Method and apparatus for transmitting and receiving reference signal

Abstract

The present disclosure provides a method and apparatus for transmitting and receiving a reference signal in a wireless communication network. The method comprises: receiving configuration information for a reference signal; according to the configuration information, determining a corresponding relationship between a plurality of antenna ports of the first node and a plurality of reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information; and sending the reference signal through a plurality of antenna ports corresponding to the plurality of reference signal ports indicated by the configuration information based on the determined corresponding relationship, wherein the corresponding relation indicates that each reference signal port indicated by the configuration information corresponds to one antenna port of the first node.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present application relates to the field of wireless communication technology, and more specifically, to a method and device for sending and receiving a reference signal in a wireless communication network. Background Art

[0002] In order to meet the increased demand for wireless data communication services since the deployment of 4G communication systems, efforts have been made to develop improved 5G or quasi-5G communication systems. Therefore, 5G or quasi-5G communication systems are also referred to as "super 4G networks" or "post-LTE systems."

[0003] 5G communication systems are implemented in higher frequency (millimeter wave, mmWave) bands, such as the 60 GHz band, to achieve higher data rates. In order to reduce the propagation loss of radio waves and increase the transmission distance, beamforming, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), full-dimensional MIMO (FD-MIMO), array antennas, analog beamforming, and massive antenna technology are discussed in 5G communication systems.

[0004] In addition, in the 5G communication system, development of system network improvements is underway based on advanced small cells, cloud radio access networks (RAN), ultra-dense networks, device-to-device (D2D) communication, wireless backhaul, mobile networks, collaborative communications, coordinated multi-point (CoMP), receiving-end interference cancellation, etc.

[0005] In 5G systems, hybrid FSK and QAM modulation (FQAM) and sliding window superposition coding (SWSC) as advanced coded modulation (ACM), and filter bank multi-carrier (FBMC), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and sparse code multiple access (SCMA) as advanced access technologies have been developed. Summary of the invention

[0006] According to an embodiment of the present invention, a method is provided for execution by a first node in a communication system, the method comprising: receiving configuration information for a reference signal; determining, based on the configuration information, a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information; and based on the determined correspondence, sending a reference signal via multiple antenna ports corresponding to the multiple reference signal ports indicated by the configuration information; wherein the correspondence indicates that each reference signal port indicated by the configuration information corresponds to an antenna port of the first node.

[0007] Optionally, based on the configuration information, the correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information is determined, including: each antenna port of the first node is associated with a different reference signal port indicated in the configuration information, and the correspondence between the multiple antenna ports and the multiple reference signal ports remains consistent within the same cell.

[0008] Optionally, the configuration information includes an index set, each index in the index set is used to identify a different antenna port of the first node, and the index is associated with a different reference signal port; according to the configuration information, determining the correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, including: according to each index in the index set in the configuration information, determining the correspondence between the antenna port identified by the index and the reference signal port associated with the index.

[0009] Optionally, the index is reported by the first node; or the index is configured by the second node for the antenna port of the first node, and each index is associated with a different antenna port of the first node.

[0010] Optionally, according to the configuration information, the correspondence between the multiple antenna ports of the first node and the multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information is determined, including: based on the order of the multiple antenna ports of the first node and the order of symbols corresponding to the reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets indicated by the configuration information, determining the correspondence between each of the multiple antenna ports and a reference signal port.

[0011] Optionally, the configuration information further includes an update flag, wherein the update flag indicates whether to update the order of the multiple antenna ports of the first node.

[0012] Optionally, when it is determined that the number of multiple reference signal ports is less than or equal to the number of multiple antenna ports based on the ordering of multiple antenna ports of the first node and the multiple reference signal resource sets indicated in the configuration information, the multiple reference signal ports are corresponded sequentially to the antenna ports in the ordering of the multiple antenna ports in accordance with the order of symbols corresponding to the reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets.

[0013] Optionally, the order of the multiple antenna ports of the first node is determined based on information in the configuration information that is used to indicate an order of symbols corresponding to the reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets.

[0014] Optionally, the information used for the first reference signal resource set in the configuration information includes indication information, and the correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and the multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information is determined according to the configuration information, including: determining the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the first reference signal resource set and the antenna ports of the first node according to the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the second reference signal resource set indicated by the indication information and the antenna ports of the first node.

[0015] Optionally, the indication information is an ID of a second reference signal resource set.

[0016] Optionally, the information in the configuration information for the reference signal resource set associated with the first antenna switching method includes identification information for identifying multiple reference signal resource sets associated with the second antenna switching method; based on the configuration information, determining the correspondence between the multiple antenna ports of the first node and the multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, including: determining the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the reference signal resource set associated with the first antenna switching method and the antenna port of the first node based on the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets associated with the second antenna switching method identified by the identification information and the antenna port of the first node.

[0017] According to another embodiment of the present invention, a method executed by a second node in a communication system is provided, the method comprising: sending configuration information for a reference signal; determining a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of a first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, and receiving a reference signal sent by the first node via multiple antenna ports corresponding to the multiple reference signal ports indicated by the configuration information; wherein the correspondence indicates that each reference signal port indicated by the configuration information corresponds to an antenna port of the first node.

[0018] Optionally, the configuration information includes an index set, each index in the index set is used to identify a different antenna port of the first node, and the index is associated with a different reference signal port.

[0019] Optionally, the index is reported by the first node; or the index is configured by the second node for the antenna port of the first node, and each index is associated with a different antenna port of the first node.

[0020] Optionally, the configuration information further includes an update flag, wherein the update flag indicates whether to update the order of the multiple antenna ports of the first node.

[0021] Optionally, the configuration information further includes information for indicating an order of symbols corresponding to reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets.

[0022] Optionally, the configuration information includes information for a first reference signal resource set, wherein the information for the first reference signal resource set includes indication information; and wherein the indication information indicates a correspondence between a reference signal port included in the second reference signal resource set and an antenna port of the first node.

[0023] Optionally, the indication information is an ID of a second reference signal resource set.

[0024] Optionally, the configuration information includes information for a reference signal resource set associated with a first antenna switching method, wherein the information for a reference signal resource set associated with the first antenna switching method includes identification information for identifying multiple reference signal resource sets associated with a second antenna switching method; and wherein the identification information identifies the correspondence between reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets associated with the second antenna switching method and the antenna ports of the first node.

[0025] According to another embodiment of the present disclosure, a node device in a communication system is provided, and the node device includes: a transceiver; and a processor coupled to the transceiver and configured to execute any one of the above methods.

[0026] The present disclosure designs a method and device for sending and receiving reference signals in a wireless communication network to achieve a corresponding relationship between an antenna port for sending a reference signal and a reference signal resource. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0027] Figure 1 An example wireless network according to various embodiments of the present disclosure is shown;

[0028] Figure 2a and Figure 2b shows example wireless transmit and receive paths according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0029] Figure 3a An example UE according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown;

[0030] Figure 3b An example gNB according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown;

[0031] Figure 4 A schematic diagram of performing CSI estimation for different antennas based on a neural network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown;

[0032] Figure 5 A diagram illustrating the operation of an adaptive neural network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0033] Figure 6 A flow chart of adaptive neural network adjustment according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown;

[0034] Figure 7 A method for configuring and sending a reference signal by a first node in a communication network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown;

[0035] Figure 8 A method for receiving a reference signal by a second node in a communication network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown;

[0036] Fig. 9 A block diagram showing a structure of a first node for sending a reference signal according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0037] Fig.10 A block diagram showing a structure of a second node for receiving a reference signal according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0038] The following description with reference to the accompanying drawings is provided to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the various embodiments of the present disclosure as defined by the claims and their equivalents. This description includes various specific details to facilitate understanding but should be considered as exemplary only. Therefore, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that various changes and modifications can be made to the various embodiments described herein without departing from the scope and spirit of the present disclosure. In addition, for the sake of clarity and conciseness, descriptions of well-known functions and structures may be omitted.

[0039] The terms and expressions used in the following specification and claims are not limited to their dictionary meanings, but are merely used by the inventor to enable a clear and consistent understanding of the present disclosure. Therefore, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art that the following description of various embodiments of the present disclosure is provided for illustration purposes only and not for the purpose of limiting the present disclosure as defined in the appended claims and their equivalents.

[0040] It should be understood that the singular forms "a," "an," and "the" include plural referents unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. Thus, for example, reference to "a component surface" includes reference to one or more of such surfaces.

[0041] The term "include" or "may include" refers to the presence of the corresponding disclosed functions, operations or components that can be used in various embodiments of the present disclosure, rather than limiting the presence of one or more additional functions, operations or features. In addition, the term "include" or "have" may be interpreted as indicating certain characteristics, numbers, steps, operations, constituent elements, components or combinations thereof, but should not be interpreted as excluding the possibility of the presence of one or more other characteristics, numbers, steps, operations, constituent elements, components or combinations thereof.

[0042] The term "or" used in various embodiments of the present disclosure includes any of the listed terms and all combinations thereof. For example, "A or B" may include A, may include B, or may include both A and B.

[0043] Unless defined differently, all terms (including technical terms or scientific terms) used in the present disclosure have the same meanings as understood by those skilled in the art described in the present disclosure. Common terms as defined in dictionaries are interpreted as having meanings consistent with the context in the relevant technical field, and should not be interpreted ideally or overly formally unless clearly defined in the present disclosure.

[0044] The technical solutions of the embodiments of the present application can be applied to various communication systems, such as: global system for mobile communications (GSM) system, code division multiple access (CDMA) system, wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) system, general packet radio service (GPRS), long term evolution (LTE) system, LTE frequency division duplex (FDD) system, LTE time division duplex (TDD) system, universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) communication system, fifth generation (5G) communication system. th generation, 5G) system or new radio (newradio, NR), etc. In addition, the technical solution of the embodiment of the present application can be applied to future-oriented communication technology.

[0045] Figure 1 An example wireless network 100 is shown in accordance with various embodiments of the present disclosure. Figure 1 The embodiment of the wireless network 100 shown in FIG. 1 is for illustration only. Other embodiments of the wireless network 100 can be used without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

[0046] Wireless network 100 includes gNodeB (gNB) 101, gNB 102, and gNB 103. gNB 101 communicates with gNB 102 and gNB 103. gNB 101 also communicates with at least one Internet Protocol (IP) network 130, such as the Internet, a private IP network, or other data network.

[0047] Depending on the network type, other well-known terms such as "base station" or "access point" can be used instead of "gNodeB" or "gNB". For convenience, the terms "gNodeB" and "gNB" are used in this patent document to refer to network infrastructure components that provide wireless access to remote terminals. Also, depending on the network type, other well-known terms such as "mobile station", "subscriber station", "remote terminal", "wireless terminal" or "user device" can be used instead of "user equipment" or "UE". For convenience, the terms "user equipment" and "UE" are used in this patent document to refer to a remote wireless device that wirelessly accesses a gNB, whether the UE is a mobile device (such as a mobile phone or smartphone) or a commonly thought of fixed device (such as a desktop computer or vending machine).

[0048] gNB 102 provides wireless broadband access to network 130 for a first plurality of user equipment (UE) within coverage area 120 of gNB 102. The first plurality of UEs include: UE 111, which may be located in a small business (SB); UE 112, which may be located in an enterprise (E); UE 113, which may be located in a WiFi hotspot (HS); UE 114, which may be located in a first residence (R); UE 115, which may be located in a second residence (R); UE 116, which may be a mobile device (M), such as a cellular phone, a wireless laptop, a wireless PDA, etc. gNB 103 provides wireless broadband access to network 130 for a second plurality of UEs within coverage area 125 of gNB 103. The second plurality of UEs include UE 115 and UE 116. In some embodiments, one or more of gNBs 101-103 may be capable of communicating with each other and with UEs 111-116 using 5G, long term evolution (LTE), LTE-A, WiMAX, or other advanced wireless communication technologies.

[0049] The dashed lines illustrate the approximate extents of coverage areas 120 and 125, which are shown as approximately circular for purposes of illustration and explanation only. It should be clearly understood that coverage areas associated with gNBs, such as coverage areas 120 and 125, can have other shapes, including irregular shapes, depending on the configuration of the gNB and variations in the radio environment associated with natural and man-made obstacles.

[0050] As described in more detail below, one or more of gNB 101, gNB 102, and gNB 103 include a 2D antenna array as described in embodiments of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, one or more of gNB 101, gNB 102, and gNB 103 support codebook design and structure for a system with a 2D antenna array.

[0051] although Figure 1 One example of a wireless network 100 is shown, but Figure 1 Various changes may be made. For example, wireless network 100 can include any number of gNBs and any number of UEs in any suitable arrangement. Also, gNB 101 can communicate directly with any number of UEs and provide those UEs with wireless broadband access to network 130. Similarly, each gNB 102-103 can communicate directly with network 130 and provide UEs with direct wireless broadband access to network 130. In addition, gNBs 101, 102, and / or 103 can provide access to other or additional external networks, such as an external telephone network or other type of data network.

[0052] Figure 2a and Figure 2b Example wireless transmit and receive paths according to the present disclosure are shown. In the following description, transmit path 200 can be described as being implemented in a gNB (such as gNB 102) and receive path 250 can be described as being implemented in a UE (such as UE 116). However, it should be understood that receive path 250 can be implemented in a gNB and transmit path 200 can be implemented in a UE. In some embodiments, receive path 250 is configured to support codebook design and structure for a system with a 2D antenna array as described in embodiments of the present disclosure.

[0053] The transmit path 200 includes a channel coding and modulation block 205, a serial to parallel (S to P) block 210, an N-point inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) block 215, a parallel to serial (P to S) block 220, an add cyclic prefix block 225, and an upconverter (UC) 230. The receive path 250 includes a downconverter (DC) 255, a remove cyclic prefix block 260, a serial to parallel (S to P) block 265, an N-point fast Fourier transform (FFT) block 270, a parallel to serial (P to S) block 275, and a channel decoding and demodulation block 280.

[0054] In the transmit path 200, the channel coding and modulation block 205 receives a set of information bits, applies coding (such as low-density parity check (LDPC) coding), and modulates the input bits (such as using quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) or quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)) to generate a sequence of frequency-domain modulation symbols. The serial-to-parallel (S-to-P) block 210 converts (such as demultiplexes) the serial modulation symbols into parallel data to generate N parallel symbol streams, where N is the number of IFFT / FFT points used in the gNB 102 and the UE 116. The N-point IFFT block 215 performs an IFFT operation on the N parallel symbol streams to generate a time-domain output signal. The parallel-to-serial block 220 converts (such as multiplexes) the parallel time-domain output symbols from the N-point IFFT block 215 to generate a serial time-domain signal. The add cyclic prefix block 225 inserts a cyclic prefix into the time-domain signal. The up-converter 230 modulates (such as up-converts) the output of the add cyclic prefix block 225 to an RF frequency for transmission via a wireless channel. The signal can also be filtered at baseband before conversion to RF frequency.

[0055] The RF signal transmitted from gNB 102 arrives at UE 116 after passing through a wireless channel, and an operation opposite to that at gNB 102 is performed at UE 116. Downconverter 255 downconverts the received signal to a baseband frequency, and remove cyclic prefix block 260 removes the cyclic prefix to generate a serial time-domain baseband signal. Serial-to-parallel block 265 converts the time-domain baseband signal into a parallel time-domain signal. N-point FFT block 270 performs an FFT algorithm to generate N parallel frequency-domain signals. Parallel-to-serial block 275 converts the parallel frequency-domain signals into a sequence of modulated data symbols. Channel decoding and demodulation block 280 demodulates and decodes the modulated symbols to recover the original input data stream.

[0056] Each of gNBs 101-103 may implement a transmit path 200 similar to that for transmitting in the downlink to UEs 111-116 and may implement a receive path 250 similar to that for receiving in the uplink from UEs 111-116. Similarly, each of UEs 111-116 may implement a transmit path 200 for transmitting in the uplink to gNBs 101-103 and may implement a receive path 250 for receiving in the downlink from gNBs 101-103.

[0057] Figure 2a and Figure 2b Each of the components in can be implemented using hardware only, or a combination of hardware and software / firmware. As a specific example, Figure 2a and Figure 2bAt least some of the components in can be implemented with software, while other components can be implemented by configurable hardware or a mixture of software and configurable hardware. For example, FFT block 270 and IFFT block 215 can be implemented as a configurable software algorithm, in which the value of the number of points N can be modified according to the implementation.

[0058] In addition, although described as using FFT and IFFT, this is illustrative only and should not be construed as limiting the scope of the present disclosure. Other types of transforms can be used, such as discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) functions. It should be understood that for DFT and IDFT functions, the value of variable N can be any integer (such as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), while for FFT and IFFT functions, the value of variable N can be any integer as a power of 2 (such as 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.).

[0059] although Figure 2a and Figure 2b An example of a wireless transmit and receive path is shown, but the Figure 2a and Figure 2b Make various changes. For example, Figure 2a and Figure 2b The various components in can be combined, further subdivided or omitted, and additional components can be added according to specific needs. Figure 2a and Figure 2b It is intended to illustrate examples of the types of transmit and receive paths that can be used in a wireless network. Any other suitable architecture can be used to support wireless communications in a wireless network.

[0060] Figure 3a An example UE 116 according to the present disclosure is shown. Figure 3a The embodiment of UE 116 shown in FIG. 1 is for illustration only, and Figure 1 UEs 111-115 can have the same or similar configurations. However, UEs have a variety of configurations, and Figure 3a The scope of the present disclosure is not limited to any particular implementation of the UE.

[0061] UE 116 includes antenna 305, radio frequency (RF) transceiver 310, transmit (TX) processing circuit 315, microphone 320, and receive (RX) processing circuit 325. UE 116 also includes speaker 330, processor / controller 340, input / output (I / O) interface 345, input device(s) 350, display 355, and memory 360. Memory 360 includes operating system (OS) 361 and one or more applications 362.

[0062] The RF transceiver 310 receives incoming RF signals from the antenna 305 transmitted by the gNB of the wireless network 100. The RF transceiver 310 downconverts the incoming RF signals to generate an intermediate frequency (IF) or baseband signal. The IF or baseband signal is sent to the RX processing circuit 325, where the RX processing circuit 325 generates a processed baseband signal by filtering, decoding and / or digitizing the baseband or IF signal. The RX processing circuit 325 sends the processed baseband signal to the speaker 330 (such as for voice data) or to the processor / controller 340 (such as for web browsing data) for further processing.

[0063] The TX processing circuit 315 receives analog or digital voice data from the microphone 320, or receives other outgoing baseband data (such as network data, email, or interactive video game data) from the processor / controller 340. The TX processing circuit 315 encodes, multiplexes, and / or digitizes the outgoing baseband data to generate a processed baseband or IF signal. The RF transceiver 310 receives the outgoing processed baseband or IF signal from the TX processing circuit 315 and up-converts the baseband or IF signal to an RF signal that is transmitted via the antenna 305.

[0064] The processor / controller 340 can include one or more processors or other processing devices and execute an OS 361 stored in the memory 360 to control the overall operation of the UE 116. For example, the processor / controller 340 can control the reception of forward channel signals and the transmission of reverse channel signals through the RF transceiver 310, the RX processing circuit 325, and the TX processing circuit 315 according to well-known principles. In some embodiments, the processor / controller 340 includes at least one microprocessor or microcontroller.

[0065] The processor / controller 340 is also capable of executing other processes and programs resident in the memory 360, such as operations for channel quality measurement and reporting for a system with a 2D antenna array as described in the embodiments of the present disclosure. The processor / controller 340 is capable of moving data into or out of the memory 360 as needed for the executed process. In some embodiments, the processor / controller 340 is configured to execute applications 362 based on the OS 361 or in response to signals received from the gNB or operator. The processor / controller 340 is also coupled to the I / O interface 345, where the I / O interface 345 provides the UE 116 with the ability to connect to other devices such as laptops and handheld computers. The I / O interface 345 is the communication path between these accessories and the processor / controller 340.

[0066] Processor / controller 340 is also coupled to input device(s) 350 and display 355. An operator of UE 116 can input data into UE 116 using input device(s) 350. Display 355 can be a liquid crystal display or other display capable of presenting text and / or at least limited graphics (such as from a website). Memory 360 is coupled to processor / controller 340. A portion of memory 360 can include random access memory (RAM), while another portion of memory 360 can include flash memory or other read-only memory (ROM).

[0067] although Figure 3a An example of UE 116 is shown, but it is possible to Figure 3a Make various changes. For example, Figure 3a The various components in can be combined, further subdivided, or omitted, and additional components can be added according to specific needs. As a specific example, processor / controller 340 can be divided into multiple processors, such as one or more central processing units (CPUs) and one or more graphics processing units (GPUs). Moreover, although Figure 3a The UE 116 is shown configured as a mobile phone or smart phone, but the UE can be configured to operate as other types of mobile or stationary devices.

[0068] Figure 3b An example gNB 102 according to the present disclosure is shown. Figure 3b The embodiment of the gNB 102 shown in FIG. is for illustration only, and Figure 1 Other gNBs can have the same or similar configurations. However, gNBs have a variety of configurations, and Figure 3b The scope of the present disclosure is not limited to any particular implementation of the gNB. It should be noted that gNB 101 and gNB 103 can include the same or similar structure as gNB 102.

[0069] like Figure 3b As shown in FIG. 1 , gNB 102 includes multiple antennas 370a-370n, multiple RF transceivers 372a-372n, transmit (TX) processing circuitry 374, and receive (RX) processing circuitry 376. In some embodiments, one or more of the multiple antennas 370a-370n include a 2D antenna array. gNB 102 also includes a controller / processor 378, a memory 380, and a backhaul or network interface 382.

[0070] The RF transceivers 372a-372n receive incoming RF signals from the antennas 370a-370n, such as signals transmitted by a UE or other gNB. The RF transceivers 372a-372n downconvert the incoming RF signals to generate IF or baseband signals. The IF or baseband signals are sent to the RX processing circuitry 376, which generates processed baseband signals by filtering, decoding, and / or digitizing the baseband or IF signals. The RX processing circuitry 376 sends the processed baseband signals to the controller / processor 378 for further processing.

[0071] The TX processing circuit 374 receives analog or digital data (such as voice data, network data, email, or interactive video game data) from the controller / processor 378. The TX processing circuit 374 encodes, multiplexes, and / or digitizes the outgoing baseband data to generate a processed baseband or IF signal. The RF transceivers 372a-372n receive the outgoing processed baseband or IF signals from the TX processing circuit 374 and up-convert the baseband or IF signals to RF signals that are transmitted via the antennas 370a-370n.

[0072] The controller / processor 378 can include one or more processors or other processing devices that control the overall operation of the gNB 102. For example, the controller / processor 378 can control the reception of forward channel signals and the transmission of reverse channel signals through the RF transceivers 372a-372n, the RX processing circuitry 376, and the TX processing circuitry 374 in accordance with well-known principles. The controller / processor 378 can also support additional functionality, such as more advanced wireless communication functionality. For example, the controller / processor 378 can perform a Blind Interference Sensing (BIS) process, such as performed through a Blind Interference Sensing (BIS) algorithm, and decode a received signal with an interference signal subtracted. The controller / processor 378 can support any of a variety of other functions in the gNB 102. In some embodiments, the controller / processor 378 includes at least one microprocessor or microcontroller.

[0073] The controller / processor 378 can also execute programs and other processes resident in the memory 380, such as a basic OS. The controller / processor 378 can also support channel quality measurement and reporting for systems with 2D antenna arrays as described in embodiments of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, the controller / processor 378 supports communications between entities such as web RTC. The controller / processor 378 can move data into or out of the memory 380 as needed by the executing process.

[0074] The controller / processor 378 is also coupled to a backhaul or network interface 382. The backhaul or network interface 382 allows the gNB 102 to communicate with other devices or systems via a backhaul connection or via a network. The backhaul or network interface 382 can support communication via any suitable (multiple) wired or wireless connections. For example, when the gNB 102 is implemented as part of a cellular communication system (such as a cellular communication system supporting 5G or new radio access technology or NR, LTE or LTE-A), the backhaul or network interface 382 can allow the gNB 102 to communicate with other gNBs via a wired or wireless backhaul connection. When the gNB 102 is implemented as an access point, the backhaul or network interface 382 can allow the gNB 102 to communicate with a larger network (such as the Internet) via a wired or wireless local area network or via a wired or wireless connection. The backhaul or network interface 382 includes any suitable structure that supports communication via a wired or wireless connection, such as an Ethernet or RF transceiver.

[0075] The memory 380 is coupled to the controller / processor 378. A portion of the memory 380 can include RAM, while another portion of the memory 380 can include flash memory or other ROM. In some embodiments, a plurality of instructions such as a BIS algorithm are stored in the memory. The plurality of instructions are configured to cause the controller / processor 378 to perform the BIS process and decode the received signal after subtracting at least one interference signal determined by the BIS algorithm.

[0076] As described in more detail below, the transmit and receive paths of the gNB 102 (implemented using the RF transceivers 372a-372n, the TX processing circuitry 374, and / or the RX processing circuitry 376) support aggregated communications with FDD cells and TDD cells.

[0077] although Figure 3b An example of a gNB 102 is shown, but the Figure 3b For example, gNB 102 can include any number of Figure 3a . As a specific example, an access point can include a number of backhaul or network interfaces 382, ​​and the controller / processor 378 can support routing functions to route data between different network addresses. As another specific example, while shown as including a single instance of TX processing circuitry 374 and a single instance of RX processing circuitry 376, the gNB 102 can include multiple instances of each (such as one for each RF transceiver).

[0078] Exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure are further described below in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

[0079] The text and drawings are provided as examples only to help readers understand the present disclosure. They are not intended and should not be interpreted as limiting the scope of the present disclosure in any way. Although certain embodiments and examples have been provided, it is obvious to those skilled in the art based on what is disclosed herein that the embodiments and examples shown may be changed without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

[0080] In wireless communication systems, one of the main means to ensure communication rate and reliability is to process signals through channel state information (CSI) at both ends of the transmitter and receiver. For example, the transmit signal is precoded at the transmitter and the receive signal is channel-equalized at the receiver, so as to eliminate the influence of the channel on the signal as much as possible. However, due to the complex and changeable characteristics of wireless channels, how to accurately obtain channel state information is one of the biggest challenges in wireless communication. At present, the prosperous development of smart devices and related applications has stimulated users' demand for wireless communication with faster speeds and lower latency. These demands have prompted wireless communication networks to evolve towards wider bandwidths and more antennas. Accordingly, the resources and difficulty required to obtain wireless channel state information have also increased accordingly. In order to further improve the spectrum efficiency of wireless communication systems, both the industry and academia currently regard how to efficiently obtain channel state information as one of the key challenges for future wireless communication systems.

[0081] To implement the above signal processing, the base station or device needs to obtain the channel state information of each transmitting antenna in all time units and all frequency units of information transmission, where the time unit can be a subframe, a subframe includes two time slots, and the frequency unit can be a resource block (RB), each RB includes subcarriers or resource elements (REs), such as 12 REs. Without loss of generality, the channel state information in the present disclosure may be a channel state matrix, eigenvalues ​​and eigenvectors of the channel after singular value decomposition, a channel precoding matrix indicator (Precoding Matrix Indicator), channel quality information (Channel Quality Information), a layer indicator of the channel (Layer Indicator), a rank indicator of the channel (Rank Indicator), etc. Without loss of generality, the antenna in the present disclosure is a generalized antenna, which may be a physical antenna element (antenna element), or an antenna array (antenna array) including multiple physical antenna elements, or an antenna panel (antenna panel), or a beam (beam), or a precoding matrix (precoding matrix) of the transmitter, etc. Without loss of generality, the frequency unit in the present disclosure may be a sub-band, a bandwidth part (BWP), a subcarrier, a carrier, a physical resource block (PRB), a resource block group (RBG), etc. For example, in LTE and NR, a frequency unit may be a subcarrier covering a frequency range of 15kHz.

[0082] Without loss of generality, the transmission of information occurs on no less than one continuous frequency unit. The method for obtaining channel state information for a certain antenna is to select some frequency units in a certain pattern on the frequency band in which it works to send reference signals (reference signals, akaRS), and estimate the wireless channel state information accordingly. The system may simultaneously send non-reference signals, such as data signals and / or control signals, at other frequency points in this frequency band. The reference signal is a transmission signal composed of a generated sequence, and its content and the time unit and frequency unit in which it is sent are shared by both the transmitter and the receiver. The reference signal may also be called a pilot signal, a training signal, etc. Currently, the most widely used wireless communication system is a cellular communication system based on the 3GPP protocol, such as 4G communication systems such as LTE and LTE-A, and 5G communication systems such as NR. In LTE-A and NR systems, channel state information can be obtained by sending channel state information reference signal CSI-RS (channel state information reference signal), sounding reference signal SRS (sounding reference signal), and demodulation reference signal DM-RS (demodulation reference signal).

[0083] In order to improve the accuracy of CSI acquisition and reduce the resource overhead of reference signals, some current studies consider using neural networks to achieve CSI acquisition. Depending on the application scenario, the neural network includes at least one of the following functions: obtaining the CSI on the frequency unit where the signal is located based on the received reference signal, inferring the CSI of the frequency unit without the reference signal in the frequency domain, and inferring the CSI of the antenna without the reference signal in the antenna domain, for example, inferring the CSI of the antenna without the reference signal. Neural networks include but are not limited to multi-layer perceptron (MLP), convolutional neural network (CNN), deep neural network (DNN), recurrent neural network (RNN), restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM), graph neural network (GNN), deep belief network (DBN), bidirectional recurrent deep neural network (BRDNN), generative adversarial network (GAN), Transformer network, etc.

[0084] Figure 4 A schematic diagram of performing CSI estimation for different antennas based on a neural network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown.

[0085] like Figure 4As shown, the receiver can obtain the CSI on the antenna where the RS is located by performing channel estimation on the reference signal resource used to send the RS, and then input the obtained CSI into a trained neural network, and finally use the neural network to obtain the CSI of all antennas.

[0086] In practice, neural networks generally do not have the ability to adjust their structures adaptively. For example, a neural network can be obtained by training an offline data set, where the offline data set can be obtained by artificial generation, such as generating an offline data set through a random process; then the trained neural network is deployed to online reasoning, and the structure and parameters of the neural network will not be adjusted during the online reasoning process. However, the main problems caused by using such a neural network for CSI acquisition are: 1) The variable characteristics of the wireless channel make it difficult to obtain an offline data set similar to the characteristics of the online CSI, which leads to a decrease in the accuracy of the neural network trained by the offline data after being deployed online; 2) In order to ensure the generalization of the neural network model, the above-mentioned neural network without adaptive structural adjustment is often composed of relatively many neurons, which will cause the large-scale neural network model deployed online to occupy a large amount of computing resources and suffer a large inference delay, and thus increase the difficulty of training; 3) The wireless channel may change due to changes in the physical environment, and the above-mentioned neural network does not support the adjustment of online weight parameters and structure, which will cause the deployed neural network to obtain CSI with reduced accuracy after the physical environment in which it is deployed changes.

[0087] According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, an adaptive neural network for acquiring channel state information CSI in a communication node is provided, and is configured as follows: the communication node adjusts the neural network based on reference signals sent by all of the one or more antenna ports received; and the communication node infers the CSI of one or more antenna ports that do not send reference signals based on reference signals sent by some of the one or more antenna ports received through the adjusted neural network; wherein, in both the adjustment and inference processes of the neural network, the reference signal is sent by one or more antenna ports via one or more reference signal ports corresponding to the one or more antenna ports based on the correspondence between one or more antenna ports determined according to configuration information and one or more reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information.

[0088] In an adaptive neural network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure, the communication node adjusts the neural network based on the reference signals sent by all antenna ports among the received one or more antenna ports, including: the communication node obtains channel state information CSI of the reference signals of one or more antenna ports by performing channel estimation on one or more reference signal resources for sending reference signals of one or more antenna ports to form a CSI data set; and adjusts the neural network based on the CSI data set.

[0089] The adaptive neural network according to the embodiment of the present disclosure further includes: determining, by the communication node based on a threshold, whether to adjust the neural network.

[0090] In the adaptive neural network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure, the threshold includes a neural network complexity threshold and / or a neural network accuracy threshold.

[0091] According to an adaptive neural network of an embodiment of the present disclosure, wherein the neural network is adjusted based on a CSI data set, comprising: adjusting the weight parameters of the neural network and / or the connection structure between neurons of the neural network and / or the data format in which the weight parameters of the connections in the neural network are stored based on the CSI data set.

[0092] According to the adaptive neural network of an embodiment of the present disclosure, model pruning is used to adjust the connection structure between neurons of the neural network.

[0093] According to an adaptive neural network of an embodiment of the present disclosure, adjusting the data format in which weight parameters of connections in the neural network are stored includes: converting the weight parameters from a first data format to a second data format; and determining a mapping relationship between the first data format and the second data format.

[0094] According to an adaptive neural network of an embodiment of the present disclosure, determining a mapping relationship between a first data format and a second data format includes: if the accuracy of the second data format is less than that of the first data format, clustering all weight parameters of the neural network under the first data format, and mapping the weight parameters of each class to the second data format.

[0095] According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, the adaptive neural network also includes: when the communication node determines to adjust the neural network, the communication node adjusts the reference signal to be received and sent by one or more antenna ports and one or more reference signal ports; or when the communication node determines to adjust the neural network, the communication node sends a control signal to another communication node to notify the other communication node to adjust the reference signal to be received and sent by one or more antenna ports and one or more reference signal ports.

[0096] According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, an adaptive neural network for CSI acquisition is proposed, which can realize adaptive adjustment of neural network weight parameters and / or structure according to CSI data samples acquired online, thereby avoiding the performance degradation of the neural network due to lack of model generalization, avoiding the performance degradation caused by underfitting of the neural network due to environmental changes, and reducing the reasoning complexity of the neural network to achieve reduction in computing resource consumption and reasoning delay. This method can be applied to both the network side (such as base station) and the terminal side.

[0097] Figure 5 A diagram illustrating the operation of an adaptive neural network in a communication node according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

[0098] like Figure 5 As shown, in operation 510, the communication node may adjust the neural network based on the received reference signals sent by all antenna ports of the one or more antenna ports. According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, the communication node may include but is not limited to a base station, a terminal (e.g., a user equipment UE), etc. According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, a communication node may receive a reference signal sent by one or more antennas of another communication node, and the communication node may adjust the adaptive neural network in the communication node based on the received reference signal. For example, including but not limited to, the weight parameters and / or neural network structure of the adaptive neural network may be adjusted based on the received reference signal.

[0099] exist Figure 5 In the operation 520 shown, the communication node infers the CSI of the antenna port that does not send the reference signal among the one or more antenna ports based on the received reference signals sent by some of the one or more antenna ports through the adjusted neural network. After the neural network is adjusted based on the reference signals sent by the one or more antenna ports, the adjusted neural network can be used to infer the CSI of the antenna port during the communication process. For example, the inference process can be to receive the reference signals sent by some of the one or more antenna ports, and infer the CSI of the antenna port that does not send the reference signal based on the received reference signals sent by some of the antenna ports.

[0100] according to Figure 5 The operation of the adaptive neural network shown can realize the adaptive adjustment of the weight parameters and structure of the neural network according to the CSI data samples obtained online, and at the same time can reduce the number of resources configured in the reasoning process, reduce the reasoning complexity of the neural network to achieve the reduction of computing resource consumption and reasoning delay.

[0101] For the adaptive neural network for channel state information acquisition according to the embodiments of the present disclosure, the communication node (e.g., base station, terminal, etc.) can receive reference signals from all antennas, perform channel estimation for the reference signal resources of these reference signals, and obtain CSI to form an online CSI data set; the neural network used for online CSI inference is adjusted according to the obtained CSI online data samples, for example, the adjustment of the neural network may include but is not limited to the adjustment of weight parameters and / or neural network structure. The neural network structure means the structure of the connection between each neuron in the neural network (i.e., whether the neurons between any two adjacent layers are connected) and / or the data format in which the weight parameters of all connections are stored in the memory (including the type of data stored and the number of bytes of memory occupied).

[0102] For the sake of simplicity, unless otherwise specified, the "neural network used for CSI acquisition" will be referred to as the "neural network", the "neural network model deployed on the communication node for online CSI inference" will be referred to as the "inference network model", and the "baseline neural network model used for adaptive adjustment of the neural network to obtain the inference network model" will be referred to as the "baseline network model".

[0103] Figure 6 A flow chart of adaptive neural network adjustment according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown.

[0104] In such Figure 6 In the illustrated embodiment, the inference network model can determine whether to acquire the online CSI data set by detecting the performance. The detection of the inference network model performance can be that the communication node sets a start switch for adaptive adjustment of the neural network according to its own demand for the performance of the neural network. The start of the adaptive adjustment of the neural network is determined by the communication node detecting the performance index of the current neural network. For example, the performance index of the neural network can be the inference complexity and / or CSI inference accuracy of the current inference network model. The communication node will set an inference complexity threshold and / or CSI inference accuracy threshold of the CSI neural network during the deployment phase. If the communication node detects that the inference complexity of the current inference network model is higher than the complexity threshold and / or the CSI inference accuracy is lower than the accuracy threshold, the process of acquiring the online CSI data set is started. It should be understood that the above threshold for starting the adaptive adjustment of the neural network is only an example, and other types of thresholds can also be used according to the embodiments of the present disclosure.

[0105] According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, the meaning of inference complexity may include but is not limited to one or more of the following: the total number of neural network neurons, the number of floating point operations (FLOPs) used for neural network inference, the time consumed by neural network inference, etc. The CSI inference accuracy cannot be directly obtained, so it can be reflected by one or more of the following performances of uplink transmission based on neural network acquisition of CSI, including but not limited to the difference between actual throughput and estimated throughput, the difference between actual spectrum efficiency and estimated spectrum efficiency, the frequency of negative acknowledgment (NACK) received by the base station, etc. The inference complexity threshold and CSI inference accuracy threshold of the communication node can be determined according to the upper limit of the computational complexity supported by the communication node and the minimum uplink transmission performance that can be tolerated.

[0106] In some examples, when the neural network is located on the base station side, the base station detects the inference complexity and / or CSI inference accuracy of the current inference network model at a certain frequency, and the detection frequency can be determined by the speed of change of the environment in which the base station is located. When the base station detects that the inference complexity of the inference network model is higher than the complexity threshold and / or the CSI inference accuracy is lower than the accuracy threshold, the base station starts the process of acquiring the online CSI data set. Exemplarily, the base station adjusts the format of the reference signal sent by the terminal and the corresponding radio resources according to the needs of the required training samples, and notifies the terminal of the relevant information through scheduling or control signaling (such as higher layer signaling, etc.).

[0107] In some examples, when the neural network is located on the terminal side, the terminal detects the inference complexity and / or CSI inference accuracy of the current inference network model at a certain frequency, and the detection frequency can be determined by the speed of change of the environment in which the base station is located. When the terminal detects that the inference complexity of the inference network model is higher than the complexity threshold and / or the CSI inference accuracy is lower than the accuracy threshold, the terminal starts the process of acquiring the online CSI data set. Exemplarily, the terminal notifies the base station through a second control signaling (such as a higher layer signaling, etc.) that the terminal needs to start the process of acquiring the online CSI data set.

[0108] In some examples, after a communication node (e.g., a base station, a terminal, etc.) calculates the CSI of a reference signal using a channel estimation method and stores the CSI in a fixed location in a memory to form an online CSI data set, the backup of the baseline network model can replace the current inference network model, and the weight parameters and / or neural network structure of the replaced inference network model can be adjusted at least once based on the CSI online data samples obtained according to a preset threshold.

[0109] Exemplarily, the baseline network model is a neural network model for CSI acquisition that is directly deployed by the communication node during the deployment phase. Optionally, the baseline network model can be obtained by starting online CSI data set acquisition by the communication node at any time and training based on the acquired data set. Optionally, at any time, the communication node can replace the baseline network model with the inference network model currently used for online CSI acquisition and store it in the memory for use in the next model adaptive adjustment. Optionally, the communication node can also replace the existing baseline model with the inference network model obtained after any adjustment round in the model adaptive adjustment and store it in the memory for use in the next model adaptive adjustment (the inference network model obtained in the model adaptive adjustment described here can be an inference network model whose model has not been adjusted to exceed the system set threshold).

[0110] Exemplarily, when the preset adaptive adjustment switch is determined by the CSI estimation accuracy as a threshold, the communication node can adjust the neural network in each round according to the following combination, including: 1) adjusting the weight parameters of the neural network alone; 2) adjusting the structure of the connection between neurons in the neural network and adjusting the weight parameters of the neural network. When the preset adaptive adjustment switch is determined by the inference complexity threshold alone as a threshold, or by the inference complexity threshold and the CSI estimation accuracy as a threshold, the communication node can adjust the neural network in each round according to the following combination, including: 1) adjusting the data type and length of the parameters of each connection in the neural network stored in the memory alone; 2) adjusting the structure of the connection between neurons in the neural network and adjusting the weight parameters of the neural network; 3) adjusting the weight parameters of the neural network and the data type and size of the memory occupied by the parameters stored in each neuron in the neural network; 4) adjusting the structure of the connection between neurons in the neural network, adjusting the weight parameters of the neural network, and adjusting the data type and length of the parameters of each connection in the neural network stored in the memory.

[0111] Exemplarily, the weight parameters of the neural network are adjusted by using an online CSI data set to train the neural network model. When the training is sufficient, the training is stopped, and sufficient may mean, for example, that the performance of the currently trained neural network is higher than a preset CSI estimation accuracy threshold.

[0112] Exemplarily, the communication node adjusts the structure of the connection between neurons in the neural network by using a model pruning method to prune the connection between each neuron in the middle layer of the neural network. When any round of model adaptive adjustment includes model pruning, the communication node needs to perform the following two steps in sequence: 1) perform model pruning on the connections of all neurons in the middle layer of the inference network model; 2) use the online CSI data set to train and tune the inference network model.

[0113] Among them, pruning means to delete or retain the connection between each neuron in the neural network according to a pruning threshold. If the connection exceeds the threshold, the connection is retained, and if the connection is lower than the pruning threshold, the connection is discarded. Among them, the discarding operation can be to reset the weight of the connection to zero, or to directly delete the corresponding parameters of the connection from the memory. Among them, for example, in the pruning operation of a certain connection, the smaller the value of the connection weight, the smaller the contribution to the output, so those connections whose weight values ​​are lower than the preset pruning threshold are directly pruned. The pruning threshold can be obtained by a function, which can be obtained by multiplying a quality parameter by the standard deviation, mean or L1 / L2 norm of all weights of the neural network. The meaning of the quality parameter is the pruning ratio in this round of pruning, and the higher the quality parameter, the greater the pruning ratio. After the communication node prunes the inference network model, the number of connections between its neurons will be reduced to the pruning ratio corresponding to the quality parameter. The inference network model after pruning by the communication node can be directly used for online CSI acquisition. Optionally, the communication node uses the online CSI data set to train the pruned inference network model, that is, to perform parameter tuning on the remaining weights in the pruned inference network model. The communication node can stop training when the training is sufficient, and sufficient means that the performance of the currently trained neural network is higher than the preset CSI inference accuracy threshold.

[0114] Optionally, the communication node may perform only one round of model pruning and weight parameter adjustment, and use the adjusted inference network model for online CSI acquisition after these two steps. Optionally, the communication node may perform multiple rounds of model pruning and weight parameter adjustment, with different quality parameters set for each round to achieve a specific proportion of neuron connections pruned in this round of pruning. Optionally, the communication node sets similar weight parameters for each round of pruning or decreases with the increase in rounds to achieve an average or gradually increasing pruning ratio based on the final desired model complexity. Compared with a single round of model pruning, the use of multiple rounds of step-by-step pruning can achieve higher CSI inference accuracy while pruning the model to the same complexity.

[0115] Exemplarily, the method by which the communication node adjusts the data format in which the weight parameters of each connection in the neural network are stored in the memory is model quantization. The meaning of the data format is the data type in which the weight parameters are stored and the number of bytes of the memory occupied, wherein the data type can be a floating point number, an integer, etc. The method by which the communication node quantizes the weight parameters of all connections of the inference network model is to convert the first data format in which the weights are stored in the memory into a second data format. The conversion of the data format can be one of the following three modes: 1) conversion of the same data type and different occupied memory lengths (for example, conversion from a 64-bit floating point data format to a 32-bit floating point data format); 2) conversion of different data types with the same memory length (for example, conversion of a 16-bit floating point data format to a 16-bit integer data format); 3) conversion of different data types and different lengths (for example, conversion of a 64-bit floating point data format to an 8-bit integer data format). The conversion of the data format of the weight parameters requires the following two steps to be performed in sequence: 1) selecting the target data format based on the communication node's requirements for the complexity of the inference network model; 2) if the accuracy of the second data format is less than that of the first data format, clustering all weight parameters of the inference network model in the first data format (before the data format is converted), and mapping the weight parameters of each category to the second data format.

[0116] The target data format of the communication node when performing model quantization is selected by considering the data format that the device can support during calculation and the requirements of the complexity of the inference network model. Since integer operations are more efficient than floating-point operations in most devices, when the device supports integer operations, the device prefers to convert the data type of the inference network model from floating point to integer. Generally speaking, the complexity of the operation will decrease by about 25% for every halving of the memory occupied by the data format of the inference network model. The communication device selects the memory length occupied by the data format connected in the inference network model according to the target complexity of CSI inference. For example, when the data format of the baseline network model of the communication device is a 64-bit floating point number, and the goal of the communication device is to reduce the complexity of CSI inference by 50% using model quantization, the data format of the inference network model can be quantized from 64-bit floating point to 16-bit integer.

[0117] After the communication node selects the target data format (the second data format), clustering is performed on all the weight parameters of the inference network model in the first data format (before the data format is converted). The weight parameters of the same class in the first data format will share the weight parameters in the second data format. The reason why the communication node needs to cluster all the weight parameters of the inference network model is that if the precision of the second data format is less than that of the first data format, the number of weight parameters that are different in the first data format representation may be greater than the total number of different data supported by the second data format. For example, when the data format of the benchmark network model is 64-bit floating-point numbers and the second data format is 8-bit integers, the total number of different data supported by the second data format is 256, while in the case of the inference network model represented in the first data format, the number of its different weight parameters may be much greater than 256. The clustering method can be equal-interval clustering, k-mean clustering, etc.

[0118] Optionally, the communication node can use the equal-interval clustering method to cluster the weight parameters in the first data format. Exemplarily, the total number of different data N that can be supported is calculated according to the precision of the second data format, and the maximum value ω of all the weight parameters is counted max and the minimum value ω min . The communication node uses ω max as the upper bound and ω min as the lower bound, and evenly divides the range between the upper and lower bounds into N classes. The range included in each class is . The weights whose values of the weight parameters in the first data format fall within a certain class range are grouped into one class. After clustering is completed, all the weight parameters of the inference network model are mapped to data format 2 according to the clusters.

[0119] Optionally, the communication node can use the k-mean clustering method to cluster the weight parameters in the first data format. The total number of weights of the inference network model in the first data format is M, denoted as {α 1 , α 2 , α 3 , …, α M}, where α m , m ∈ [1, M] represents the value of the m-th weight in the first data format. The second data format contains a total of K sets (K < M), denoted as {β 1 , β 2 , β 3 , …, β K}, where β k , k ∈ [1, K] represents the weight value corresponding to the k-th set in the second data format. The M weights in the first data format can be clustered and mapped to the second data format through the following formula:

[0120]

[0121] In order to realize the reasoning and adaptive structural adjustment of the neural network for acquiring channel state information (CSI) between antennas according to the above-mentioned embodiment, the communication node (for example, a base station, a terminal, etc.) needs to obtain the CSI of the antenna position where the reference signal is located, and store the CSI in a fixed position in the memory to form an online CSI data set. For example, in the case where the base station obtains the channel state information of the antenna of the terminal, the terminal needs to be configured with at least two different reference signal resource sets, wherein the reference signal configured in the first reference signal resource set needs to comply with the reference signal resource and antenna mapping method required for the CSI acquisition neural network to perform adaptive structural adjustment, and the reference signal configured in the second reference signal resource set needs to comply with the reference signal resource and antenna mapping method required for the CSI acquisition neural network reasoning. Without loss of generality, the antenna described in the present disclosure is a generalized antenna, which can be a physical antenna element, or an antenna array including multiple physical antenna elements, or an antenna panel, or a beam, or a precoding matrix at the transmitting end, etc. For the sake of simplicity of description, unless otherwise specified, the "neural network for CSI acquisition" will be referred to as "neural network" hereinafter; and in the following description, the case in which a base station performs channel estimation on an uplink reference signal resource to obtain channel state information of an antenna of a terminal (e.g., a user equipment UE) will be taken as an example to describe an embodiment according to the present disclosure, wherein the uplink reference signal may be a sounding reference signal (SRS), but it should be understood that the embodiment of the present disclosure may be applied to the reception and transmission of reference signals between any communication nodes (e.g., base stations, terminals, etc.) in a communication network, for example, the method according to an embodiment of the present disclosure may also be applied to the case in which a terminal (e.g., a user equipment UE) performs channel estimation on a downlink reference signal resource to obtain channel state information of an antenna of a base station, wherein the downlink reference signal may be a channel state information reference signal CSI-RS.

[0122] At present, in the protocol, the user (UE) realizes the measurement of uplink CSI by being configured and sending a sounding reference signal (SRS). Among them, the UE can be configured to send an SRS with the usage of antenna switching, so that the base station can obtain the uplink CSI of each UE transmitting antenna port according to the SRS. Exemplarily, the UE first reports the radio access capability information, which includes the UE antenna switching capability. After that, the UE can be configured with no less than one uplink reference signal resource or resource set to configure the SRS resources required for antenna switching, and the UE can only be configured with one antenna switching method for uplink reference signal transmission (according to the indicated user capability) at the same time. The UE will be implicitly configured with the antenna switching method by the SRS resources contained in the uplink reference signal resources, and the UE will be indicated that the uplink reference signal transmitting antenna ports corresponding to each SRS resource cannot be the same.

[0123] In the above-mentioned prior art, the reason why the UE is only configured with one antenna switching method for sending an uplink reference signal at the same time is that the base station only needs one antenna switching configuration to obtain the uplink reference signal of each antenna port of the UE. In order to support the SRS antenna switching, the UE may be configured with more than one uplink reference signal resource or resource set, wherein the reason for configuring more than one uplink reference signal resource set is that each uplink reference signal resource set can only contain resource configuration within one slot, and the number of resources available for SRS in one slot may be less than the number of resources required for antenna switching. For the UE to send an uplink reference signal to implement antenna switching, the UE will only be indicated that the UE antenna port corresponding to each SRS resource for sending the uplink reference signal cannot be the same, and will not be configured with the mapping relationship between each SRS resource and the UE antenna port. Therefore, the UE can determine the mapping relationship between the SRS resource and the UE antenna port according to the configured antenna switching method. The reason why the UE will not be configured with the mapping relationship between the SRS resource and the uplink reference signal sending port is that different mapping relationships will not affect the result of the base station obtaining the uplink CSI of each UE sending antenna port.

[0124] For example, if a UE is configured with an uplink reference signal resource set for xTyR antenna switching, "xT" means that the UE can send SRS signals on x antenna ports each time the antenna is switched, and "yR" means that the UE needs to send SRS signals on y antenna ports in total. Therefore, the UE needs to perform y / x antenna switches in total. Taking x=1 and y=4 as an example, the UE needs to perform SRS signal transmission on 4 different antenna ports through 4 antenna switches. Among them, the SRS resource set configured by the UE for antenna switching includes 4 SRS resources and is distributed on different OFDM symbols. Through the above resource configuration, the UE is implicitly indicated that the antenna switching method of SRS is "1T4R". The UE will be configured with 4 (a+b) OFDM symbols to perform 4 SRS signal transmissions, where a represents the number of OFDM symbols required to send SRS signals on one antenna port, and b represents the number of OFDM symbols required for the guard period to perform antenna switching. The number of symbols contained in 4 (a+b) needs to be less than the total number of symbols in a slot. At the same time, the UE needs to ensure that a different antenna port is used to send the SRS each time the antenna is switched.

[0125] When the neural network deployed at the base station needs to infer the CSI of the antenna port that is not configured with a reference signal based on the CSI on the transmitting antenna port corresponding to the received SRS, the neural network operation (such as reasoning, adaptive structural adjustment) needs to know the UE transmitting antenna port corresponding to each resource of the received SRS. Because in the current protocol, the antenna switching configuration does not directly specify the antenna port for the UE to send SRS corresponding to the SRS resource, the neural network deployed at the base station cannot know the correspondence between the SRS resource and the UE antenna port, resulting in the inability of the neural network to run. In addition, when the neural network deployed at the base station needs to run both reasoning and adaptive structural adjustment functions at the same time, the UE needs to be configured with at least two different antenna switching methods for sending SRS for antenna switching purposes. However, the existing protocol only supports the same UE to be configured with one antenna switching method at the same time for sending SRS for antenna switching purposes, so it is impossible to simultaneously execute the reasoning and adaptive structural adjustment of the neural network at the base station.

[0126] Figure 7 A method for configuring and sending a reference signal by a first node in a communication network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown.

[0127] like Figure 7As shown, in step S710, the first node receives configuration information for a reference signal. The first node may be any communication node in a communication network, such as a base station, a terminal, etc. According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, the configuration information may be, for example, higher layer signaling, control signaling, or scheduling signaling, but the embodiments of the present disclosure are not limited thereto.

[0128] In step S720, the first node may determine, according to the configuration information, a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information.

[0129] In step S730, the first node may send a reference signal via a plurality of antenna ports corresponding to the plurality of reference signal ports indicated by the configuration information based on the determined corresponding relationship.

[0130] In such Figure 7 In the embodiment shown, each reference signal port indicated by the corresponding relationship indication configuration information corresponds to an antenna port of the first node.

[0131] Figure 8 A method for receiving a reference signal by a second node in a communication network according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown.

[0132] like Figure 8 As shown, in step S810, the second node sends configuration information for the reference signal. The second node may be any communication node in the communication network, such as a base station, a terminal, etc. According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, the configuration information may be, for example, higher layer signaling, control signaling, or scheduling signaling, but the embodiments of the present disclosure are not limited thereto.

[0133] In step S820, the second node may determine a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information.

[0134] In step S830, the second node may receive a reference signal sent by the first node via a plurality of antenna ports corresponding to a plurality of reference signal ports indicated by the configuration information.

[0135] In accordance with Figure 8 In the illustrated embodiment, the correspondence relationship indicates that each reference signal port indicated by the configuration information corresponds to an antenna port of the first node.

[0136] Through Figure 7 The reference signal configuration and transmission method shown in Figure 8The reference signal receiving method shown, according to the embodiment of the present disclosure, can configure the mapping relationship between the reference port included in the reference resource set and the antenna port for sending the reference signal, and maintain this mapping relationship in different reference signal transmissions. For example, according to the embodiment of the present disclosure, in an example in which the base station obtains the channel state information of the antenna of the terminal (such as the user equipment (UE)), the UE can obtain the correspondence between the uplink reference signal resource for sending SRS and the antenna port according to the configuration information, and perform SRS antenna switching in sequence through the correspondence. Through the above functions, the base station can obtain the correspondence between the SRS resource and the antenna port used by the user to send SRS, thereby realizing the reasoning and adaptive structure adjustment of the neural network for obtaining the uplink CSI. In the process of the base station obtaining the uplink CSI, this neural network is used to infer the CSI of the other antenna ports of the UE that have not sent the SRS through the CSI of the UE's partially sent SRS antenna port. Therefore, the UE only needs to send SRS on some antenna ports to support the base station to obtain all CSI related to this UE, so the number of SRS resources configured for this UE can be reduced, so as to save the uplink reference signal resource overhead. At the same time, the number of times the UE performs SRS antenna switching will also decrease accordingly as the number of SRS configuration resources decreases, so the number of communication interruptions caused by the UE performing antenna switching (communication interruptions occur within the protection interval of each round of antenna switching) will also decrease accordingly. At the same time, this method can realize that the same UE is configured with multiple different antenna switching methods at the same time for uplink reference signal transmission for antenna switching purposes, and by receiving SRS with different antenna switching configurations, the neural network at the base station can simultaneously perform reasoning and adaptive structural adjustment, so that the neural network at the base station can achieve efficient adaptive structural adjustment, thereby increasing the accuracy of CSI acquisition and reducing the delay of neural network reasoning and computing resource overhead.

[0137] The method for sending and receiving a reference signal according to an embodiment of the present disclosure can be applied to an uplink reference signal or a downlink reference signal. For example, the first node may be a user equipment (UE), and the second node may be a base station. At this time, the first node may receive configuration information, determine the association relationship between the first node antenna port and the uplink reference signal port in the configuration according to the configuration, and then the first node may send an uplink reference signal on the associated antenna port. In addition, in the case of being applied to a downlink reference signal, the first node may receive configuration information, determine the association relationship between the second node antenna port and the downlink reference signal port in the configuration according to the configuration, and then the first node receives the downlink reference signal sent on the associated antenna port on the reference signal port.

[0138] For example, when the configuration received by the first node is an uplink reference signal related configuration, the configuration received by the first node includes at least one uplink reference signal resource set (the uplink reference signal resource set may be a sounding reference signal resource (SRS-Resources), a sounding reference signal resource set (SRS-ResourcesSets) or other uplink reference signal configuration set). Each uplink reference signal resource set in the configuration received by the first node contains at least one uplink reference signal resource, wherein the reference signal resource represents a time-frequency resource used to send a reference signal, and a reference signal resource may be associated with one or more reference signal ports. The reference signal port represents a logical port used to send a reference signal, and a reference signal port may be associated with a first node antenna port, and the reference signal port may be an SRS port. The first node antenna port represents an antenna port at which the first node can independently send a signal, and the antenna port may be a physical antenna unit, a physical antenna array, a physical antenna panel, etc. of the first node. The first node associates each antenna port with an uplink reference signal port according to the configuration instructions, and sends an uplink reference signal on the resources associated with each antenna port.

[0139] For example, when the configuration received by the first node is a downlink reference signal related configuration, the configuration received by the first node includes at least one downlink reference signal resource set (the downlink reference signal resource set may be a channel state information reference signal resource (CSI-RS-Resources), a channel state information reference signal resource set (CSI-RS-ResourcesSets) or other uplink reference signal configuration set). Among them, each downlink reference signal resource set in the configuration received by the first node contains at least one downlink reference signal resource, wherein a reference signal port may be associated with an antenna port of a second node, and the reference signal port may be a CSI-RS port. The antenna port of the second node represents an antenna port through which the second node can independently send signals, and this antenna port may be a physical antenna unit, a physical antenna array, a physical antenna panel, etc. of the second node.

[0140] For the sake of simplicity of description, unless otherwise specified, the antenna port association relationship mentioned below is "the association relationship between the antenna port of the UE and the uplink reference signal port in the configuration", but it should be understood that the embodiments of the present disclosure can be applied to the reception and transmission of reference signals between any communication nodes (such as base stations, terminals, etc.) in a communication network. For example, the method according to the embodiments of the present disclosure can also be applied to the case where a terminal (such as a user equipment UE) performs channel estimation on a downlink reference signal resource to obtain channel state information of an antenna of a base station, where the downlink reference signal can be a channel state information reference signal CSI-RS. The following specifically describes an example embodiment in which the UE determines the antenna port association relationship.

[0141] ■ Improvements based on existing antenna port association relationships

[0142] In some examples, the UE determines the correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the UE and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information based on the configuration information, including: associating each antenna port of the UE with a different reference signal port according to the configuration information, and the correspondence between the multiple antenna ports and the multiple reference signal ports is consistent in the same cell. For example, the UE receives configuration information of the first reference signal resource set and the second reference signal resource set respectively in the same cell. According to the configuration information, the UE corresponds the reference signal ports 300x1 and 300x2 to the antenna port 1 and antenna port 2 of the UE respectively, and the UE applies this reference signal correspondence to the first and second reference signal resource sets respectively. In the same cell, at different times, the UE receives the third reference signal resource set. According to the configuration information, the UE also corresponds the reference signal ports 300x1 and 300x2 to the antenna port 1 and antenna port 2 of the UE respectively.

[0143] ■ Predefined antenna port association

[0144] In some examples, the UE may be predefined with an antenna port association relationship, for example, the UE may be predefined with an antenna port association relationship when it is factory set, and the antenna port association relationship may associate the antenna port of the UE with the uplink reference signal port corresponding to the uplink reference signal resource. Furthermore, after the UE receives the configuration information, the UE may associate the antenna port used to send the uplink reference signal with the uplink reference signal port corresponding to the uplink reference signal resource in the configuration information based on the predefined antenna port association relationship, and send the uplink reference signal on different resources based on this association relationship. Through the above design, the UE may be predefined to associate the antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in a fixed order.

[0145] ■ Determine the antenna port association relationship based on the index

[0146] In some examples, the UE may associate its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in sequence according to the association relationship included in the configuration information. The association relationship included in the configuration information is an index set of an antenna port, each index in the index set is used to identify a different antenna port of the UE, and the index is associated with a different reference signal port. The index of the antenna port is a general representation, and may also be an identity identifier, ID, etc. of the antenna port. The index is reported by the UE; or the index is configured by the base station for the antenna port of the UE, and each index is associated with a different antenna port of the UE. The index set may be represented by a bit sequence, consisting of no less than one subsequence, each index is represented by a subsequence, each subsequence has the same length, and each subsequence indexes an antenna port of the UE. Optionally, the correspondence between the UE antenna port and the index subsequence may be determined by the UE itself, and the UE needs to ensure that the correspondence does not change in the same cell. Optionally, the correspondence between the UE antenna port and the index subsequence may be constant. According to the above association relationship, the UE associates the antenna port used to send the uplink reference signal with the uplink reference signal port corresponding to the uplink reference signal resource, and sends the uplink reference signal on different resources based on this association relationship. Taking the UE supporting a maximum of N antenna ports as an example, the index subsequence of each antenna port is represented by an M-bit sequence, and by configuring 2M>=N, it is ensured that the M-bit sequence can represent at least N different antenna port indexes. Therefore, the configuration information received by the UE is a Y×M-bit sequence {ε 1 ,ε 2 ,ε 3 ,…,ε Y} represents the antenna port association relationship, where ε y is an index subsequence of an antenna port, Y represents the number of antenna switching ports supported by this configuration and satisfies Y≤N, and the UE associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in the order of this sequence. Through the above design, the UE can associate the antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in a certain order.

[0147] ■Determine the antenna port association relationship based on the order of symbols corresponding to the reference signal port

[0148] In some examples, the UE may read a predefined antenna port association relationship from the configuration information. The predefined antenna port association relationship may be stored in a cache. The UE obtains the total number of antenna switching ports supported by this uplink reference signal resource set through the configuration information. The antenna port association relationship stored in the cache by the UE is a sequence of antenna port association relationships generated by the UE itself, and this sequence is a sequence of all antenna ports of the UE. When the UE receives the configuration information containing antenna switching, the UE reads the sequence of antenna port association relationships from the cache, and sequentially associates the symbols corresponding to the reference signal ports with the uplink reference signal ports according to the order of the antenna ports provided by the sequence. When the total number of antenna switching ports indicated in the configuration information is less than the length of the read sequence (i.e., the maximum number of antenna ports supported by the first node), the UE associates the antenna ports with the uplink reference signal ports in the order provided by the sequence, and the antenna ports arranged after the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information in this sequence will not be associated, so the UE will not send uplink reference signals on these antenna ports. The UE associates the antenna port used to send the uplink reference signal with the uplink reference signal port corresponding to the uplink reference signal resource according to the above association order, and sends the uplink reference signal on different resources based on this association relationship. Taking the UE as an example that the maximum number of antenna ports supported by the UE is Y, the sequence of antenna switching order generated by the UE is S Y ={ε 1 ,ε 2 ,ε 3 ,…,ε Y}(ε y represents the yth antenna port of the UE), if the antenna switching method indicated by the configuration information received by the UE is xTy 1 R, then UE Antenna switching is performed in the order of 1 ≤Y. Through the above design, the UE can associate the antenna ports with the uplink reference signal ports in a certain order.

[0149] ■Updateable antenna port association

[0150] In some examples, the UE can read the corresponding antenna port association relationship from the cache according to the configuration information. Among them, the UE obtains the total number of antenna switching ports supported by this uplink reference signal resource set and the antenna port association sequence update identifier through the configuration information. This update identifier indicates whether the UE updates the antenna port association relationship stored in the cache. When the update identifier is positive, the UE generates a sequence of antenna port association relationships according to the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information and stores it in the cache, and associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port according to the newly generated sequence order. When the update identifier is negative, the UE reads the sequence of antenna port association relationships from the cache, and associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in sequence according to the order provided by the sequence. The process of the UE reading the sequence of antenna port association relationships from the cache and performing antenna switching is as follows: 1) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is equal to the sequence length of the antenna port association relationship extracted from the cache, the antenna port is directly associated with the uplink reference signal port using the read association order (for example, the UE is configured to perform xTyR antenna switching, and the sequence length of the association relationship extracted from the cache is also y, then the antenna association is directly performed using the order provided by this sequence); 2) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is greater than the sequence length of the antenna port association relationship read from the cache, the antenna association is first performed using the read order, and then the antenna port association order is generated for other antenna ports, and the association is completed (for example, the sequence length y2 of the antenna port association relationship extracted from the cache is less than the antenna port indicated by the configuration information). 3) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is less than the sequence length of the antenna port association relationship read from the cache, the UE performs antenna association according to the antenna port association relationship corresponding to the sequence. In this sequence, the antenna ports arranged after the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information will not be associated with the uplink reference signal port, so the UE will not send uplink reference signals on these antenna ports (for example, if the sequence length y2 of the antenna port association relationship read from the cache is greater than the number of antenna switching times y1 indicated by the configuration information, the UE first associates the antenna ports of the first y1 part of the sequence extracted from the cache with the uplink reference signal port). The UE associates the antenna port used to send the uplink reference signal with the uplink reference signal port corresponding to the uplink reference signal resource according to the above association order, and sends the uplink reference signal on different resources based on this association relationship. Through the above design, the UE can associate the antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in a certain order, and can update the antenna port association sequence according to the instruction of the base station.

[0151] ■ Antenna port association order read by index

[0152] In some examples, the UE can read the corresponding antenna port association relationship from the cache according to the configuration information. Among them, the UE obtains the total number of antenna switching ports supported by this uplink reference signal resource set and the antenna port association relationship sequence index through the configuration information. Exemplarily, the UE can store no less than one antenna port association relationship sequence in the cache, and obtain the antenna port association relationship sequence corresponding to the current uplink reference signal resource set through the antenna port association relationship sequence index. When the sequence indicated by the antenna port association relationship sequence index does not exist, the UE generates a sequence of antenna port association relationships according to the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information and stores it in the cache, and associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port according to the order of the newly generated sequence. When the UE successfully reads the sequence indicated by the antenna port association relationship sequence index from the cache, the UE associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in sequence according to the order provided by the sequence. The process of the UE reading the sequence of antenna port association relations from the cache and performing antenna switching is as follows: 1) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is equal to the sequence length of the antenna port association relations extracted from the cache, the antenna port is directly associated with the uplink reference signal port using the read association relationship; 2) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is greater than the sequence length of the antenna port association relations read from the cache, the antenna association is first performed using the read order, and then the antenna port association relations are generated for other antenna ports and the association is completed; 3) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is less than the sequence length of the antenna port association relations read from the cache, the UE performs antenna association according to the antenna port association order corresponding to the sequence, and the antenna ports arranged after the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information in this sequence will not be associated with the uplink reference signal ports, so the UE will not send uplink reference signals on these antenna ports. The UE associates the antenna port used to send the uplink reference signal with the uplink reference signal port corresponding to the uplink reference signal resource according to the above association relationship, and sends the uplink reference signal on different resources based on this association relationship. Through the above design, the UE can associate the antenna port with the uplink reference signal port according to the instruction of the base station and in the order provided by the indicated sequence.

[0153] ■ Antenna port association based on uplink reference signal resource set identity (ID)

[0154] In some examples, the configuration information for the first reference signal resource set received by the UE includes an identifier of the second reference signal resource set. The identifier described here is a general name, and may also be an identity, ID, etc. The UE determines the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the first reference signal resource set and the antenna ports of the UE based on the correspondence between the multiple antenna ports and the multiple reference signal ports in the second reference signal resource set corresponding to the ID included in the configuration information. The UE corresponds the multiple antenna ports to the multiple reference signal ports according to the acquired correspondence. For example, the configuration information received by the UE is the first reference signal resource set, which includes the ID of the second reference signal resource set. Through the ID, the UE obtains that the reference signal ports 300x1 and 300x2 of the second reference signal resource set correspond to the antenna port 1 and antenna port 2 of the UE, respectively. Based on this, the UE also corresponds the reference signal ports 300x1 and 300x2 in the first reference signal resource set to the antenna port 1 and antenna port 2 of the UE, respectively.

[0155] Through the above example embodiments, the UE can obtain the correspondence between the uplink reference signal resource for sending SRS and the antenna port according to the configuration information, and perform SRS antenna switching in sequence according to the correspondence. Through the above function, the base station can obtain the correspondence between the SRS resource and the antenna port used by the user to send SRS, thereby realizing the reasoning and adaptive structure adjustment of the neural network for obtaining uplink CSI.

[0156] In addition, according to the embodiments of the present disclosure, it is possible to configure the same UE with multiple different antenna switching methods for uplink reference signal transmission for antenna switching purposes, and by receiving SRSs of different antenna switching configurations, the neural network at the base station can perform reasoning and adaptive structural adjustment at the same time, so that the neural network at the base station can achieve efficient adaptive structural adjustment, thereby increasing the accuracy of CSI acquisition and reducing the delay and computing resource overhead of neural network reasoning. The following will describe an example embodiment of configuring multiple different antenna switching methods for the same UE and determining the antenna port association relationship of different antenna switching methods.

[0157] ■ Indicate the antenna switching method, based on the association of multiple antenna switching methods, determine the antenna port association relationship

[0158] In some examples, the configuration information received by the UE may include an antenna switching method indication and an antenna switching method association indication, the antenna switching method indication is used to indicate the antenna switching method corresponding to the current resource set (represented by the first antenna switching method), and the antenna switching method association indication is used to indicate the antenna port association relationship of the second antenna switching method associated with the current resource set (first antenna switching method). The UE can obtain the antenna port association relationship for the first antenna switching method according to the antenna switching method association indication in the configuration.

[0159] In some examples, the "antenna switching method indication" can be a fixed-length binary bit sequence, each expression of this sequence represents an antenna switching method, and the length of this sequence is associated with the maximum number that can be expressed, and the maximum number that this sequence can express should be greater than the number of antenna switching methods that the UE can support. For example, the configuration information received by the UE contains two uplink reference signal resource sets configured with 1T4R and 1T2R antenna switching methods, respectively. The UE uses the resources configured by the first uplink reference signal resource unit to perform 1T4R antenna switching, and the UE uses the resources configured by the second uplink reference signal resource unit to perform 1T2R antenna switching. Through the above design, the UE can determine the antenna switching method of this resource set according to the antenna switching method indication contained in each uplink reference signal resource set, and use this antenna switching method to perform uplink reference signal transmission. Therefore, the UE can be configured with no less than two uplink reference signal resource sets that support different antenna switching methods, respectively, so that the UE can simultaneously support no less than two uplink reference signal transmissions with different antenna switching.

[0160] In some examples, the UE may read the antenna port association relationship corresponding to the first antenna switching method from the cache using the antenna switching method association indication in the configuration information as an index. When the antenna port association order of the first antenna switching method read from the cache using the antenna switching method association indication as an index does not exist, the UE generates a sequence of antenna port association relationships according to the configuration related to the first antenna switching method and stores it in the cache, and associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port according to the newly generated sequence order. When the UE successfully reads the sequence of antenna port association relationships from the cache using the antenna switching method association indication as an index, the UE associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in sequence according to the order provided by the sequence. The process of the UE reading the sequence of antenna port association relations from the cache and performing antenna switching is as follows: 1) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is equal to the sequence length of the antenna port association relations extracted from the cache, the antenna port is directly associated with the uplink reference signal port using the read association sequence; 2) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is greater than the sequence length of the antenna port association relations read from the cache, the antenna association is first performed using the read sequence, and then the antenna port association sequence is generated for other antenna ports, and the association is completed; 3) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is less than the sequence length of the antenna port association relations read from the cache, the UE performs antenna association according to the antenna port association sequence corresponding to the sequence, and the antenna ports arranged after the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information in this sequence will not be associated with the uplink reference signal ports, so the UE will not send uplink reference signals on these antenna ports. The UE associates the antenna port used to send the uplink reference signal with the uplink reference signal port corresponding to the uplink reference signal resource according to the above association relationship, and sends the uplink reference signal on different resources based on this association relationship. Through the above design, the UE can associate the uplink reference signal resource sets corresponding to different antenna switching methods with the antenna ports and the uplink reference signal ports in the same order.

[0161] ■ Indicate the antenna switching process, determine the antenna port association relationship based on the association of multiple antenna switching processes

[0162] In some examples, the configuration information received by the UE may include an antenna switching process number and an antenna switching process association indication. The antenna switching process represents a process that enables the base station to obtain all channel information of all antenna ports of a certain UE. An antenna switching process needs to be implemented by resources configured by no less than one uplink reference signal resource set. The uplink reference signal resource set used to perform the same antenna switching process is configured with the same antenna switching process number, and different antenna switching processes can be configured with different or the same antenna switching methods. The antenna switching process association indication is used to indicate the antenna port association relationship of the second antenna switching process associated with the current resource set (using the first antenna switching process). The UE can obtain the antenna port association relationship used for the first antenna switching process according to the antenna switching process association indication in the configuration information.

[0163] In some examples, the UE can determine the antenna switching process to which this resource set belongs according to the antenna switching process number contained in the configuration information, and the uplink reference signal ports corresponding to the uplink reference signal resources contained in all uplink reference signal resource sets configured with the same antenna switching process are associated with different user antenna ports. Take the configuration signaling received by the UE as an example, which contains three uplink reference signal resource sets, assuming that the antenna switching process numbered 1 is configured for the first two resource sets, and the antenna switching process numbered 2 is configured for the third resource set, and each resource set is configured with resources for executing the 1T2R antenna switching method. The first and second resource sets belong to the same antenna switching process, so the UE uses the resources configured by these two resource sets to perform 1T4R antenna switching. At the same time, the UE uses the resources configured by the third resource set to perform 1T2R antenna switching. Through the above design, the UE can be configured with no less than two uplink reference signal resource sets that support different antenna switching processes respectively, and different antenna switching processes can be associated with different antenna switching methods, so that the UE can simultaneously support the transmission of uplink reference signals for no less than one different antenna switching.

[0164] In some examples, the UE can read the corresponding antenna port association relationship from the cache based on the antenna switching process association indication in the configuration information as an index. Exemplarily, when the UE uses the antenna switching process association indication as an index and the antenna port association order of the second antenna switching process read from the cache does not exist, the UE generates a sequence of antenna port association relationships according to the configuration related to the first antenna switching process and stores it in the cache, and associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port according to the newly generated sequence order. When the UE successfully reads the antenna port association relationship from the cache based on the antenna switching process association indication as an index, the UE associates its antenna port with the uplink reference signal port in sequence according to the order provided by the sequence. The process of the UE reading the sequence of antenna port association order from the cache and performing antenna switching is as follows: 1) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is equal to the sequence length of the antenna port association relationship extracted from the cache, the antenna port is directly associated with the uplink reference signal port using the read association relationship; 2) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is greater than the sequence length of the antenna port association relationship read from the cache, the antenna association is first performed using the read order, and then the antenna port association relationship is generated for other antenna ports, and the association is completed; 3) If the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information is less than the sequence length of the antenna port association relationship read from the cache, the UE performs antenna association according to the antenna port association relationship corresponding to the sequence, and the antenna ports arranged after the total number of antenna switching ports indicated by the configuration information in this sequence will not be associated with the uplink reference signal port, so the UE will not send uplink reference signals on these antenna ports. The UE associates the antenna port used to send the uplink reference signal with the uplink reference signal port corresponding to the uplink reference signal resource according to the above association order, and sends the uplink reference signal on different resources based on this association relationship. Through the above design, the UE can associate the uplink reference signal resource sets corresponding to different antenna switching processes with the antenna ports and the uplink reference signal ports in the same order.

[0165] Fig. 9 A block diagram showing a structure of a first node for sending a reference signal according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown.

[0166] refer to Fig. 9 , the first node 900 includes a transceiver 910 and a controller 920. The transceiver 910 is configured to send signals to the outside and receive signals from the outside. The controller 920 is configured to control the transceiver to send / receive physical signals and perform the reference signal transmission method described in the present disclosure. The first node 900 can be implemented in the form of hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software so that it can perform all methods described in the present disclosure.

[0167] Fig.10A block diagram showing a structure of a second node for receiving a reference signal according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is shown.

[0168] refer to Fig.10 , the first node 1000 includes a transceiver 1010 and a controller 1020. The transceiver 1010 is configured to send signals to the outside and receive signals from the outside. The controller 1020 is configured to control the transceiver to send / receive physical signals and perform the reference signal reception method described in the present disclosure. The first node 1000 can be implemented in the form of hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software so that it can perform all methods described in the present disclosure.

[0169] According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, the first node and the second node mentioned above may be any communication node in a communication network, such as a base station, a terminal (user equipment UE), etc.

[0170] The present invention aims to design a method for sending and receiving a reference signal, so that the corresponding relationship between the reference signal resource and the antenna port for sending the reference signal can be obtained according to the configuration information, and the antenna switching is performed in sequence according to the corresponding relationship. Through the above function, the communication node can obtain the corresponding relationship between the reference signal resource and the antenna port used to send the reference signal, thereby realizing the reasoning and adaptive structural adjustment of the neural network for obtaining CSI. In the process of obtaining CSI, this neural network can be used for reasoning to infer the CSI of other antenna ports that have not sent the reference signal through the CSI of some antenna ports that have sent the reference signal. Therefore, it is only necessary to send the reference signal on some antenna ports to support the acquisition of the CSI of all antenna ports, so the number of configured reference signal resources can be reduced, so as to save resource overhead. At the same time, the number of antenna switching operations will also be reduced accordingly as the number of reference signal configuration resources decreases. At the same time, according to the embodiment of the present disclosure, it is possible to configure multiple different antenna switching methods for reference signal transmission for antenna switching purposes at the same time, and by receiving reference signals of different antenna switching configurations, the neural network can realize simultaneous reasoning and adaptive structural adjustment, so that the neural network can realize efficient adaptive structural adjustment, thereby increasing the accuracy of CSI acquisition and reducing the delay and computing resource overhead of neural network reasoning.

[0171] Various embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented as computer-readable codes embodied on a computer-readable recording medium from a specific perspective. A computer-readable recording medium is any data storage device that can store data readable by a computer system. Examples of computer-readable recording media may include read-only memory (ROM), random access memory (RAM), compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), magnetic tape, floppy disk, optical data storage device, carrier wave (e.g., data transmission via the Internet), and the like. Computer-readable recording media may be distributed via a computer system connected via a network, and therefore computer-readable codes may be stored and executed in a distributed manner. Moreover, the functional programs, codes, and code segments for implementing the various embodiments of the present disclosure may be easily interpreted by a technician in the field of the embodiments of the present disclosure.

[0172] It will be understood that the embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented in the form of hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. Software may be stored as program instructions or computer-readable codes executable on a processor on a non-transient computer-readable medium. Examples of non-transient computer-readable recording media include magnetic storage media (e.g., ROM, floppy disk, hard disk, etc.) and optical recording media (e.g., CD-ROM, digital video disk (DVD), etc.). Non-transient computer-readable recording media may also be distributed on network-coupled computer systems so that computer-readable codes are stored and executed in a distributed manner. The medium may be read by a computer, stored in a memory, and executed by a processor. Various embodiments may be implemented by a computer or a portable terminal including a controller and a memory, and the memory may be an example of a non-transient computer-readable recording medium suitable for storing (multiple) programs having instructions for implementing embodiments of the present disclosure. The present disclosure may be implemented by a program having a code for specifically implementing the apparatus and method described in the claims, the program being stored in a machine (or computer) readable storage medium. The program may be electronically carried on any medium, such as a communication signal transmitted via a wired or wireless connection, and the present disclosure suitably includes its equivalents.

[0173] The above description is only a specific implementation of the present disclosure, but the protection scope of the present disclosure is not limited thereto. Any technician familiar with the technical field can make various changes or substitutions within the technical scope disclosed in the present disclosure, and these changes or substitutions should be included in the protection scope of the present disclosure. Therefore, the protection scope of the present disclosure should be based on the protection scope of the claims.

Claims

1. A method performed by a first node in a communication system, the method comprising: receiving configuration information for a reference signal; Determine, according to the configuration information, a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information; as well as Based on the determined correspondence, sending the reference signal via a plurality of antenna ports corresponding to the plurality of reference signal ports indicated by the configuration information; The corresponding relationship indicates that each reference signal port indicated by the configuration information corresponds to an antenna port of the first node.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein: Determining, according to the configuration information, a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, includes: Each antenna port of the first node is associated with a different reference signal port indicated in the configuration information, and the correspondence between the multiple antenna ports and the multiple reference signal ports remains consistent in the same cell.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein: The configuration information includes an index set, each index in the index set is used to identify a different antenna port of the first node, and the index is associated with a different reference signal port; Determining, according to the configuration information, a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, includes: According to each index in the index set in the configuration information, a correspondence between the antenna port identified by the index and the reference signal port associated with the index is determined.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein: The index is reported by the first node; or The index is configured by the second node for the antenna port of the first node, and each index is associated with a different antenna port of the first node.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein: Determining, according to the configuration information, a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, includes: Based on the order of the multiple antenna ports of the first node and the order of symbols corresponding to the reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets indicated by the configuration information, determine the correspondence between each antenna port in the multiple antenna ports and a reference signal port. 6 . The method according to claim 5 , wherein the configuration information further comprises an update flag, wherein the update flag indicates whether to update the order of the multiple antenna ports of the first node.

7. The method according to claim 5, further comprising: When it is determined that the number of the multiple reference signal ports is less than or equal to the number of the multiple antenna ports based on the ordering of the multiple antenna ports of the first node and the multiple reference signal resource sets indicated in the configuration information, the multiple reference signal ports are corresponded sequentially to the antenna ports in the ordering of the multiple antenna ports according to the order of symbols corresponding to the reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets.

8. The method according to any one of claims 5 to 7, wherein: The order of the multiple antenna ports of the first node is determined based on information in the configuration information that indicates an order of symbols corresponding to the reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein: The information for the first reference signal resource set in the configuration information includes indication information, Determining, according to the configuration information, a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, includes: According to the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the second reference signal resource set indicated by the indication information and the antenna ports of the first node, the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the first reference signal resource set and the antenna ports of the first node is determined.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein: The indication information is the ID of the second reference signal resource set.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein: The information of the reference signal resource set associated with the first antenna switching method in the configuration information includes identification information for identifying a plurality of reference signal resource sets associated with the second antenna switching method; Determining, according to the configuration information, a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, includes: Determine the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the reference signal resource set associated with the first antenna switching method and the antenna ports of the first node based on the correspondence between the reference signal ports included in the multiple reference signal resource sets associated with the second antenna switching method identified by the identification information and the antenna ports of the first node.

12. A method performed by a second node in a communication system, the method comprising: sending configuration information for a reference signal; determining a correspondence between multiple antenna ports of the first node and multiple reference signal ports indicated in the configuration information, receiving a reference signal sent by the first node via the multiple antenna ports corresponding to the multiple reference signal ports indicated by the configuration information; The corresponding relationship indicates that each reference signal port indicated by the configuration information corresponds to an antenna port of the first node.

13. The method according to claim 12, wherein: The configuration information includes an index set, each index in the index set is used to identify a different antenna port of the first node, and the index is associated with a different reference signal port.

14. The method according to claim 13, wherein: The index is reported by the first node; or The index is configured by the second node for the antenna port of the first node, and each index is associated with a different antenna port of the first node.

15. The method according to claim 12, wherein: The configuration information further includes an update flag, wherein the update flag indicates whether to update the order of the multiple antenna ports of the first node.

16. The method according to claim 12, wherein: The configuration information also includes information for indicating an order of symbols corresponding to reference signal ports included in multiple reference signal resource sets.

17. The method according to claim 12, wherein: The configuration information includes information for a first reference signal resource set, wherein the information for the first reference signal resource set includes indication information; and, The indication information indicates a correspondence between a reference signal port included in the second reference signal resource set and an antenna port of the first node.

18. The method according to claim 17, wherein: The indication information is the ID of the second reference signal resource set.

19. The method according to claim 12, wherein: The configuration information includes information for a reference signal resource set associated with a first antenna switching method, wherein the information for a reference signal resource set associated with the first antenna switching method includes identification information for identifying a plurality of reference signal resource sets associated with a second antenna switching method; and The identification information identifies a correspondence between reference signal ports included in a plurality of reference signal resource sets associated with the second antenna switching method and antenna ports of the first node.

20. A node device in a communication system, the node device comprising: Transceiver; as well as A processor coupled to the transceiver and configured to execute the method of any one of claims 1-11 or 12-19.

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