Communication device, communication method, and communication system

Abstract

According to the present invention, a communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points comprises: an encoding unit that generates a plurality of encoded sequences from one transmission data sequence by using block encoding; and a generation unit that allocates a plurality of coding sequences for each of the plurality of transmission and reception points on the basis of information on the transport block size of each of the plurality of transmission and reception points, and generates a transport block of each of the plurality of transmission and reception points on the basis of the allocated coding sequences.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present disclosure relates to a communication device, a communication method and a communication system. Background Art

[0002] In recent years, cellular communication is actively developing. For example, in recent years, various forms of communication such as communication using multiple transmission and reception points (e.g., multi-transmission and reception points (multi-TRP)) and division of network functions (e.g., division of base station functions) are actively developing.

[0003] Citation List

[0004] Non-patent literature

[0005] Non-patent document 1: 3GPP TSG-RAN, RP-202803, “Summary for WI: Enhancement on MIMO for NR”, Samsung

[0006] Non-patent document 2: 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2, R2-1914020 "LS on multi PDCCH-based and single PDCCH-based multi-TRP operation"

[0007] Non-patent document 3: 3GPP TS 38.401 V16.8.0 (2021-12), 3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NG-RAN; Architecture description (16th edition) Summary of the invention

[0008] Technical issues

[0009] The complication of the communication mode may reduce the communication performance (eg, reliability, low latency, or communication efficiency (eg, throughput or frequency utilization efficiency)) of the communication device or the communication system.

[0010] In view of this, the present disclosure proposes a communication device, a communication method, and a communication system capable of achieving high communication performance.

[0011] Note that the above-mentioned problem or object is only one of the multiple problems or objects that can be solved or achieved by the multiple embodiments disclosed in this specification.

[0012] Solution to the problem

[0013] In order to solve the above problems, a communication device according to the present embodiment is capable of performing communication using multiple sending and receiving points, the communication device including: an encoder, which generates multiple coding sequences from a sending data sequence by using group coding; and a generator, which distributes the multiple coding sequences to each sending and receiving point based on the transmission block size information of each sending and receiving point in the multiple sending and receiving points, and generates a transmission block for each sending and receiving point in the multiple sending and receiving points based on the allocated coding sequences. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0014] Figure 1 is a diagram illustrating a network configuration that can be adopted by the communication system according to the present embodiment.

[0015] Figure 2 is a diagram illustrating a functional configuration example of a communication system according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

[0016] Figure 3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a server according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

[0017] Figure 4 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a management device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

[0018] Figure 5 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a base station according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

[0019] Figure 6 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a terminal device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

[0020] Figure 7 It is a diagram illustrating an overview of a packet encoding process performed by a communication device on the transmission side.

[0021] Figure 8 It is a diagram illustrating an overview of a packet encoding process performed by a communication device on the receiving side.

[0022] Fig. 9 is a diagram for illustrating a block coding process.

[0023] Fig.10 is a diagram illustrating an example of redundant data assigned to a coded bit sequence.

[0024] Fig.11 is a diagram illustrating an example of an encoding procedure of a packet encoding process.

[0025] Fig.12 is a diagram illustrating an example of an encoding process of multiple received coded bit sequences.

[0026] Fig.13 is a sequence diagram illustrating an exemplary procedure of a packet encoding process.

[0027] Fig.14 is a diagram illustrating a first mode of multi-TRP.

[0028] Fig.15 is a diagram illustrating a second mode of multi-TRP.

[0029] Fig.16 is a diagram illustrating an example of an NG RAN architecture.

[0030] Fig.17 is a diagram illustrating an outline of a transmission process according to the first embodiment.

[0031] Fig.18 is a diagram illustrating an outline of a reception process according to the first embodiment.

[0032] Fig.19 is a sequence chart illustrating the transmission / reception process according to the first embodiment.

[0033] Fig. 20 is a sequence chart illustrating the transmission / reception process according to the first embodiment.

[0034] Fig.21 A diagram for illustrating a boundary line between a CU and a DU.

[0035] Fig. 22 is a diagram illustrating an example of an IAB architecture (C-plane).

[0036] Fig.23 is a diagram illustrating an example of the architecture of a gNB in ​​a state where the CP and UP are separated.

[0037] Fig.24 is a diagram illustrating an example of a basic pattern of a network configuration.

[0038] Fig.25 is a diagram illustrating an example of a basic pattern of a network configuration.

[0039] Fig.26 is a diagram illustrating an example of an architecture that a HU may adopt.

[0040] Fig. 27 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary architecture that the MU and RU may adopt.

[0041] Fig.28 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary architecture that the MU and RU may adopt.

[0042] Fig.29 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary architecture that the MU and RU may adopt.

[0043] Fig.30 is a diagram illustrating a communication architecture assumed in this embodiment.

[0044] Fig.31 is a diagram illustrating a communication architecture assumed in this embodiment.

[0045] Fig.32 is a diagram illustrating a communication architecture assumed in this embodiment.

[0046] Fig.33 is a diagram illustrating a communication architecture assumed in this embodiment.

[0047] Fig.34 is a flowchart illustrating a transmission process according to the second embodiment.

[0048] Fig.35 is a flowchart illustrating a reception process according to the second embodiment. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0049] Embodiments of the present disclosure will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. Note that in each of the following embodiments, the same parts are denoted by the same reference numerals, and repeated descriptions thereof will be omitted.

[0050] In addition, in this specification and the drawings, multiple components having substantially the same functional configuration will be distinguished by appending different numbers after the same reference numerals. For example, multiple configurations having substantially the same functional configuration, such as the terminal device 40, are distinguished as needed. 1 , 40 2 and 40 3 However, when there is no need to particularly distinguish between a plurality of components having substantially the same functional configuration, only the same reference numeral is given. For example, when there is no need to particularly distinguish between the terminal device 40 1 , 40 2 and 40 3 In this case, they are simply referred to as terminal devices 40.

[0051] One or more embodiments described below (including examples and modifications) can be implemented independently of each other. On the other hand, at least some of the multiple embodiments described below can be appropriately combined with at least some of the other embodiments. Multiple embodiments can include novel features that are different from each other. Thus, multiple embodiments can contribute to achieving or solving different purposes or problems, and can show different effects.

[0052] <<1.Overview>>

[0053] Radio access technologies (RATs) such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and New Radio (NR) have been studied in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). LTE and NR are a type of cellular communication technology, and enable mobile communication of terminal devices by using a cellular arrangement of multiple areas covered by a base station (or a transmission and reception point (TRP)). At this time, one base station (or one TRP) can manage multiple cells, and multiple base stations (or TRPs) can be included in a single base station.

[0054] In the following, it is assumed that "LTE" includes LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), LTE-Advanced Pro (LTE-A Pro) and Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA). In addition, it is assumed that NR includes New Radio Access Technology (NRAT) and Further E-UTRA (FE-UTRA). In the following, a cell corresponding to LTE may be referred to as an LTE cell, and a cell corresponding to NR may be referred to as an NR cell. A base station in LTE may be referred to as an evolved Node B (eNodeB). A base station in NR may be referred to as a gNodeB. In LTE and NR, a terminal device (also referred to as a mobile station, a mobile station apparatus, or a terminal) may be referred to as a user equipment (UE).

[0055] NR is the next generation (fifth generation) radio access technology (RAT) after LTE. NR is a radio access technology that can support a variety of use cases, including enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communications (mMTC), and ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC). NR is being studied with the goal of creating a technology framework that supports usage scenarios, requirements, and deployment scenarios for these use cases.

[0056] For example, in recent years, various forms of communication such as communication using multiple transmission and reception points (e.g., multiple transmission and reception points (multi-TRP)) and division of network functions (e.g., dividing base station functions into a central unit (CU) and a distributed unit (DU)) are being actively developed. The complication of the communication mode may reduce the communication performance (such as reliability, low latency, or frequency utilization efficiency) of the communication device or communication system.

[0057] For example, in communications using multiple transmission and reception points, due to the different transmission block sizes used for each transmission and reception point, there is a case where an appropriate transmission block is not generated, thereby reducing communication efficiency. In addition, due to the complication of network configuration, dividing network functions may cause the appropriate device to be unable to perform data decoding processing, thereby reducing communication efficiency or communication reliability.

[0058] In view of this, the present embodiment (including the first embodiment and the second embodiment) is provided to solve the above problems, as shown below.

[0059] (First embodiment)

[0060] In a first embodiment, a communication system includes: a transmission device (eg, a base station) capable of performing communication using multiple transmission and reception points; and a reception device (eg, a terminal apparatus) capable of performing communication using multiple transmission and reception points.

[0061] The transmitting device generates a plurality of coding sequences from a transmission data sequence by using block coding. Subsequently, the transmitting device allocates a plurality of coding sequences to each transmission and reception point based on the transmission block size information of each transmission and reception point in the plurality of transmission and reception points, and generates a transmission block for each transmission and reception point in the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the allocated coding sequences.

[0062] The receiving device receives a plurality of transport blocks from the transmitting device and then decodes a plurality of coded sequences extracted from the plurality of transport blocks using a decoding method corresponding to block coding.

[0063] This enables the communication system of the first embodiment to cope with a situation where the transmission block size of each transmission and reception point is different, leading to an improvement in communication efficiency.

[0064] (Second embodiment)

[0065] The second embodiment assumes that the configuration of a network connected to a user equipment (UE) is functionally split into a high-level unit (HU) indicating a unit of the highest layer, a radio unit (RU) indicating a unit of the lowest layer, and a middle unit (MU) indicating a unit located between the HU and the RU.

[0066] The communication system of the second embodiment includes: a transmitting device corresponding to the HU; and a receiving device corresponding to the MU, RU or UE.

[0067] The transmitting device acquires information related to the RU having a direct connection with the edge MU from the edge MU, the edge MU being the MU located closest to the RU. Based on the information related to the RU acquired from the edge MU, information related to the architecture of the edge MU, the RU, and the UE is determined. Subsequently, the transmitting device generates a plurality of coding sequences from a transmission data sequence by using group coding. Subsequently, the transmitting device assigns the information related to the architecture to the plurality of coding sequences.

[0068] The receiving device receives a coded sequence assigned with architecture-related information from a transmitting device (HU), and determines whether a decoding process is valid or invalid based on the architecture-related information assigned to the coded sequence. When it is determined that the decoding process is valid, the receiving device decodes the plurality of coded sequences using a decoding method corresponding to the group coding.

[0069] With this configuration, the communication system of the second embodiment can perform decoding processing by an appropriate device on the network, thereby making it possible to improve communication efficiency or communication reliability.

[0070] The outline of the present embodiment (the first embodiment and the second embodiment) has been described above. Hereinafter, a communication system according to the present embodiment will be described in detail.

[0071] <<2. Configuration of communication system>>

[0072] Hereinafter, the configuration of the communication system 1 will be specifically described with reference to the drawings. The configuration of the communication system 1 described below is common to the first embodiment and the second embodiment.

[0073] <2-1. Network Configuration Example>

[0074] Figure 1 : is a diagram illustrating a network configuration that can be adopted by the communication system 1 of the present embodiment (first embodiment and second embodiment). The lines (dashed lines) in the figure represent logical connections and do not necessarily indicate direct physical connections. The communication area is composed of "cells" (ovals in the figure) that receive services from each of multiple base stations. One base station can provide services to multiple cells. The base stations can communicate with each other via a backhaul (regardless of whether the communication is performed through a wired connection or a wireless connection) and mainly exchange control information. An assumed example of communication using a backhaul is communication using a protocol of an X2 interface or an S1 interface.

[0075] The base station also has a backhaul to the core network of the system. At this point, the base station can be connected to the core network by connecting to a control entity (the control entity can be considered an element of the core network). In addition, in addition to the control entity, the base station can also be connected to the core network via an external network. Examples of base stations to be connected include femtocell base station devices or HeNB devices that can be installed indoors or at home.

[0076] Similarly, when the base station functional split is implemented and the base station is defined as separate units, these units can have midhaul between the units. These units can be connected to the core network by connecting to the control entity or the core network separately. In addition, these units can be connected to the control entity or the core network by relaying between the same or different units generated by the functional split.

[0077] When base station functional splitting is implemented and the base station is defined as separate units, these units may be shared by the same or separate base stations or by devices or entities constituting a macro cell or a micro cell.

[0078] When implementing a base station functional split and defining the base station as separate units, these units do not necessarily need to be physically separated from each other. The units can be defined by virtual or logical separation.

[0079] The midhaul can be established physically or logically. In this case, the midhaul can be composed of a dedicated communication path or a general public network. Alternatively, the midhaul can be established via a wireless device. In addition, the midhaul and the backhaul can overlap each other.

[0080] In addition, the equipment or base station constituting the macrocell or microcell may have a fronthaul between the unit including at least the RF equipment or antenna equipment and other functions or equipment. At this time, the fronthaul allows any connection, whether it is physical, logical, wireless, wired, dedicated or general network.

[0081] The device constituting the small cell or femto cell may be constituted by units including at least an RF device or an antenna device. These units may be shared by one or more base stations or some devices having similar functions.

[0082] The small cell area is basically deployed to overlap with the macro cell area. However, the small cell area may be partially or entirely deployed outside the macro cell area.

[0083] Devices constituting a macro cell, devices constituting a small cell, or devices having a base station function may have features in the radio resources to be used. For example, the same frequency resource F1 (or time resource T1) may be used in a macro cell and a small cell. This makes it possible to improve the efficiency of radio resource utilization for the entire system. On the other hand, a macro cell may use frequency resource F1 (or time resource T1), while a small cell may use frequency F2 (or time resource T2). This makes it possible to avoid interference between a macro cell and a small cell. In addition, both types of cells or devices having a base station function may use F1 / 2 (T1 / 2). When applied to frequency resources, this is equivalent to the concept of carrier aggregation (CA).

[0084] Macro cells and small cells or devices with base station functions can be characterized by the radio resources to be used under the premise of spatial separation from each other or their superposition method. Examples include multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and spatial division multiplexing using beamforming.

[0085] The macro cell and the small cell may include multiple transmission and reception points or multiple radio transmitters / receivers. In communications using multiple transmission and reception points or multiple radio transmitters-receivers, the multiple transmission and reception points and the multiple radio transmitters-receivers may use separate resources (frequency and time) when transmitting / receiving or may use the same resources. The multiple transmission and reception points and the multiple radio transmitters-receivers may be shared and used by different cells.

[0086] <2-2. Functional Configuration Example of Communication System>

[0087] Figure 2 1 is a diagram illustrating an example of a functional configuration of a communication system 1 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. The communication system 1 includes a server 10, a management device 20, a base station 30, and a terminal device 40. The communication system 1 provides a user with a wireless network capable of mobile communication by operating the respective wireless communication devices constituting the communication system 1 in cooperation with each other. The wireless network of the present embodiment includes, for example, a radio access network and a core network. In the present embodiment, the wireless communication device is a device having a wireless communication function, and Figure 2 In the example of , the device corresponds to the base station 30 and the terminal device 40.

[0088] The communication system 1 may include a plurality of servers 10, a plurality of management devices 20, a plurality of base stations 30, and a plurality of terminal devices 40. Figure 2 In the example of FIG. 1 , the communication system 1 includes a server 10 as a server 10 1 , 10 2 etc., and includes a management device 20 as a management device 20 1 , 20 2 etc. Figure 2 In the example of FIG. 1 , the communication system 1 includes a base station 30 as a base station 30. 1 , 30 2 etc., and includes a terminal device 40 as a terminal device 40 1 , 40 2 , 40 3 The server 10 is connected to the management device 20 via the network N. The server 10 may be connected to a device other than the management device 20 , such as a terminal device 40 , via the network N.

[0089] Examples of the network N include communication networks such as a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a cellular network, a fixed line telephone network, a regional Internet Protocol (IP) network, and the Internet. The network N may include a wired network or a wireless network. The network N may be a data network connected to the core network. The data network may be a service network of a telecommunications operator, for example, an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network. In addition, the data network may be a private network such as an intranet. Although Figure 2 Only one network is illustrated in the example of FIG. 1 , but the number of networks is not limited to one.

[0090] The devices in the figure can be regarded as devices in a logical sense. That is, some of the devices in the figure can be partially implemented by virtual machines (VMs), containers, dockers, etc., and they can be implemented on physically the same hardware.

[0091] The communication system 1 may be compatible with radio access technologies (RATs) such as long term evolution (LTE) and new radio (NR). LTE and NR are a type of cellular communication technology and enable mobile communication of terminal devices by using a cellular arrangement of multiple areas covered by base stations.

[0092] The radio access method used by the communication system 1 is not limited to LTE and NR, and may be other radio access methods such as Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) and Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (cdma2000), for example.

[0093] In addition, the base stations or relay stations constituting the communication system 1 may be ground stations or non-ground stations. The non-ground stations may be satellite stations or aircraft stations. If the non-ground stations are satellite stations, the communication system 1 may be a bent-pipe (transparent) mobile satellite communication system.

[0094] In this embodiment, a ground station (also referred to as a ground base station) refers to a base station (relay station) installed on the ground. "Ground" not only refers to land, but also refers to a general ground location, including underground, above water, and underwater. Note that in the following description, the description of "ground station" may be referred to as "gateway".

[0095] A base station in LTE may be referred to as an evolved Node B (eNodeB) or eNB. A NR base station may be referred to as a gNodeB or gNB. In LTE and NR, a terminal device (also referred to as a mobile station or terminal) may be referred to as a user equipment (UE). A terminal device is a type of communication device and is also referred to as a mobile station or terminal.

[0096] In this embodiment, the concept of "communication device" includes not only portable mobile devices (terminal devices) such as mobile terminals, but also devices installed in a structure or a mobile body. The structure or mobile body itself can be regarded as a communication device. In addition, the concept of communication device includes not only terminal devices, but also base stations and relay stations. A communication device is a type of processing device and information processing device. A communication device can be interpreted as a sending device or a receiving device.

[0097] Hereinafter, the configuration of each device included in the communication system 1 will be described in detail. The configuration of each device illustrated below is only an example. The configuration of each device may be different from the following configuration.

[0098] <2-3. Server Configuration>

[0099] First, the configuration of the server 10 will be described.

[0100] The server 10 is an information processing device (computer) that provides various services to the terminal device 40 via a network. For example, the server 10 may be an application server or a network (web) server. The server 10 may be a PC server, a medium-sized server, or a mainframe server. The server 10 may be an information processing device that performs data processing (edge ​​processing) near a user or a terminal. For example, the server 10 may be an information processing device (computer) that is arranged near a base station or built into a base station. The server 10 may of course be an information processing device that performs cloud computing.

[0101] Figure 3 1 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a server 10 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. The server 10 includes a communication unit 11, a storage unit 12, and a control unit 13. Note that Figure 4 The configuration shown in is a functional configuration, and the hardware configuration may be different from this. In addition, the functions of the server 10 may be installed in a plurality of physically separated configurations in a distributed manner. For example, the server 10 may include a plurality of information processing devices.

[0102] The communication unit 11 is a communication interface for communicating with other devices. For example, the communication unit 11 is a network interface. An example of the communication unit 11 is a local area network (LAN) interface, such as a network interface card (NIC). The communication unit 11 may be a wired interface, or may be a wireless interface. The communication unit 11 is used as a communication component of the server 10. The communication unit 11 communicates with the terminal device 40 under the control of the control unit 13.

[0103] The storage unit 12 is a data readable / writable storage device such as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a static random access memory (SRAM), a flash drive, or a hard disk. The storage unit 12 is used as a storage component of the server 10. The storage unit 12 stores, for example, prediction models (learning models) to be distributed to the terminal device 40, such as a quality prediction model and an intention prediction model. This information will be described below.

[0104] The control unit 13 is a controller that controls each unit of the server 10. The control unit 13 is implemented by, for example, a processor such as a central processing unit (CPU) or a microprocessing unit (MPU). For example, the control unit 13 is implemented by executing various programs stored in a storage device inside the server 10 by the processor using a random access memory (RAM) or the like as a work area. Note that the control unit 13 can be implemented by an integrated circuit such as an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or a field programmable gate array (FPGA). CPU, MPU, ASIC, and FPGA can all be regarded as controllers.

[0105] like Figure 3 As shown in , the control unit 13 includes an acquisition unit 131, a determiner 132 and an assignment unit 133. The various blocks (acquisition unit 131 to assignment unit 133) constituting the control unit 13 are functional blocks that respectively indicate the functions of the control unit 13. These functional blocks may be software blocks or hardware blocks. For example, each of the above-mentioned functional blocks may be a software module implemented by software (including microprograms) or a circuit block on a semiconductor chip (die). Each functional block may of course be formed as a processor or an integrated circuit. The functional blocks may be configured by using any method. Note that the control unit 13 may be configured in a functional unit different from the above-mentioned functional blocks.

[0106] The operation of the control unit 23 may be the same as the operation of each block of the control unit 33 of the base station 30 , or may be the same as the operation of each block of the control unit 43 of the terminal device 40 .

[0107] <2-4. Configuration of management device>

[0108] Next, the configuration of the management device 20 will be described.

[0109] The management device 20 is a device that manages a wireless network. For example, the management device 20 is a device that manages the communication of the base station 30. The management device 20 may be a device having a function as a mobility management entity (MME). The management device 20 may be a device having a function as an access and mobility management function (AMF) and / or a session management function (SMF). It will be understood that the function of the management device 20 is not limited to MME, AMF or SMF. The management device 20 may be a device having a function as a network slice selection function (NSSF), an authentication server function (AUSF), a policy control function (PCF) or a unified data management (UDM). In addition, the management device 20 may be a device having a function as a home subscriber server (HSS).

[0110] Note that the management device 20 may have a gateway function. For example, the management device 20 may have a function as a serving gateway (S-GW) or a packet data network gateway (P-GW). In addition, the management device 20 may have a function as a user plane function (UPF).

[0111] The core network includes multiple network functions. Each network function can be integrated into one physical device, or distributed to multiple physical devices. That is, the management device 20 can be deployed in multiple devices in a distributed arrangement. In addition, the distributed arrangement can be controlled to be executed dynamically. The base station 30 and the management device 20 constitute a network and provide wireless communication services to the terminal device 40. The management device 20 is connected to the Internet, and the terminal device 40 can use various services provided through the Internet via the base station 30.

[0112] Note that the management device 20 does not necessarily have to be a device constituting the core network. For example, it is assumed that the core network is a core network of Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) or Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (cdma2000). In this case, the management device 20 may be a device serving as a Radio Network Controller (RNC).

[0113] Figure 4 2 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a management device 20 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. The management device 20 includes a communication unit 21, a storage unit 22, and a control unit 23. Note that Figure 4 The configuration shown in is a functional configuration, and the hardware configuration may be different from this. In addition, the functions of the management device 20 may be implemented in multiple physically separated configurations in a static or dynamically distributed form. For example, the management device 20 may be composed of multiple server devices.

[0114] The communication unit 21 is a communication interface for communicating with other devices. The communication unit 21 may be a network interface or a device connection interface. For example, the communication unit 21 may be a local area network (LAN) interface such as a network interface card (NIC), or may be a universal serial bus (USB) interface including a USB host controller, a USB port, etc. In addition, the communication unit 21 may be a wired interface or a wireless interface. The communication unit 21 is used as a communication component of the management device 20. The communication unit 21 communicates with the base station 30, etc. under the control of the control unit 23.

[0115] The storage unit 22 is a data readable / writable storage device, such as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a static random access memory (SRAM), a flash drive, or a hard disk. The storage unit 22 is used as a storage component in the management device 20. The storage unit 22 stores, for example, the connection status of the terminal device 40. For example, the storage unit 22 stores the radio resource control (RRC) status or the EPS connection management (ECM) status or the 5G system connection management (CM) status of the terminal device 40. The storage unit 22 can be used as a unit called a "home memory" that stores the location information of the terminal device 40.

[0116] The control unit 23 is a controller that controls the various components of the management device 20. The control unit 23 is implemented by, for example, a processor such as a central processing unit (CPU), a microprocessing unit (MPU), or a graphics processing unit (GPU). For example, the control unit 23 is implemented by executing various programs stored in a storage device inside the management device 20 by the processor using a random access memory (RAM) or the like as a work area. Note that the control unit 23 can be implemented by an integrated circuit such as an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or a field programmable gate array (FPGA). CPU, MPU, GPU, ASIC, and FPGA can all be regarded as controllers.

[0117] Note that the operation of the control unit 23 may be the same as the operation of each block of the control unit 13 of the server 10. The operation of the control unit 23 may be the same as the operation of each block of the control unit 33 of the base station 30, or may be the same as the operation of each block of the control unit 43 of the terminal device 40.

[0118] <2-5. Base station configuration>

[0119] Next, the configuration of the base station 30 will be described.

[0120] The base station 30 is a wireless communication device that performs wireless communication with the terminal device 40. The base station 30 may be configured to perform wireless communication with the terminal device 40 via another base station 30, or may be configured to perform wireless communication with the terminal device 40 directly.

[0121] The base station 30 is a type of communication device. More specifically, the base station 30 is a device corresponding to a radio base station (base station, node B, eNB, gNB, etc.) or a radio access point. The base station 30 may be a radio relay station. In addition, the base station 30 may be an optical link device referred to as a remote radio head (RRH) or a radio unit (RU). In addition, the base station 30 may be a receiving station such as a field pickup unit (FPU). In addition, the base station 30 may be an integrated access and backhaul (IAB) donor node or an IAB relay node that provides a radio access channel and a radio backhaul channel by using time division multiplexing, frequency division multiplexing, or space division multiplexing.

[0122] In the case where the base station 30 is an IAB donor node, the base station 30 may operate as an IAB-central unit (IAB-CU). In addition, in the case where the base station 30 is an IAB relay node, the base station 30 may operate as an IAB-mobile terminal (IAB-MT) for an IAB donor node providing backhaul, and may operate as an IAB-distributed unit (IAB-DU) for a terminal device 40 providing access.

[0123] Note that the radio access technology used by the base station 30 may be a cellular communication technology or a wireless LAN technology. It is understood that the radio access technology used by the base station 30 is not limited thereto and may be other radio access technologies. For example, the radio access technology used by the base station 30 may be a low power wide area (LPWA) communication technology. It is understood that the wireless communication used by the base station 30 may be wireless communication using millimeter waves. In addition, the wireless communication used by the base station 30 may be wireless communication using radio waves or wireless communication using infrared or visible light (optical wireless communication).

[0124] The base station 30 may be capable of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) communication with the terminal device 40. Here, NOMA communication refers to communication (transmission, reception, or both) using non-orthogonal resources. The base station 30 may be capable of performing NOMA communication with another base station 30.

[0125] The base stations 30 may be able to communicate with each other via a base station-core network interface (e.g., NG interface, S1 interface, etc.). The interface may be implemented as a wired or wireless interface. In addition, the base stations may be able to communicate with each other via an inter-base station interface (e.g., Xn interface, X2 interface, S1 interface, F1 interface, etc.). The interface may be implemented as a wired or wireless interface.

[0126] Note that the concept of a base station includes not only a donor base station but also a relay base station (also referred to as a relay station). For example, a relay base station can be any one of an RF repeater, an intelligent repeater, and an intelligent surface. In addition, a base station conceptually includes not only a structure having a base station function but also a device installed in the structure.

[0127] Examples of structures include buildings such as high-rise buildings, houses, steel towers, station facilities, airport facilities, port facilities, office buildings, school buildings, hospitals, factories, commercial facilities, or stadiums. The concept of structures includes not only buildings, but also non-building structures such as tunnels, bridges, dams, fences, and steel columns, and facilities such as cranes, doors, and windmills. In addition, structures conceptually include not only land-based (in a narrow sense, ground-based) structures or underground structures, but also structures such as jetties. x ) and large floating structures as well as underwater structures such as ocean observation facilities. The base station can be referred to as an information processing device.

[0128] The base station 30 may be a donor station or a relay station. The base station 30 may be a fixed station or a mobile station. A mobile station is a wireless communication device (e.g., a base station) configured to be movable. At this time, the base station 30 may be a device installed on a mobile body, or may be the mobile body itself. For example, a relay station with mobility may be regarded as a base station 30 as a mobile station. In addition, a device designed to be mobile and having a base station function (at least a part of the base station function), such as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) represented by a drone or a smart phone, also corresponds to a base station 30 as a mobile station.

[0129] Here, the mobile body may be a mobile terminal such as a smart phone or a mobile phone. The mobile body may be a mobile body moving on land (land in a narrow sense) (e.g., a vehicle such as a car, a motorcycle, a bus, a truck, an electric bicycle, a train or a linear motor car), or a mobile body moving underground (e.g., through a tunnel) (e.g., a subway). The mobile body may be a mobile body moving on water (e.g., a ship such as a passenger ship, a cargo ship and an air cushion ship), or a mobile body moving underwater (e.g., a submersible ship such as a submarine, a submarine or an unmanned submarine). The mobile body may be a mobile body moving in the atmosphere (e.g., an aircraft such as an airplane, an airship or a drone).

[0130] In addition, the base station 30 can be a ground base station (ground station) installed on the ground. For example, the base station 30 can be a base station deployed on a structure on the ground, or can be a base station installed in a mobile body moving on the ground. More specifically, the base station 30 can be an antenna installed in a structure such as a building and a signal processing device connected to the antenna. Note that the base station 30 can be a structure or a mobile body itself. "Ground" not only means land (ground in a narrow sense), but also means a broad ground position, including underground, above water, and underwater. Note that the base station 30 is not limited to a ground base station. For example, in the case where the communication system 1 is a satellite communication system, the base station 30 can be an aircraft station. From the perspective of a satellite station, an aircraft station located on the earth is a ground station.

[0131] Note that the base station 30 is not limited to a ground station. The base station 30 may be a non-ground base station (non-ground station) capable of floating in the air or in space. For example, the base station 30 may be an aircraft station or a satellite station.

[0132] A satellite station is a satellite station that can float outside the atmosphere. A satellite station may be a device installed on a space mobile body such as an artificial satellite, or may be the space mobile body itself. A space mobile body is a mobile body that moves outside the atmosphere. Examples of space mobile bodies include artificial bodies such as artificial satellites, spacecraft, space stations, and probes.

[0133] The satellite used as a satellite station can be any one of a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite, a medium earth orbit (MEO) satellite, a geostationary orbit (GEO) satellite, or a high elliptical orbit (HEO) satellite. Therefore, the satellite station can be a device installed on a low earth orbit satellite, a medium earth orbit satellite, a geostationary orbit satellite, or a high elliptical orbit satellite.

[0134] An aircraft station is a wireless communication device capable of floating in the atmosphere, such as an aircraft. An aircraft station may be a device mounted on an aircraft or the like, or may be the aircraft itself. The concept of an aircraft includes not only heavy aircraft such as airplanes and gliders, but also light aircraft such as balloons and airships. Furthermore, the concept of an aircraft includes not only heavy aircraft and light aircraft, but also rotorcraft such as helicopters and auto-gyros. Note that an aircraft station (or an aircraft on which an aircraft station is mounted) may be an unmanned aerial vehicle, such as a drone.

[0135] Note that the concept of unmanned aerial vehicles also includes unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and tethered UAS. The concept of unmanned aerial vehicles also includes lighter-than-air (LTA) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and heavier-than-air (HTA) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Other concepts of unmanned aerial vehicles include high altitude platform (HAP) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

[0136] The coverage of the base station 30 can be large (such as a macro cell) or small (such as a pico cell). It is understood that the coverage of the base station 30 can be very small, such as a femto cell. In addition, the base station 30 can have beamforming capabilities. In this case, the base station 30 can form a cell or service area for each beam.

[0137] Figure 5 3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a base station 30 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. The base station 30 includes a wireless communication unit 31, a storage unit 32, and a control unit 33. Figure 5 The configuration shown in is a functional configuration, and the hardware configuration may be different from this. In addition, the functions of the base station 30 may be implemented in a distributed form in a plurality of physically separated configurations.

[0138] The wireless communication unit 31 is a signal processing unit for performing wireless communication with other wireless communication devices (e.g., terminal device 40). The wireless communication unit 31 operates under the control of the control unit 33. The wireless communication unit 31 can support one or more radio access methods. For example, the wireless communication unit 31 supports both NR and LTE. In addition to NR and LTE, the wireless communication unit 31 can also support W-CDMA or cdma 2000. The wireless communication unit 31 can support automatic retransmission technology such as Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ).

[0139] The wireless communication unit 31 includes a transmission processing unit 311, a reception processing unit 312, and an antenna 313. The wireless communication unit 31 may include multiple transmission processing units 311, multiple reception processing units 312, and multiple antennas 313. In the case where the wireless communication unit 31 supports multiple radio access methods, each part of the wireless communication unit 31 may be configured separately for each radio access method. For example, the transmission processing unit 311 and the reception processing unit 312 may be configured separately for LTE and NR. In addition, the antenna 313 may include multiple antenna elements (e.g., multiple patch antennas). In this case, the wireless communication unit 31 may be configured to be capable of beamforming. The wireless communication unit 31 may be configured to be capable of performing polarization beamforming using vertically polarized waves (V polarized waves) and horizontally polarized waves (H polarized waves).

[0140] The transmission processing unit 311 performs transmission processing of downlink control information and downlink data. The transmission processing unit 311 encodes the downlink control information and downlink data input from the control unit 33 by using a coding scheme such as block coding, convolutional coding or Turbo coding. Coding can be performed using polar code or low-density parity check (LDPC) code. The transmission processing unit 311 modulates the coded bits by a predetermined modulation scheme such as BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM, 256QAM. In this case, the signal points on the constellation do not necessarily have to be equidistant. The constellation can be a non-uniform constellation (NUC). The transmission processing unit 311 multiplexes the modulation symbol and downlink reference signal of each channel, and allocates the multiplexed signal on a predetermined resource element. Subsequently, the transmission processing unit 311 performs various types of signal processing on the multiplexed signal. For example, the transmission processing unit 311 performs processing such as conversion to the frequency domain using a fast Fourier transform, adding a guard interval (cyclic prefix), generating a baseband digital signal, converting to an analog signal, orthogonal modulation, up-conversion, removing extra frequency components, and power amplification. The signal generated by the transmission processing unit 311 is transmitted from the antenna 313.

[0141] The receiving processing unit 312 processes the uplink signal received via the antenna 313. For example, the receiving processing unit 312 performs processing on the uplink signal, such as down-conversion, removal of unnecessary frequency components, amplification level control, orthogonal demodulation, conversion into a digital signal, removal of a guard interval (cyclic prefix), and extraction of a frequency domain signal using a fast Fourier transform. The receiving processing unit 312 then demultiplexes an uplink channel (such as a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) or a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH)) and an uplink reference signal from the signal that has undergone these processing processes. Subsequently, the receiving processing unit 312 demodulates the received signal using a modulation scheme such as binary phase shift keying (BPSK) or quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) for the modulation symbol of the uplink channel. The modulation scheme used in the demodulation may be 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), 64QAM, or 256QAM. In this case, the signal points on the constellation do not necessarily have to be equidistant. The constellation may be a non-uniform constellation (NUC). Then, the reception processing unit 312 performs a decoding process on the coded bits of the demodulated uplink channel. The decoded uplink data and uplink control information are output to the control unit 33.

[0142] Antenna 313 is an antenna device (antenna unit) that performs mutual conversion of electric current and radio waves. Antenna 313 may include one antenna element (e.g., one patch antenna), or may include multiple antenna elements (e.g., multiple patch antennas). In the case where antenna 313 includes multiple antenna elements, wireless communication unit 31 may be configured to be able to perform beamforming. For example, wireless communication unit 31 may use multiple antenna elements to control the directivity of radio signals to generate directional beams. Antenna 313 may be a dual-polarized antenna. When antenna 313 is a dual-polarized antenna, wireless communication unit 31 may use vertical polarized waves (V polarized waves) and horizontal polarized waves (H polarized waves) when sending radio signals. Subsequently, wireless communication unit 31 may control the directivity of radio signals sent using vertical polarized waves and horizontal polarized waves. In addition, wireless communication unit 31 may send and receive spatially multiplexed signals via multiple layers including multiple antenna elements.

[0143] The storage unit 32 is a data readable / writable storage device such as a DRAM, an SRAM, a flash drive, and a hard disk. The storage unit 32 is used as a storage means in the base station 30.

[0144] The control unit 33 is a controller that controls the various components of the base station 30. The control unit 33 is implemented, for example, by a processor such as a central processing unit (CPU) or a microprocessing unit (MPU). For example, the control unit 33 is implemented by executing various programs stored in a storage device inside the base station 30 using a random access memory (RAM) or the like as a work area by the processor. Note that the control unit 33 can be implemented by an integrated circuit such as an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or a field programmable gate array (FPGA). CPU, MPU, ASIC and FPGA can all be regarded as controllers. In addition, in addition to or instead of the CPU, the control unit 33 can be implemented by a graphics processing unit (GPU).

[0145] The control unit 33 includes an acquisition unit 331, a multiplexer 332, an encoder 333, a generator 334, a receiver 335, a determiner 336 and a decoder 337. The various blocks (acquisition unit 331 to decoder 337) constituting the control unit 33 are functional blocks that respectively indicate the functions of the control unit 33. These functional blocks can be software blocks or hardware blocks. For example, each of the above-mentioned functional blocks can be a software module implemented by software (including microprograms), or can be a circuit block on a semiconductor chip (die). Each functional block can certainly be formed as a processor or an integrated circuit. Note that the control unit 33 can be configured in a functional unit different from the above-mentioned functional blocks. The functional blocks can be configured by using any method.

[0146] The operation of the control unit 23 may be the same as the operation of each block (the acquisition unit 131 to the assignment unit 133 ) of the control unit 13 of the server 10 , or may be the same as the operation of each block of the control unit 43 of the terminal device 40 .

[0147] In some embodiments, the concept of a base station may be composed of a collection of multiple physical or logical devices. For example, in this embodiment, the base station may be classified into multiple devices, such as a baseband unit (BBU) and a radio unit (RU). The base station may be interpreted as an assembly of multiple devices. In addition, the base station may be either or both of the BBU and the RU. The BBU and the RU may be connected via a predetermined interface (e.g., an enhanced common public radio interface (eCPRI)). The RU may be referred to as a remote radio unit (RRU) or a radio DoT (RD). The RU may correspond to a gNB distributed unit (gNB-DU) described below. The BBU may correspond to a gNB central unit (gNB-CU) described below. Alternatively, the RU may be a wireless device connected to the gNB-DU described below. The gNB-CU, gNB-DU, and RU connected to the gNB-DU may be configured to comply with an open radio access network (O-RAN). The RU may be a device formed integrally with an antenna. The antenna included in the base station (e.g., an antenna formed integrally with the RU) may adopt an advanced antenna system and support MIMO (e.g., FD-MIMO) or beamforming. For example, the antennas included in the base station may include 64 transmit antenna ports and 64 receive antenna ports.

[0148] In addition, the antenna mounted on the RU may be an antenna panel including one or more antenna elements, and the RU may include one or more antenna panels. For example, the RU may include two types of antenna panels, a horizontally polarized antenna panel and a vertically polarized antenna panel, or two types of antenna panels, a clockwise (right-hand) circularly polarized antenna panel and a counterclockwise (left-hand) circularly polarized antenna panel. In addition, the RU may form and control an independent beam for each antenna panel.

[0149] A plurality of base stations may be connected to each other. One or more base stations may be included in a radio access network (RAN). That is, a base station may be referred to as a RAN, a RAN node, an access network (AN), or an AN node. The RAN in LTE may be referred to as an Enhanced Universal Terrestrial RAN (EUTRAN). In addition, the RAN in NR may be referred to as an NGRAN. The RAN in W-CDMA (UMTS) may be referred to as an UTRAN.

[0150] The base station in LTE can be called an evolved Node B (eNodeB) or an eNB. That is, EUTRAN includes one or more eNodeBs (eNBs). NR base stations can be called gNodeBs or gNBs. At this time, NGRAN contains one or more gNBs. EUTRAN can include a gNB (en-gNB) connected to the core network (EPC) in the LTE communication system (EPS). Similarly, NGRAN can include an ng-eNB connected to the core network 5GC in the 5G communication system (5GS).

[0151] When the base station is an eNB, gNB, etc., the base station can be referred to as a 3GPP access. In addition, when the base station is a radio access point, the base station can be referred to as a non-3GPP access. The base station can be an optical link device called a remote radio head (RRH) or a radio unit (RU). In addition, in the case where the base station is a gNB, the base station can be a combination of the above-mentioned gNB-CU and gNB-DU, or can be any one of the gNB-CU and gNB-DU.

[0152] Here, in order to communicate with the UE, the gNB-CU hosts multiple upper layers in the access layer (e.g., radio resource control (RRC), service data adaptation protocol (SDAP), and packet data convergence protocol (PDCP)). On the other hand, the gNB-DU hosts multiple lower layers in the access layer (e.g., radio link control (RLC), medium access control (MAC), and physical layer (PHY)). That is, among the messages / information to be described below, RRC signaling (semi-static notification) can be generated by the gNB-CU, while MAC CE and DCI (dynamic notification) can be generated by the gNB-DU. Alternatively, for example, among the RRC configuration (semi-static notification), some configurations such as IE: cellGroupConfig can be generated by the gNB-DU, while the rest of the configurations can be generated by the gNB-CU. These configurations can be sent and received through the F1 interface described below.

[0153] A base station may be configured to be able to communicate with another base station. For example, when multiple base stations are each an eNB or a combination of an eNB and an en-gNB, the base stations may be connected to each other via an X2 interface. In addition, when multiple base stations are each a gNB or a combination of a gn-eNB and a gNB, the devices may be connected to each other via an Xn interface. In addition, when multiple base stations are a combination of a gNB CU and a gNBDU, the devices may be connected to each other via the above-mentioned F1 interface. For example, the messages / information described below (e.g., RRC signaling, MAC control element (MAC CE) or DCI) may be sent between multiple base stations via an X2 interface, an Xn interface, or an F1 interface.

[0154] The cell provided by the base station may be referred to as a serving cell. A serving cell conceptually includes a primary cell (PCell) and a secondary cell (SCell). When dual connectivity is configured for a UE (e.g., a terminal device 40), the PCell provided by a master node (MN) and zero or one or more SCells may be referred to as a primary cell group. Examples of dual connectivity include EUTRA-EUTRA dual connectivity, EUTRA-NR dual connectivity (ENDC), EUTRA-NR dual connectivity with 5GC, NR-EUTRA dual connectivity (NEDC), and NR-NR dual connectivity.

[0155] The serving cell may include a primary secondary cell or a primary SCG cell (PSCell). In the case of dual connectivity configured in the UE, the PSCell provided by the secondary node (SN) and zero or one or more SCells may be referred to as a secondary cell group (SCG). Unless otherwise specially configured (for example, PUCCH on the SCell), the physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) is sent in the PCell and PSCell, but not in the SCell. In addition, a radio link failure is also detected in the PCell and PSCell, but no radio link failure is detected in the SCell (no detection is required). In this way, since the PCell and PSCell have special roles in the serving cell, these cells are also referred to as special cells (SpCell).

[0156] One cell may be associated with one downlink component carrier and one uplink component carrier. In addition, the system bandwidth corresponding to one cell may be divided into a plurality of bandwidth parts (BWPs). In this case, one or more BWPs may be configured for the UE, and one BWP may be used as an active BWP for the UE. In addition, the radio resources (e.g., frequency band, number (subcarrier spacing), and time slot format (time slot configuration)) that may be used by the terminal device 40 may be different for each cell, each component carrier, or each BWP.

[0157] <2-6. Configuration of terminal device>

[0158] Next, the configuration of the terminal device 40 will be described.

[0159] The terminal device 40 is a wireless communication device that performs wireless communication with other communication devices such as the base station 30. Examples of the terminal device 40 include a mobile phone, a smart device (smartphone or tablet), a personal digital assistant (PDA), or a personal computer. In addition, the terminal device 40 may be a device such as a commercial camera equipped with a communication function, or may be a motorcycle, a mobile relay vehicle, etc. on which a communication device such as a field pickup unit (FPU) is installed. The terminal device 40 may be a machine-to-machine (M2M) device or an Internet of Things (IoT) device.

[0160] The terminal device 40 may be able to perform NOMA communication with the base station 30. The terminal device 40 may be able to use automatic retransmission techniques such as HARQ when communicating with the base station 30. The terminal device 40 may be able to perform sidelink communication with another terminal device 40. The terminal device 40 may also be able to use automatic retransmission techniques such as HARQ when performing sidelink communication. The terminal device 40 may also be able to perform NOMA communication in communication (sidelink) with another terminal device 40. In addition, the terminal device 40 may be able to perform LPWA communication with other communication devices (e.g., the base station 30 or another terminal device 40). In addition, the wireless communication used by the terminal device 40 may be wireless communication using millimeter waves. The radio communication (including sidelink communication) used by the terminal device 40 may be radio communication using radio waves or wireless communication (optical wireless communication) using infrared or visible light.

[0161] In addition, the terminal device 40 may be a mobile device. A mobile device is a movable wireless communication device. At this time, the terminal device 40 may be a wireless communication device installed on a mobile body, or may be the mobile body itself. For example, the terminal device 40 may be a vehicle moving on a road (such as a car, a bus, a truck, or a motorcycle), may be a vehicle traveling on a rail installed on a train track, etc., or may be a wireless communication device installed on a vehicle. The mobile body may be a mobile terminal, or may be a mobile body moving on land (on the ground in a narrow sense), in the ground, on water, or under water. In addition, the mobile body may be a mobile body moving within the atmosphere (such as a drone or a helicopter), or may be a mobile body moving outside the atmosphere (such as an artificial satellite).

[0162] The terminal device 40 can perform communication while being connected to multiple base stations or multiple cells at the same time. For example, when one base station supports a communication area via multiple cells (e.g., pCell and sCell), multiple cells can be aggregated by using carrier aggregation (CA) technology, dual connectivity (DC) technology, or multi-connectivity (MC) technology and communication can be performed between the base station 30 and the terminal device 40. Alternatively, the terminal device 40 and multiple base stations 30 can communicate with each other via the cells of different base stations 30 through coordinated multi-point transmission and reception (CoMP) technology.

[0163] Figure 6 4 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a terminal device 40 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. The terminal device 40 includes a wireless communication unit 41, a storage unit 42, and a control unit 43. Note that Figure 6 The configuration shown in is a functional configuration, and the hardware configuration may be different from this. In addition, the functions of the terminal device 40 may be implemented in a plurality of physically separated configurations in a distributed manner.

[0164] The wireless communication unit 41 is a signal processing unit for performing wireless communication with other wireless communication devices (e.g., the base station 30 and another terminal device 40). The wireless communication unit 41 operates under the control of the control unit 43. The wireless communication unit 41 includes a transmission processing unit 411, a reception processing unit 412, and an antenna 413. The configurations of the wireless communication unit 41, the transmission processing unit 411, the reception processing unit 412, and the antenna 413 may be similar to the configurations of the wireless communication unit 31, the transmission processing unit 311, the reception processing unit 312, and the antenna 313 of the base station 30, respectively. Similar to the wireless communication unit 31, the wireless communication unit 41 may be configured to be capable of beamforming. In addition, similar to the wireless communication unit 31, the wireless communication unit 41 may be capable of transmitting and receiving spatially multiplexed signals.

[0165] The storage unit 42 is a data readable / writable storage device such as a DRAM, an SRAM, a flash drive, and a hard disk. The storage unit 42 is used as a storage means in the terminal device 40.

[0166] The control unit 43 is a controller that controls various parts of the terminal device 40. The control unit 43 is implemented by a processor such as a CPU or an MPU, for example. For example, the control unit 43 is implemented by the processor using a RAM or the like as a work area to execute various programs stored in a storage device inside the terminal device 40. The control unit 43 can be implemented by an integrated circuit such as an ASIC or an FPGA. CPUs, MPUs, ASICs, and FPGAs can all be considered controllers. In addition to or in place of a CPU, the control unit 43 can be implemented by a GPU.

[0167] The control unit 43 includes an acquisition unit 431, a multiplexer 432, an encoder 433, a generator 434, a receiver 435, a determiner 436 and a decoder 437. The various blocks (acquisition unit 431 to decoder 437) constituting the control unit 43 are functional blocks that respectively indicate the functions of the control unit 43. These functional blocks can be software blocks or hardware blocks. For example, each of the above-mentioned functional blocks can be a software module implemented by software (including microprograms), or can be a circuit block on a semiconductor chip (die). Each functional block can certainly be formed as a processor or an integrated circuit. Note that the control unit 43 can be configured in a functional unit different from the above-mentioned functional blocks. The functional blocks can be configured by using any method.

[0168] The operation of the control unit 43 may be the same as the operation of each block (acquisition unit 131 to assignment unit 133) of the control unit 13 of the server 10, or may be the same as the operation of each block (acquisition unit 331 to decoder 337) of the control unit 33 of the base station 30.

[0169] <<3. Group Coding>>

[0170] The configuration of the communication system 1 of the present embodiment has been described above. Next, packet coding which is a premise of the transmission / reception processing of the present embodiment will be described.

[0171] <3-1. Overview of Block Coding>

[0172] This embodiment uses a coding technique for generating multiple coded bit sequences from one information sequence to be transmitted (or multiple bit sequences generated by dividing one information sequence). This coding method is called block coding in this embodiment.

[0173] In the following description, a plurality of bit sequences generated by dividing an information sequence (also referred to as a transmission data sequence) may be referred to as a plurality of source bit sequences or a plurality of subsequences. In the following description, a coded bit sequence generated by block coding may be referred to as a coded bit sequence or a coded sequence. In addition, in the following description, not only a process (coding process) of generating a plurality of coded bit sequences from an information sequence (or a plurality of source bit sequences) but also a process (decoding process) of generating an information sequence (or a plurality of source bit sequences) from a plurality of coded bit sequences may be referred to as a block coding process.

[0174] Figure 7 and Figure 8 is a diagram illustrating an overview of block coding processing. Specifically, Figure 7 is a diagram illustrating an overview of a block encoding process performed by a communication device on the transmission side, and Figure 83 is a diagram illustrating an outline of a block coding process performed by a communication device on the receiving side. Both the base station 30 and the terminal device 40 may be communication devices on the transmitting side or the receiving side. In the present embodiment, the communication device applies block coding process to information sequences to be transmitted and received.

[0175] First, refer to Figure 7 First, when an information sequence is acquired from an upper layer (eg, an SDAP layer or an RRC layer), a predetermined layer related to signal processing inside the communication device performs a predetermined signal processing ( Figure 7 The transmitting side processing 1 shown in FIG. 1 is performed, and an information sequence (hereinafter, also referred to as a transmission data sequence) is sent to a coding layer (e.g., a PDCP layer). The coding layer performs a coding process on the received transmission data sequence. The coding process performed here includes a group coding process of generating a plurality of coded bit sequences (hereinafter, also referred to as coding sequences) from a transmission data sequence. The coding sequence undergoes a predetermined signal processing ( Figure 7 The transmission side process 2) shown in , and then transmitted to the communication device on the receiving side. At this time, a plurality of coding sequences are allocated and transmitted in a plurality of channels.

[0176] Next, we will refer to Figure 8 First, when an information sequence (hereinafter, also referred to as a received data sequence) is acquired from a communication device on the transmitting side, a predetermined layer related to signal processing inside the communication device performs predetermined signal processing ( Figure 8 The receiving side processing 1 shown in FIG. 1 is performed, and the received data sequence is sent to the decoding layer (e.g., PDCP layer). The decoding layer performs a decoding process corresponding to the transmitting side encoding process (packet encoding process) on the received data sequence. The information sequence generated by the decoding process undergoes a predetermined signal processing ( Figure 8 The receiving side processes 2) as shown in , and is then sent to the upper layer.

[0177] <3-2. Characteristics of block coding>

[0178] Next, the characteristics of the packet encoding will be described. Note that the decoding process performed on the receiving side is a process corresponding to the encoding process (packet encoding process) on the transmitting side, and therefore the description thereof is omitted.

[0179] The block coding process includes: a division process of dividing a transmission data sequence into a plurality of source bit sequences; and a coding process of performing a coding process according to a predetermined error correction coding scheme on the plurality of source bit sequences to generate a plurality of coded bit sequences from the plurality of source bit sequences. The block coding process does not necessarily include the division process. The block coding process may only include the coding process.

[0180] Fig. 9 is a diagram for illustrating block coding processing. In block coding, a communication device generates multiple source bit sequences from a bit sequence (a transmission data sequence). At this time, the multiple source bit sequences can have the same length. That is, the communication device can equally divide a bit sequence. Then, the communication device divides the multiple source bit sequences ( Fig. 9 A bit sequence group shown in FIG. 1 is subjected to a predetermined error correction coding process to generate a plurality of coded bit sequences ( Fig. 9 In this case, the communication device can generate the coded bit sequence group by performing a bit-level exclusive OR (XOR) calculation on the source bit sequence. In this case, the bit sequence length of the parity check bit sequence is the same as the sequence length of the multiple source bit sequences (here, corresponding to one bit sequence group) used for input. In order to successfully perform decoding, the communication device on the transmitting side needs to send multiple output coded bit sequences (in Fig. 9 In the example, 9 coded bit sequences) are the number of source bit sequences to be coded at least (in Fig. 9 In the example of , 5) or more coded bit sequences. Note that Fig. 9 The exemplary illustrations in FIG. 1 are only examples. The block coding process is not limited to Fig. 9 The example shown in .

[0181] The error correction coding scheme used in the block coding process is expected to be a forward error correction (FEC) scheme, which is included in categories such as erasure codes, rateless codes, or fountain codes. The error correction coding scheme used in the block coding process can be a scheme that linearly combines or XORs a plurality of bit sequences for encoding. Hereinafter, examples of error correction coding schemes assumed to be used in the block coding process will be described in the following (A1) to (A11). It will be understood that the error correction coding scheme used in the first coding process is not limited to the following examples.

[0182] (A1) Erasure Code

[0183] (A2) No rate code

[0184] (A3) Fountain Code

[0185] (A4) Tornado Code

[0186] (A5) Luby Transform Code (LT Code)

[0187] (A6) Raptor Code

[0188] (A7) RaptorQ code

[0189] (A8) Low-density parity-check code (LDPC code)

[0190] (A9)BCH code

[0191] (A10) Reed-Solomon code (RS code)

[0192] (A11) XOR code

[0193] The communication device assigns redundant data to a plurality of coded bit sequences generated by block coding in units of coded bit sequences. Fig.10 is a diagram illustrating an example of redundant data assigned to a coded bit sequence. Fig.10 In the example of , the redundant data includes sequence identification data with a symbol identification function and error detection data with an error detection function. The sequence identification data is, for example, an identification number for identifying a coded bit sequence. The identification number may be referred to as an identification (ID) or a sequence number (SN). The identification number is used by the communication device on the receiving side to determine which coded sequence of the transmitting side the received coded bit sequence corresponds to. The error detection data is used by the communication device on the receiving side to detect whether there is an error in the coded bit sequence. When generating the error detection data, the communication device on the transmitting side may also perform coding processing on the coded sequence. An example of a further coding process is a cyclic redundancy check (CRC).

[0194] A specific example of the packet encoding process (encoding process / decoding process) will be described below.

[0195] Fig.11 is a diagram illustrating an example of the encoding process of the block encoding process. As described above, the encoding process of the block encoding process can be regarded as the block encoding process. Not all block encodings shown in (A1) to (A11) follow the same Fig.11 The same process as in the process. Fig.11 The diagram shows the process of generating a new parity bit sequence by encoding using one of three bit sequences as input. Fig.11 In the example of , the parity check is generated by using bit-level addition of bit sequences of equal length. In this case, the coding technique can be represented by a matrix operation. Fig.11 In the matrix representation of , the matrix on the left side of the right side is the encoding matrix. Fig.11 In the example, multiple bit sequences (components of the first to third rows of the matrix) and a parity bit sequence (components of the fourth row of the matrix) that are the same as the input are generated as a coding bit sequence group.

[0196] Fig.12 is a diagram illustrating an example of a coding process for a plurality of received coded bit sequences. Note that Fig.12 The decoding process shown in does not correspond to all the block coding schemes shown in (A1) to (A11). Fig.12The diagram shows a state in which correction is performed using a parity bit sequence in the event that one coded bit sequence at an arbitrary position is lost. Whether the lost sequence can be corrected is equivalent to whether an equation can be solved when a matrix consisting of row components of the coding matrix corresponding to the correctly delivered coded bit sequence is regarded as a linear equation.

[0197] <3-3. Exemplary Procedure of Packet Coding Processing>

[0198] Next, an exemplary procedure of the block encoding process will be described. Fig.13 is a sequence diagram illustrating an exemplary procedure of a packet encoding process. Fig.13 The exemplary process illustrated in FIG. 1 is merely an example, and the process of the packet coding process is not limited to the exemplary process. Fig.13 The downlink communication from the base station 30 to the terminal device 40 is illustrated, but the technology disclosed in this embodiment is also applicable to other communications (for example, uplink communication from the terminal device 40 to the base station 30). Fig.13 The sequence diagram of describes an exemplary process of the packet encoding processing of this embodiment.

[0199] First, the terminal device 40 notifies the base station 30 of the connected cell of information related to its own terminal capabilities (step S101). The information also includes capability information for packet coding. The terminal device 40 may notify information related to terminal capabilities during the initial connection (initial access) process or after the initial connection. The notification may be performed using a physical channel (e.g., at least one of a random access channel (PRACH), a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH), and a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH)).

[0200] The base station 30 notifies the terminal device 40 connected to the cell managed by the base station itself of semi-static control information including information related to group coding (encoding / decoding) (step S102). The semi-static control information may be cell-specific control information. The base station 30 may notify the semi-static control information during the initial connection process or after the initial connection (initial access). In addition, the base station 30 may notify the control information as part of an RRC process (such as RRC signaling, RRC configuration, or RRC reconfiguration). In addition, the base station 30 may periodically notify the terminal device 40 of the control information. The notification of the control information may be performed using a physical channel (i.e., at least one of a physical broadcast channel (PBCH), a physical downlink control channel, an enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH), and a physical downlink shared channel).

[0201] When receiving the semi-static control information, the terminal device 40 performs settings related to coding based on the information related to the packet coding included in the received control information (step S103).

[0202] Thereafter, when downlink communication occurs from the base station 30 to the terminal device 40, the base station 30 transmits dynamic control information to the terminal device 40 (step S104). Examples of situations where downlink communication occurs include situations where the terminal device 40 requests data download (pull) and situations where push data occurs to the terminal device 40. The dynamic control information may be terminal-specific (UE-specific) control information or terminal group-specific (UE group-specific) control information. Here, the terminal group is, for example, a group of one or more terminal devices 40 that are transmission destination targets when the downlink communication is multicast or broadcast communication.

[0203] Note that the dynamic control information may include various types of information, such as information related to radio resources used to perform downlink communication. For example, the dynamic control information may include, for example, information related to various resources used to allocate downlink communication to the target terminal device 40 (group of terminal devices 40). More specifically, the dynamic control information may include, for example, the following information (1) to (9).

[0204] (1) Frequency resources (e.g., resource blocks, subcarriers, subcarrier groups, etc.)

[0205] (2) Time resources (e.g., subframe, time slot, mini-time slot, symbol, etc.)

[0206] (3) Spatial resources (e.g., antennas, antenna ports, spatial layers, spatial streams, etc.)

[0207] (4) Non-orthogonal resources (e.g., resources related to power, interleaving mode, scrambling mode, diffusion mode, etc.) used for predetermined communications (e.g., non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), multi-user superposition transmission (MUST), interleaved multiple access (IDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA), etc.)

[0208] (5) Modulation Order

[0209] (6) The coding method used in block coding (e.g., error correction coding scheme)

[0210] (7) Information related to the coding rate of block coding

[0211] (8) Information related to redundant data assigned to the coding sequence (e.g., information related to an error detection method and an identification number of the coding sequence)

[0212] (9) ARQ / HARQ settings (e.g., new data indicator (NDI), redundancy version (RV), etc.)

[0213] The terminal device 40 that has received the dynamic control information performs settings for preparing for appropriate reception of downlink communication according to the control information (step S105 ).

[0214] Next, the base station 30 performs encoding on the downlink communication data to the terminal device by using the packet coding process so that the information sequence subjected to the transmission process in the upper layer is consistent with the control information notified to the terminal device 40, and performs the transmission process including the physical layer process (including modulation, physical layer coding, etc.) (step S106). The base station 30 transmits the encoded and modulated data to the terminal device 40 as a radio signal (step S107).

[0215] When receiving data from the base station 30, the terminal device 40 performs various types of processing (reception processing, demodulation processing, and decoding processing) according to the settings specified in the control information, including encoding processing corresponding to the packet encoding processing (step S108). For example, the terminal device 40 distinguishes whether the recovered coding sequence includes errors. Subsequently, the terminal device 40 attempts decoding using only the coding sequence that does not include errors. Thereafter, the terminal device 40 returns ACK or NACK to the base station 30 depending on whether the data decoding is successful or results in failure. In addition, the terminal device 40 desirably changes the settings of the processing related to the additional transmission (for example, setting ARQ / HARQ processing) according to whether the data decoding is successful or results in failure. In the event that the decoding results in failure, the terminal device 40 desirably stores the decoding result or the data (coding sequence) on the way to the decoding in a memory in order to perform retransmission and a combination including the subsequently received coding sequence. When the decoding is successful, the terminal device 40 performs processing for data transmission to the upper layer. In Fig.13 In the example of , the terminal device 40 fails in decoding and returns NACK to the base station 30 (step S109).

[0216] The base station 30 performs the processing to be performed next according to the response (ACK / NACK) received from the terminal device 40. For example, in the case of receiving a notification of NACK, preparation for transmission of the additional information sequence is performed (step S110). Examples of preparation for the transmission include generating a new coding sequence by block coding, transmission processing required by the transmission, and selection of radio resources. Receiving ACK from the terminal device 40 indicates that the transmission and reception of the target data were performed without any problem, and therefore, the process moves to the communication of the next new data.

[0217] The base station 30 continues to perform downlink communication according to the process for additional transmission corresponding to the above response (ACK / NACK) as retransmission or transmission of new data. To this end, the base station 30 notifies the target terminal device 40 of dynamic control information again, and performs downlink communication according to the setting.

[0218] exist Fig.13 In the example of , since NACK is received from the terminal device 40 (step S109), the base station 30 performs processing for determining additional transmission (step S110), and notifies the terminal device 40 of dynamic control information again (step S111). The terminal device 40 that has received the dynamic control information performs settings for preparing for appropriate reception of downlink communication according to the control information. The base station 30 performs various types of processing including packet coding processing on the downlink communication data sent to the terminal device 40 to be consistent with the control information notified to the terminal device 40 (step S112). Subsequently, the base station 30 retransmits the coded data to the terminal device 40 (step S113).

[0219] The terminal device 40 combines the data based on the retransmission signal, and performs various types of processing (reception processing, demodulation processing, and decoding processing) on ​​the combined data according to the settings specified in the control information, including encoding processing corresponding to the packet encoding processing (step S114). Fig.13 In the example of , the terminal device 40 has successfully decoded at this time, returns ACK to the base station 30 (step S115), and performs the remaining reception processing (step S116).

[0220] When receiving ACK, the base station 30 performs processing for determining additional transmission (step S117), and moves to communication of next new data.

[0221] <<4. First embodiment>>

[0222] The packet coding which is a premise of the transmission / reception processing of the present embodiment has been described above. Next, the operation of the communication system 1 of the first embodiment will be described below.

[0223] <4-1. Overview of First Embodiment>

[0224] First, an outline of the first embodiment will be described.

[0225] <Background>

[0226] The 3GPP NR standard (mainly Release 15 and later) supports a function called multi-TRP (also called MTRP, M-TRP, or mTRP). Multi-TRP is a function of sending a single or multiple transport blocks by collaboratively using multiple transmission and reception points (TRPs) at the physical layer level. For example, an overview of multi-TRP is described in documents such as non-patent document 1 (3GPP TSG-RAN RP-202803) and non-patent document 2 (3GPP TSG-RAN WG2R2-1914020).

[0227] Multi-TRP is roughly divided into two modes. Fig.14 and Fig.15 The figures each illustrate a pattern of multiple TRPs.

[0228] Fig.14 is a diagram illustrating a first mode of multiple TRPs. In the first mode, channel information for each TRP is exchanged independently with the UE. The first mode assumes that forwarding between TRPs is used during non-ideal communication.

[0229] Fig.15 is a diagram illustrating a second mode of multiple TRPs. In the second mode, channel information of the UE and each TRP is exchanged collectively via a single TRP. This assumes that the fronthaul between the TRPs is used during ideal communication. Compared to the first mode, the second mode uses fewer channel information exchanges.

[0230] These modes assume the use of a method to improve communication reliability by sending the same data on each TRP. In each mode, these controls are performed by a single media access control entity (MAC entity).

[0231] In the case of multiple TRPs, the transport block size (TRS) processed by each TRP is determined by channel information or resource amount. Here, the channel information includes a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) and / or a channel quality indicator (CQI) value determined by the information. In addition, the information about the resource amount includes at least one piece of information such as the number of available resource blocks and the number of layers.

[0232] Non-patent document 3 (3GPP TS 38.401 V16.8.0) describes the NG RAN architecture defined by 3GPP. Fig.16 is a diagram illustrating an example of an NG RAN architecture.

[0233] In the current standard, the base station (in Fig.16In the example of , the functions of gNB are divided into two: central unit (CU) and distributed unit (DU). The boundary line between CU and DU (also called split point or division point) is set between the packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) layer and the radio link control (RLC) layer in the 3GPP protocol stack.

[0234] Here, DU may include some or all functions known by names such as Radio Remote Head (RRH), Remote Radio Unit (RRU), and Radio Unit (RU) in 3GPP LTE. It is assumed that one gNB includes one CU and one or more DUs. In addition, one DU may establish a connection only between one CU.

[0235] For communication flexibility, in an appropriate implementation, one DU can be connected to multiple CUs. In order to establish communication between CU and DU, 3GPP defines "F1" as the interface between these units. This interface is a logical interface. For example, IP packets are transmitted over a network such as Ethernet (registered trademark) (IEEE 802.3) to establish communication between CU and DU.

[0236] <Question>

[0237] In a communication system using multiple TRPs, there may be problems of efficiency and flexibility in achieving communication reliability. Here, the problems of efficiency and flexibility include, for example, the following problems (1) to (3).

[0238] (1) When the channel information between each TRP-UE is different (i.e., the transport block size (TBS) is different for each TRP), the same amount of information cannot be sent at each TRP.

[0239] (2) In the case where each TRP cannot process the same size of transport blocks (TB), the receiving side MAC layer cannot perform synchronization in units of subMAC protocol data units (PDUs) or MAC service data units (SDUs).

[0240] (3) From the perspective of coding efficiency, a method of simply duplicating the same data (eg, subMAC PDU or MAC SDU) and judging whether transmission of each transport block is successful is not preferable.

[0241] <Solution>

[0242] In view of this, a first embodiment is provided to solve the above problem by introducing forward error correction (FEC) at the packet level before the upper layer (particularly before the process of generating TB from the upper layer packet). The outline of the solution of this embodiment will be described below.

[0243] The communication system 1 of the first embodiment includes: a sending device (for example, a base station 30) capable of performing communication through multiple TRPs; and a receiving device (for example, a terminal device 40) capable of performing communication through multiple TRPs.

[0244] Fig.17 It is a diagram illustrating an overview of the transmission processing according to the first embodiment. The transmission device multiplexes a plurality of upper layer packets to generate a transmission data sequence. Subsequently, the transmission device generates a plurality of coding sequences from the transmission data sequence by using group coding. At this time, the group coding processing includes: a process of dividing a transmission data sequence into a plurality of subsequences; and a process of performing coding processing according to a predetermined error correction coding scheme on the plurality of subsequences to generate a plurality of coding sequences from the plurality of subsequences. The transmission device allocates a plurality of coding sequences to each TRP based on information on the transmission block size of each TRP in the plurality of TRPs. Subsequently, the transmission device generates a transmission block for each TRP in the plurality of TRPs based on the allocated coding sequences.

[0245] Fig.18 1 is a diagram illustrating an overview of a receiving process according to a first embodiment. A receiving device receives a plurality of transport blocks from a transmitting device. Subsequently, the receiving device extracts a plurality of coding sequences from each of the plurality of transport blocks. The receiving device decodes the extracted plurality of coding sequences using a decoding method corresponding to the block coding. Subsequently, the receiving device separates the decoded data into a plurality of upper layer packets.

[0246] <Effect>

[0247] The PHY belonging to each TRP receives from the upper layer a group of coded symbols generated from the same upper layer group of packets that satisfies the request for each transport block size (TBS) as a transport block (TB). Therefore, when checking in units of upper layer packets, data sent for each TRP can be synchronized. That is, by performing encoding in the upper layer, the communication system 1 can change a sequence of a certain size to any size while saving the amount of information, so that any TBS can be supported. Therefore, the communication system 1 can improve efficiency and flexibility in achieving communication reliability.

[0248] <4-2. Operation of Communication System 1 of First Embodiment>

[0249] The outline of the first embodiment has been described above. Hereinafter, the operation of the communication system 1 of the first embodiment will be described.

[0250] Fig.19 and Fig. 20 is a sequence diagram illustrating the transmission / reception processing according to the first embodiment. Fig.19 and Fig. 20 In the example of , the communication system 1 includes two TRPs (physical layers). Fig.19 In the example of , each physical layer performs the calculation of the transport block size (TBS) and the processing required for the calculation separately. Fig. 20 In the example of , a physical layer representatively obtains channel information between the transmission and reception points RX and calculates each TBS. Fig.19 and Fig. 20 In the example of , TX PHY 1 is in correspondence with RX PHY 1, and TX PHY 2 is in correspondence with RX PHY 2. As long as each transmission point and TB can be processed independently, they do not need to be physical layers. For example, these can be low PHY, RHH or RU.

[0251] The following will refer to Fig.19 and Fig. 20 The transmission / reception processing according to the first embodiment is described. Fig.19 and Fig. 20 In the following description, the communication device on the transmitting side may be referred to as a transmitting device, and the communication device on the receiving side will be referred to as a receiving device.

[0252] First, the transmitting device performs a multiplexing process of the upper layer packets (step S201). For example, the transmitting device multiplexes a plurality of upper layer packets to generate a transmission data sequence. Here, the upper layer packet refers to a packet before undergoing physical layer transmission. For example, the upper layer packet can be any one of the following (1) to (4).

[0253] (1) subMAC PDU, MAC SDU

[0254] (2) RLC PDU, RLC SDU

[0255] (3) PDCP PDU, PDCP SDU

[0256] (4) Bit sequence generated above the physical layer

[0257] Then, the transmitting device determines the size of the bit sequence (one transmission data sequence) generated after the multiplexing process. Note that this process may be omitted. In addition, in order to determine the size, the transmitting device may use information related to one or more communications.

[0258] At this time, the information related to communication may be information related to a channel state (eg, DCI).

[0259] In addition, the information related to communication may be information used for establishing and reconfiguring a radio bearer or a logical layer. For example, the information related to communication may be information included in an RRC signal, a MACCE, an RLC control PDU, or a PDCP control PDU.

[0260] In addition, the information related to communication may be control information for a logical layer. For example, the information related to communication may be information included in an RRC signal, a MAC CE, an RLC control PDU, or a PDCP control PDU.

[0261] In addition, in order to determine the size, the transmitting device may use information about the TBS of each of the multiple transmitting and receiving points (for example, the TBS notified from each physical layer). For example, the transmitting device may determine the largest size among the multiple transport block sizes as the size of the bit sequence (a transmit data sequence). In the case of using two TRPs for communication, when each TBS (TBS1 / TBS2) is notified from the PHY layer (PHY1 / PHY2) to which each TRP belongs, the transmitting device may compare the sizes of TBS1 and TBS2, and determine the larger size as the size of the bit sequence (a transmit data sequence). It will be understood that the algorithm used by the transmitting device to determine the size is not limited to the above algorithm.

[0262] After determining the size, the transmitting device multiplexes a plurality of packets to obtain the determined size. At this time, the transmitting device may perform zero padding after multiplexing to obtain the determined size.

[0263] Subsequently, the transmitting device performs encoding processing on the multiplexed bit sequence (a transmission data sequence) (step S202). Specifically, the transmitting device performs group encoding processing on a transmission data sequence. The group encoding processing includes: a division process of dividing a transmission data sequence into a plurality of subsequences; and a generation process of performing encoding processing according to a predetermined error correction coding scheme on the plurality of subsequences to generate a plurality of coded sequences from the plurality of subsequences.

[0264] (Division process)

[0265] The transmitting device determines the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence according to a predetermined condition, and divides the transmission data sequence into a plurality of subsequences to obtain the determined number of divisions.

[0266] At this time, the transmitting device can determine the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence based on the reliability information required to send the transmission data sequence. For example, the transmitting device can determine the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence based on the value of the 5G QoS identifier (5QI) set in the data radio bearer (DRB).

[0267] In addition, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmit data sequence based on any value or notification from another communication device. For example, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmit data sequence based on the number of available TRPs. In addition, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmit data sequence based on notifications in configuration / reconfiguration, establishment, and reestablishment of the logical layer.

[0268] In addition, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence based on information of a transport block size (TBS). For example, the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence may be determined based on the size of the transport block determined by information notified from the terminal device 40 indicated by the PUCCH.

[0269] For example, the transmitting device can determine the size of a subsequence based on the common divisor of two TBSs among the TBSs notified from each TRP, and can determine the number of divisions based on the determined size. When one or more coding sequences are multiplexed using this method to generate a transport block, each TRP can receive a transport block having the same size as the notified TBS from an upper layer. Therefore, from the perspective of improving the efficiency of resource specification, this method is effective.

[0270] For example, the transmitting device can determine the size of a subsequence based on the divisor of any TBS among the TBSs notified from each TRP, and then can determine the number of divisions based on the determined size. This method is effective because the number of divisions can be determined by a method with lower complexity than the above method.

[0271] In addition, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence based on the state of the physical layer. For example, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence based on the state of the channel. In addition, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence based on a modulation and coding scheme (MCS). In addition, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence based on a QoS class identifier (QCI). In addition, the transmitting device may determine the number of divisions of a transmission data sequence based on resource allocation.

[0272] The advantages and disadvantages of determining the number of partitions (or increasing / decreasing the size of the subsequences) are as follows.

[0273] Basically, it is assumed that a header is assigned to each coding sequence for the purpose of performing point-to-point sharing of information to be used for decoding. The header is a redundant component, and its total amount increases in proportion to the number of coding sequences used for transmission. On the other hand, as described above, when encoding is performed using n subsequences, the minimum number of coding sequences required for decoding is n. Therefore, unless the transmitting side sends at least n sequences by some method, decoding cannot be successful. That is, the larger the n value, the larger the redundant component caused by the header. However, in the case where the size of the coding sequence increases, the coding sequence will not fit the TBS sent from the physical layer corresponding to each TRP, or will fit but have a large amount of blank space. For example, when the TBS is 20 and the size of the coding sequence is 13, it is assumed that the transport block has seven blank spaces. At this point, it is assumed that reducing the size of the coding sequence will also reduce the blank space of the transport block. In this regard, reducing the size of the coding sequence is effective.

[0274] (Generation process)

[0275] The transmitting device performs encoding processing using the subsequence group. Subsequently, the transmitting device assigns a header to each encoded sequence. The header is not necessarily assigned. In the case where the header is assigned, the header includes at least one piece of information described in the following (1) to (3).

[0276] (1) Information used to identify a coding sequence.

[0277] (2) A function capable of detecting errors in a coding sequence or a function equivalent thereto.

[0278] (3) Information used in demultiplexing (e.g., unit code sequence length).

[0279] The transmitting device allocates multiple coding sequences to each TRP based on the information of the transmission block size of each transmitting and receiving point in the multiple transmitting and receiving points. Subsequently, the transmitting device generates a transmission block of each TRP in the multiple TRPs based on the allocated coding sequence (steps S203 and S204).

[0280] For example, the transmitting device multiplexes the coded sequences so that the size is closer to the requested TBS or less. At this time, the requested TBS is the TBS requested by the PHY layer belonging to one UE-TRP connection. The total size of the coded sequences sent to multiple PHY layers is equal to or greater than the size of the sequence (a transmission data sequence) after multiplexing of multiple upper layer packets. When viewed for each physical layer to be sent, the multiplexed coded sequences can be repeated.

[0281] In addition, the transmitting device may assign a header to the multiplexed sequence (ie, transport block). The header is not necessarily assigned. In the case where the header is assigned, the header includes at least the information shown in (1) to (2).

[0282] (1) Information used in demultiplexing (for example, unit code sequence length).

[0283] (2) Control information required for transport blocks (e.g., HARQ-ID).

[0284] The physical layer of the transmitting device transmits a transport block to the receiving device. The physical layer of the receiving device receives the transport block from the transmitting device. The receiving device receives the transport block from the physical layer.

[0285] The receiving device demultiplexes the transport blocks received from the physical layer (step S205). This process can be performed sequentially on the transport blocks delivered from the physical layer. The receiving device can maintain the information required for demultiplexing as a value that does not change due to any information or operation. In addition, the receiving device can receive the information required for demultiplexing from the transmitting device. The information can be sent in the form of being included in the control information for each TRP. In addition, the information can be sent in the form of being included in the header assigned to the transport block. The receiving device can perform demultiplexing of the transport block according to the notification in the configuration / reconfiguration, establishment or reestablishment of the logical layer.

[0286] Next, the receiving device performs decoding processing on the multiple coded sequences obtained by demultiplexing (step S206). For example, the receiving device decodes the multiple coded sequences by using a decoding method corresponding to the block coding used in step S202. At this time, the receiving device can determine the start timing of the decoding processing.

[0287] For example, the receiving device may start decoding a plurality of coded sequences at the timing of receiving a coded sequence of a quantity or length that satisfies a predetermined criterion. For example, the receiving device determines whether the quantity (or length) of the coded sequence correctly received satisfies a predetermined criterion. At this time, the receiving device may determine whether a coded sequence with the same number of divisions has been received. In addition, the receiving device may determine whether a coded sequence of a quantity that is judged to have a high expected value for achieving target reliability has been received. When the predetermined criterion is met, the receiving device starts decoding a plurality of coded sequences.

[0288] In addition, the receiving device may start decoding the plurality of coding sequences when a timer prompting the start of decoding meets a predetermined criterion. The timer may be set by the transmitting device or may be set by the receiving device.

[0289] Next, the receiving device demultiplexes the decoded sequence (step S207). The receiving device can maintain the information required for demultiplexing as a value that does not change due to any information or operation. In addition, the receiving device can receive the information required for demultiplexing from the transmitting device. The information can be sent in the form of being included in the control information for each TRP. In addition, the information can be sent in the form of being included in the header assigned to the transport block. The receiving device can perform demultiplexing of the transport block according to the notification in the configuration / reconfiguration, establishment or reestablishment of the logical layer.

[0290] According to the first embodiment, the communication system 1 can handle the case where the transmission block size is different for each transmission and reception point. Therefore, the communication system 1 can improve the efficiency and flexibility in achieving communication reliability.

[0291] <<5. Second embodiment>>

[0292] Next, the operation of the communication system 1 of the second embodiment will be described.

[0293] <5-1. Overview of Second Embodiment>

[0294] First, an outline of the first embodiment will be described.

[0295] <Background>

[0296] Non-patent document 3 (3GPP TS 38.401 V16.8.0) describes the NG RAN architecture defined by 3GPP. For example, non-patent document 3 discloses Fig.16 The NGRAN architecture shown in .

[0297] In the current standard, the base station (in Fig.16 In the example of gNB, the functionality of the gNB is split into two: central unit (CU) and distributed unit (DU). Fig.21 is a diagram for illustrating the boundary line between CU and DU. Currently, the boundary line between CU and DU (also called split point or division point) is set between the PDCP layer and the RLC layer in the 3GPP protocol stack (option 2), such as Fig.21 As shown in P1 in.

[0298] Here, DU may include some or all functions known by names such as Radio Remote Head (RRH), Remote Radio Unit (RRU), and Radio Unit (RU) in 3GPP LTE. It is assumed that one gNB includes one CU and one or more DUs. In addition, one DU may establish a connection only between one CU.

[0299] For communication flexibility, in an appropriate implementation, one DU can be connected to multiple CUs. In order to establish communication between CU and DU, 3GPP defines "F1" as the interface between these units. This interface is a logical interface. For example, IP packets are transmitted over Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) to establish communication between CU and DU.

[0300] Since a general public network is used as a communication path, F1 is a non-ideal wired interface where synchronization between communication routes is difficult to achieve. As some exceptions, there are cases where F1 is provided wirelessly. Integral And Backhaul (IAB) corresponds to this case. Fig. 22 is a diagram illustrating an example of an IAB architecture (C-plane). In IAB, F1 is provided as a wireless interface between an IAB donor or a DU on an IAB node and a mobile terminal (MT) on the IAB node.

[0301] Furthermore, the CU and the DU may be implemented on divided planes, ie, a control plane (CP) and a user plane (UP). Fig.23 3GPP standard, a gNB includes one CU-CP, multiple CU-UPs, and DUs.

[0302] <Communication Architecture Assumed by This Embodiment>

[0303] At the time of Release 14, the split point, i.e., the point at which the CU-DU will be split, has been discussed. As a result of the discussion, the split at the current split point, which is considered to have the best balance between throughput requirements and delay requirements in the current implementation, is adopted ( Fig.21 However, it is estimated that splitting at other splitting points will be adopted in the future (e.g., Fig.21 That is, it is estimated that in the future, functions for communication will be physically, logically, or virtually divided, and there will be a network configuration having a communication architecture having a topology that allows redundancy (diversity) in communication routing.

[0304] Thus, in the present embodiment, for example, when focusing on the unit definition by separation of base station functions, it is assumed that the network configuration adopts the following mode. Fig.24 is a diagram illustrating an example of a basic mode of network configuration. Fig.24 In, HU, MU and RU are defined as follows:

[0305] Higher Level Units (HU):

[0306] HU is the highest level unit when performing functional splitting of network configuration. HU includes, for example, core network functions or control entity functions. For example, one HU is defined for each time slot or bearer. Fig.25 and Fig.26 is a diagram illustrating an example of an architecture that a HU may adopt. Fig.25 and Fig.26 One of the modes shown in . The HU can be virtually constructed on a cloud server, or can be defined as being virtually separated on the same server or device as other units. In the case where the HU is defined as a function from the core network onwards (gNB side of the NG interface) until the PDCP layer, the HU is the same as the CU in the current standard of 3GPP. In addition, the HU can be configured separately in the UP and CP. In this case, on the CP side, one HU (HU-CP) can be defined. In addition, on the UP side, the HU (HU-UP) can be defined as one HU or multiple HUs.

[0307] MU(Middle Unit):

[0308] MU is a unit that exists between the high-level unit (HU) and the radio unit (RU) when performing functional splitting of network configuration. One MU is defined in the form of being subordinate to one HU or one or more MUs. In addition, multiple MUs can be defined for one HU or one or more MUs. Fig. 27 , Fig.28 and Fig.29 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary architecture that can be adopted by the MU and RU. Fig. 27 , Fig.28 and Fig.29 One of the modes shown in . MU can be virtually constructed on a cloud server, or can be defined as being virtually separated on the same server or device as other units. For the purpose of further splitting the functions, one MU can be subjected to functional splitting. In that case, for example, each MU can be distinguished by names such as Upper-MU and Lower-MU according to the order of the protocol stack in 3GPP. For example, when MU is a unit including all analog parts including RLC layer functions to RF functions, the MU corresponds to DU in the current standard of 3GPP.

[0309] Radio Unit (RU):

[0310] RU is the lowest level unit when performing functional splitting of network configuration. RU may include, for example, analog functions, RF equipment, and antennas. One RU is defined in the form of being subordinate to one or more MUs. In addition, multiple RUs may be defined for one or more MUs. RUs are used Fig. 27 , Fig.28 and Fig.29One of the modes shown in . The transmit signals sent by one RU can be separated by physical or logical separation technology. For example, the transmit signals sent by one RU can be separated in time axis, frequency axis or space by using characteristics such as orthogonality. In order to achieve separation, the RU may include multiple transmission points with physical distance or a transmission device including multiple antennas. As an example, a remote radio head (RRH), a radio equipment (RE) and a remote radio unit (RRU) can also be defined as a mode of RU.

[0311] (Inter-unit interface)

[0312] Note that the connection state of the interface (HU-MU, MU-MU, MU-RU) between each unit is allowed as follows. In the case of using a wired connection, ideal (a state capable of achieving synchronization and controlling the communication path state) and non-ideal (for example, a case of using a communication network such as Ethernet) are allowed. In the case of using a wireless connection, a certain connection state is independently allowed with respect to the state of a certain interface at a CU-RU defined by a time slot or bearer. Note that the HU-MU connection corresponds to the above-mentioned backhaul or midhaul. The MU-MU connection corresponds to the above-mentioned midhaul. The MU-RU connection corresponds to the above-mentioned fronthaul.

[0313] (Architecture)

[0314] Figure 30 to Figure 33 : is a diagram illustrating a communication architecture assumed in the present embodiment. Here is a possible situation in which the network configuration includes one bearer or time slot and there is routing redundancy between the HU and the UE. In the present embodiment, the mode of the network configuration (redundancy of the communication route) is classified into the following architecture example 1 ((a) to (c)) or architecture example 2 ((a) to (d)). Here, the edge MU is a MU that has a direct connection with the RU.

[0315] Architecture Example 1:

[0316] (a) The case where redundancy is closed between the HU and the edge MU and not closed at the RU or UE (e.g. Fig.30 ).

[0317] (b) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and RU and not turned off at the UE (e.g. Fig.31 ).

[0318] (c) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and UE (e.g. Fig.32 ).

[0319] Architecture Example 2:

[0320] (a) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the edge MU and not turned off at the RU or UE (e.g. Fig.30 ).

[0321] (b) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and RU and not turned off at the UE (e.g. Fig.31 ).

[0322] (c) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the UE, and it is not the case of (d) below (e.g., Fig.32 ).

[0323] (d) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the UE and redundancy is also turned off from the HU to the edge MU (e.g., Fig.33 ).

[0324] Here, "redundancy off" indicates a state in which two or more different routes exist in the routes connecting between two specific units, and at least the unit on the terminal side has links with a plurality of units. Figure 30 to Figure 33 In the example of , the portion indicated by CP is a point where redundancy is turned off. Between units where redundancy is turned off, redundancy between the same unit or another unit can be turned off. Here, the unit includes a UE (terminal device).

[0325] <Question>

[0326] A problem to be solved in the second embodiment is the inefficiency when a coding technique for improving reliability and using routing redundancy to achieve effective utilization of diversity is introduced in a communication system having such a communication architecture.

[0327] In particular, in a communication system adopting the mode described in Architecture Example 1 or Architecture Example 2, the point at which redundancy is turned off varies depending on the system. When considering the characteristics of block coding that a sufficient effect can be achieved when decoding is performed at a point at which redundancy is turned off, performing encoding at a single point is not considered to be efficient.

[0328] That is, it is necessary to provide a process or signal processing capable of performing decoding at a highly effective point or capable of switching a decoding point as needed according to various types of route redundancy.

[0329] <Solution>

[0330] When the configuration of a network connected to a user equipment (UE) is functionally split into a high-level unit (HU), a middle unit (MU), and a radio unit (RU), the communication system of the second embodiment includes: a transmitting device corresponding to the HU; and a receiving device corresponding to the MU, RU, or UE.

[0331] The edge MU is a MU located closest to the RU, and the edge MU transmits information related to the RU having a direct connection with the edge MU to the transmitting device (HU). The transmitting device obtains information about the RU having a direct connection with the edge MU from the edge MU. Based on the information (information related to the RU) obtained from the edge MU, the transmitting device determines information related to the architecture of the edge MU, the RU, and the UE. Subsequently, the transmitting device generates multiple coding sequences from a transmission data sequence by using group coding, and assigns information related to the architecture to each of the multiple coding sequences.

[0332] The receiving device (MU, RU or UE) receives a coded sequence to which architecture-related information has been assigned from the transmitting device (HU). Then, based on the architecture-related information assigned to the coded sequence, the receiving device determines whether the decoding process is valid or invalid (whether the receiving device itself should perform the decoding process). When it is determined that the decoding process is valid, the receiving device decodes the plurality of coded sequences using a decoding method corresponding to the block coding.

[0333] <Effect>

[0334] Since information related to the architecture is assigned to the encoding sequence, the decoding process can be performed by an appropriate device on the network. Therefore, highly reliable and highly efficient communication can be performed by making full use of routing redundancy. In addition, the switching of the decoding start point can be achieved with a small amount of information without relying too much on the configuration of the network.

[0335] <5-2. Operation of Communication System 1 of Second Embodiment>

[0336] The outline of the second embodiment has been described above. Hereinafter, the operation of the communication system 1 of the second embodiment will be described.

[0337] In the following description, a device corresponding to a high-level unit (HU) is referred to as a transmitting device. In the following description, a device corresponding to an intermediate unit (MU), a radio unit (RU), or a user equipment (UE) is referred to as a receiving device. The HU may be a server 10, a management device 20, a base station 30, or a partial function of these devices. The MU may be a management device 20, a base station 30, or a partial function of these devices. In addition, the UE may be a terminal device 40.

[0338] First, the transmission process will be described. Fig.34 is a flowchart illustrating the transmission process according to the second embodiment. Fig.34 The transmission process according to the second embodiment is described.

[0339] The edge MU notifies the transmitting device (HU) of information related to the RU having a direct connection with the edge MU (hereinafter referred to as RU information). Here, the edge MU is an MU having a direct connection with the RU. The transmitting device (HU) obtains the RU information from the edge MU (step S301). The RU information can be notified on a physical channel or can be notified via a public general network. At this time, the RU information includes at least any one of the following information (1) to (2).

[0340] (1) Information for identifying the edge MU. For example, this information is an ID unique to the edge MU.

[0341] (2) Information related to the RU attached to the edge MU. This information is, for example, the number of RUs directly connected to the edge MU. Alternatively, this information is, for example, information for identifying the RU directly connected to the edge MU (e.g., an RU-specific ID).

[0342] The RU information is used to identify the number of generated coding sequences and the architecture information attached to the coding sequences.

[0343] Next, the transmitting device (HU) determines the architecture information based on the RU information (step S302). The architecture information is information related to the architecture of the edge MU, RU, and UE. For example, the transmitting device determines information for specifying in which unit the redundancy of the communication route is turned off as the architecture information. This process (architecture determination process) includes, for example, the following processes (1) to (2).

[0344] (1) The transmitting unit (HU) recognizes the number of edge MUs to be used and the number of available RUs based on the RU information acquired in step S301.

[0345] (2) The transmitting device classifies the architecture information into an architecture example (architecture example 1 or architecture example 2) according to the discrimination result of (1) above.

[0346] Architecture Example 1:

[0347] (a) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the edge MU and not turned off at the RU or UE (e.g. Fig.30 ).

[0348] (b) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and RU and not turned off at the UE (e.g. Fig.31 ).

[0349] (c) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and UE (e.g. Fig.32 ).

[0350] Architecture Example 2:

[0351] (a) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the edge MU and not turned off at the RU or UE (e.g. Fig.30 ).

[0352] (b) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and RU and not turned off at the UE (e.g. Fig.31 ).

[0353] (c) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the UE, and it is not the case of (d) below (e.g., Fig.32 ).

[0354] (d) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the UE and redundancy is also turned off from the HU to the edge MU (e.g., Fig.33 ).

[0355] At this time, when the number of edge MUs is one and the number of RUs is one, the transmitting device (HU) determines that the architecture corresponds to the above case (a). When multiple edge MUs are set and one RU with the same identification number is attached to the multiple edge MUs, the transmitting device (HU) determines that the architecture corresponds to the above case (b). When multiple edge MUs are set and RUs with identification numbers different from each other are attached to each of the multiple edge MUs, the transmitting device (HU) determines that the architecture corresponds to the above case (c). At this time, when the number of edge MUs is one and multiple RUs are set, the transmitting device (HU) determines that the architecture corresponds to the above case (d).

[0356] Next, the transmitting device (HU) performs coding processing on the transmission data sequence (step S303). Specifically, the transmitting device performs block coding processing on the transmission data sequence. The block coding processing includes: a division process of dividing a transmission data sequence into a plurality of subsequences; and a generation process of performing coding processing according to a predetermined error correction coding scheme on the plurality of subsequences to generate a plurality of coded sequences from the plurality of subsequences.

[0357] Next, the transmitting device (HU) adds the architecture information determined in step S302 as information bits to the coding sequence (step S304). At this time, the transmitting device may assign the information bits indicating the architecture information as a header to each of the plurality of coding sequences. When assigning the architecture information, the transmitting device may assign the identification number of the edge MU or RU to be used. The information bits and the architecture may be associated as described below.

[0358] Information bits: architectural information

[0359] 00: Case (a) in the above architecture example 1 / example 2

[0360] 01: Situation (b) in the above architecture example 1 / example 2

[0361] 10: Situation (c) in the above architecture example 1 / example 2

[0362] 11: Case (d) in the above architecture example 2

[0363] Next, the transmitting device (HU) transmits the coded sequence to which the architecture information is added to the terminal device 40 (UE) (step S305). When the transmission is completed, the transmitting device (HU) ends the transmission process.

[0364] Next, the reception process will be described. Fig.35 is a flowchart illustrating the reception process according to the second embodiment. Fig.35 The reception process according to the second embodiment is described.

[0365] The receiving device (MU, RU or UE) acquires data (coded sequence) transmitted from the transmitting device (HU) via the network (step S401).

[0366] Subsequently, the receiving device (MU, RU or UE) obtains the architecture information from the received data (step S402). For example, the receiving device determines which of 00, 01, 10 and 11 corresponds to the information bit added to the coding sequence. At this time, 00 corresponds to the case of (a) of the above architecture example 1 / example 2; 01 corresponds to the case of (b) of the above architecture example 1 / example 2; 10 corresponds to the case of (c) of the above architecture example 1 / example 2; and 11 corresponds to the case of (d) of the above architecture example 2.

[0367] Subsequently, the receiving apparatus (MU, RU or UE) determines whether the decoding process is valid (whether the receiving device itself should perform the decoding process) based on the acquired architecture information (step S403).

[0368] For example, when the information bits added to the coded sequence are 00 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case of (a) above) and when the receiving device itself corresponds to an edge MU, the receiving device determines that the decoding process is valid.

[0369] For example, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 01 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (b) above) and the receiving device corresponds to an edge MU or UE, or in a case where the receiving device corresponds to an edge MU, UE, or RU, the receiving device determines that the decoding process is valid. Alternatively, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 01 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (b) above) and the receiving device itself corresponds to an edge MU, the receiving device may determine that the decoding process is valid. Alternatively, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 01 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (b) above) and the receiving device itself corresponds to a UE, the receiving device may determine that the decoding process is valid. Alternatively, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 01 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (b) above) and the receiving device itself corresponds to a RU, the receiving device may determine that the decoding process is valid.

[0370] For example, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 10 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (c) above) and in a case where the receiving device itself corresponds to an edge MU or UE, the receiving device determines that the decoding process is effective. Alternatively, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 10 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (c) above) and in a case where the receiving device itself corresponds to an edge MU, the receiving device may determine that the decoding process is effective. Alternatively, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 10 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (c) above) and in a case where the receiving device itself corresponds to a UE, the receiving device may determine that the decoding process is effective.

[0371] For example, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 11 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (d) above) and in a case where the receiving device itself corresponds to an edge MU or UE, the receiving device determines that the decoding process is valid. Alternatively, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 11 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (d) above) and in a case where the receiving device itself corresponds to an edge MU, the receiving device may determine that the decoding process is valid. Alternatively, in a case where the information bits added to the coding sequence are 11 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (d) above) and in a case where the receiving device itself corresponds to a UE, the receiving device may determine that the decoding process is valid.

[0372] When the decoding process is invalid (step S403: No), the receiving device returns the process to step S401.

[0373] When the decoding process is valid (step S403: Yes), the receiving apparatus decodes the plurality of coded sequences using a decoding method corresponding to block coding (step S404). At this time, the receiving apparatus performs the following processes (1) to (4) for each information bit.

[0374] (1) When the information bits added to the coded sequence are 00 (when the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (a) above), the receiving device (eg, edge MU) performs the following processing.

[0375] For example, the edge MU starts decoding by using the delivered coded sequence. For example, as a case where a pre-specified number or more of coded sequences are delivered at the edge MU, it is desirable to use a method that maximizes the effect in upper layer encoding, such as using a start condition.

[0376] When decoding is successful, it is expected that the edge MU performs signal processing predefined in the standard, etc. to perform transmission to the receiving side. When decoding results in failure, the edge MU can try decoding again using the additionally delivered coded sequence. When decoding results in failure, the edge MU can notify any upper level of the decoding failure. The upper level function, upper level protocol, or upper layer that receives the notification can determine whether to perform additional transmission based on the result.

[0377] The decoding can be handled in any protocol stack of the edge MU. In addition, the decoding can be performed by a function in a different area than the edge MU.

[0378] (2) When the information bits added to the coded sequence are 01 (when the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (b) above), the receiving device (eg, edge MU, RU, or UE) performs the following processing.

[0379] Each edge MU identifies the number of edge MUs used in communication based on the notification from the HU. Each edge MU performs configuration such as the transport block size by using a value obtained by dividing the throughput available for transmission at the RU by the number of edge MUs (i.e., the amount of throughput that each edge MU can handle). This operation is an operation required for each edge MU to collaboratively perform adaptive signal processing for the throughput determined by the capabilities of the RU and the transmission method. All functions of the MU can be configured as needed.

[0380] Multiple transmit sequences including coded sequences processed by the edge MU may be subjected to any of the following processing in the RU:

[0381] At the RU, multiple transmission sequences are combined into one transmission sequence to be sent to the UE. Although this is a method that can achieve high resource efficiency on the time axis while fully utilizing the transmission capability of the RU, this method requires a combination process.

[0382] · The RU performs transmission processing for the transmission units from each edge MU separately. This method does not require combining processing, but has the possibility of transmission delay.

[0383] RU performs decoding processing by using the transmission sequence. Multiple sets on the transmission side can be utilized without performing decoding processing on the reception side. If this option is not selected, decoding processing will be performed on the reception side. After the decoding processing, the RU performs transmission processing using the decoding sequence as the transmission sequence.

[0384] When performing decoding processing in the UE, the UE expects to obtain at least the minimum information (starting condition) that can be decoded from the transmitting side or the received packet. For example, as a case where a coding sequence of a predetermined number or more of coding packets has been delivered, it is expected to use a method that maximizes the effect in the upper layer coding, such as setting a starting condition for decoding.

[0385] When decoding is successful, it is expected that the edge receiving device performs signal processing predefined in the standard, etc. to perform transmission to the upper level. When decoding results in failure, the receiving device can try decoding again using the additional delivered coding sequence. When decoding results in failure, the receiving device can notify any upper level of the decoding failure. The upper level function, upper level protocol or upper layer that receives the notification can determine whether to perform additional transmission based on the result.

[0386] The decoding may be performed in the protocol stack of the edge MU or the UE. In addition, the decoding may be performed by a function in a different area from the edge MU. In this case, the decoding function may be diverted from the outside.

[0387] (3) When the information bits added to the coded sequence are 10 (when the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (c) above), the receiving device (eg, edge MU or UE) performs the following processing.

[0388] The decoding process is desirably performed by the UE. When the decoding process is performed in the UE, the UE expects to obtain at least the minimum information (starting condition) that can be decoded from the transmitting side or the received packet. For example, as a case where a coding sequence of a pre-specified number or more of coding packets has been delivered to the receiving side, it is desirable to use a method that maximizes the effect in the upper layer coding, such as setting a starting condition.

[0389] In the case of successful decoding, the receiving device can perform signal processing predefined in the standard, etc. In the case that the decoding expected to be sent to the upper level results in failure, the receiving device can retry the decoding using the additionally delivered coded sequence. When the decoding results in failure, the receiving device can notify any upper level of the decoding failure. The upper level function, upper level protocol or upper layer that receives the notification can determine whether to perform additional transmission based on the result.

[0390] Decoding can be performed in one protocol stack of the UE. In addition, decoding can be performed by a function in a different area from the UE. In this case, the decoding function can be transferred from the outside.

[0391] (4) When the information bits added to the coded sequence are 11 (when the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (d) above), the receiving device (eg, edge MU or UE) performs the following processing.

[0392] The edge MU may perform one or both of the following process 1 and process 2.

[0393] (Process 1)

[0394] Until the decoding process, the receiving device performs the same process as the case where the information bits are 00 (the redundancy of the communication path corresponds to the case of (a) above). For example, the edge MU starts decoding by using the delivered coded sequence.

[0395] After decoding, there are two options.

[0396] Option 1

[0397] The edge MU re-encodes (upper layer FEC) using the decoded sequence to generate multiple new coded sequences. The edge MU sends the multiple newly generated coded sequences to the RU in a distributed manner. The edge MU performs FEC suitable for the number and status of the RU, and can efficiently use multiple sets of RUs, resulting in further improved communication efficiency. The decoding process is expected to be performed on the receiving side. The processing can be the same as the case where the information bit is 01 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (b) above).

[0398] Option 2

[0399] The edge MU sends the transmission sequence to the RU by a method other than the new coding. For example, the edge MU can perform transmission using duplication or HARQ. Compared with option 1, this method is difficult to efficiently utilize multiple sets of RUs, but simplifies signal processing.

[0400] The options may be determined based on at least one of: information notified from an upper layer, channel information, information related to a state of a link, static information, semi-static information, header information of a coding sequence, and dynamic information.

[0401] (Process 2)

[0402] The edge MU reallocates the coded sequence to the RU without performing decoding processing. It is expected that the reallocation is performed adaptively according to the number of RUs accompanying the edge MU, the amount of resources at the physical layer level and / or the channel state. The reallocated coded sequence undergoes decoding processing at the UE. The processing can be the same as the case where the information bit is 01 (the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to the case (b) above). Compared with processing 1, processing 2 reduces the decoding processing, resulting in reduced processing delay.

[0403] When performing decoding processing in the UE, the UE expects to obtain at least the minimum information that can be decoded from the transmitting side or the received packet. For example, as a case where a coding sequence of a predetermined number or more of coded packets has been delivered to the edge MU, it is expected to use a method that maximizes the effect in the upper layer coding, such as setting a start condition.

[0404] In the case of successful decoding, the receiving device can perform signal processing predefined in the standard, etc. In the case that the decoding expected to be sent to the upper level results in failure, the receiving device can retry the decoding using the additionally delivered coded sequence. When the decoding results in failure, the receiving device can notify any upper level of the decoding failure. The upper level function, upper level protocol or upper layer that receives the notification can determine whether to perform additional transmission based on the result.

[0405] The decoding may be performed in the protocol stack of the edge MU or UE. In addition, the decoding may be performed by a function in a different area from the edge MU or UE. In this case, the decoding function may be transferred from the outside.

[0406] When decoding is completed, the receiving device ends the receiving process.

[0407] According to the second embodiment, the communication system 1 of the second embodiment can perform decoding processing by an appropriate device on the network, thereby making it possible to improve communication efficiency or communication reliability.

[0408] <<6. Variants>>

[0409] The above-described embodiments are examples, and various modifications and applications are possible.

[0410] For example, the second embodiment has described that data (one or more code sequences) is transmitted from HU to UE, but data may be transmitted from HU to terminal device 40 other than UE. In this case, the description of UE may be replaced with terminal device 40.

[0411] The description of the sending device of the above-mentioned embodiments (the first embodiment and the second embodiment) can be appropriately replaced by the server 10, the management device 20, the base station 30 or the terminal device 40. In addition, the description of the receiving device can be appropriately replaced by the server 10, the management device 20, the base station 30 or the terminal device 40.

[0412] The control device that controls the server 10, the management device 20, the base station 30, and the terminal device 40 of this embodiment can be implemented by a dedicated computer system or a general-purpose computer system.

[0413] For example, a communication program for performing the above operations is stored in a computer-readable recording medium such as an optical disk, a semiconductor memory, a magnetic tape, or a floppy disk and distributed. For example, the program is installed on a computer and the above processing is performed to implement the configuration of the control device. At this time, the control device may be a device (e.g., a personal computer) outside the server 10, the management device 20, the base station 30, or the terminal device 40. In addition, the control device may be a device (e.g., a control unit 13, a control unit 23, a control unit 33, or a control unit 43) inside the server 10, the management device 20, the base station 30, or the terminal device 40.

[0414] In addition, for example, the communication program may be stored in a disk device included in a server apparatus on a network such as the Internet so that it can be downloaded to a computer. In addition, the above functions may be implemented by cooperatively using an operating system (OS) and application software. In this case, for example, a portion other than the OS may be stored in a medium for distribution, or a portion other than the OS may be stored in a server apparatus so as to be downloaded to a computer.

[0415] In addition, in each process described in the above embodiments, all or part of the process described as being automatically performed may be performed manually, or the process described as being manually performed may be automatically performed by a known method. In addition, unless otherwise specified, the process, specific name, and information including various data and parameters shown in the above documents or drawings may be changed arbitrarily. For example, the various information shown in each drawing is not limited to the information shown.

[0416] In addition, each component of each device is provided as a functional and conceptual illustration, and therefore does not necessarily need to be physically configured as shown. That is, the specific mode of distribution / integration of each device is not limited to those shown in the drawings, and all or part of it can be functionally or physically distributed or integrated into any unit according to various loads and usage conditions. Such configuration by distribution and integration can be performed dynamically.

[0417] Furthermore, the above-described embodiments can be appropriately combined within an achievable range without processing conflicts. Furthermore, the order of the respective steps shown in the flowcharts of the above-described embodiments can be appropriately changed.

[0418] In addition, for example, the present embodiment can be implemented as an arbitrary configuration constituting a device or system, such as a processor as a large-scale integration (LSI) or the like, a module using a plurality of processors or the like, a unit using a plurality of modules or the like, and a set obtained by further adding other functions to the unit, etc. (i.e., a configuration of a part of the device).

[0419] In this embodiment, the system represents a collection of multiple components (devices, modules (parts), etc.), and whether all components are located in the same housing is not a big problem. Therefore, multiple devices or equipment housed in separate housings and connected via a network, and a device or equipment in which multiple modules are housed in one housing are all systems.

[0420] Furthermore, for example, the present embodiment may adopt a configuration of cloud computing in which one function is shared and processed by a plurality of devices or apparatuses cooperatively via a network.

[0421] <<7. Conclusion>>

[0422] As described above, the communication system 1 according to the first embodiment includes a transmitting device (e.g., a base station 30) capable of performing communication through multiple TRPs and a receiving device (e.g., a terminal device 40) capable of performing communication through multiple TRPs.

[0423] The transmitting device multiplexes a plurality of upper layer packets to generate a transmitting data sequence. Subsequently, the transmitting device generates a plurality of coding sequences from the transmitting data sequence by using group coding. At this time, the group coding process includes: a process of dividing a transmitting data sequence into a plurality of subsequences; and a process of performing coding processing according to a predetermined error correction coding scheme on the plurality of subsequences to generate a plurality of coding sequences from the plurality of subsequences. The transmitting device allocates a plurality of coding sequences to each TRP based on information of the transmission block size of each TRP in the plurality of TRPs. Subsequently, the transmitting device generates a transmission block of each TRP in the plurality of TRPs based on the allocated coding sequences.

[0424] The receiving device receives a plurality of transport blocks from the transmitting device. Then, the receiving device extracts a plurality of coding sequences from each of the plurality of transport blocks. The receiving device decodes the extracted plurality of coding sequences using a decoding method corresponding to the block coding. Then, the receiving device separates the decoded data into a plurality of upper layer packets.

[0425] This allows the communication system of the first embodiment to cope with the case where the transmission block size is different for each transmission and reception point. Therefore, the communication system 1 can improve the efficiency and flexibility in achieving communication reliability.

[0426] When the configuration of a network connected to a user equipment (UE) is functionally split into a high-level unit (HU), a middle unit (MU), and a radio unit (RU), a communication system 1 according to a second embodiment includes: a transmitting device corresponding to the HU; and a receiving device corresponding to the MU, RU, or UE.

[0427] The edge MU is a MU located closest to the RU, and the edge MU transmits information related to the RU having a direct connection with the edge MU to the transmitting device (HU). The transmitting device obtains information related to the RU having a direct connection with the edge MU from the edge MU. Based on the information (information related to the RU) obtained from the edge MU, the transmitting device determines information related to the architecture of the edge MU, the RU, and the UE. Subsequently, the transmitting device generates multiple coding sequences from a transmission data sequence by using group coding, and assigns information related to the architecture to each of the multiple coding sequences.

[0428] The receiving device (MU, RU or UE) receives a coded sequence assigned with architecture-related information from the transmitting device (HU). Then, based on the architecture-related information assigned to the coded sequence, the receiving device determines whether the decoding process is valid or invalid (whether the receiving device itself should perform the decoding process). When it is determined that the decoding process is valid, the receiving device decodes the plurality of coded sequences using a decoding method corresponding to the group coding.

[0429] With this configuration, the communication system 1 of the second embodiment can perform decoding processing by an appropriate device on the network, thereby making it possible to improve communication efficiency or communication reliability.

[0430] The embodiments of the present invention have been described above. However, the technical scope of the present disclosure is not limited to the above embodiments, and various modifications can be made without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. In addition, it is allowed to appropriately combine various components across different embodiments and variations.

[0431] The effects described in the respective embodiments of the present specification are merely examples, and thus there may be other effects without being limited to the exemplified effects.

[0432] Note that the present technology may also have the following configurations. (1)

[0434] A communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points, the communication device comprising:

[0435] An encoder that generates a plurality of coded sequences from a transmit data sequence by using block coding; and

[0436] A generator that distributes the multiple coding sequences to each transmitting and receiving point based on the transmission block size information of each transmitting and receiving point in the multiple transmitting and receiving points, and generates a transmission block for each transmitting and receiving point in the multiple transmitting and receiving points based on the distributed coding sequences. (2)

[0438] The communication device according to (1), further comprising:

[0439] A multiplexer multiplexes the plurality of packets to generate a transmit data sequence. (3)

[0441] The communication device according to (2), wherein:

[0442] The multiplexer determines a size of the one transmission data sequence based on information related to communication, and multiplexes the plurality of packets to obtain the determined size. (4)

[0444] The communication device according to (3), wherein:

[0445] The multiplexer determines the size of the one transmission data sequence based on transport block size information of each of the plurality of transmission and reception points. (5)

[0447] The communication device according to (3), wherein:

[0448] The multiplexer determines a maximum size among a plurality of transport block sizes as the size of the one transmission data sequence. (6)

[0450] The communication device according to any one of (1) to (5), wherein:

[0451] The block coding process includes: a process of dividing the one transmission data sequence into a plurality of subsequences; and a process of performing coding processing according to a predetermined error correction coding scheme on the plurality of subsequences to generate the plurality of coded sequences from the plurality of subsequences. (7)

[0453] The communication device according to (6), wherein:

[0454] The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence according to a predetermined condition, and divides the one transmission data sequence into the plurality of subsequences to obtain the determined number of divisions. (8)

[0456] The communication device according to (7), wherein:

[0457] The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on reliability information required to transmit the transmission data sequence. (9)

[0459] The communication device according to (7), wherein:

[0460] The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on notification from other communication devices. (10)

[0462] The communication device according to (7), wherein:

[0463] The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on the number of available transmission and reception points. (11)

[0465] The communication device according to (7), wherein:

[0466] The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on the transport block size information. (12)

[0468] The communication device according to (11), wherein:

[0469] The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on information of a common divisor of a plurality of transport block sizes. (13)

[0471] The communication device according to (7), wherein:

[0472] The generator determines the number of divisions of the one transmit data sequence based on a state of a physical layer of a channel used to transmit the transmit data sequence. (14)

[0474] The communication device according to any one of (6) to (13), wherein:

[0475] The predetermined error correction coding scheme includes at least one of the following: erasure code, rateless code, fountain code, tornado code, Luby transform (LT) code, Raptor code, RaptorQ code, low-density parity check (LDPC) code, BCH code, Reed Solomon (RS) code and exclusive OR (XOR) code. (15)

[0477] A communication device capable of communicating using multiple transmission and reception points, the communication device comprising:

[0478] a receiver that generates a plurality of coded sequences from a transmission data sequence using block coding, distributes the plurality of coded sequences to each transmission and reception point based on transmission block size information of each transmission and reception point of the plurality of transmission and reception points, and receives a plurality of transport blocks from other communication devices that generate a transport block for each transmission and reception point of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the distributed coded sequences; and

[0479] A decoder is provided for decoding the plurality of coded sequences extracted from the plurality of transport blocks using a decoding method corresponding to block coding. (16)

[0481] The communication device according to (15), wherein:

[0482] The decoder starts decoding the plurality of code sequences at a timing when code sequences of a number or length satisfying a predetermined criterion are received. (17)

[0484] The communication device according to (15), wherein:

[0485] The decoder starts decoding the plurality of coding sequences at a timing when the set timer meets a predetermined standard. (18)

[0487] A communication method implemented by a communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points, the communication method comprising:

[0488] generating a plurality of coded sequences from a transmit data sequence by using block coding; and

[0489] The multiple coding sequences are distributed to each of the multiple transmitting and receiving points based on the transmission block size information of each of the multiple transmitting and receiving points, and the transmission blocks of each of the multiple transmitting and receiving points are generated based on the distributed coding sequences. (19)

[0491] A communication method implemented by a communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points, the communication method comprising:

[0492] generating a plurality of coding sequences from a transmission data sequence using block coding, distributing the plurality of coding sequences to each transmission and reception point based on transmission block size information of each transmission and reception point of the plurality of transmission and reception points, and receiving a plurality of transmission blocks from other communication devices, the other communication devices generating a transmission block for each transmission and reception point of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the distributed coding sequences; and

[0493] The plurality of coded sequences extracted from the plurality of transport blocks are decoded using a decoding method corresponding to block coding. (20)

[0495] A communication system, comprising: a first communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points; and a second communication device capable of performing communication using the plurality of transmission and reception points, wherein:

[0496] The first communication device comprises:

[0497] an encoder that generates a plurality of coded sequences from a transmit data sequence using block coding; and

[0498] a generator that distributes the plurality of coding sequences for each of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the transport block size information of each of the plurality of transmission and reception points, and generates a transport block for each of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the distributed coding sequences, and

[0499] The second communication device comprises:

[0500] a receiver that receives a plurality of transport blocks from a first communication device; and

[0501] A decoder is provided for decoding the plurality of coded sequences extracted from the plurality of transport blocks using a decoding method corresponding to block coding. (twenty one)

[0503] A communication device corresponding to a high level unit (HU), a radio unit (RU), and a middle unit (MU) when the configuration of a network connected to a user equipment (UE) is functionally split into the HU, the HU indicating a unit of the highest layer, the RU indicating a unit of the lowest layer, and the MU indicating a unit located between the HU and the RU, the communication device comprising:

[0504] an acquisition unit, the acquisition unit acquiring information related to a RU having a direct connection with the edge MU from an edge MU, the edge MU being a MU located closest to the RU;

[0505] a determiner that determines information related to an architecture regarding the edge MU, the RU, and the UE based on the information related to the RU acquired from the edge MU;

[0506] An encoder that generates a plurality of coded sequences from a transmit data sequence by using block coding; and

[0507] An assigning unit assigns architecture-related information to the plurality of encoding sequences. (twenty two)

[0509] The communication device according to (21), wherein:

[0510] The determiner determines information for specifying in which unit redundancy of a communication route is turned off as the architecture-related information. (twenty three)

[0512] The communication device according to (22), wherein:

[0513] The architecture-related information determined by the determiner includes information indicating which of the following situations (a) to (c) corresponds to redundancy of the communication route:

[0514] (a) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the edge MU and not turned off at the RU or UE;

[0515] (b) redundancy is turned off between the HU and RU and not turned off at the terminal; or

[0516] (c) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and UE. (twenty four)

[0518] The communication device according to (22), wherein:

[0519] The architecture-related information determined by the determiner includes information indicating which of the following situations (a) to (d) corresponds to redundancy of the communication route:

[0520] (a) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and edge MU and not turned off at RU or UE;

[0521] (b) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and RU and not turned off at the terminal;

[0522] (c) the case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the UE, and is not the case of (d) below; or

[0523] (d) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and UE and redundancy is also turned off from HU to edge MU. (25)

[0525] The communication device according to any one of (21) to (24), wherein:

[0526] The block coding process includes: a process of dividing the one transmission data sequence into a plurality of subsequences; and a process of performing coding processing according to a predetermined error correction coding scheme on the plurality of subsequences to generate the plurality of coded sequences from the plurality of subsequences. (26)

[0528] The communication device according to (25), wherein:

[0529] The predetermined error correction coding scheme includes at least one of the following: erasure code, rateless code, fountain code, tornado code, Luby transform (LT) code, Raptor code, RaptorQ code, low-density parity check (LDPC) code, BCH code, Reed Solomon (RS) code and exclusive OR (XOR) code. (27)

[0531] A communication device corresponding to a high level unit (HU), a radio unit (RU), and a middle unit (MU) when the configuration of a network connected to a user equipment (UE) is functionally split into a MU, a RU, or a UE, wherein the HU indicates a unit of the highest layer, the RU indicates a unit of the lowest layer, and the MU indicates a unit located between the HU and the RU, the communication device comprising:

[0532] a receiver that receives, from a HU that generates a plurality of code sequences from one transmission data sequence by using block coding, a code sequence to which information related to architectures regarding edge MUs, RUs, and UEs is assigned;

[0533] a determiner that determines whether a decoding process is valid or invalid based on architecture-related information assigned to the coding sequence; and

[0534] A decoder is configured to decode the plurality of coded sequences using a decoding method corresponding to block coding when the decoding process is determined to be valid. (28)

[0536] The communication device according to (27), wherein:

[0537] The architecture-related information includes information for specifying in which unit redundancy of a communication route is to be turned off. (29)

[0539] The communication device according to (28), wherein:

[0540] The information related to the architecture includes information indicating which of the following situations (a) to (d) corresponds to the redundancy of the communication route:

[0541] (a) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the edge MU and not turned off at the RU or UE;

[0542] (b) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and RU and not turned off at the UE;

[0543] (c) the case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the UE, and is not the case of (d) below; or

[0544] (d) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and UE and redundancy is also turned off from HU to edge MU. (30)

[0546] The communication device according to (28), wherein:

[0547] The information related to the architecture includes information indicating which of the following situations (a) to (c) corresponds to the redundancy of the communication route:

[0548] (a) The case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and the edge MU and not turned off at the RU or UE;

[0549] (b) the case where redundancy is turned off between the HU and RU and not turned off at the UE; or

[0550] (c) The case where redundancy is turned off between HU and UE. (31)

[0552] The communication device according to (29) or (30), wherein:

[0553] When the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (a) and the device itself corresponds to the edge MU, the determiner determines that the decoding process is valid. (32)

[0555] The communication device according to (29) or (30), wherein:

[0556] When the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (b) and the device itself corresponds to an edge MU or UE, the determiner determines that the decoding process is valid. (33)

[0558] The communication device according to (29) or (30), wherein:

[0559] When the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (b) and the device itself corresponds to the RU, the determiner determines that the decoding process is valid. (34)

[0561] The communication device according to (29) or (30), wherein:

[0562] When the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (c) and the device itself corresponds to an edge MU or UE, the determiner determines that the decoding process is valid. (35)

[0564] The communication device according to (29) or (30), wherein:

[0565] When the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (c) and the device itself corresponds to the UE, the determiner determines that the decoding process is valid. (36)

[0567] The communication device according to (29), wherein:

[0568] When the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (d) and the device itself corresponds to an edge MU or UE, the determiner determines that the decoding process is valid. (37)

[0570] The communication device according to (36), wherein:

[0571] When the redundancy of the communication route corresponds to (d) and the device itself corresponds to the edge MU, the decoder decodes the multiple coding sequences using a decoding method corresponding to the group coding, and then uses the decoded sequences to regenerate multiple new coding sequences to be allocated and sent to multiple RUs. (38)

[0573] A communication method implemented by a communication device corresponding to a high level unit (HU), a radio unit (RU), and a middle unit (MU) when the configuration of a network connected to a user equipment (UE) is functionally split into the HU, the HU indicating a unit of the highest layer, the RU indicating a unit of the lowest layer, and the MU indicating a unit located between the HU and the RU, the communication method comprising:

[0574] acquiring, from an edge MU, information related to a RU having a direct connection with the edge MU, the edge MU being a MU located closest to the RU;

[0575] determining information related to architectures regarding the edge MU, the RU, and the UE based on the information related to the RU obtained from the edge MU;

[0576] generating a plurality of coded sequences from a transmit data sequence by using block coding; and

[0577] Architecture-related information is assigned to the plurality of encoding sequences. (39)

[0579] A communication method implemented by a communication device corresponding to a high level unit (HU), a radio unit (RU), or a middle unit (MU) when the configuration of a network connected to a user equipment (UE) is functionally split into a MU, a radio unit (RU), and a middle unit (MU), wherein HU indicates a unit of a highest layer, RU indicates a unit of a lowest layer, and MU indicates a unit located between HU and RU, the communication method comprising:

[0580] receiving, from a HU that generates a plurality of code sequences from one transmit data sequence by using block coding, a code sequence assigned with information related to architectures of edge MUs, RUs, and UEs;

[0581] determining whether a decoding process is active or inactive based on architecture-dependent information assigned to the coded sequence; and

[0582] In a case where the decoding process is determined to be valid, the plurality of code sequences are decoded using a decoding method corresponding to the block coding. (40)

[0584] A communication system, comprising: a first communication device corresponding to a high level unit (HU), a radio unit (RU), and a middle unit (MU) when a configuration of a network connected to a user equipment (UE) is functionally split into the HU, the HU indicating a unit of the highest layer, the RU indicating a unit of the lowest layer, and the MU indicating a unit located between the HU and the RU; and a second communication device corresponding to the MU, the RU, or the UE, wherein

[0585] The first communication device comprises:

[0586] an acquisition unit, the acquisition unit acquiring information related to a RU having a direct connection with the edge MU from an edge MU, the edge MU being a MU located closest to the RU;

[0587] a first determiner that determines information related to an architecture of the edge MU, the RU, and the UE based on information related to the RU acquired from the edge MU;

[0588] An encoder that generates a plurality of coded sequences from a transmit data sequence by using block coding; and

[0589] an assignment unit, the assignment unit assigning architecture-related information to the plurality of encoding sequences, and

[0590] The second communication device comprises:

[0591] a receiver that receives, from a HU that generates a plurality of code sequences from one transmission data sequence by using block coding, a code sequence to which information related to architectures regarding edge MUs, RUs, and UEs is assigned;

[0592] a second determiner that determines whether the decoding process is valid or invalid based on architecture-related information assigned to the coding sequence; and

[0593] A decoder is configured to decode the plurality of coded sequences using a decoding method corresponding to block coding when the decoding process is determined to be valid.

[0594] Reference Mark List

[0595] 1. Communication System

[0596] 10 servers

[0597] 20 Management Device

[0598] 30 base stations

[0599] 40Terminal Device

[0600] 11, 21 communication unit

[0601] 31, 41 wireless communication unit

[0602] 12, 22, 32, 42 memory cells

[0603] 13, 23, 33, 43 control units

[0604] 311, 411 sending processing unit

[0605] 312, 412 receiving processing unit

[0606] 313, 413 antenna

[0607] 131, 331, 431 acquisition unit

[0608] 132, 336, 436 Determinator

[0609] 133 Assignment Unit

[0610] 332, 432 multiplexer

[0611] 333, 433 encoder

[0612] 334, 434 generator

[0613] 335, 435 receiver

[0614] 337, 437 decoder

Claims

1. A communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points, the communication device comprising: an encoder that generates a plurality of coded sequences from a transmit data sequence by using block coding; as well as A generator that distributes the multiple coding sequences to each transmitting and receiving point based on the transmission block size information of each transmitting and receiving point in the multiple transmitting and receiving points, and generates a transmission block for each transmitting and receiving point in the multiple transmitting and receiving points based on the distributed coding sequences.

2. The communication device according to claim 1, further comprising: A multiplexer multiplexes the plurality of packets to generate a transmit data sequence.

3. The communication device according to claim 2, wherein: The multiplexer determines a size of the one transmission data sequence based on information related to communication, and multiplexes the plurality of packets to obtain the determined size.

4. The communication device according to claim 3, wherein: The multiplexer determines the size of the one transmission data sequence based on transport block size information of each of the plurality of transmission and reception points.

5. The communication device according to claim 3, wherein: The multiplexer determines a maximum size among a plurality of transport block sizes as the size of the one transmission data sequence.

6. The communication device according to claim 1, wherein: The block coding process includes: a process of dividing the one transmission data sequence into a plurality of subsequences; and a process of performing coding processing according to a predetermined error correction coding scheme on the plurality of subsequences to generate the plurality of coded sequences from the plurality of subsequences.

7. The communication device according to claim 6, wherein: The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence according to a predetermined condition, and divides the one transmission data sequence into the plurality of subsequences to obtain the determined number of divisions.

8. The communication device according to claim 7, wherein: The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on reliability information required to transmit the transmission data sequence.

9. The communication device according to claim 7, wherein: The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on notification from other communication devices.

10. The communication device according to claim 7, wherein: The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on the number of available transmission and reception points.

11. The communication device according to claim 7, wherein: The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on the transport block size information.

12. The communication device according to claim 11, wherein: The encoder determines the number of divisions of the one transmission data sequence based on information of a common divisor of a plurality of transport block sizes.

13. The communication device according to claim 7, wherein: The generator determines the number of divisions of the one transmit data sequence based on a state of a physical layer of a channel used to transmit the transmit data sequence.

14. The communication device according to claim 6, wherein: The predetermined error correction coding scheme includes at least one of the following: erasure code, rateless code, fountain code, tornado code, Luby transform (LT) code, Raptor code, RaptorQ code, low-density parity check (LDPC) code, BCH code, Reed Solomon (RS) code and exclusive OR (XOR) code.

15. A communication device capable of communicating using multiple transmission and reception points, the communication device comprising: a receiver that generates a plurality of coded sequences from a transmission data sequence using block coding, distributes the plurality of coded sequences to each of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on transmission block size information of each of the plurality of transmission and reception points, and receives a plurality of transport blocks from other communication devices that generate transport blocks for each of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the distributed coded sequences; as well as A decoder is provided for decoding the plurality of coded sequences extracted from the plurality of transport blocks using a decoding method corresponding to block coding.

16. The communication device according to claim 15, wherein: The decoder starts decoding the plurality of code sequences at a timing when code sequences of a number or length satisfying a predetermined criterion are received.

17. The communication device according to claim 15, wherein: The decoder starts decoding the plurality of coding sequences at a timing when the set timer meets a predetermined standard.

18. A communication method implemented by a communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points, the communication method comprising: generating a plurality of coded sequences from a transmitted data sequence by using block coding; as well as The multiple coding sequences are distributed to each of the multiple transmitting and receiving points based on the transmission block size information of each of the multiple transmitting and receiving points, and the transmission blocks of each of the multiple transmitting and receiving points are generated based on the distributed coding sequences.

19. A communication method implemented by a communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points, the communication method comprising: generating a plurality of coded sequences from a transmission data sequence using block coding, distributing the plurality of coded sequences to each transmission and reception point based on transmission block size information of each transmission and reception point of the plurality of transmission and reception points, and receiving a plurality of transport blocks from other communication devices, the other communication devices generating a transport block for each transmission and reception point of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the distributed coded sequences; as well as The plurality of coded sequences extracted from the plurality of transport blocks are decoded using a decoding method corresponding to block coding.

20. A communication system comprising: a first communication device capable of performing communication using a plurality of transmission and reception points; and a second communication device capable of performing communication using the plurality of transmission and reception points, wherein The first communication device comprises: an encoder that generates a plurality of coded sequences from a transmit data sequence using block coding; and a generator that distributes the plurality of coding sequences for each of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the transport block size information of each of the plurality of transmission and reception points, and generates a transport block for each of the plurality of transmission and reception points based on the distributed coding sequences, and The second communication device comprises: a receiver that receives a plurality of transport blocks from a first communication device; and A decoder is provided for decoding the plurality of coded sequences extracted from the plurality of transport blocks using a decoding method corresponding to block coding.

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