio frequency carrier" and / or any other similar terms representing a path or medium through which data is transmitted. In addition, the term "link" as used herein refers to a connection between two devices for transmitting and receiving information over a RAT.

[0182] As used herein, the terms "instantiate," "instantiate," and the like refer to the creation of an instance. "Instance" also refers to a specific occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during the execution of program code.

[0183] The terms "coupled," "communicatively coupled," and their derivatives are used herein. The term "coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other, may mean that two or more elements are in indirect contact with each other but still cooperate or interact with each other, and / or may mean that one or more other elements are coupled or connected between the elements said to be coupled to each other. The term "directly coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in direct contact with each other. The term "communicatively coupled" may mean that two or more elements may be in contact with each other by means of communication, including through a wire or other interconnect connection, through a wireless communication channel or link, etc.

[0184] The term "information element" refers to a structural element that contains one or more fields. The term "field" refers to the individual contents of an information element, or a data element that contains the contents.

[0185] The term "SMTC" refers to the SSB-based measurement timing configuration configured by SSB-MeasurementTimingConfiguration.

[0186] The term "SSB" refers to SS / PBCH block.

[0187] The term "primary cell" refers to an MCG cell operating on a primary frequency, where the UE either performs an initial connection establishment procedure or initiates a connection re-establishment procedure.

[0188] The term "primary SCG cell" refers to an SCG cell in which a UE performs random access when reconfiguration is performed using a synchronization procedure for DC operation.

[0189] The term "secondary cell" refers to a cell that provides additional radio resources on top of a special cell for a UE configured with CA.

[0190] The term "secondary cell group" refers to a subset of serving cells including a PSCell for a UE configured with DC and zero or more secondary cells.

[0191] The term "serving cell" refers to a primary cell for a UE in RRC_CONNECTED without CA / DC configured, where there is only one serving cell including the primary cell.

[0192] The term "serving cell" refers to a cell group including a special cell for a UE configured with CA / DC and in RRC_CONNECTED and all secondary cells.

[0193] The term "special cell" refers to the PCell of the MCG or the PSCell of the SCG for DC operation; otherwise, the term "special cell" refers to the Pcell.

[0194] Example :

[0195] According to various embodiments herein, there are some non-limiting examples:

[0196] Embodiment 1 can include a method comprising: decoding, when received from a BS, a message indicating one or more MG modes for use by a UE; and determining at least one of the one or more MG modes relative to one or more measurements.

[0197] Embodiment 2 can include the method according to embodiment 1 or some other embodiments herein, further comprising measuring one or more reference signals based on the determined at least one MG mode upon reception; and generating a report relative to the measurements.

[0198] Embodiment 3 may include the method according to embodiment 1 or 2 or some other embodiments herein, and further include receiving the message via an LTE RRC signal or an NR RRC signal.

[0199] Embodiment 4 can include the method according to Embodiments 1-3 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the one or more MG modes are based on Table 2, Table 3 and / or Table 4 in the present disclosure.

[0200] Embodiment 5 can include the method according to Embodiments 1-3 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the one or more MG modes include an indication of an MGRP and an indication of an MGL.

[0201] Embodiment 6 can include the method according to embodiments 1-5 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the UE can be or is configured with a per-FR MG.

[0202] Embodiment 7 can include the method according to embodiment 6 or some other embodiments herein, further comprising: determining the MO in FR2 upon receiving a configuration message for measurement.

[0203] Embodiment 8 can include the method according to embodiment 7 or some other embodiments herein, further comprising: receiving a configuration message with respect to the measurement, the configuration message indicating the MO in FR2 and other information corresponding to the measurement.

[0204] Embodiment 9 may include a method according to embodiments 1-5 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the UE has or is configured to have per-UE MG capability and has a FR2 serving cell, and the BS is a gNB or an eNB.

[0205] Embodiment 10 may include a method according to Embodiments 1-9 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the method is performed by the UE in EN-DC, NE-DC or NR-NR mode of 5G communication.

[0206] Embodiment 11 can include a method comprising: generating a message to indicate one or more MG modes that a UE is to support in communications; and transmitting the message to a BS.

[0207] Embodiment 12 may include a method according to embodiment 11 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the message includes supportedGapPatter, shortMeasurementGap, and / or measGapPatterns signaled via LTE or NR RRC, and further, wherein one or more configurations and / or indications of supportedGapPatter, shortMeasurementGap, and / or measGapPatterns are described in detail according to Tables 2 to 4 and Figures 12 and 13.

[0208] Embodiment 13 can include a method comprising: receiving a message from a UE via RRC signaling; and determining one or more MG patterns relative to one or more measurements based on the message.

[0209] Embodiment 14 can include the method according to embodiment 13 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the message includes supportedGapPatter, shortMeasurementGap, and / or measGapPatterns.

[0210] Embodiment 15 may include a method according to Embodiments 13-14 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the method is performed by an eNB in ​​EN-DC mode, or by a gNB in ​​NE-DC or NR-NR mode.

[0211] Embodiment 16 may include a method comprising: determining one or more MG modes of a UE relative to measurements in FR1 and / or FR2; generating a message to indicate the one or more MG modes; and transmitting the message to the UE via LTE or NR RRC signaling.

[0212] Embodiment 17 can include a method according to embodiment 16 or some other embodiments herein, wherein determining the one or more MG modes is based on UE capabilities indicated by the UE.

[0213] Embodiment 18 can include the method of Embodiments 16-17 or some other embodiments herein, further comprising transmitting one or more reference signals relative to the measurement.

[0214] Embodiment 19 may include a method according to embodiments 16-18 or some other embodiments herein, wherein the method is performed by the eNB in ​​EN-DC mode, or by the gNB in ​​NE-DC or NR-NR mode.

Claims

1. A method for wireless communication, the method being performed by one or more processors of a user equipment UE, the method comprising: Determine one or more measurement gap MG patterns associated with an NR frequency range FR in a long term evolution LTE and new radio NR dual connectivity operation, the MG pattern corresponding to a gap pattern identifier including 0, 1, and 12-23 for a measurement gap per frequency range 2, i.e., FR2; generating, via an LTE radio resource control (RRC) message, a message for indicating the one or more MG modes to be supported by the UE; as well as The message is prepared for transmission to an access node AN in the LTE and NR dual connectivity operation. 2 . The method according to claim 1 , wherein the message comprises a first information element IE of shortMeasurementGap and a second IE of measGapPatterns to indicate the one or more MG modes to be supported by the UE.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the message is further used to indicate one or more MG modes not supported by the UE.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the LTE and NR dual connectivity operation is an Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Terrestrial Radio Access New Air (E-UTRA-NR) dual connectivity (EN-DC) operation or an NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity (NE-DC) operation.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the NR FR is NR frequency range 1, ie, FR1, or NR frequency range 2, ie, FR2.

6. The method according to claim 5, further comprising: Based on determining that no other MO configurations are available, it is determined that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available. 7 . The method of claim 5 , further comprising determining that the MO configuration for FR2 is available based on determining that the MO configuration for the first frequency range FR1 is available in addition to the MO configuration for FR2 .

8. The method of claim 5, further comprising determining that the MO configuration for FR2 is available based on determining that an MO configuration for an Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) scenario is also available in addition to the MO configuration for FR2.

9. The method of claim 5, further comprising determining that the MO configuration for the FR2 is available based on determining that an MO configuration for a non-NR radio access technology, i.e., a non-NR RAT, is also available in addition to the MO configuration for the FR2.

10. The method according to claim 1, further comprising: Determine the operating mode; as well as An MG mode capability report is generated based on the operation mode, the MG mode capability report indicating support for signal measurement of any MG mode including a measurement gap length MGL value less than or equal to 6 milliseconds and a measurement gap repetition periodicity MGRP value less than 160 milliseconds.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein the operation mode comprises one of E-UTRA-NR dual connectivity EN-DC, NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity NE-DC, independent new air interface NR SA, new air interface carrier aggregation NR CA, new air interface dual connectivity NR-DC or independent long term evolution LTE SA.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the operating mode comprises EN-DC, and wherein generating the MG mode capability report comprises: Disable bits 2 to 11 in the supportedGapPattern message.

13. A method for operation by an access node AN, comprising: When received from the UE, a message including a first information element IE of shortMeasurementGap and a second IE of measGapPatterns is decoded to indicate one or more measurement gap MG modes to be supported by the UE in long-term evolution LTE and new air interface NR dual-connection DC operation, wherein the MG mode corresponds to a gap pattern identifier including 0, 1 and 12-23 for the measurement gap for each frequency range 2, i.e., FR2. The method of claim 13 , wherein the message further comprises a supportedGapPattern.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the method is performed by an eNB in ​​EN-DC mode, or by a gNB in ​​NE-DC or NR-NR mode.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the LTE and NR dual connectivity operation is an Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Terrestrial Radio Access New Air (E-UTRA-NR) dual connectivity (EN-DC) operation or an NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity (NE-DC) operation. 17 . The method of claim 13 , wherein the first IE and the second IE indicate an NR frequency range FR including an NR frequency range 1 (FR1) or an NR frequency range 2 (FR2).

18. The method of claim 13, further comprising transmitting one or more reference signals relative to the measurements.

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