Pre-configuration of sounding reference signals (SRS) for positioning

By preconfiguring and coordinating the parameter set of detection reference signals (SRS) for positioning, the problem of inflexible SRS configuration in the prior art is solved, the positioning accuracy and efficiency are improved, and it is suitable for multi-cell environments.

CN119744515APending Publication Date: 2025-04-01QUALCOMM INC
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Patent Information

Application Number
CN202380054994.2
Authority / Receiving Office
CN · China
Patent Type
Applications(China)
Current Assignee / Owner
Priority Date
2022-07-29
Filing Date
2023-06-21
Publication Date
2025-04-01

AI Technical Summary

Technical Problem

The detection reference signal (SRS) configuration for positioning in wireless communications is not flexible enough, and it is difficult to meet the needs of multiple cells, affecting positioning accuracy and efficiency.

Method used

By preconfiguring the parameter set of the first probe reference signal (SRS) for positioning, the parameter set is ensured to be valid for multiple cells and coordinated between the user equipment (UE) and the base station to support dynamic management of positioning activation requests and resources.

Benefits of technology

It realizes a more flexible and efficient SRS configuration, improves positioning accuracy and efficiency in multi-cell environments, and simplifies positioning session management between UE and location server.

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Abstract

Techniques for wireless communication are disclosed. In an aspect, a user equipment (UE) receives a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters for positioning a configured first sounding reference signal (SRS), where the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; transmitting a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, the first SRS request for the positioning activation request permitting the UE to transmit an SRS for a positioning resource according to the first SRS for a positioning configuration; receiving a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS indication for the positioning activation message permits the UE to transmit an SRS for a positioning resource according to the first SRS for a positioning configuration; and transmitting one or more SRSs for a positioning resource based on the first SRS for the positioning configuration.
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Description

[0001] CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0002] This patent application claims priority to Greek Patent Application No. 20220100619, filed on July 29, 2022, entitled “PRECONFIGURATION OF SOUNDING REFERENCE SIGNALS (SRS) FOR POSITIONING”, which is assigned to the assignee of this application and is expressly incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. Background Art 1. Technical Field

[0003] Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communications.

[0004] 2. Description of related technologies

[0005] Wireless communication systems have evolved over many generations, including first generation analog wireless telephone service (1G), second generation (2G) digital wireless telephone service (including transitional 2.5G and 2.75G networks), third generation (3G) high speed data, wireless service with Internet capabilities, and fourth generation (4G) services (e.g., Long Term Evolution (LTE) or WiMax). There are many different types of wireless communication systems in use today, including cellular systems and personal communications service (PCS) systems. Examples of known cellular systems include the cellular analog Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), and digital cellular systems based on code division multiple access (CDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and the like.

[0006] The fifth generation (5G) wireless standard, known as New Radio (NR), enables higher data transfer speeds, a greater number of connections, and better coverage, among other improvements. According to the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance, the 5G standard is designed to provide higher data rates, more accurate positioning (e.g., based on reference signals for positioning (RS-P), such as downlink, uplink, or sidelink positioning reference signals (PRS)), and other technical enhancements compared to previous standards. These enhancements, along with the use of higher frequency bands, advances in PRS processes and technologies, and high-density deployment of 5G, enable high-precision positioning based on 5G. Summary of the invention

[0007] The following presents a simplified summary of the invention related to one or more aspects disclosed herein. Thus, the following summary of the invention should neither be considered as an exhaustive overview related to all conceived aspects, nor should it be considered to identify key or decisive elements related to all conceived aspects or to delineate the scope associated with any particular aspect. Therefore, the sole purpose of the following summary of the invention is to present certain concepts related to one or more aspects related to the mechanisms disclosed herein in a brief form before the detailed embodiments presented below.

[0008] On the one hand, a method for wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE) includes: receiving a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; sending a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, the first SRS for the positioning activation request requesting permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for the positioning configuration; receiving a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for the positioning configuration; and sending one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first SRS for the positioning configuration.

[0009] On the one hand, a method of wireless communication performed by a base station includes: pre-configuring a user equipment (UE) with at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receiving an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server from the UE, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and sending a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session to the UE, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and sending a positioning information update message to the location server, wherein the positioning information update message indicates that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

[0010] In one aspect, a user equipment (UE) includes: one or more memories; one or more transceivers; and one or more processors, which are communicatively coupled to the one or more memories and the one or more transceivers, and the one or more processors are configured individually or in combination to: receive a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration via one or more transceivers, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; send a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server via one or more transceivers, the first SRS for the positioning activation request requesting permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for the positioning configuration; receive a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session via one or more transceivers, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for the positioning configuration; and send one or more SRSs for positioning resources via one or more transceivers based on the first SRS for the positioning configuration.

[0011] In one aspect, a base station includes: one or more memories; one or more transceivers; and one or more processors, which are communicatively coupled to the one or more memories and the one or more transceivers, and the one or more processors are configured individually or in combination to: pre-configure a user equipment (UE) using at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receive an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server from the UE via the one or more transceivers, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session to the UE via the one or more transceivers, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send a positioning information update message to the location server via the one or more transceivers, wherein the positioning information update message indicates that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

[0012] In one aspect, a user equipment (UE) includes: a preconfigured component for receiving a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; a component for sending a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, the first SRS request for the positioning activation request permitting the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; a component for receiving a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permitting the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and a component for sending one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0013] In one aspect, a base station includes: a component for pre-configuring a user equipment (UE) with at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; a component for receiving an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server from the UE, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and a component for sending a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session to the UE, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and a component for sending a positioning information update message to the location server, the positioning information update message indicating that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

[0014] On the one hand, a non-transitory computer-readable medium stores computer-executable instructions, which when executed by a user equipment (UE) causes the UE to: receive a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; send a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, the first SRS for the positioning activation request request permitting the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for the positioning configuration; receive a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permitting the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for the positioning configuration; and send one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first SRS for the positioning configuration.

[0015] In one aspect, a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions, which when executed by a base station causes the base station to: pre-configure a user equipment (UE) with at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receive from the UE an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send to the UE a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send to the location server a positioning information update message, wherein the positioning information update message indicates that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

[0016] Other objects and advantages associated with the various aspects disclosed herein will be apparent to those skilled in the art based on the drawings and detailed description. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0017] The accompanying drawings are presented to aid in describing various aspects of the present disclosure and are provided solely for illustration and not limitation of the various aspects.

[0018] Figure 1 An example wireless communication system in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated.

[0019] Figure 2A , Figure 2B and Figure 2C Example wireless network structures according to aspects of the present disclosure are illustrated.

[0020] Figure 3A , Figure 3B and Figure 3C is a simplified block diagram of several sample aspects of components that may be employed in a user equipment (UE), a base station, and a network entity, respectively, and configured to support communications as taught herein.

[0021] Figure 4 Examples of various positioning methods supported in New Radio (NR) according to aspects of the present disclosure are illustrated.

[0022] Figure 5 is a diagram illustrating an example frame structure according to aspects of the present disclosure.

[0023] Figure 6 Different radio resource control (RRC) states available in New Radio (NR) according to aspects of the present disclosure are illustrated.

[0024] Fig. 7A and Figure 7B An example deferred mobile terminated location request (MT LR) procedure for a downlink and uplink based positioning method according to aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated.

[0025] Figure 8 is a diagram illustrating a pre-configured positioning sounding reference signal (SRS) structure according to aspects of the present disclosure.

[0026] Fig. 9A and Fig. 9B An example deferred MT LR procedure for a downlink and uplink based positioning method with positioning SRS pre-configuration according to aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated.

[0027] Fig. 10A and 10B An example deferred MT LR procedure for a downlink and uplink based positioning method in the absence of SRS information at a receiving base station according to aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated.

[0028] Fig.11 An example deferred MT LR procedure for a downlink and uplink based positioning method with a location server triggered positioning SRS deactivation request in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated.

[0029] Fig.12 An example deferred MT LR procedure for a downlink and uplink based positioning method with a UE triggered positioning SRS deactivation request in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated.

[0030] Fig.13 and Fig.14

[0013] Example methods of wireless communications in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure are illustrated. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0031] Various aspects of the present disclosure are provided in the following description and related drawings for various examples provided for illustrative purposes. Alternative aspects may be designed without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. Additionally, well-known elements of the present disclosure will not be described in detail or will be omitted to avoid making the relevant details of the present disclosure difficult to understand.

[0032] The words "exemplary" and / or "example" are used herein to mean "serving as an example, instance, or illustration." Any aspect described herein as "exemplary" and / or "example" is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other aspects. Likewise, the term "aspects of the disclosure" does not require that all aspects of the disclosure include the discussed feature, advantage, or mode of operation.

[0033] Those skilled in the art will appreciate that any of a variety of different techniques and methods may be used to represent the information and signals described below. For example, data, instructions, commands, information, signals, bits, symbols, and chips that may be mentioned throughout the following description may be represented by voltage, current, electromagnetic waves, magnetic fields or magnetic particles, light fields or optical particles, or any combination thereof, which depends in part on the specific application, in part on the desired design, in part on the corresponding technology, and so on.

[0034] In addition, many aspects are described in terms of a sequence of actions to be performed by, for example, an element of a computing device. It will be appreciated that the various actions described herein may be performed by a specific circuit (e.g., an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC)), by program instructions executed by one or more processors, or by a combination of the two. Additionally, the sequence of actions described herein may be considered to be fully embodied in any form of non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, in which a corresponding computer instruction set is stored, which, when executed, will cause or command the associated processor of the device to perform the functions described herein. Therefore, various aspects of the present disclosure may be embodied in a variety of different forms, all of which have been contemplated to be within the scope of the claimed subject matter. In addition, for each of the various aspects described herein, the corresponding form of any such aspect may be described herein as, for example, "logic configured to perform the described actions."

[0035] As used herein, unless otherwise specified, the terms "user equipment" (UE) and "base station" are not intended to be specific or otherwise limited to any specific radio access technology (RAT). In general, a UE may be any wireless communication device (e.g., a mobile phone, a router, a tablet computer, a laptop computer, a consumer asset location device, a wearable device (e.g., a smart watch, glasses, an augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR) head-mounted device, etc.), a vehicle (e.g., a car, a motorcycle, a bicycle, etc.), an Internet of Things (IoT) device, etc.) used by a user to communicate over a wireless communication network. A UE may be mobile or may be stationary (e.g., at certain times) and may communicate with a radio access network (RAN). As used herein, the term "UE" may be interchangeably referred to as an "access terminal" or "AT", "client device", "wireless device", "subscriber device", "subscriber terminal", "subscriber station", "user terminal" or "UT", "mobile device", "mobile terminal", "mobile station" or variations thereof. In general, a UE may communicate with a core network via a RAN, and through the core network, the UE may be connected to external networks such as the Internet and to other UEs. Of course, other mechanisms for the UE to connect to the core network and / or the Internet are also possible, such as through a wired access network, a wireless local area network (WLAN) network (e.g., based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 specification, etc.), etc.

[0036] A base station may operate according to one of several RATs to communicate with a UE, depending on the network in which the base station is deployed, and may alternatively be referred to as an access point (AP), a network node, a Node B, an evolved Node B (eNB), a next generation eNB (ng-eNB), a new radio (NR) Node B (also referred to as a gNB or gNodeB), etc. A base station may be primarily used to support wireless access for UEs, including supporting data, voice, and / or signaling connections for supported UEs. In some systems, a base station may only provide edge node signaling functions, while in other systems, it may provide additional control and / or network management functions. The communication link through which a UE may transmit a signal to a base station is referred to as an uplink (UL) channel (e.g., a reverse traffic channel, a reverse control channel, an access channel, etc.). The communication link through which a base station may transmit a signal to a UE is referred to as a downlink (DL) or forward link channel (e.g., a paging channel, a control channel, a broadcast channel, a forward traffic channel, etc.). As used herein, the term "traffic channel (TCH)" may refer to an uplink / reverse traffic channel or a downlink / forward traffic channel.

[0037] The term "base station" may refer to a single physical transmit receive point (TRP) or to multiple physical TRPs that may or may not be co-located. For example, where the term "base station" refers to a single physical TRP, the physical TRP may be an antenna of the base station corresponding to a cell (or several cell sectors) of the base station. Where the term "base station" refers to multiple co-located physical TRPs, the physical TRP may be an antenna array of a base station (e.g., as in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system or where the base station employs beamforming). Where the term "base station" refers to multiple non-co-located physical TRPs, the physical TRP may be a distributed antenna system (DAS) (a network of spatially separated antennas connected to a common source via a transmission medium) or a remote radio head (RRH) (a remote base station connected to a serving base station). Alternatively, the non-co-located physical TRP may be a serving base station that receives measurement reports from the UE and a neighboring base station whose reference radio frequency (RF) signal the UE is measuring. Because, as used herein, a TRP is the point through which a base station transmits and receives wireless signals, references to transmitting from or receiving at a base station should be understood to refer to the specific TRP of a base station.

[0038] In some specific implementations of supporting UE positioning, the base station may not support wireless access for the UE (e.g., may not support data, voice and / or signaling connections for the UE), but may instead send a reference signal to be measured by the UE to the UE and / or may receive and measure a signal sent by the UE. Such a base station may be referred to as a positioning beacon (e.g., in the case of sending a signal to the UE) and / or as a position measurement unit (e.g., in the case of receiving and measuring a signal from the UE).

[0039] An "RF signal" includes an electromagnetic wave of a given frequency that transmits information through the space between a transmitter and a receiver. As used herein, a transmitter may transmit a single "RF signal" or multiple "RF signals" to a receiver. However, due to the propagation characteristics of RF signals through multipath channels, a receiver may receive multiple "RF signals" corresponding to each transmitted RF signal. The same transmitted RF signal on different paths between a transmitter and a receiver may be referred to as a "multipath" RF signal. As used herein, an RF signal may also be referred to as a "wireless signal" or simply a "signal" where it is clear from the context that the term "signal" refers to a wireless signal or an RF signal.

[0040] Figure 1An example wireless communication system 100 according to various aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated. The wireless communication system 100 (which may also be referred to as a wireless wide area network (WWAN)) may include various base stations 102 (labeled as "BS") and various UEs 104. The base stations 102 may include macro cell base stations (high power cellular base stations) and / or small cell base stations (low power cellular base stations). In one aspect, the macro cell base stations may include eNBs and / or ng-eNBs (where the wireless communication system 100 corresponds to an LTE network), or gNBs (where the wireless communication system 100 corresponds to an NR network), or a combination of the two, and the small cell base stations may include femto cells, pico cells, micro cells, etc.

[0041] The base stations 102 may collectively form a RAN and interface with a core network 170 (e.g., an evolved packet core (EPC) or a 5G core (5GC)) through a backhaul link 122, and interface with one or more location servers 172 (e.g., a location management function (LMF) or a secure user plane location (SUPL) location platform (SLP)) through the core network 170. The location server 172 may be part of the core network 170 or may be external to the core network 170. The location server 172 may be integrated with the base station 102. The UE 104 may communicate with the location server 172 directly or indirectly. For example, the UE 104 may communicate with the location server 172 via the base station 102 currently serving the UE 104. The UE 104 may also communicate with the location server 172 via another path, such as via an application server (not shown), via another network, such as via a wireless local area network (WLAN) access point (AP) (e.g., AP 150 described below), etc. For signaling purposes, communication between UE 104 and location server 172 may be represented as an indirect connection (e.g., through core network 170, etc.) or a direct connection (e.g., as shown via direct connection 128), with intermediate nodes (if any) omitted from the signaling diagram for clarity.

[0042] Among other functions, the base station 102 can perform functions related to one or more of the following: delivering user data, radio channel encryption and decryption, integrity protection, header compression, mobility control functions (e.g., handover, dual connectivity), inter-cell interference coordination, connection establishment and release, load balancing, distribution of non-access stratum (NAS) messages, NAS node selection, synchronization, RAN sharing, multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS), subscriber and equipment tracking, RAN information management (RIM), paging, positioning, and delivery of warning messages. The base stations 102 can communicate with each other directly or indirectly (e.g., through EPC / 5GC) on a backhaul link 134, which can be wired or wireless.

[0043] Base station 102 may communicate wirelessly with UE 104. Each of base stations 102 may provide communication coverage for a corresponding geographic coverage area 110. In one aspect, one or more cells may be supported by base station 102 in each geographic coverage area 110. A "cell" is a logical communication entity used to communicate with a base station (e.g., on a certain frequency resource, which is referred to as a carrier frequency, component carrier, carrier, frequency band, etc.), and may be associated with an identifier (e.g., a physical cell identifier (PCI), an enhanced cell identifier (ECI), a virtual cell identifier (VCI), a cell global identifier (CGI), etc.) used to distinguish cells operating via the same or different carrier frequencies. In some cases, different cells may be configured according to different protocol types (e.g., machine type communication (MTC), narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), or other protocol types) that may provide access to different types of UEs. Because a cell is supported by a specific base station, the term "cell" may refer to either or both of the logical communication entity and the base station supporting it, depending on the context. In addition, because the TRP is generally the physical transmission point of the cell, the terms "cell" and "TRP" can be used interchangeably. In some cases, the term "cell" can also refer to the geographic coverage area (e.g., sector) of a base station, as long as the carrier frequency can be detected and used for communication within a portion of the geographic coverage area 110.

[0044] Although the geographic coverage areas 110 of neighboring macrocell base stations 102 may partially overlap (e.g., in a handover area), some of the geographic coverage areas 110 may substantially overlap with the larger geographic coverage areas 110. For example, a small cell base station 102' (labeled "SC" for "small cell") may have a geographic coverage area 110' that substantially overlaps with the geographic coverage areas 110 of one or more macrocell base stations 102. A network that includes both small cell base stations and macrocell base stations may be referred to as a heterogeneous network. A heterogeneous network may also include a home eNB (HeNB) that may provide services to a restricted group referred to as a closed subscriber group (CSG).

[0045] The communication link 120 between the base station 102 and the UE 104 may include uplink (also referred to as reverse link) transmissions from the UE 104 to the base station 102 and / or downlink (DL) (also referred to as forward link) transmissions from the base station 102 to the UE 104. The communication link 120 may use MIMO antenna technology, including spatial multiplexing, beamforming, and / or transmit diversity. The communication link 120 may be over one or more carrier frequencies. The allocation of carriers may be asymmetric for the downlink and uplink (e.g., more or fewer carriers may be allocated to the downlink than to the uplink).

[0046] The wireless communication system 100 may also include a WLAN access point (AP) 150 that communicates with a wireless local area network (WLAN) station (STA) 152 in an unlicensed spectrum (e.g., 5 GHz) via a communication link 154. When communicating in the unlicensed spectrum, the WLAN STA 152 and / or the WLAN AP 150 may perform a clear channel assessment (CCA) or listen before talk (LBT) procedure prior to communication to determine whether a channel is available.

[0047] The small cell base station 102' can operate in licensed and / or unlicensed spectrum. When operating in the unlicensed spectrum, the small cell base station 102' can adopt LTE or NR technology and use the same 5GHz unlicensed spectrum used by the WLAN AP 150. The small cell base station 102' using LTE / 5G in the unlicensed spectrum can improve the coverage of the access network and / or increase the capacity of the access network. NR in the unlicensed spectrum can be referred to as NR-U. LTE in the unlicensed spectrum can be referred to as LTE-U, License Assisted Access (LAA) or MulteFire.

[0048] The wireless communication system 100 may further include a millimeter wave (mmW) base station 180, which can operate at mmW frequencies and / or near mmW frequencies to communicate with UE 182. Extremely high frequency (EHF) is part of RF in the electromagnetic spectrum. EHF has a range of 30 GHz to 300 GHz, and the wavelength is between 1 mm and 10 mm. The radio waves in this band can be called millimeter waves. Near mmW can be extended down to a frequency of 3 GHz, where the wavelength is 100 mm. The super high frequency (SHF) band extends between 3 GHz and 30 GHz, which is also called centimeter waves. Communications using mmW / near mmW radio frequency bands have high path loss and relatively short distances. The mmW base station 180 and the UE 182 can utilize beamforming (transmitting and / or receiving) on ​​the mmW communication link 184 to compensate for the extremely high path loss and short distance. In addition, it should be understood that in an alternative configuration, one or more base stations 102 may also use mmW or near mmW and beamforming for transmission. Therefore, it should be understood that the foregoing illustrations are merely examples and should not be construed as limiting the various aspects disclosed herein.

[0049] Transmit beamforming is a technique for focusing an RF signal in a specific direction. Traditionally, when a network node (e.g., a base station) broadcasts an RF signal, it broadcasts the signal in all directions (omnidirectionally). With transmit beamforming, the network node determines where a given target device (e.g., a UE) is located (relative to the transmitting network node) and projects a stronger downlink RF signal in that specific direction, thereby providing a faster (in terms of data rate) and stronger RF signal to the receiving device. In order to change the directionality of the RF signal when transmitting, the network node can control the phase and relative amplitude of the RF signal at each of the one or more transmitters that broadcast the RF signal. For example, a network node can use an array of antennas (referred to as a "phased array" or "antenna array") that creates RF beams that can be "steered" to point in different directions without actually moving the antenna. Specifically, the RF current from the transmitter is fed to each antenna in the correct phase relationship so that the radio waves from the separate antennas are added together to increase the radiation in the desired direction while canceling to suppress the radiation in the undesired direction.

[0050] The transmit beams can be quasi-co-located, meaning that they appear to the receiver (e.g., UE) to have the same parameters, regardless of whether the network node's own transmit antenna is physically co-located. In NR, there are four types of quasi-co-location (QCL) relationships. Specifically, a given type of QCL relationship means that certain parameters about the second reference RF signal on the second beam can be derived based on information about the source reference RF signal on the source beam. Therefore, if the source reference RF signal is QCL type A, the receiver can use the source reference RF signal to estimate the Doppler shift, Doppler spread, average delay, and delay spread of the second reference RF signal sent on the same channel. If the source reference RF signal is QCL type B, the receiver can use the source reference RF signal to estimate the Doppler shift and Doppler spread of the second reference RF signal sent on the same channel. If the source reference RF signal is QCL type C, the receiver can use the source reference RF signal to estimate the Doppler shift and average delay of the second reference RF signal sent on the same channel. If the source reference RF signal is QCL type D, the receiver may use the source reference RF signal to estimate spatial reception parameters of a second reference RF signal transmitted on the same channel.

[0051] In receive beamforming, the receiver uses receive beams to amplify RF signals detected on a given channel. For example, the receiver may increase the gain setting of the antenna array in a particular direction and / or adjust the phase setting of the antenna array in a particular direction to amplify the RF signal received from that direction (e.g., increase its gain level). Therefore, when a receiver is said to perform beamforming in a certain direction, this means that the beam gain in that direction is high relative to the beam gain along other directions, or the beam gain in that direction is the highest compared to the beam gain in that direction of all other receive beams available to the receiver. This results in a stronger received signal strength (e.g., reference signal received power (RSRP), reference signal received quality (RSRQ), signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), etc.) of the RF signal received from that direction.

[0052] The transmit beam and the receive beam may be spatially correlated. The spatial relationship means that parameters of a second beam (e.g., a transmit beam or a receive beam) for a second reference signal may be derived based on information about a first beam (e.g., a receive beam or a transmit beam) for a first reference signal. For example, a UE may use a specific receive beam to receive a reference downlink reference signal (e.g., a synchronization signal block (SSB)) from a base station. The UE may then form a transmit beam for transmitting an uplink reference signal (e.g., a sounding reference signal (SRS)) to the base station based on the parameters of the receive beam.

[0053] Note that depending on the entity forming the "downlink" beam, the beam can be a transmit beam or a receive beam. For example, if the base station is forming a downlink beam to send a reference signal to the UE, the downlink beam is a transmit beam. However, if the UE is forming a downlink beam, the downlink beam is a receive beam that receives a downlink reference signal. Similarly, depending on the entity forming the "uplink" beam, the beam can be a transmit beam or a receive beam. For example, if the base station is forming an uplink beam, it is an uplink receive beam, while if the UE is forming an uplink beam, it is an uplink transmit beam.

[0054] The electromagnetic spectrum is typically subdivided into various categories, bands, channels, etc. based on frequency / wavelength. In 5G NR, two initial operating bands have been identified as frequency range designations FR1 (410 MHz–7.125 GHz) and FR2 (24.25 GHz–52.6 GHz). It should be understood that, although portions of FR1 are greater than 6 GHz, FR1 is often (interchangeably) referred to as the “sub-6 GHz” band in various documents and articles. A similar naming issue sometimes occurs with respect to FR2, which is often (interchangeably) referred to as the “millimeter wave” band in documents and articles, although distinct from the extremely high frequency (EHF) band (30 GHz–300 GHz) identified as the “millimeter wave” band by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

[0055] Frequencies between FR1 and FR2 are generally referred to as mid-band frequencies. Recent 5G NR research has identified the operating bands for these mid-band frequencies as frequency range designation FR3 (7.125GHz–24.25GHz). The bands falling within FR3 can inherit FR1 characteristics and / or FR2 characteristics, and therefore the features of FR1 and / or FR2 can be effectively extended to mid-band frequencies. In addition, higher frequency bands are currently being explored to extend 5G NR operations to more than 52.6GHz. For example, three higher operating bands have been identified as frequency range designations FR4a or FR4-1 (52.6GHz–71GHz), FR4 (52.6GHz–114.25GHz), and FR5 (114.25GHz–300GHz). Each of these higher frequency bands falls within the EHF band.

[0056] In view of the above aspects, unless otherwise specifically stated, it should be understood that if the term "below 6 GHz" or the like is used herein, it can be broadly referred to as a frequency that can be less than 6 GHz, can be within FR1, or can include mid-band frequencies. In addition, unless otherwise specifically stated, it should be understood that if the term "millimeter wave" or the like is used herein, it can be broadly referred to as a frequency that can include mid-band frequencies, can be within FR2, FR4, FR4-a or FR4-1 and / or FR5, or can be within the EHF band.

[0057] In a multi-carrier system (such as 5G), one of the carrier frequencies is referred to as the "primary carrier" or "anchor carrier" or "primary serving cell" or "PCell", and the remaining carrier frequencies are referred to as "secondary carriers" or "secondary serving cells" or "SCells". In carrier aggregation, the anchor carrier is a carrier operating on the primary frequency (e.g., FR1) used by the UE 104 / 182 and the cell in which the UE 104 / 182 performs an initial radio resource control (RRC) connection establishment procedure or initiates an RRC connection re-establishment procedure. The primary carrier carries all common and UE-specific control channels and can be a carrier in a licensed frequency (however, this is not always the case). A secondary carrier is a carrier operating on a second frequency (e.g., FR2), which can be configured and can be used to provide additional radio resources once an RRC connection is established between the UE 104 and the anchor carrier. In some cases, the secondary carrier can be a carrier in an unlicensed frequency. The secondary carrier may contain only necessary signaling information and signals, for example, since the primary uplink carrier and the primary downlink carrier are usually UE-specific, those UE-specific signaling information and signals may not be present in the secondary carrier. This means that different UEs 104 / 182 in a cell may have different downlink primary carriers. The same is true for the uplink primary carrier. The network is able to change the primary carrier of any UE 104 / 182 at any time. This is done, for example, to balance the load on different carriers. Because a "serving cell" (whether PCell or SCell) corresponds to a carrier frequency / component carrier on which a base station communicates, the terms "cell", "serving cell", "component carrier", "carrier frequency", etc. are used interchangeably.

[0058] For example, still refer to Figure 1 , one of the frequencies used by macrocell base station 102 may be an anchor carrier (or "PCell"), and the other frequencies used by macrocell base station 102 and / or mmW base station 180 may be secondary carriers ("SCells"). Simultaneous transmission and / or reception of multiple carriers enables UE 104 / 182 to significantly increase its data transmission and / or reception rate. For example, two 20 MHz aggregated carriers in a multi-carrier system would theoretically result in a doubling of the data rate (i.e., 40 MHz) compared to the data rate obtained with a single 20 MHz carrier.

[0059] The wireless communication system 100 may also include a UE 164, which may communicate with the macrocell base station 102 via a communication link 120 and / or communicate with the mmW base station 180 via a mmW communication link 184. For example, the macrocell base station 102 may support a PCell and one or more SCells for the UE 164, and the mmW base station 180 may support one or more SCells for the UE 164.

[0060] In some cases, UE 164 and UE 182 are capable of sidelink communication. A UE with sidelink capability (SL-UE) can communicate with base station 102 via communication link 120 using a Uu interface (i.e., an air interface between UE and base station). SL-UEs (e.g., UE 164, UE 182) can also communicate directly with each other via a wireless sidelink 160 using a PC5 interface (i.e., an air interface between UEs with sidelink capability). A wireless sidelink (or just "sidelink") is an adaptation of a core cellular network (e.g., LTE, NR) standard that allows direct communication between two or more UEs without communicating through a base station. Sidelink communications can be unicast or multicast and can be used for device-to-device (D2D) media sharing, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2X) communications (e.g., cellular V2X (cV2X) communications, enhanced V2X (eV2X) communications, etc.), emergency rescue applications, etc. One or more SL-UEs in a group of SL-UEs utilizing sidelink communications may be located within the geographic coverage area 110 of the base station 102. Other SL-UEs in such a group may be outside the geographic coverage area 110 of the base station 102, or may be unable to receive transmissions from the base station 102 for other reasons. In some cases, each group of SL-UEs communicating via sidelink communications may utilize a one-to-many (1:M) system, where each SL-UE transmits to each other SL-UE in the group. In some cases, the base station 102 facilitates the scheduling of resources for the sidelink communications. In other cases, the sidelink communications are performed between the SL-UEs without involving the base station 102.

[0061] In one aspect, the sidelink 160 may operate on a wireless communication medium of interest, which may be shared with other vehicles and / or infrastructure access points and other wireless communications between other RATs. A "medium" may include one or more time, frequency, and / or spatial communication resources associated with wireless communications between one or more transmitter / receiver pairs (e.g., covering one or more channels across one or more carriers). In one aspect, the medium of interest may correspond to at least a portion of an unlicensed band shared between various RATs. Although different licensed bands have been reserved for certain communication systems (e.g., by government entities such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States), these systems (particularly those that employ small cell access points) have recently expanded operations into unlicensed bands such as the unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) band used by wireless local area network (WLAN) technology (most notably the IEEE 802.11x WLAN technology commonly referred to as "Wi-Fi"). Example systems of this type include different variants of CDMA systems, TDMA systems, FDMA systems, orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems, single carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems, and the like.

[0062] Note that although Figure 1 Only two of these UEs are illustrated as SL-UEs (i.e., UEs 164 and 182), but any of the illustrated UEs may be SL-UEs. In addition, although only UE 182 is described as being capable of beamforming, any of the illustrated UEs (including UE 164) may be capable of beamforming. In the case where SL-UEs are capable of beamforming, they may beamform toward each other (i.e., toward other SL-UEs), toward other UEs (e.g., UE 104), toward base stations (e.g., base stations 102, 180, small cells 102', access point 150), etc. Therefore, in some cases, UE 164 and UE 182 may utilize beamforming via side link 160.

[0063] exist Figure 1 In the example of FIG. 1 , the UE illustrated (for simplicity, in Figure 1Any of the UEs 104 (shown as a single UE 104 in FIG. 1 ) may receive a signal 124 from one or more earth orbiting space vehicles (SVs) 112 (e.g., satellites). In one aspect, the SVs 112 may be part of a satellite positioning system that the UEs 104 may use as an independent source of location information. A satellite positioning system typically includes a transmitter system (e.g., SVs 112) positioned to enable a receiver (e.g., UE 104) to determine its position on or above the earth based at least in part on a positioning signal (e.g., signal 124) received from the transmitter. Such transmitters typically transmit signals marked with a repeating pseudo-random noise (PN) code of a set number of chips. Although typically located in the SVs 112, the transmitters may sometimes be located on ground-based control stations, base stations 102, and / or other UEs 104. The UEs 104 may include one or more dedicated receivers that are specifically designed to receive the signal 124 in order to derive geographic location information from the SVs 112.

[0064] In a satellite positioning system, the use of signal 124 may be enhanced by various satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) that may be associated with or otherwise enabled for use with one or more global and / or regional navigation satellite systems. For example, SBAS may include augmentation systems that provide integrity information, differential corrections, etc., such as Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), Multifunction Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS), Global Positioning System (GPS) Assisted Geographic Augmented Navigation, or GPS and Geographic Augmented Navigation System (GAGAN), etc. Thus, as used herein, a satellite positioning system may include any combination of one or more global and / or regional navigation satellites associated with such one or more satellite positioning systems.

[0065] In one aspect, SV 112 may additionally or alternatively be part of one or more non-terrestrial networks (NTNs). In an NTN, SV 112 is connected to an earth station (also referred to as a ground station, NTN gateway, or gateway), which in turn is connected to an element in a 5G network, such as an improved base station 102 (without a ground antenna) or a network node in a 5GC. This element in turn will provide access to other elements in the 5G network, and ultimately provide access to entities outside the 5G network (such as Internet web servers and other user devices). In this way, instead of or in addition to communication signals from a ground base station 102, a UE 104 can receive communication signals (e.g., signal 124) from a SV 112.

[0066] The wireless communication system 100 may further include one or more UEs, such as UE 190, which are indirectly connected to one or more communication networks via one or more device-to-device (D2D) peer-to-peer (P2P) links (referred to as “side links”). Figure 1 In the example of FIG. 1 , UE 190 has a D2D P2P link 192 with one of UEs 104 connected to one of base stations 102 (e.g., UE 190 can indirectly obtain cellular connectivity through the D2D P2P link), and has a D2D P2P link 194 with WLAN STA 152 connected to WLAN AP 150 (UE 190 can indirectly obtain WLAN-based Internet connectivity through the D2D P2P link). In an example, D2D P2P links 192 and 194 can be supported by any well-known D2D RAT, such as LTE Direct (LTE-D), WiFi Direct (WiFi-D), etc.

[0067] Figure 2A An example wireless network structure 200 is illustrated. For example, the 5GC 210 (also referred to as the Next Generation Core (NGC)) can be functionally viewed as a control plane (C-plane) function 214 (e.g., UE registration, authentication, network access, gateway selection, etc.) and a user plane (U-plane) function 212 (e.g., UE gateway function, access to data networks, IP routing, etc.), which operate in conjunction to form a core network. The user plane interface (NG-U) 213 and the control plane interface (NG-C) 215 connect the gNB 222 to the 5GC 210, and specifically to the user plane function 212 and the control plane function 214, respectively. In an additional configuration, the ng-eNB 224 can also be connected to the 5GC 210 via the NG-C 215 to the control plane function 214 and the NG-U 213 to the user plane function 212. In addition, the ng-eNB 224 can communicate directly with the gNB 222 via the backhaul connection 223. In some configurations, the next generation RAN (NG-RAN) 220 may have one or more gNBs 222, while other configurations include one or more of ng-eNBs 224 and gNBs 222. Either the gNB 222 or the ng-eNB 224 (or both) may communicate with one or more UEs 204 (e.g., any of the UEs described herein).

[0068] Another optional aspect may include a location server 230 that can communicate with the 5GC 210 to provide location assistance for the UE 204. The location server 230 can be implemented as multiple separate servers (e.g., physically separate servers, different software modules on a single server, different software modules distributed across multiple physical servers, etc.), or alternatively can each correspond to a single server. The location server 230 can be configured to support one or more location services for the UE 204 that can be connected to the location server 230 via the core network, the 5GC 210, and / or via the Internet (not illustrated). In addition, the location server 230 can be integrated into a component of the core network, or alternatively can be external to the core network (e.g., a third-party server, such as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) server or a service server).

[0069] Figure 2B Another example wireless network structure 240 is illustrated. 5GC 260 (which may correspond to Figure 2AThe 5GC 210 in the 5GC 210 can be functionally viewed as a control plane function provided by an access and mobility management function (AMF) 264, and a user plane function provided by a user plane function (UPF) 262, which operate in conjunction to form a core network (i.e., 5GC 260). The functions of the AMF 264 include: registration management, connection management, reachability management, mobility management, lawful interception, transmission of session management (SM) messages between one or more UEs 204 (e.g., any UE described herein) and a session management function (SMF) 266, a transparent proxy service for routing SM messages, access authentication and access authorization, transmission of short message service (SMS) messages between the UE 204 and a short message service function (SMSF) (not shown), and security anchor functionality (SEAF). The AMF 264 also interacts with an authentication server function (AUSF) (not shown) and the UE 204, and receives an intermediate key established as a result of the UE 204 authentication process. In the case of authentication based on the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) Subscriber Identity Module (USIM), the AMF 264 retrieves security material from the AUSF. The functionality of the AMF 264 also includes security context management (SCM). The SCM receives keys from the SEAF, which it uses to derive access network specific keys. The functionality of the AMF 264 also includes location service management for regulatory services, for the transmission of location service messages between the UE 204 and the Location Management Function (LMF) 270 (which acts as a location server 230), for the transmission of location service messages between the NG-RAN 220 and the LMF 270, for the allocation of Evolved Packet System (EPS) bearer identifiers for interoperation with EPS, and UE 204 mobility event notifications. In addition, the AMF 264 also supports functionality for non-3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) access networks.

[0070] The functions of UPF 262 include: acting as an anchor point for intra-RAT / inter-RAT mobility (when applicable), acting as an external protocol data unit (PDU) session point for interconnection to a data network (not shown), providing packet routing and forwarding, packet inspection, user plane policy rule enforcement (e.g., gating, redirection, service steering), lawful interception (user plane collection), service usage reporting, user plane quality of service (QoS) handling (e.g., uplink / downlink rate enforcement, reflective QoS marking in downlink), uplink service verification (service data flow (SDF) to QoS flow mapping), transport level packet marking in uplink and downlink, downlink packet buffering and downlink data notification triggering, and transmitting and forwarding one or more "end markers" to the source RAN node. UPF 262 can also support the delivery of location service messages between UE 204 and a location server (such as SLP 272) on the user plane.

[0071] The functions of SMF 266 include session management, UE Internet Protocol (IP) address allocation and management, selection and control of user plane functions, traffic steering configuration for routing traffic to the correct destination at UPF 262, partial control of policy enforcement and QoS, and downlink data notification. The interface through which SMF 266 communicates with AMF 264 is called the N11 interface.

[0072] Another optional aspect may include an LMF 270 that can communicate with the 5GC 260 to provide location assistance for the UE 204. The LMF 270 can be implemented as multiple separate servers (e.g., physically separate servers, different software modules on a single server, different software modules distributed across multiple physical servers, etc.), or alternatively can each correspond to a single server. The LMF 270 can be configured to support one or more location services for the UE 204, which can be connected to the LMF 270 via the core network, the 5GC 260, and / or via the Internet (not illustrated). SLP 272 may support similar functionality as LMF 270, but LMF 270 may communicate with AMF 264, NG-RAN 220, and UE 204 on a control plane (e.g., using interfaces and protocols intended to carry signaling messages rather than voice or data), and SLP 272 may communicate with UE 204 and external clients (e.g., third-party servers 274) on a user plane (e.g., using protocols intended to carry voice and / or data, such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and / or IP).

[0073] Yet another optional aspect may include a third-party server 274 that may communicate with the LMF 270, SLP 272, 5GC 260 (e.g., via AMF 264 and / or UPF 262), NG-RAN 220, and / or UE 204 to obtain location information (e.g., location estimate) of the UE 204. Thus, in some cases, the third-party server 274 may be referred to as a location service (LCS) client or external client. The third-party server 274 may be implemented as multiple separate servers (e.g., physically separate servers, different software modules on a single server, different software modules distributed across multiple physical servers, etc.), or alternatively may each correspond to a single server.

[0074] The user plane interface 263 and the control plane interface 265 connect the 5GC 260, and specifically the UPF 262 and the AMF 264, respectively, to one or more gNBs 222 and / or ng-eNBs 224 in the NG-RAN 220. The interface between the gNB 222 and / or ng-eNB 224 and the AMF 264 is referred to as the "N2" interface, and the interface between the gNB 222 and / or ng-eNB 224 and the UPF 262 is referred to as the "N3" interface. The gNBs 222 and / or ng-eNBs 224 of the NG-RAN 220 may communicate directly with each other via a backhaul connection 223 referred to as an "Xn-C" interface. One or more of the gNBs 222 and / or ng-eNBs 224 may communicate with one or more UEs 204 via a wireless interface referred to as a "Uu" interface.

[0075] The functionality of the gNB 222 may be divided between a gNB central unit (gNB-CU) 226, one or more gNB distributed units (gNB-DU) 228, and one or more gNB radio units (gNB-RU) 229. The gNB-CU 226 is a logical node that includes base station functions other than those specifically assigned to the gNB-DU 228, including delivery of user data, mobility control, radio access network sharing, positioning, session management, and the like. More specifically, the gNB-CU 226 generally hosts the radio resource control (RRC), service data adaptation protocol (SDAP), and packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) protocols of the gNB 222. The gNB-DU 228 is a logical node that generally hosts the radio link control (RLC) and medium access control (MAC) layers of the gNB 222. Its operation is controlled by the gNB-CU 226. One gNB-DU 228 may support one or more cells, and one cell is supported by only one gNB-DU 228. The interface 232 between the gNB-CU 226 and one or more gNB-DUs 228 is referred to as the "F1" interface. The physical (PHY) layer functionality of the gNB 222 is typically hosted by one or more independent gNB-RUs 229, which perform functions such as power amplification and signal transmission / reception. The interface between the gNB-DU 228 and the gNB-RU 229 is referred to as the "Fx" interface. Thus, the UE 204 communicates with the gNB-CU 226 via the RRC layer, the SDAP layer, and the PDCP layer, communicates with the gNB-DU 228 via the RLC layer and the MAC layer, and communicates with the gNB-RU 229 via the PHY layer.

[0076] The deployment of a communication system (such as a 5G NR system) may be arranged with various components or constituent parts in a variety of ways. In a 5G NR system or network, a network node, a network entity, a mobility element of a network, a RAN node, a core network node, a network element or a network equipment (such as a base station or one or more units (or one or more components) that perform base station functionality may be implemented in an aggregated or decomposed architecture. For example, a base station (such as a Node B (NB), an evolved NB (eNB), an NR base station, a 5G NB, an access point (AP), a transmit receive point (TRP) or a cell, etc.) may be implemented as an aggregated base station (also referred to as a standalone base station or a single-chip base station) or a decomposed base station.

[0077] A converged base station may be configured to utilize a radio protocol stack physically or logically integrated within a single RAN node. A decomposed base station may be configured to utilize a protocol stack physically or logically distributed between two or more units, such as one or more central or centralized units (CUs), one or more distributed units (DUs), or one or more radio units (RUs). In some aspects, a CU may be implemented within a RAN node, and one or more DUs may be co-located with the CU, or alternatively, may be geographically or virtually distributed in one or more other RAN nodes. A DU may be implemented to communicate with one or more RUs. Each of a CU, a DU, and a RU may also be implemented as a virtual unit, i.e., a virtual central unit (VCU), a virtual distributed unit (VDU), or a virtual radio unit (VRU).

[0078] Base station type operations or network designs may take into account the aggregated nature of base station functionality. For example, a disaggregated base station may be used in an integrated access backhaul (IAB) network, an open radio access network (O-RAN (network configurations such as those initiated by the O-RAN Alliance)), or a virtualized radio access network (vRAN, also known as a cloud radio access network (C-RAN)). Decomposition may include distributing functionality across two or more units at various physical locations, as well as virtually distributing functionality of at least one unit, which may enable flexibility in network design. Individual units of a disaggregated base station or disaggregated RAN architecture may be configured for wired or wireless communication with at least one other unit.

[0079] Figure 2C An example disaggregated base station architecture 250 is illustrated in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure. The disaggregated base station architecture 250 may include one or more central units (CUs) 280 (e.g., gNB-CUs 226) that may communicate directly with a core network 267 (e.g., 5GC 210, 5GC 260) via a backhaul link, or indirectly with the core network 267 through one or more disaggregated base station units, such as a near real-time (near-RT) RAN intelligent controller (RIC) 259 via an E2 link or a non-real-time (non-RT) RIC 257 associated with a service management and orchestration (SMO) framework 255, or both. The CU 280 may communicate with one or more distributed units (DUs) 285 (e.g., gNB-DUs 228) via respective midhaul links, such as an F1 interface. The DUs 285 may communicate with one or more radio units (RUs) 287 (e.g., gNB-RUs 229) via respective fronthaul links. The RU 287 can communicate with a corresponding UE 204 via one or more radio frequency (RF) access links. In some implementations, a UE 204 can be served by multiple RUs 287 simultaneously.

[0080] Each of the units (i.e., CU 280, DU 285, RU 287, and near-RT RIC 259, non-RT RIC 257, and SMO framework 255) may include or be coupled to one or more interfaces configured to receive or send signals, data, or information (collectively referred to as signals) via a wired or wireless transmission medium. Each of the units or an associated processor or controller that provides instructions to the communication interface of these units may be configured to communicate with one or more of the other units via a transmission medium. For example, these units may include a wired interface configured to receive or send signals to one or more of the other units via a wired transmission medium. Additionally, these units may include a wireless interface that may include a receiver, a transmitter, or a transceiver (such as a radio frequency (RF) transceiver) configured to receive or send signals, or both, to one or more of the other units on a wireless transmission medium.

[0081] In some aspects, CU 280 may host one or more higher layer control functions. Such control functions may include radio resource control (RRC), packet data convergence protocol (PDCP), service data adaptation protocol (SDAP), etc. Each control function may be implemented using an interface configured to communicate signals with other control functions hosted by CU 280. CU280 may be configured to handle user plane functionality (i.e., central unit-user plane (CU-UP)), control plane functionality (i.e., central unit-control plane (CU-CP)), or a combination thereof. In some specific implementations, CU 280 may be logically split into one or more CU-UP units and one or more CU-CP units. When implemented in an O-RAN configuration, the CU-UP unit may communicate bidirectionally with the CU-CP unit via an interface (such as an E1 interface). If necessary, CU 280 may be implemented to communicate with DU 285 for network control and signaling.

[0082] DU 285 may correspond to a logical unit that includes one or more base station functions to control the operation of one or more RU 287. In some aspects, DU 285 may host one or more of a radio link control (RLC) layer, a medium access control (MAC) layer, and one or more high physical (PHY) layers (such as modules for forward error correction (FEC) encoding and decoding, scrambling, modulation and demodulation, etc.) at least in part according to a functional split such as defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). In some aspects, DU 285 may further host one or more low PHY layers. Each layer (or module) may be implemented using an interface that is configured to communicate signals with other layers (and modules) hosted by DU 285 or with control functions hosted by CU 280.

[0083] The lower layer functionality may be implemented by one or more RUs 287. In some deployments, the RU 287 controlled by the DU 285 may correspond to a logical node that hosts RF processing functions or low PHY layer functions (such as performing fast Fourier transform (FFT), inverse FFT (iFFT), digital beamforming, physical random access channel (PRACH) extraction and filtering, etc.), or both, based at least in part on functional splitting (such as lower layer functional splitting). In such an architecture, the RU 287 may be implemented to handle over-the-air (OTA) communications with one or more UEs 204. In some specific implementations, the real-time and non-real-time aspects of the control plane and user plane communications with the RU 287 may be controlled by the corresponding DU 285. In some scenarios, this configuration may enable the DU 285 and the CU 280 to be implemented in a cloud-based RAN architecture (such as a vRAN architecture).

[0084] The SMO framework 255 may be configured to support RAN deployment and provisioning of non-virtualized network elements and virtualized network elements. For non-virtualized network elements, the SMO framework 255 may be configured to support the deployment of dedicated physical resources for RAN coverage requirements, which may be managed via an operation and maintenance interface (such as an O1 interface). For virtualized network elements, the SMO framework 255 may be configured to interact with a cloud computing platform (such as an open cloud (O-Cloud) 269) to perform network element lifecycle management (such as instantiating virtualized network elements) via a cloud computing platform interface (such as an O2 interface). Such virtualized network elements may include, but are not limited to, CU 280, DU 285, RU 287, and near-RT RIC 259. In some specific implementations, the SMO framework 255 may communicate with hardware aspects of the 4G RAN (such as an open eNB (O-eNB) 261) via the O1 interface. Additionally, in some specific implementations, the SMO framework 255 may communicate directly with one or more RUs 287 via the O1 interface. The SMO framework 255 may also include a non-RT RIC 257 configured to support the functionality of the SMO framework 255 .

[0085] The non-RT RIC 257 may be configured to include logic functions that enable non-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources, artificial intelligence / machine learning (AI / ML) workflows including model training and updating, or policy-based guidance of applications / features in the near-RT RIC 259. The non-RT RIC 257 may be coupled to or in communication with the near-RT RIC 259 (such as via an A1 interface). The near-RT RIC 259 may be configured to include logic functions that enable near-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources via data collection and actions through an interface (such as via an E2 interface) that connects one or more CUs 280, one or more DUs 285, or both, and the O-eNB with the near-RT RIC 259.

[0086] In some implementations, in order to generate an AI / ML model to be deployed in the near-RT RIC 259, the non-RT RIC 257 may receive parameters or external enrichment information from an external server. Such information may be utilized by the near-RT RIC 259 and may be received from a non-network data source or from a network function at the SMO framework 255 or the non-RT RIC 257. In some examples, the non-RT RIC 257 or the near-RT RIC 259 may be configured to tune RAN behavior or performance. For example, the non-RT RIC 257 may monitor long-term trends and patterns of performance and employ AI / ML models to perform corrective actions through the SMO framework 255 (such as via reconfiguration of O1) or via the creation of RAN management policies (such as A1 policies).

[0087] Figure 3A , Figure 3B and Figure 3C Several example components (represented by corresponding blocks) are illustrated, which may be incorporated into UE 302 (which may correspond to any UE described herein), base station 304 (which may correspond to any base station described herein), and network entity 306 (which may correspond to or embody any network function described herein, including location server 230 and LMF 270, or alternatively may be independent of Figure 2A and Figure 2B The depicted NG-RAN 220 and / or 5GC 210 / 260 infrastructure, such as a dedicated network, is implemented in order to support the operations as described herein. It should be understood that these components can be implemented in different types of devices with different specific implementations (e.g., in an ASIC, in a system on a chip (SoC), etc.). The illustrated components can also be incorporated into other devices in the communication system. For example, other devices in the system may include components similar to those described as providing similar functionality. In addition, a given device may include one or more of these components. For example, a device may include multiple transceiver components that enable the device to operate on multiple carriers and / or communicate via different technologies.

[0088] UE 302 and base station 304 each include one or more wireless wide area network (WWAN) transceivers 310 and 350, respectively, which provide means (e.g., means for transmitting, means for receiving, means for measuring, means for tuning, means for preventing transmitting, etc.) for communicating via one or more wireless communication networks (not shown), such as NR networks, LTE networks, GSM networks, etc. WWAN transceivers 310 and 350 may each be connected to one or more antennas 316 and 356, respectively, for communicating with other network nodes (such as other UEs, access points, base stations (e.g., eNBs, gNBs), etc.) via at least one designated RAT (e.g., NR, LTE, GSM, etc.) on a wireless communication medium of interest (e.g., a set of time / frequency resources in a particular spectrum). The WWAN transceivers 310 and 350 can be configured in different ways to transmit and encode signals 318 and 358 (e.g., messages, indications, information, etc.) according to the specified RAT, and conversely, receive and decode the signals 318 and 358 (e.g., messages, indications, information, pilots, etc.). Specifically, the WWAN transceivers 310 and 350 include: one or more transmitters 314 and 354 for transmitting and encoding the signals 318 and 358, respectively, and one or more receivers 312 and 352 for receiving and decoding the signals 318 and 358, respectively.

[0089] At least in some cases, the UE 302 and the base station 304 each further include one or more short-range wireless transceivers 320 and 360, respectively. The short-range wireless transceivers 320 and 360 can be connected to one or more antennas 326 and 366, respectively, and provide for communicating over the wireless communication medium of interest via at least one designated RAT (e.g., WiFi, LTE-D, The short-range wireless transceivers 320 and 360 are components (e.g., components for sending, components for receiving, components for measuring, components for tuning, components for preventing sending, etc.) for communicating with other network nodes (such as other UEs, access points, base stations, etc.) using a PC5, dedicated short-range communication (DSRC), wireless access for vehicle environments (WAVE), near field communication (NFC), ultra-wideband (UWB), etc.). The short-range wireless transceivers 320 and 360 can be configured in different ways to send and encode signals 328 and 368 (e.g., messages, indications, information, etc.) according to a specified RAT, and conversely, receive and decode signals 328 and 368 (e.g., messages, indications, information, pilots, etc.). Specifically, the short-range wireless transceivers 320 and 360 include: one or more transmitters 324 and 364 for sending and encoding signals 328 and 368, respectively, and one or more receivers 322 and 362 for receiving and decoding signals 328 and 368, respectively. As a specific example, the short-range wireless transceivers 320 and 360 may be WiFi transceivers, Transceiver, and / or transceiver, NFC transceiver UWB transceiver or vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and / or vehicle-to-everything (V2X) transceiver.

[0090] At least in some cases, the UE 302 and the base station 304 also include satellite signal receivers 330 and 370. The satellite signal receivers 330 and 370 may be connected to one or more antennas 336 and 376, respectively, and may provide components for receiving and / or measuring satellite positioning / communication signals 338 and 378, respectively. In the case where the satellite signal receivers 330 and 370 are satellite positioning system receivers, the satellite positioning / communication signals 338 and 378 may be global positioning system (GPS) signals, global navigation satellite system (GLONASS) signals, Galileo signals, Beidou signals, Indian regional navigation satellite system (NAVIC), Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), etc. In the case where the satellite signal receivers 330 and 370 are non-terrestrial network (NTN) receivers, the satellite positioning / communication signals 338 and 378 may be communication signals (e.g., carrying control and / or user data) originating from a 5G network. The satellite signal receivers 330 and 370 may include any suitable hardware and / or software for receiving and processing satellite positioning / communication signals 338 and 378, respectively. Satellite signal receivers 330 and 370 may request appropriate information and operations from other systems and, at least in some cases, perform calculations using measurements obtained by any suitable satellite positioning system algorithm to determine the positions of UE 302 and base station 304, respectively.

[0091] The base station 304 and the network entity 306 each include one or more network transceivers 380 and 390, respectively, which provide means (e.g., means for transmitting, means for receiving, etc.) for communicating with other network entities (e.g., other base stations 304, other network entities 306). For example, the base station 304 may employ one or more network transceivers 380 to communicate with other base stations 304 or network entities 306 via one or more wired or wireless backhaul links. As another example, the network entity 306 may employ one or more network transceivers 390 to communicate with one or more base stations 304 via one or more wired or wireless backhaul links, or communicate with other network entities 306 via one or more wired or wireless core network interfaces.

[0092] The transceiver may be configured to communicate over a wired or wireless link. A transceiver (whether a wired transceiver or a wireless transceiver) includes a transmitter circuit system (e.g., transmitters 314, 324, 354, 364) and a receiver circuit system (e.g., receivers 312, 322, 352, 362). In some implementations, the transceiver may be an integrated device (e.g., implementing the transmitter circuit system and the receiver circuit system in a single device), in some implementations may include separate transmitter circuit systems and separate receiver circuit systems, or may be implemented in other ways in other implementations. The transmitter circuit system and the receiver circuit system of a wired transceiver (e.g., network transceivers 380 and 390 in some implementations) may be coupled to one or more wired network interface ports. The wireless transmitter circuitry (e.g., transmitters 314, 324, 354, 364) may include or be coupled to multiple antennas (e.g., antennas 316, 326, 356, 366), such as antenna arrays, which allow the corresponding device (e.g., UE 302, base station 304) to perform transmit "beamforming", as described herein. Similarly, the wireless receiver circuitry (e.g., receiver 312, 322, 352, 362) may include or be coupled to multiple antennas (e.g., antennas 316, 326, 356, 366), such as antenna arrays, which allow the corresponding device (e.g., UE 302, base station 304) to perform receive beamforming, as described herein. In one aspect, the transmitter circuitry and the receiver circuitry may share the same multiple antennas (e.g., antennas 316, 326, 356, 366) so that the corresponding device can only receive or only transmit at a given time, rather than both receive and transmit at the same time. The wireless transceivers (eg, WWAN transceivers 310 and 350, short-range wireless transceivers 320 and 360) may also include a network listening module (NLM) or the like for performing various measurements.

[0093] As used herein, various wireless transceivers (e.g., transceivers 310, 320, 350, and 360 in some implementations, and network transceivers 380 and 390) and wired transceivers (e.g., network transceivers 380 and 390 in some implementations) may be generally characterized as a "transceiver," "at least one transceiver," or "one or more transceivers." Thus, whether a particular transceiver is a wired transceiver or a wireless transceiver may be inferred based on the type of communication being performed. For example, backhaul communications between network devices or servers typically involve signaling via a wired transceiver, while wireless communications between a UE (e.g., UE 302) and a base station (e.g., base station 304) will typically involve signaling via a wireless transceiver.

[0094] UE 302, base station 304, and network entity 306 also include other components that can be used in conjunction with the operations disclosed herein. UE 302, base station 304, and network entity 306 include one or more processors 332, 384, and 394, respectively, for providing functionality related to, for example, wireless communication, and for providing other processing functionality. Thus, processors 332, 384, and 394 may provide means for processing, such as means for determining, means for calculating, means for receiving, means for sending, means for indicating, etc. In one aspect, processors 332, 384, and 394 may include, for example, one or more general purpose processors, multi-core processors, central processing units (CPUs), ASICs, digital signal processors (DSPs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), other programmable logic devices or processing circuit systems, or various combinations thereof.

[0095] UE 302, base station 304, and network entity 306 include memory circuitry implementing memory 340, 386, and 396 (e.g., each including a memory device) for maintaining information (e.g., information indicating reserved resources, thresholds, parameters, etc.). Thus, memory 340, 386, and 396 may provide means for storing, means for retrieving, means for maintaining, etc. In some cases, UE 302, base station 304, and network entity 306 may include positioning components 342, 388, and 398, respectively. Positioning components 342, 388, and 398, respectively, may be hardware circuits that are part of or coupled to processors 332, 384, and 394, respectively, which, when executed, cause UE 302, base station 304, and network entity 306 to perform the functionality described herein. In other aspects, the positioning components 342, 388, and 398 can be external to the processors 332, 384, and 394 (e.g., part of a modem processing system, integrated with another processing system, etc.). Alternatively, the positioning components 342, 388, and 398 can be memory modules stored in the memories 340, 386, and 396, respectively, which when executed by the processors 332, 384, and 394 (or a modem processing system, another processing system, etc.), cause the UE 302, the base station 304, and the network entity 306 to perform the functionality described herein. Figure 3A Possible locations for a location component 342 are illustrated, which may be, for example, part of one or more WWAN transceivers 310, memory 340, one or more processors 332, or any combination thereof, or may be a standalone component. Figure 3B Possible locations for a location component 388 are illustrated, which may be, for example, part of one or more WWAN transceivers 350, memory 386, one or more processors 384, or any combination thereof, or may be a standalone component. Figure 3C Possible locations for a location component 398 are illustrated, which may be, for example, part of one or more network transceivers 390, memory 396, one or more processors 394, or any combination thereof, or may be a stand-alone component.

[0096] UE 302 may include one or more sensors 344 coupled to one or more processors 332 to provide a means for sensing or detecting movement and / or orientation information that is independent of motion data derived from signals received by one or more WWAN transceivers 310, one or more short-range wireless transceivers 320, and / or satellite signal receivers 330. As an example, sensor 344 may include an accelerometer (e.g., a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) device), a gyroscope, a geomagnetic sensor (e.g., a compass), an altimeter (e.g., a barometric altimeter), and / or any other type of motion detection sensor. In addition, sensor 344 may include multiple different types of devices and combine their outputs to provide motion information. For example, sensor 344 may use a combination of a multi-axis accelerometer and an orientation sensor to provide the ability to calculate positioning in a two-dimensional (2D) and / or three-dimensional (3D) coordinate system.

[0097] In addition, the UE 302 includes a user interface 346, which provides means for providing indications to the user (e.g., audible and / or visual indications) and / or for receiving user input (e.g., when the user actuates a sensing device such as a keypad, touch screen, microphone, etc.). Although not shown, the base station 304 and the network entity 306 may also include a user interface.

[0098] Referring to the one or more processors 384 in more detail, in a downlink, IP packets from the network entity 306 may be provided to the processor 384. The one or more processors 384 may implement functionality for an RRC layer, a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) layer, a radio link control (RLC) layer, and a medium access control (MAC) layer. One or more processors 384 may provide: RRC layer functionality associated with broadcasting of system information (e.g., master information block (MIB), system information block (SIB)), RRC connection control (e.g., RRC connection paging, RRC connection establishment, RRC connection modification, and RRC connection release), inter-RAT mobility, and measurement configuration for UE measurement reporting; PDCP layer functionality associated with header compression / decompression, security (encryption, decryption, integrity protection, integrity verification), and handover support functions; RLC layer functionality associated with delivery of upper layer PDUs, error correction through automatic repeat request (ARQ), concatenation, segmentation and reassembly of RLC service data units (SDUs), re-segmentation of RLC data PDUs, and reordering of RLC data PDUs; and MAC layer functionality associated with mapping between logical channels and transport channels, scheduling information reporting, error correction, priority handling, and logical channel prioritization.

[0099] The transmitter 354 and the receiver 352 may implement layer 1 (L1) functionality associated with various signal processing functions. Layer 1, including the physical (PHY) layer, may include: error detection on the transport channel, forward error correction (FEC) coding / decoding of the transport channel, interleaving, rate matching, mapping to physical channels, modulation / demodulation of physical channels, and MIMO antenna processing. The transmitter 354 handles the mapping to the signal constellation based on various modulation schemes (e.g., binary phase shift keying (BPSK), quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK), M-phase shift keying (M-PSK), M-quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM)). The coded and modulated symbols may then be separated into parallel streams. Each stream may then be mapped to an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarrier, multiplexed with a reference signal (e.g., a pilot) in the time and / or frequency domain, and then combined together using an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) to produce a physical channel carrying a time domain OFDM symbol stream. The OFDM symbol stream is spatially pre-decoded to generate multiple spatial streams. Channel estimates from a channel estimator may be used to determine coding and modulation schemes and for spatial processing. Channel estimates may be derived based on a reference signal and / or channel condition feedback sent by the UE 302. Each spatial stream may then be provided to one or more different antennas 356. The transmitter 354 may modulate an RF carrier with a corresponding spatial stream for transmission.

[0100] At the UE 302, the receiver 312 receives the signal through its corresponding antenna 316. The receiver 312 recovers the information modulated onto the RF carrier and provides the information to one or more processors 332. The transmitter 314 and the receiver 312 implement layer 1 functionality associated with various signal processing functions. The receiver 312 can perform spatial processing on the information to recover any spatial streams destined for the UE 302. If the destination of multiple spatial streams is the UE 302, they can be combined into a single OFDM symbol stream by the receiver 312. Then, the receiver 312 converts the OFDM symbol stream from the time domain to the frequency domain using a fast Fourier transform (FFT). The frequency domain signal includes a separate OFDM symbol stream for each subcarrier of the OFDM signal. The symbols on each subcarrier and the reference signal are recovered and demodulated by determining the signal constellation point that is most likely to be sent by the base station 304. These soft decisions can be based on channel estimates calculated by a channel estimator. Then, the soft decisions are decoded and deinterleaved to recover the data and control signals originally sent by the base station 304 on the physical channel. The data and control signals are then provided to one or more processors 332, which implement layer 3 (L3) and layer 2 (L2) functionality.

[0101] In the downlink, one or more processors 332 provide demultiplexing between transport and logical channels, packet reassembly, decryption, header decompression, and control signal processing to recover IP packets from the core network. One or more processors 332 are also responsible for error detection.

[0102] Similar to the functionality described in conjunction with downlink transmissions performed by the base station 304, the one or more processors 332 provide: RRC layer functionality associated with system information (e.g., MIB, SIB) acquisition, RRC connection, and measurement reporting; PDCP layer functionality associated with header compression / decompression and security (encryption, decryption, integrity protection, integrity verification); RLC layer functionality associated with delivery of upper layer PDUs, error correction through ARQ, concatenation, segmentation and reassembly of RLC SDUs, resegmentation of RLC data PDUs, and reordering of RLC data PDUs; and MAC layer functionality associated with mapping between logical channels and transport channels, multiplexing of MAC SDUs onto transport blocks (TBs), demultiplexing of MAC SDUs from TBs, scheduling information reporting, error correction through hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ), priority handling, and logical channel prioritization.

[0103] Channel estimates derived by the channel estimator from a reference signal or feedback sent by the base station 304 may be used by the transmitter 314 to select appropriate coding and modulation schemes and to facilitate spatial processing. The spatial streams generated by the transmitter 314 may be provided to different antennas 316. The transmitter 314 may modulate an RF carrier with a corresponding spatial stream for transmission.

[0104] The uplink transmissions are processed at the base station 304 in a manner similar to that described in conjunction with the receiver functionality at the UE 302. The receiver 352 receives the signal through its respective antenna 356. The receiver 352 recovers the information modulated onto the RF carrier and provides the information to one or more processors 384.

[0105] In the uplink, one or more processors 384 provide demultiplexing between transport and logical channels, packet reassembly, decryption, header decompression, control signal processing to recover IP packets from UE 302. IP packets from one or more processors 384 may be provided to the core network. One or more processors 384 are also responsible for error detection.

[0106] For convenience, UE 302, base station 304 and / or network entity 306 may Figure 3A , Figure 3B and Figure 3C, is shown as including various components that can be configured according to the various examples described herein. However, it should be understood that the illustrated components may have different functionality in different designs. Specifically, FIG. 3A to FIG. 3C The various components in are optional in alternative configurations, and various aspects include configurations that may vary due to design choice, cost, use of the device, or other considerations. For example, in Figure 3A In the case of a wearable device or a tablet computer or a PC or a laptop computer, a specific implementation of the UE 302 may omit the WWAN transceiver 310 (e.g., a wearable device or a tablet computer or a PC or a laptop computer may have Wi-Fi and / or Bluetooth capabilities but no cellular capabilities), may omit the short-range wireless transceiver 320 (e.g., only cellular, etc.), may omit the satellite signal receiver 330, may omit the sensor 344, etc. In another example, in Figure 3B In the case of a wireless cellular network, a specific implementation of the base station 304 may omit the WWAN transceiver 350 (e.g., a Wi-Fi "hotspot" access point without cellular capabilities), or may omit the short-range wireless transceiver 360 (e.g., cellular only, etc.), or may omit the satellite signal receiver 370, etc. For the sake of brevity, illustrations of various alternative configurations are not provided herein, but will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

[0107] Various components of the UE 302, base station 304, and network entity 306 may be communicatively coupled to one another via data buses 334, 382, ​​and 392, respectively. In an aspect, the data buses 334, 382, ​​and 392 may form or be part of communication interfaces for the UE 302, base station 304, and network entity 306, respectively. For example, where different logical entities are embodied in the same device (e.g., gNB and location server functionality incorporated into the same base station 304), the data buses 334, 382, ​​and 392 may provide for communication between the different logical entities.

[0108] Figure 3A , Figure 3B and Figure 3C The components of can be implemented in various ways. In some specific implementations, Figure 3A , Figure 3B and Figure 3CThe components of may be implemented in one or more circuits, such as, for example, one or more processors and / or one or more ASICs (which may include one or more processors). Here, each circuit may use and / or be combined with at least one memory component for storing information or executable code used by the circuit to provide the function. For example, some or all of the functionality represented by blocks 310 to 346 may be implemented by the processor and memory components of UE 302 (e.g., by executing appropriate code and / or by appropriate configuration of the processor components). Similarly, some or all of the functionality represented by blocks 350 to 388 may be implemented by the processor and memory components of base station 304 (e.g., by executing appropriate code and / or by appropriate configuration of the processor components). Moreover, some or all of the functionality represented by blocks 390 to 398 may be implemented by the processor and memory components of network entity 306 (e.g., by executing appropriate code and / or by appropriate configuration of the processor components). For simplicity, various operations, actions and / or functions are described herein as being performed by "UE", "by base station", "by network entity", etc. However, it should be understood that such operations, actions and / or functions may actually be performed by specific components or combinations of components of the UE 302, base station 304, network entity 306, etc. (such as processors 332, 384, 394, transceivers 310, 320, 350 and 360, memories 340, 386 and 396, positioning components 342, 388 and 398, etc.).

[0109] In some designs, the network entity 306 may be implemented as a core network component. In other designs, the network entity 306 may be operated differently from a network operator or cellular network infrastructure (e.g., NG RAN 220 and / or 5GC 210 / 260). For example, the network entity 306 may be a component of a dedicated network that may be configured to communicate with the UE 302 via the base station 304 or independently of the base station 304 (e.g., via a non-cellular communication link such as WiFi).

[0110] NR supports a variety of cellular network-based positioning technologies, including downlink-based positioning methods, uplink-based positioning methods, and downlink and uplink-based positioning methods. Downlink-based positioning methods include: Observed Time Difference of Arrival (OTDOA) in LTE, Downlink Time Difference of Arrival (DL-TDOA) in NR, and Downlink Angle of Departure (DL-AoD) in NR. Figure 4Examples of various positioning methods according to various aspects of the present disclosure are illustrated. In the OTDOA or DL-TDOA positioning procedure illustrated in scenario 410, the UE measures the difference between the arrival times (ToA) of reference signals (e.g., positioning reference signals (PRS)) received from paired base stations (referred to as reference signal time difference (RSTD) or arrival time difference (TDOA) measurements), and reports these differences to a positioning entity. More specifically, the UE receives identifiers (IDs) of a reference base station (e.g., a serving base station) and multiple non-reference base stations in auxiliary data. The UE then measures the RSTD between the reference base station and each non-reference base station. Based on the known positions of the base stations involved and the RSTD measurements, a positioning entity (e.g., a UE for UE-based positioning or a location server for UE-assisted positioning) can estimate the position of the UE.

[0111] For DL-AoD positioning illustrated in scenario 420, the positioning entity uses measurement reports from the UE regarding received signal strength measurements of multiple downlink transmit beams to determine the angle between the UE and the transmitting base station. The positioning entity can then estimate the position of the UE based on the determined angle and the known position of the transmitting base station.

[0112] Uplink-based positioning methods include uplink time difference of arrival (UL-TDOA) and uplink angle of arrival (UL-AoA). UL-TDOA is similar to DL-TDOA, but is based on uplink reference signals (e.g., sounding reference signals (SRS)) sent by the UE to multiple base stations. Specifically, the UE sends one or more uplink reference signals, which are measured by a reference base station and multiple non-reference base stations. Each base station then reports the reception time of the reference signal (referred to as relative time of arrival (RTOA)) to a positioning entity (e.g., a location server) that knows the location and relative timing of the base stations involved. Based on the receive-to-receive (Rx-Rx) time difference between the reported RTOA of the reference base station and the reported RTOA of each non-reference base station, the known location of the base stations, and their known timing offsets, the positioning entity can use TDOA to estimate the position of the UE.

[0113] For UL-AoA positioning, one or more base stations measure the received signal strength of one or more uplink reference signals (e.g., SRS) received from the UE on one or more uplink receive beams. The positioning entity uses the signal strength measurements and the angle of the receive beams to determine the angle between the UE and the base station. Based on the determined angle and the known location of the base station, the positioning entity can then estimate the location of the UE.

[0114] Downlink and uplink based positioning methods include: enhanced cell ID (E-CID) positioning and multiple round trip time (RTT) positioning (also referred to as "multi-cell RTT" and "multi-RTT"). In the RTT procedure, a first entity (e.g., a base station or UE) sends a first RTT-related signal (e.g., a PRS or SRS) to a second entity (e.g., a UE or a base station), and the second entity sends a second RTT-related signal (e.g., an SRS or PRS) back to the first entity. Each entity measures the time difference between the arrival time (ToA) of the received RTT-related signal and the transmission time of the transmitted RTT-related signal. The time difference is called the received-to-transmit (Rx-Tx) time difference. The Rx-Tx time difference measurement can be performed or adjusted to include only the time difference between the nearest time slot boundary of the received signal and the transmitted signal. The two entities may then transmit their Rx-Tx time difference measurements to a location server (e.g., LMF 270), which calculates the round trip propagation time (i.e., RTT) between the two entities based on the two Rx-Tx time difference measurements (e.g., calculated as the sum of the two Rx-Tx time difference measurements). Alternatively, one entity may transmit its Rx-Tx time difference measurements to the other entity, which then calculates the RTT. The distance between the two entities may be determined based on the RTT and a known signal speed (e.g., the speed of light). For multi-RTT positioning illustrated in scenario 430, a first entity (e.g., a UE or a base station) performs an RTT positioning procedure with multiple second entities (e.g., multiple base stations or UEs) to enable the location of the first entity to be determined (e.g., using multilateration) based on the distance to the second entity and the known location of the second entity. RTT and multi-RTT methods may be combined with other positioning techniques (such as UL-AoA and DL-AoD) to improve location accuracy, as illustrated in scenario 440.

[0115] The E-CID positioning method is based on radio resource management (RRM) measurements. In E-CID, the UE reports the serving cell ID, timing advance (TA), and the identifiers, estimated timing and signal strength of the detected neighboring base stations. The UE's position is then estimated based on this information and the known location of the base stations.

[0116] To assist the positioning operation, the location server (e.g., location server 230, LMF 270, SLP 272) may provide assistance data to the UE. For example, the assistance data may include: an identifier of the base station (or cell / TRP of the base station) from which the reference signal is measured, reference signal configuration parameters (e.g., the number of consecutive time slots including PRS, the periodicity of consecutive time slots including PRS, the silent sequence, the frequency hopping sequence, the reference signal identifier, the reference signal bandwidth, etc.), and / or other parameters applicable to a particular positioning method. Alternatively, the assistance data may originate directly from the base station itself (e.g., in an overhead message broadcast periodically, etc.). In some cases, the UE itself may be able to detect neighboring network nodes without using assistance data.

[0117] In the case of OTDOA or DL-TDOA positioning process, the auxiliary data may further include an expected RSTD value and associated uncertainty, or a search window around the expected RSTD. In some cases, the value range of the expected RSTD may be + / -500 microseconds (μs). In some cases, when any resource used for positioning measurement is in FR1, the value range of the uncertainty of the expected RSTD may be + / -32μs. In other cases, when all resources used for positioning measurement are in FR2, the value range of the uncertainty of the expected RSTD may be + / -8μs.

[0118] The position estimate may be referred to by other names, such as a position estimate, a position, a fix, a position fix, a fix, etc. The position estimate may be geodetic and include coordinates (e.g., latitude, longitude, and possibly altitude), or may be municipal and include a street address, a postal address, or some other verbal description of the location. The position estimate may be further defined relative to some other known location or in absolute terms (e.g., using latitude, longitude, and possibly altitude). The position estimate may include an expected error or uncertainty (e.g., by including an area or volume within which the location is expected to be contained with some specified or default confidence level).

[0119] Various frame structures may be used to support downlink and uplink transmissions between network nodes (eg, base stations and UEs). Figure 5 5 is a diagram illustrating an example frame structure according to aspects of the present disclosure. The frame structure may be a downlink or uplink frame structure. Other wireless communication technologies may have different frame structures and / or different channels.

[0120] LTE (and in some cases NR) utilizes orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) on the downlink and single carrier frequency division multiplexing (SC-FDM) on the uplink. However, unlike LTE, NR also has the option of using OFDM on the uplink. OFDM and SC-FDM divide the system bandwidth into multiple (K) orthogonal subcarriers, which are also often called tones, frequency bins, etc. Each subcarrier can be modulated with data. In general, modulation symbols are transmitted in the frequency domain using OFDM and in the time domain using SC-FDM. The spacing between adjacent subcarriers can be fixed, and the total number of subcarriers (K) can depend on the system bandwidth. For example, the spacing of the subcarriers can be 15 kilohertz (kHz), and the minimum resource allocation (resource block) can be 12 subcarriers (or 180kHz). Thus, for a system bandwidth of 1.25 megahertz (MHz), 2.5 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz, or 20 MHz, the nominal fast Fourier transform (FFT) size may be equal to 128, 256, 512, 1024, or 2048, respectively. The system bandwidth may also be partitioned into multiple subbands. For example, a subband may cover 1.08 MHz (i.e., 6 resource blocks), and there may be 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 subbands for a system bandwidth of 1.25 MHz, 2.5 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz, or 20 MHz, respectively.

[0121] LTE supports a single parameter set (subcarrier spacing (SCS), symbol length, etc.). In contrast, NR may support multiple parameter sets (μ), for example, 15kHz (μ=0), 30kHz (μ=1), 60kHz (μ=2), 120kHz (μ=3), and 240kHz (μ=4) or larger subcarrier spacings may be available. In each subcarrier spacing, there are 14 symbols per slot. For 15kHz SCS (μ=0), there is one slot per subframe, 10 slots per frame, the slot duration is 1 millisecond (ms), the symbol duration is 66.7 microseconds (μs), and the maximum nominal system bandwidth (in MHz) with a 4K FFT size is 50. For 30kHz SCS (μ=1), there are two slots per subframe, 20 slots per frame, the slot duration is 0.5ms, the symbol duration is 33.3μs, and the maximum nominal system bandwidth (in MHz) with a 4K FFT size is 100. For 60kHz SCS (μ=2), there are four slots per subframe, 40 slots per frame, the slot duration is 0.25ms, the symbol duration is 16.7μs, and the maximum nominal system bandwidth (in MHz) with a 4K FFT size is 200. For 120kHz SCS (μ=3), there are eight slots per subframe, 80 slots per frame, the slot duration is 0.125ms, the symbol duration is 8.33μs, and the maximum nominal system bandwidth (in MHz) with a 4K FFT size is 400. For 240kHz SCS (μ=4), there are 16 slots per subframe, 160 slots per frame, the slot duration is 0.0625ms, the symbol duration is 4.17μs, and the maximum nominal system bandwidth (in MHz) with a 4K FFT size is 800.

[0122] exist Figure 5 In the example of , a parameter set of 15 kHz is used. Therefore, in the time domain, a 10 ms frame is divided into 10 equally sized subframes, each subframe is 1 ms, and each subframe includes one time slot. Figure 5 , time is represented horizontally (on the X-axis), where time increases from left to right, while frequency is represented vertically (on the Y-axis), where frequency increases (or decreases) from bottom to top.

[0123] A resource grid may be used to represent a time slot, each of which includes one or more time-concurrent resource blocks (RBs) (also referred to as physical RBs (PRBs)) in the frequency domain. The resource grid is further divided into a plurality of resource elements (REs). An RE may correspond to one symbol length in the time domain and one subcarrier in the frequency domain. Figure 5In the parameter set of , for a normal cyclic prefix, an RB may contain 12 consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain and seven consecutive symbols in the time domain, for a total of 84 REs. For an extended cyclic prefix, an RB may contain 12 consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain and six consecutive symbols in the time domain, for a total of 72 REs. The number of bits carried by each RE depends on the modulation scheme.

[0124] Some of the REs may carry reference (pilot) signals (RS). These reference signals may include positioning reference signals (PRS), tracking reference signals (TRS), phase tracking reference signals (PTRS), cell-specific reference signals (CRS), channel state information reference signals (CSI-RS), demodulation reference signals (DMRS), primary synchronization signals (PSS), secondary synchronization signals (SSS), synchronization signal blocks (SSB), sounding reference signals (SRS), etc., depending on whether the illustrated frame structure is used for uplink communication or downlink communication. Figure 5 Example locations of REs carrying reference signals (labeled "R") are illustrated.

[0125] A set of resource elements (REs) used for transmission of a PRS is referred to as a "PRS resource". A set of resource elements may span multiple PRBs in the frequency domain and "N" (such as 1 or more) consecutive symbols within a slot in the time domain. In a given OFDM symbol in the time domain, a PRS resource occupies consecutive PRBs in the frequency domain.

[0126] The transmission of PRS resources within a given PRB has a specific comb size (also referred to as "comb density"). The comb size "N" represents the subcarrier spacing (or frequency / tone spacing) within each symbol of the PRS resource configuration. Specifically, for comb size "N", the PRS is transmitted in every Nth subcarrier of a symbol of the PRB. For example, for comb-4, for each symbol of the PRS resource configuration, the RE corresponding to every fourth subcarrier (such as subcarriers 0, 4, 8) is used to transmit the PRS of the PRS resource. Currently, comb sizes of comb-2, comb-4, comb-6, and comb-12 are supported for DL-PRS. Figure 5 An example PRS resource configuration for comb-4 (which spans four symbols) is illustrated. That is, the positions of shaded REs (labeled as "R") indicate the PRS resource configuration of comb-4.

[0127] Currently, DL-PRS resources can span 2, 4, 6, or 12 consecutive symbols in a timeslot using a full frequency domain staggered pattern. DL-PRS resources can be configured in any downlink or flexible (FL) symbol configured by higher layers in a timeslot. There may be a constant energy per resource element (EPRE) for all REs of a given DL-PRS resource. The following are the symbol-by-symbol frequency offsets for comb sizes 2, 4, 6, and 12 on 2, 4, 6, and 12 symbols. 2-Symbol Comb-2: {0,1}; 4-Symbol Comb-2: {0,1,0,1}; 6-Symbol Comb-2: {0,1,0,1,0,1}; 12-Symbol Comb-2:

[0128] {0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1}; 4-symbol comb-4: {0,2,1,3} (as in Figure 5 in the example); 12-symbol comb-4: {0,2,1,3,0,2,1,3,0,2,1,3}; 6-symbol comb-6: {0,3,1,4,2,5}; 12-symbol comb-6: {0,3,1,4,2,5,0,3,1,4,2,5}; and 12-symbol comb-12: {0,6,3,9,1,7,4,10,2,8,5,11}.

[0129] A "PRS resource set" is a set of PRS resources used to send a PRS signal, where each PRS resource has a PRS resource ID. In addition, the PRS resources in the PRS resource set are associated with the same TRP. A PRS resource set is identified by a PRS resource set ID and is associated with a specific TRP (identified by the TRP ID). In addition, the PRS resources in the PRS resource set have the same periodicity, a common muting pattern configuration, and the same repetition factor (such as "PRS-ResourceRepetitionFactor") across time slots. The periodicity is the time from the first repetition of the first PRS resource of the first PRS instance to the same first repetition of the same first PRS resource of the next PRS instance. The periodicity may have a length selected from the following: 2^μ*{4,5,8,10,16,20,32,40,64,80,160,320,640,1280,2560,5120,10240} time slots, where μ=0,1,2,3. The repetition factor may have a length selected from {1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 16, 32} slots.

[0130] The PRS resource ID in a PRS resource set is associated with a single beam (or beam ID) transmitted from a single TRP (where a TRP may transmit one or more beams). That is, each PRS resource in a PRS resource set may be transmitted on a different beam, and therefore, a "PRS resource" (or simply "resource") may also be referred to as a "beam". Note that this does not have any implication on whether the UE knows the TRP and beam on which the PRS is transmitted.

[0131] A "PRS instance" or "PRS opportunity" is an instance of a periodically repeated time window (such as a group of one or more consecutive time slots) in which a PRS is expected to be sent. A PRS opportunity may also be referred to as a "PRS positioning opportunity", "PRS positioning instance", "positioning opportunity", "positioning instance", "positioning repetition", or simply "opportunity", "instance" or "repetition".

[0132] A "positioning frequency layer" (also referred to simply as a "frequency layer") is a set of one or more PRS resource sets with the same values ​​for certain parameters across one or more TRPs. Specifically, the set of PRS resource sets has the same subcarrier spacing and cyclic prefix (CP) type (meaning that all parameter sets supported for the physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) are also supported by PRS), the same point A, the same value of the downlink PRS bandwidth, the same starting PRB (and center frequency), and the same comb size. The point A parameter takes the value of the parameter "ARFCN-ValueNR" (where "ARFCN" stands for "absolute radio frequency channel number") and is an identifier / code that specifies a pair of physical radio channels used for transmission and reception. The downlink PRS bandwidth can have a granularity of four PRBs, and the minimum value is 24 PRBs and the maximum value is 272 PRBs. Currently, up to four frequency layers have been defined, and up to two PRS resource sets can be configured per TRP per frequency layer.

[0133] The concept of frequency layer is somewhat similar to the concept of component carrier and bandwidth part (BWP), but the difference is that component carrier and BWP are used by one base station (or macro cell base station and small cell base station) to send data channels, while frequency layer is used by several (usually three or more) base stations to send PRS. The UE can indicate the number of frequency layers that the UE can support when the UE transmits its positioning capabilities to the network (such as during an LTE Positioning Protocol (LPP) session). For example, the UE can indicate whether it can support one or four positioning frequency layers.

[0134] On the one hand, Figure 5The reference signal carried on the RE marked with "R" in the figure can be an SRS. The SRS sent by the UE can be used by the base station to obtain channel state information (CSI) for the transmitting UE. CSI describes how the RF signal propagates from the UE to the base station and represents the combined effect of scattering, attenuation, and power attenuation with distance. The system uses SRS for resource scheduling, link adaptation, massive MIMO, beam management, etc.

[0135] The set of REs used for transmission of SRS is called "SRS resource" and can be identified by the parameter "SRS-ResourceId". The set of resource elements can span multiple PRBs in the frequency domain and 'N' (e.g., one or more) consecutive symbols within a time slot in the time domain. In a given OFDM symbol, an SRS resource occupies one or more consecutive PRBs. An "SRS resource set" is a set of SRS resources used for transmission of SRS signals and is identified by an SRS resource set ID ("SRS-ResourceSetId").

[0136] The transmission of the SRS resource within a given PRB has a specific comb size (also referred to as "comb density"). The comb size 'N' represents the subcarrier spacing (or frequency / tone spacing) within each symbol of the SRS resource configuration. Specifically, for comb size 'N', the SRS is transmitted in every Nth subcarrier of a symbol of the PRB. For example, for comb-4, for each symbol of the SRS resource configuration, the REs corresponding to every fourth subcarrier (such as subcarriers 0, 4, 8) are used to transmit the SRS of the SRS resource. Figure 5 In the example of FIG. 1 , the illustrated SRS is comb-tooth-4 on four symbols. That is, the position of the shaded SRS RE indicates the SRS resource configuration of comb-tooth-4.

[0137] Currently, SRS resources with a comb size of Comb-2, Comb-4, or Comb-8 can span 1, 2, 4, 8, or 12 consecutive symbols within a slot. The following are the symbol-by-symbol frequency offsets for the currently supported SRS comb patterns. 1-Symbol Comb-2: {0}; 2-Symbol Comb-2: {0,1}; 2-Symbol Comb-4: {0,2}; 4-Symbol Comb-2: {0,1,0,1}; 4-Symbol Comb-4: {0,2,1,3} (as in Figure 5 in the example); 8-symbol comb-4: {0,2,1,3,0,2,1,3}; 12-symbol comb-4: {0,2,1,3,0,2,1,3,0,2,1,3}; 4-symbol comb-8: {0,4,2,6}; 8-symbol comb-8: {0,4,2,6,1,5,3,7}; and 12-symbol comb-8: {0,4,2,6,1,5,3,7,0,4,2,6}.

[0138] In general, as mentioned, the UE sends the SRS to enable the receiving base station (serving base station or neighboring base station) to measure the channel quality (i.e., CSI) between the UE and the base station. However, the SRS may also be specifically configured as an uplink positioning reference signal for uplink-based positioning procedures, such as uplink time difference of arrival (UL-TDOA), round trip time (RTT), uplink angle of arrival (UL-AoA), etc. As used herein, the term "SRS" may refer to an SRS configured for channel quality measurement or an SRS configured for positioning purposes. When it is necessary to distinguish between two types of SRS, the former may be referred to as "SRS for communication" and / or the latter may be referred to as "SRS for positioning" or "positioning SRS" in this article.

[0139] Several enhancements to the previous definitions for SRS may be used for "SRS for positioning" (also referred to as "UL-PRS"), such as a new staggering pattern within the SRS resource (in addition to a single symbol / comb-2), a new comb type for SRS, a new sequence for SRS, a larger number of SRS resource sets per component carrier, and a larger number of SRS resources per component carrier. In addition, the parameters "SpatialRelationInfo" and "PathLossReference" are to be configured based on downlink reference signals or SSBs from neighboring TRPs. Furthermore, one SRS resource may be sent outside the active BWP, and one SRS resource may span multiple component carriers. Moreover, the SRS may be configured in the RRC connected state and sent only within the active BWP. In addition, there may be no frequency hopping, no repetition factor, a single antenna port, and new lengths for the SRS (e.g., 8 and 12 symbols). There may also be open-loop power control and no closed-loop power control, and comb-8 (i.e., SRS sent every eighth subcarrier in the same symbol) may be used. Finally, the UE may transmit from multiple SRS resources through the same transmit beam for UL-AoA. These features may be configured through RRC higher layer signaling (and potentially triggered or activated through MAC Control Element (MAC-CE) or Downlink Control Information (DCI)).

[0140] It should be noted that the terms "positioning reference signal" and "PRS" generally refer to specific reference signals used for positioning in NR and LTE systems. However, as used herein, the terms "positioning reference signal" and "PRS" may also refer to any type of reference signal that can be used for positioning, such as but not limited to: PRS, TRS, PTRS, CRS, CSI-RS, DMRS, PSS, SSS, SSB, SRS, UL-PRS, etc. as defined in LTE and NR. In addition, the terms "positioning reference signal" and "PRS" may refer to a downlink positioning reference signal, an uplink positioning reference signal, or a sidelink positioning reference signal, unless otherwise indicated by the context. If further distinction is needed between the types of PRS, the downlink positioning reference signal may be referred to as a "DL-PRS", the uplink positioning reference signal (e.g., an SRS used for positioning, i.e., PTRS) may be referred to as a "UL-PRS", and the sidelink positioning reference signal may be referred to as a "SL-PRS". In addition, for signals (e.g., DMRS) that can be sent in the downlink, uplink, and / or sidelink, these signals may be prefixed with "DL," "UL," or "SL" to distinguish the direction. For example, "UL-DMRS" is different from "DL-DMRS."

[0141] After the random access procedure, the UE is in the RRC connected state. The RRC protocol is used on the air interface between the UE and the base station. The main functions of the RRC protocol include connection establishment and release functions, broadcast of system information, radio bearer establishment, reconfiguration, release, RRC connection mobility procedures, paging notification and release, and outer loop power control. In LTE, the UE can be in one of two RRC states (connected or idle), but in NR, the UE can be in one of three RRC states (connected, idle or inactive). Different RRC states have different radio resources associated with these states, which the UE can use when it is in a given state. Note that, as mentioned above, the different RRC states are usually capitalized; however, this is not necessary, and the states can also be written in lowercase.

[0142] Figure 6600 is a diagram of different RRC states (also referred to as RRC modes) available in NR according to aspects of the present disclosure. When a UE is powered on, the UE is initially in an RRC disconnected / idle state 610. After a random access procedure, the UE moves to an RRC connected state 620. If there is no activity at the UE for a short period of time, the UE may suspend its session by moving to an RRC inactive state 630. The UE may resume its session by performing a random access procedure to transition back to the RRC connected state 620. Therefore, the UE needs to perform a random access procedure to transition to the RRC connected state 620 regardless of whether the UE is in the RRC idle state 610 or the RRC inactive state 630.

[0143] Operations performed in the RRC idle state 610 include public land mobile network (PLMN) selection, broadcast of system information, cell reselection mobility, paging for mobile terminated data (initiated and managed by 5GC), discontinuous reception (DRX) for core network paging (configured by non-access stratum (NAS)). Operations performed in the RRC connected state 620 include 5GC (e.g., 5GC 260) and NG-RAN (e.g., NG-RAN 220) connection establishment (both control plane and user plane), UE context storage at NG-RAN and UE, NG-RAN knowledge of the cell to which the UE belongs, delivery of unicast data to / from the UE, and network-controlled mobility. Operations performed in the RRC Inactive state 630 include broadcast of system information, cell reselection for mobility, paging (initiated by NG-RAN), RAN-based Notification Area (RNA) management (performed by NG-RAN), DRX for RAN paging (configured by NG-RAN), 5GC and NG-RAN connection establishment for UE (both control plane and user plane), storage of UE context in NG-RAN and UE, and NG-RAN knowledge of the RNA to which the UE belongs.

[0144] Positioning in RRC inactive state was introduced in 3GPP Release 17. In RRC inactive state, the UE maintains CM connected state while the access stratum context is stored in both the UE and the RAN. During the RRC inactive state, the network signaling load is reduced because the UE is only required to perform inactive mobility procedures (e.g., PLMN selection, cell reselection, and RAN notification area update), reception of broadcast system information, and reception of RAN paging. The UE is in semi-sleep mode and wakes up periodically (according to the configured discontinuous reception (DRX) cycle) and monitors paging messages from the network. For example, the UE does not continuously monitor the PDCCH for unicast data transmission and / or reception, which allows power saving on the UE side compared to the RRC connected state.

[0145] With the recently introduced Small Data Transmission (SDT) feature, the UE can also send data and / or NAS signaling while remaining in the RRC Inactive state.

[0146] The Deferred Mobile Terminated Location Request (MT-LR) procedure provides an efficient means for location tracking of mobile devices or assets. During the initialization phase, positioning instructions (e.g., positioning method to be used, Quality of Service (QoS), etc.) and possible assistance data may be provided to the target device. The target device then monitors for events to occur, performs location measurements when an event is detected, and provides location results to the network. Multiple event types may be supported, such as entering, leaving, or staying within a predefined geographic area, moving more than a predefined distance from a previous location, or periodic locations. Procedures have been defined to allow the UE to remain in the RRC inactive state during the positioning measurement and event reporting phases.

[0147] Fig. 7A and Figure 7B An example deferred MT LR procedure for downlink and uplink based positioning methods (eg, multi-RTT) according to aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated. The procedure consists of two event reports: Fig. 7A Event Report #1 (Phase 3-10) for requesting / configuring SRS for positioning as shown, and Figure 7B Event Report #2 (stages 12-16) for reporting location measurements is shown.

[0148] At stage 1, stages 1-21 of the deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events specified in 3GPP Technical Specification (TS) 23.273, clause 6.3.1 (which is publicly available and incorporated herein by reference in its entirety) are performed. LMF 270 may perform one or more positioning procedures at stage 15 of the deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events (deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events specified in 3GPP TS 23.273, clause 6.3.1) to request and obtain UE 204 positioning capabilities or provide any necessary assistance data to the target device. The location service (LCS) periodic triggered location invocation at stage 16 of the deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events (the deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events specified in 3GPP TS 23.273, clause 6.3.1) includes an embedded LPP request location information message indicating allowed or required multi-RTT location measurements for each location event reported.

[0149] At some point, the last serving gNB releases UE 204 from RRC Connected to RRC Inactive via “RRCRelease” with “SuspendConfig”.

[0150] At Phase 2 , UE 204 monitors for the occurrence of the trigger or periodic event requested during Phase 1 .

[0151] At Phase 3, when the event is detected (or earlier), UE 204 transmits an RRC UL Information Transfer message containing a UL NAS Transport message along with an RRC Resume Request via SDT. UE 204 includes an LCS Event Report in the payload container of the UL NAS Transport message and the Deferred Route Identifier received during Phase 1 in the Additional Information of the UL NAS Transport message. The LCS Event Report includes an embedded LPP Request Assistance Data message with IE "NR-Multi-RTT-RequestAssistanceData" and "nr-AdType" set to "ul-srs" to request UL-SRS for multi-RTT positioning. Note that the receiving gNB of UE 204 when UE 204 performs Phase 3 may be the same or different from the last serving gNB from which UE 204 was released to RRC Inactive state.

[0152] At stage 4, the receiving gNB transmits an LCS event report with an LPP request assistance data message to the serving AMF 264 in a Next Generation Application Protocol (NGAP) uplink NAS transport message. The AMF 264 determines the LMF 270 based on the deferred routing identifier received in the additional information IE of the UL NAS transport message, and forwards the LCS event report with the embedded LPP message to the LMF 270 via triggering the Namf_Communication_N1MessageNotify service operation. The AMF 264 also includes the payload container type and the associated identifier set to the deferred routing identifier. It should be noted that if the anchor gNB does not change from the last serving gNB to the receiving gNB, the LCS event report can be forwarded from the receiving gNB to the last serving gNB via Xn Application Protocol (XnAP) message RRC delivery. Subsequent downlink / uplink messages can also be forwarded between the last serving gNB to the receiving gNB via XnAP message RRC delivery.

[0153] At stage 5, the LMF 270 transmits a New Radio Positioning Protocol Type A (NRPPa) Positioning Information Request message to the receiving gNB to request the UL-SRS for the target device (i.e., UE 204).

[0154] At stage 6, the receiving gNB determines the resources available for UL-SRS.

[0155] At stage 7, the receiving gNB provides UL-SRS configuration information to LMF 270 in the NRPPa Positioning Information Response message.

[0156] At stage 8, LMF 270 transmits an NRPPa measurement request including the UL-SRS measurement configuration to the gNB group.

[0157] At stage 9, LMF 270 transmits a supplementary service (SS) LCS event report confirmation to the receiving gNB. Then, at stage 9b, the receiving gNB provides the SS event report confirmation to UE 204 via a subsequent DL SDT.

[0158] At stage 10, the receiving gNB transmits an "RRCRelease" message with "suspendConfig" to keep UE 204 in the RRC inactive state. The "RRCRelease" message includes the UL-SRS configuration. Then, UE 204 sends UL-SRS resources according to the received UL-SRS configuration.

[0159] At stage 11, UE 204 performs DL-PRS measurements and UL-SRS measurements per configured TRP.

[0160] At stage 12, UE 204 transmits an RRC UL Information Transfer message including a UL NAS Transport message along with an RRC Resume Request via SDT. UE 204 includes the LCS Event Report and the LPP Provide Location Information message in the payload container of the UL NAS Transport message, and the deferred route identifier received during stage 1 in the additional information of the UL NAS Transport message. The LPP Provide Location Information message contains the location measurement (e.g., UE Rx-Tx time difference measurement) obtained by UE 204 at stage 11a.

[0161] At stage 13, the receiving gNB transmits an LCS Event Report with LPP Provide Location Information message in an NGAP Uplink NAS Transport message to the serving AMF 264. The AMF 264 determines the LMF 270 based on the Deferred Route Identifier received in the Additional Information IE of the UL NAS Transport message and forwards the LCS Event Report with embedded LPP message to the LMF 270 via triggering the Namf_Communication_N1MessageNotify service operation. The AMF 264 also includes the payload container type and the associated identifier set to the Deferred Route Identifier.

[0162] At stage 14, after performing the UL-SRS measurements, the gNB provides the UL measurements in an NRPPa Measurement Response message to the LMF 270. The NRPPa Measurement Response message contains the location measurements (e.g., gNB Rx-Tx time difference measurements) obtained by each gNB at stage 11b.

[0163] At stage 15, when all LPP Provide Location Information messages have been received, LMF 270 transmits an SS LCS Event Report Ack to the receiving gNB. Then, at stage 15b, the receiving gNB provides an SS Event Report Ack to UE 204 via a subsequent DL SDT.

[0164] At stage 16, the receiving gNB transmits an "RRCRelease" message with "suspendConfig" to keep UE 204 in the RRC inactive state.

[0165] At stage 17, stages 28-31 of the deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events specified in TS 23.273, clause 6.3.1 are executed.

[0166] Fig. 7A and Figure 7B A deferred MT-LR procedure for a UE 204 in an RRC inactive state for downlink and uplink based positioning methods (eg, Multi-RTT) is illustrated. Fig. 7A and Figure 7B A subset of the phases in can be used for downlink-only positioning (e.g., DL-TDOA) and uplink-only positioning (e.g., UL-TDOA). For downlink-only positioning, only phases 1, 2, 11a, 12, 13, 15a, 15b, 16, and 17 will be applicable. For uplink-only positioning, only phases 1, 2, 3-10, 11b, 14, and 17 will be applicable.

[0167] In the foregoing procedure, whenever an event report is triggered (e.g., when a periodic timer expires), a new positioning SRS may be “negotiated” between the LMF and the serving / receiving gNB (e.g., Fig. 7A This results in large signaling activity, for example, for periodic events with relatively small periodicity (e.g., 15 to 30 seconds), and thus in additional latency and processing, which may also adversely affect power consumption at the target device.

[0168] In order to reduce the amount of SRS configuration signaling, pre-configured positioning SRS can be used. This assumes that the initialization phase of the MT-LR procedure can be postponed, for example. Fig. 7APhase 1) in the POSITIONING SRS provides a single positioning SRS which can then be activated when needed. Fig. 7A In addition to transmitting an event report to the LMF 270 at stages 3 and 4 in the UE 204 to request the positioning SRS from the LMF 270, the UE 204 can potentially transmit a request to activate the pre-configured positioning SRS directly to the NG-RAN 220 (receiving gNB) using lower layer signaling (e.g., MAC Control Element (CE) (MAC-CE)). In this case, it will not be necessary or can be simplified. Fig. 7A Stages 5-7 and 9a.

[0169] However, due to mobility, the UE may request "SRS activation" in a different cell than the cell from which it has received the pre-configured positioning SRS. SRS used for positioning is typically UE and location specific. Positioning SRS configuration is currently only valid in the cell in which the UE has received the SRS configuration. This is due to the fact that the SRS configuration includes parameters that (at least roughly) depend on the UE's location, such as spatial relationship information and path loss reference information (both are provided for neighboring cells, and neighboring cells are typically different for different serving cells), as well as information determined by the receiving / serving gNB, such as timing advance information. Currently, the UE will release the positioning SRS configuration when cell reselection occurs. However, since the positioning SRS configuration also includes parameters that may be valid for a larger part of the network (multiple cells), at least part of the SRS configuration may be pre-configured.

[0170] Therefore, in order to achieve pre-configuration of positioning SRS, the present disclosure provides a technology for dividing positioning SRS parameters into two parts. The first part (referred to as "part (a)") is a parameter set that is valid for multiple cells. The area where the parameter set is valid can be indicated by a list of cell IDs. The list of cell IDs can be considered as "area IDs" where the positioning SRS parameter set is applicable or valid. The second part (referred to as "part (b)") is a location / cell-specific parameter set. Part (a) of the SRS for positioning configuration can be pre-configured, while part (b) can be provided in the SRS activation message.

[0171] Figure 8 8 is a diagram illustrating a pre-configured positioning SRS structure according to aspects of the present disclosure. Figure 8 As shown, each pre-configured positioning SRS includes an identifier.

[0172] The positioning SRS configuration for the RRC inactive state currently includes the following parameters as specified in 3GPP TS 38.331 (which is publicly available and incorporated herein by reference in its entirety). "SRS-PosResourceSet" includes "srs-PosResourceSetId", "srs-PosResourceIdList", "resourceType", "alpha", "p0", and "pathlossReferenceRS-Pos" parameters. The "srs-PosResourceSetId" parameter indicates the ID of the resource set. It is unique in the context of the BWP that defines the positioning SRS. The "srs-PosResourceIdList" parameter indicates the ID of the SRS used for positioning resources in the "SRS-PosResourceSet". The "resourceType" parameter defines the time domain behavior of the SRS resource configuration (e.g., periodic, semi-persistent, aperiodic). The "alpha" parameter indicates the value of the positioning SRS power control, which defines the fractional path loss compensation. The UE multiplies the alpha value by the path loss estimate. For full path loss compensation, alpha is equal to 1. The "p0" parameter indicates the value of the positioning SRS power control, which can be described as the "expected received power" at the TRP. That is, the SRS used for positioning transmit power determination is based on p0+alpha×PL, where PL is the path loss estimate. The "pathlossReferenceRS-Pos" parameter defines the reference DL signal to be used for path loss estimation. The DL reference signal can be an SSB or DL-PRS from the serving TRP or a neighboring TRP.

[0173] "SRS-PosResource" includes "srs-PosResourceId", "transmissionComb", "resourceMapping", "freqDomainShift", "freqHopping", "groupOrSequenceHopping", "resourceType", "sequenceId" and "spatialRelationInfoPos" parameters. The "srs-PosResourceId" parameter indicates the SRS used to locate the resource identifier that defines a specific positioning SRS resource. The "transmissionComb" parameter defines the comb size N (e.g., N=2, 4, or 8) of the positioning SRS, the comb offset (0...N-1) of the first symbol of the positioning SRS resource, and the cyclic shift used to generate the reference sequence. "resourceMapping" (which includes "startPosition" and "nrofSymbols") defines the first OFDM symbol position of the positioning SRS resource in the time slot (e.g., 0, 1, 2,..., 13) and the number of symbols of the positioning SRS resource (e.g., 1, 2, 4, 8, or 12). The "freqDomainShift" parameter defines the frequency domain position of the positioning SRS resource. The "freqHopping" parameter (or "c-SRS") defines the bandwidth of the positioning SRS resource. The "groupOrSequenceHopping" parameter defines whether group hopping or sequence hopping is used. The hopping pattern is used to randomize the reuse of sequences in the system. The "resourceType" parameter defines the positioning SRS resource type (periodic, semi-persistent, aperiodic) and the periodicity of semi-persistent and periodic positioning SRS. The "sequenceId" parameter defines the sequence ID used to initialize pseudo-random group and sequence hopping. The "spatialRelationInfoPos" parameter defines the spatial relationship between the reference signal and the target SRS. The reference signal can be SSB, CSI-RS, DL-PRS or SRS.

[0174] The additional parameters include BWP information that defines the BWP configuration of the SRS used for positioning, including the frequency domain position and the bandwidth, subcarrier spacing, and cyclic prefix of the bandwidth portion. The "inactivePosSRS-TimeAlignmentTimer" parameter indicates the timer value of the SRS sent for positioning. The "inactivePosSRS-RSRP-changeThreshold" parameter indicates the RSRP threshold for increase / decrease of RSRP for time alignment verification.

[0175] A possible set of part (a) parameters that may be valid for multiple cells may include: "SRS-PosResourceSet", "srs-PosResourceSetId", "srs-PosResourceIdList", "resourceType", "SRS-PosResource", "srs-PosResourceId", "transmissionComb", "resourceMapping" ("startPosition", "nrofSymbols"), "freqDomainShift", "freqHopping" ("c-SRS"), "groupOrSequenceHopping", "resourceType" and "sequenceId". A possible set of part (b) parameters that may be valid for a single (serving / receiving) cell may include: "alpha", "p0", "pathlossReferenceRS-Pos", "spatialRelationInfoPos", BWP information, time alignment timer (e.g., timing advance timer) and RSRP change threshold. However, the specific implementation / deployment is free to divide the SRS used for positioning parameters into two sets (part (a) and part (b)) as needed. In special cases, all parameters may qualify for "part (a)" SRS, for example when no path loss reference or spatial relation etc. is required.

[0176] The pre-configuration will include only part (a) of the parameter set. The remaining parameters (part (b)) will be provided during the SRS activation procedure. Fig. 7A and Figure 7B The procedure shown can then be Fig. 9A and Fig. 9B Modify as shown.

[0177] Figure 8 The "cell identifier list (area ID)" in the UE may include the cell IDs for which the positioning SRS parameter set is applicable or valid. If the UE reselects to a cell included in the "cell identifier list (area ID)", the associated SRS configuration will also be applicable or valid in the newly camped cell. This also means that if during SRS transmission (e.g., during Figure 7B If a cell reselection occurs during phase 11 in the UE, the UE can continue to send the associated SRS in the new cell, and thus positioning will not be interrupted when cell reselection occurs. Therefore, the pre-configured SRS with regional validity can also effectively support mobility during positioning operations.

[0178] Fig. 9A and Fig. 9BAn example deferred MT LR procedure for a downlink and uplink based positioning method (e.g., multi-RTT) with positioning SRS pre-configuration according to various aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated. At stage 1, stages 1-21 of the deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events specified in 3GPP TS 23.273, clause 6.3.1 are performed. Stages 1a, 1b, and 1c may be performed during the deferred MT-LR configuration phase of the deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events (e.g., during stage 15 of the deferred 5GC-MT-LR procedure for periodic or triggered location events specified in 3GPP TS 23.273, clause 6.3.1).

[0179] At phase 1a, the LMF 270 transmits an NRPPa Positioning Information Request message including a request for a pre-configured positioning SRS to the serving gNB 222. The request may include one or more "Requested SRS Transmission Characteristics" IEs, each defining the desired positioning SRS configuration (e.g., number of periodic transmissions, resource type, bandwidth, resource set list, SRS frequency, etc.). The LMF 270 may include path loss reference, spatial relationship, and SSB information for each gNB in ​​the area. This "assistance information" may be used by the serving / receiving gNB 222 to compile part (b) parameters that are valid for the current UE location at a later time. For example, for each considered cell ID, the assistance information may include a list of neighboring cells with SSB or DL-PRS information that can be used as a path loss reference or spatial relationship for the positioning SRS.

[0180] At stage 1b, the serving gNB 222 determines one or more positioning SRS configurations and provides these configurations to the target device (UE 204) for the target device to send positioning SRS at a later time (i.e., the target device does not send any positioning SRS when pre-configured). For example, the SRS configuration may be provided to the target device (e.g., UE 204) via RRC reconfiguration, via broadcast of system information, or via RRC release. Each positioning SRS configuration has the following Figure 8 204 may have a validity time and / or a validity region. A "validity region" may be defined by a list of cell IDs that define where the SRS configuration is applicable / valid. The validity time may be defined as a period (e.g., seconds, minutes, hours) for how long the positioning SRS configuration is valid. When the validity time expires, the UE 204 will release (delete) the pre-configured positioning SRS.

[0181] At stage 1c, the serving gNB 222 provides a set of pre-configured positioning SRSs to the LMF 270 (e.g., one or more “SRS Configuration” IEs, where each positioning SRS has a Figure 8 associated ID as shown).

[0182] At stage 3, after detecting the event (or earlier), the UE 204 transmits an SRS activation request message along with an RRC recovery request to the receiving gNB 222, for example using message 3 or message A of the random access procedure. The SRS activation request message may be an RRC message or a MAC-CE. The SRS activation request message may include an identifier of the desired pre-configured SRS configuration to be activated (e.g., in priority order). The SRS activation request message effectively requests permission for the receiving gNB 222 to send the desired pre-configured positioning SRS to perform positioning measurements (e.g., Rx-Tx time difference measurements). When the SRS activation request message is being transmitted, the UE 204 is not autonomously sending a positioning SRS.

[0183] At stage 4, the receiving gNB 222 identifies the last serving gNB 222 using an inactive radio network temporary identifier (I-RNTI) and retrieves the UE context (including the pre-configured positioning SRS information) with the aid of the Xn-AP retrieval UE context procedure. The receiving gNB 222 determines the positioning SRS configuration based on the pre-configuration during stage 1. The receiving gNB 222 may determine part (b) parameters such as path loss reference information (e.g., “alpha”, “p0”, “pathlossReferenceRS-Pos”) or spatial relationship information (e.g., “spatialRelationInfoPos”) for the positioning SRS that is valid for the receiving gNB 222. The receiving gNB 222 may also determine the time alignment timer and RSRP change threshold (e.g., “inactivePosSRS-TimeAlignmentTimer”, “inactivePosSRS-RSRP-changeThreshold”). The receiving gNB 222 may determine the above-mentioned SRS parameter set using the auxiliary information received from the LMF 270 at stage 1a.

[0184] At stage 5, the receiving gNB 222 may then transmit an SRS activation message to the UE 204, the SRS activation message including the ID of the preconfigured SRS to be activated and part (b) SRS information (e.g., path loss reference, spatial relationship, timing advance (TA) timer, and RSRP change threshold). The SRS activation message may also include one or more of part (a) parameters (for example, Figure 8The SRS activation message may be an RRC message or a MAC-CE or a DCI. Then, the UE 204 starts to send the positioning SRS according to the activated configuration.

[0185] At stage 6, the receiving gNB 222 transmits an NRPPa Positioning Information Update message including the ID of the activated positioning SRS to the LMF 270. The NRPPa Positioning Information Update message also includes the cell ID and / or cell part ID of the current serving cell (e.g., the receiving gNB 222) of the UE 204. This allows the LMF 270 to request uplink measurements from gNBs near the UE 204 at stage 7.

[0186] At stage 7, LMF 270 transmits an NRPPa measurement request message including the positioning SRS measurement configuration (i.e., based on the ID received at stage 6) to the gNB / TRP group. The gNB / TRP group for uplink measurement may be selected based on the current UE serving cell ID received at stage 6.

[0187] At stage 8, the receiving gNB 222 transmits an RRC release message to the UE 204 to release the UE 204 to the RRC inactive state. If stage 5 does not occur, the RRC release message includes an SRS activation message. The various network entities then perform Figure 7B Stages 11-17 illustrated in .

[0188] and Fig. 7A and Figure 7B Compared to the procedure illustrated in FIG. 1 , signaling for SRS configuration (stages 5, 6, 7, and 9) will not be required, thereby reducing the latency of SRS configuration and thus reducing power consumption (i.e., reducing Fig. 7A UE “wake-up time” between stage 3 and stage 10 in UE.

[0189] The receiving gNB may require additional “assistance information” from the LMF to determine path loss reference, spatial relationship, etc. for use in Fig. 9A and Fig. 9B Activate SRS at stage 5 or 8 in , such as when the UE recovers in an area where no assistance information was provided at stage 1a. In this case, Fig. 9B The NRPPa positioning information update at stage 6 in the above example may indicate to the LMF that new assistance information is required, in which case stages 1a-c may be as follows: Fig. 10A and Fig. 10B Alternatively, a new NRPPa procedure may be defined for this purpose.

[0190] Fig. 10Aand Fig. 10B An example deferred MT LR procedure for downlink and uplink based positioning methods (e.g., multi-RTT) in the absence of SRS information at a receiving gNB in ​​accordance with various aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated. Fig. 10A Stages 2 to 4 in Fig. 9A The described stages 2 to 4 are performed.

[0191] Fig. 10A The NRPP positioning information update at stage 5 in the NRPP positioning information update message indicates to the LMF 270 that "auxiliary information" (such as path loss reference or spatial relationship) of the SRS used for positioning is missing. More specifically, the receiving gNB 222 may determine that the partial (b) SRS information is not available for the cell served by the receiving gNB 222, and transmit an NRPP positioning information update message at stage 5 to the LMF 270 requesting the partial (b) SRS information (e.g., path loss reference, spatial relationship, etc.) that is valid for the receiving gNB 222.

[0192] The LMF 270 can then repeat the Fig. 9A , which may also include an updated or additional SRS pre-configuration request. More specifically, at stage 6, LMF 270 may provide part (b) SRS configuration information in the NRPPa Positioning Information Request message to the receiving gNB 222. The message may also include a new SRS pre-configuration request (e.g., for a new area).

[0193] At stage 7, the receiving gNB 222 acknowledges the received partial (b) SRS configuration information in the NRPPa Positioning Information Response message. If stage 6 includes a new pre-configuration request, the message also includes new pre-configured SRS information. The receiving gNB 222 then provides the pre-configured positioning SRS set to the LMF 270. Fig. 10B At stage 9 in the flow, the receiving gNB 222 may provide the new preconfigured positioning SRS along with the SRS activation to the UE 204.

[0194] Fig. 10B Stages 8-17 in Fig. 9B to be executed according to stages 6-17 in the

[0195] The "SRS deactivation request" may be triggered by the UE (e.g., included in the Figure 7B ) or LMF triggered (e.g. when a TRP measurement has been received at stage 12 in Figure 7B after stage 14 in the . Fig.11An example deferred MT LR procedure for a downlink and uplink based positioning method (e.g., multi-RTT) with LMF triggered positioning SRS deactivation request according to aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated. For LMF triggered deactivation, such as Fig.11 As shown, the NRPPa positioning deactivation procedure (stage 15) can be used.

[0196] In more detail, Fig.11 Stages 11 to 14 in Figure 7B At stage 15a, after all gNB measurements have been received at stage 14, LMF 270 may transmit an NRPPa positioning deactivation request message to the receiving gNB 222 to request the receiving gNB 222 to deactivate SRS transmission in UE 204.

[0197] At stage 15b, the receiving gNB 222 may transmit an SRS deactivation message to the UE 204. The SRS deactivation message may be transmitted via a subsequent downlink SDT. The SRS deactivation message may be an RRC message or a MAC-CE. The UE 204 stops SRS transmission when the SRS deactivation message has been received.

[0198] Stages 16 to 17 can be similar to Figure 7B to be performed in stages 15 to 16.

[0199] For uplink-only positioning, phases 12, 13, 16, and 17 will not be performed as described above. This means that the second SDT procedure is not initiated after phase 11, and the SRS deactivation message cannot be transmitted via the subsequent downlink SDT. In this case, the SRS deactivation message at phase 15b may be transmitted to the UE 204 via mobile terminated SDT (MT-SDT).

[0200] Fig.12 An example deferred MT LR procedure for downlink and uplink based positioning methods (e.g., multi-RTT) with UE triggered positioning SRS deactivation request according to aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated. When the UE 204 has completed all measurements and provided the measurement results to the LMF 270, a UE triggered deactivation request may be included in stage 12. The deactivation request may be an RRC message or a MAC-CE. Then, in Fig.12 At stage 15a, the receiving gNB 222 may notify the LMF 270 using the NRPPa positioning information update message.

[0201] In more detail, Fig.12At stage 12 in the UE 204, the UE 204 may include an SRS Deactivation Request along with an Event Report and LPP Provide Location Information message, which notifies the receiving gNB 222 that the measurements have been completed and that SRS may be deactivated. At stage 13, the receiving gNB 222 forwards the Event Report and LPP Provide Location Information message to the LMF 270. At stage 14, the gNB provides the uplink measurements to the LMF 270 in an NRPPa Measurement Response message.

[0202] At stage 15b, the receiving gNB 222 transmits an SRS deactivation message to the UE 204 (e.g., using a subsequent DL SDT). The UE 204 stops SRS transmission after having received the SRS deactivation message. At stage 15a, the receiving gNB 222 notifies the LMF 270 that SRS has been deactivated in the UE 204 by transmitting an NRPPa positioning information update message to the LMF 270. Stages 16 to 17 may be similar to Figure 7B to be performed in stages 15 to 16.

[0203] Fig.13 An example method 1300 of wireless communication in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated. In an aspect, the method 1300 may be performed by a UE (eg, any of the UEs described herein).

[0204] At 1310, the UE receives a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters (part (a) parameters) for a first SRS for positioning configuration, as in Fig. 9A At stage 1b of , where the first set of parameters is valid for the first plurality of cells. In one aspect, operation 1310 may be performed by one or more WWAN transceivers 310, one or more processors 332, memory 340, and / or positioning component 342, any or all of which may be considered as means for performing the operation.

[0205] At 1320, the UE sends a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and the location server, as in Fig. 9A At stage 3 of the present invention, the first SRS request for the positioning activation request permits the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration. In an aspect, operation 1320 may be performed by one or more WWAN transceivers 310, one or more processors 332, memory 340, and / or positioning component 342, any or all of which may be considered as means for performing the operation.

[0206] At 1330, the UE receives a first SRS for a positioning activation message for a first positioning session, as in Fig. 9BAt stage 5 or 8 of the present invention, the first SRS indication for the positioning activation message permits the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS configured for positioning. In an aspect, operation 1330 may be performed by one or more WWAN transceivers 310, one or more processors 332, memory 340, and / or positioning component 342, any or all of which may be considered as means for performing the operation.

[0207] At 1340, the UE sends one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first SRS for positioning configuration. In an aspect, operation 1340 may be performed by one or more WWAN transceivers 310, one or more processors 332, memory 340, and / or positioning component 342, any or all of which may be considered as means for performing the operation.

[0208] Fig.14 An example method 1400 of wireless communication in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure is illustrated. In one aspect, the method 1400 may be performed by a base station (e.g., a serving / receiving gNB 222).

[0209] At 1410, a base station preconfigures a UE (eg, UE 204) with at least a first set of parameters for a first SRS for positioning configuration, as in Fig. 9A At stage 1b of , wherein the first set of parameters is valid for the first plurality of cells. In one aspect, operation 1410 may be performed by one or more WWAN transceivers 350, one or more processors 384, memory 386, and / or positioning component 388, any or all of which may be considered as means for performing the operation.

[0210] At 1420, the base station receives an SRS from the UE for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server (eg, LMF 270), as in Fig. 9A At stage 3 of , wherein the SRS request for the positioning activation request permits the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS configured for positioning. In an aspect, operation 1420 may be performed by one or more WWAN transceivers 350, one or more processors 384, memory 386, and / or positioning component 388, any or all of which may be considered as means for performing the operation.

[0211] At 1430, the base station sends a first SRS for a positioning activation message for a first positioning session to the UE, as in Fig. 9BAt stage 5 or 8 of the present invention, the first SRS indication for the positioning activation message permits the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS configured for positioning. In an aspect, operation 1430 may be performed by one or more WWAN transceivers 350, one or more processors 384, memory 386, and / or positioning component 388, any or all of which may be considered as means for performing the operation.

[0212] At 1440, the base station sends a positioning information update message to the location server, such as Fig. 9B At stage 6 of , the positioning information update message indicates that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE. In one aspect, operation 1440 may be performed by one or more WWAN transceivers 350, one or more processors 384, memory 386, and / or positioning component 388, any or all of which may be considered as means for performing the operation.

[0213] It should be appreciated that the technical advantages of methods 1300 and 1400 are reduced signaling overhead and reduced latency, and thus reduced UE power consumption.

[0214] In the above specific embodiments, it can be seen that different features are grouped together in each example. This disclosure should not be understood as an intention that the example clauses have more features than the features explicitly mentioned in each clause. On the contrary, various aspects of the present disclosure may include less than all the features of the disclosed individual example clauses. Therefore, the following clauses should be considered to be incorporated into the description accordingly, wherein each clause itself can be used as a separate example. Although each subordinate clause may refer to a specific combination of one clause with other clauses in a clause, the aspects of the subordinate clause are not limited to a specific combination. It should be understood that other example clauses may also include a combination of the subject matter of the subordinate clause aspect with any other subordinate clause or independent clause or any feature with other subordinate clauses and independent clauses. Various aspects disclosed herein explicitly include these combinations, unless it is clearly expressed or can be easily inferred that a specific combination is not intended to be used (e.g., contradictory aspects, such as defining an element as both an electrical insulator and an electrical conductor). In addition, it is also expected that various aspects of the clause may be included in any other independent clause, even if the clause is not directly dependent on the independent clause.

[0215] Specific implementation examples are described in the following numbered clauses:

[0216] Clause 1. A method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising: receiving a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receiving a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session, the first SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a second set of parameters for the first SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and wherein the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters; and sending one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

[0217] Clause 2. The method of clause 1, wherein the preconfiguration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0218] Clause 3. The method of clause 2, wherein the first SRS for positioning an activation request comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0219] Clause 4. A method according to any one of clauses 1 to 3, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time at which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0220] Clause 5. A method as described in any of clauses 1 to 4, wherein the pre-configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0221] Clause 6. The method according to Clause 5 further includes: receiving a second SRS for a positioning activation request for a second positioning session, the second SRS for the positioning activation request including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0222] Clause 7. The method according to any one of clauses 1 to 6 further includes: sending a request to deactivate the transmission of the one or more SRSs used to locate resources; and receiving a small data transmission (SDT), wherein the small data transmission (SDT) permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used to locate resources.

[0223] Clause 8. The method of Clause 7, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0224] Clause 9. A method as described in any of clauses 7 to 8, wherein the deactivation request is sent in a radio resource control (RRC) message or a medium access control control element (MAC-CE).

[0225] Clause 10. A method as described in any of clauses 1 to 9, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0226] Clause 11. A method as described in any of clauses 1 to 10, wherein the first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0227] Clause 12. A method as described in any of clauses 1 to 11, wherein the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0228] Clause 13. A method according to any one of clauses 1 to 12, wherein the second set of parameters indicates a spatial relationship, a path loss reference and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0229] Clause 14. A method as described in any of clauses 1 to 13, wherein the only one cell of the first plurality of cells is a serving cell for the UE.

[0230] Clause 15. A method of wireless communication performed by a base station, the method comprising: pre-configuring a user equipment (UE) using at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; and sending a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server to the UE, the first SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and wherein the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

[0231] Clause 16. The method of clause 15, further comprising: receiving a request for pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration from the location server, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

[0232] Clause 17. The method of clause 16, further comprising: sending a response to the location server, the response comprising at least the first set of parameters.

[0233] Clause 18. The method of any of clauses 15 to 17, further comprising: receiving assistance information from the location server for determining the second set of parameters.

[0234] Clause 19. The method of clause 18, wherein the assistance information comprises a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

[0235] Clause 20. A method according to any one of clauses 15 to 19, the method further comprising: receiving an SRS activation request from the UE; sending a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server based on determining that auxiliary information for determining the second set of parameters has not yet been received from the location server; and receiving the additional SRS configuration information from the location server, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and wherein the first SRS for positioning the activation request is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

[0236] Clause 21. A method according to any one of clauses 15 to 20, the method further comprising: receiving from the location server a deactivation request for deactivating the transmission of one or more SRSs for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; and sending a small data transmission (SDT) to the UE, the small data transmission (SDT) permitting the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0237] Clause 22. The method of any one of clauses 15 to 21, wherein the preconfiguration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0238] Clause 23. The method of Clause 22, wherein the first SRS for positioning an activation request comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0239] Clause 24. A method according to any of clauses 15 to 23, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time at which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0240] Clause 25. A method as set forth in any of clauses 15 to 24, wherein the pre-configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0241] Clause 26. The method according to Clause 25 further includes: sending a second SRS to the UE for a positioning activation request for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server, the second SRS for the positioning activation request including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0242] Clause 27. According to the method described in any one of clauses 15 to 26, the method further includes: receiving a deactivation request from the UE to deactivate the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources; and sending a small data transmission (SDT) to the UE, wherein the small data transmission (SDT) allows the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources.

[0243] Clause 28. The method of Clause 27, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0244] Clause 29. A method as described in any of clauses 15 to 28, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0245] Clause 30. The method of any of clauses 15 to 29, wherein the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0246] Clause 31. A method as described in any of clauses 15 to 30, wherein the only one cell of the first plurality of cells is a serving cell for the UE.

[0247] Clause 32. A user equipment (UE), the user equipment (UE) comprising: a memory; at least one transceiver; and at least one processor, the at least one processor being communicatively coupled to the memory and the at least one transceiver, the at least one processor being configured to: receive a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration via the at least one transceiver, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receive a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session via the at least one transceiver, the first SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and wherein the second set of parameters comprises parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters; and send one or more SRSs for positioning resources via the at least one transceiver based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

[0248] Clause 33. The UE of clause 32, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0249] Clause 34. The UE of clause 33, wherein the first SRS for positioning activation request comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0250] Clause 35. A UE as described in any of clauses 32 to 34, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time for which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0251] Clause 36. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 32 to 35, wherein the pre-configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for positioning a second SRS of the configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0252] Clause 37. A UE according to clause 36, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: receive, via the at least one transceiver, a second SRS for a positioning activation request for a second positioning session, the second SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a fourth set of parameters for the second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0253] Clause 38. A UE according to any one of clauses 32 to 37, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: send a deactivation request for the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources via the at least one transceiver; and receive a small data transmission (SDT) via the at least one transceiver, wherein the small data transmission (SDT) permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources.

[0254] Clause 39. The UE of clause 38, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0255] Clause 40. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 38 to 39, wherein the deactivation request is sent in a Radio Resource Control (RRC) message or a Medium Access Control Control Element (MAC-CE).

[0256] Clause 41. A UE as set out in any of clauses 32 to 40, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0257] Clause 42. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 32 to 41, wherein the first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0258] Clause 43. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 32 to 42, wherein the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0259] Clause 44. A UE as described in any of clauses 32 to 43, wherein the second set of parameters indicates a spatial relationship, a path loss reference and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0260] Clause 45. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 32 to 44, wherein the only one cell of the first plurality of cells is a serving cell for the UE.

[0261] Clause 46. A base station, comprising: a memory; at least one transceiver; and at least one processor, the at least one processor being communicatively coupled to the memory and the at least one transceiver, the at least one processor being configured to: pre-configure a user equipment (UE) using at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; and send a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server to the UE via the at least one transceiver, the first SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and wherein the second set of parameters comprises parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

[0262] Clause 47. A base station according to clause 46, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: receive a request for a pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration from the location server via the at least one transceiver, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

[0263] Clause 48. The base station of Clause 47, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: send a response to the location server via the at least one transceiver, the response comprising at least the first set of parameters.

[0264] Clause 49. The base station of any of clauses 46 to 48, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: receive, via the at least one transceiver, assistance information from the location server for determining the second set of parameters.

[0265] Clause 50. A base station as described in clause 49, wherein the assistance information includes a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

[0266] Clause 51. A base station according to any one of clauses 46 to 50, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: receive an SRS activation request from the UE via the at least one transceiver; send a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server via the at least one transceiver based on determining that auxiliary information for determining the second set of parameters has not been received from the location server; and receive the additional SRS configuration information from the location server via the at least one transceiver, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and wherein the first SRS for positioning the activation request is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

[0267] Clause 52. A base station according to any one of clauses 46 to 51, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: receive a deactivation request from the location server via the at least one transceiver, the deactivation request being used to deactivate the transmission of one or more SRS for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; and send a small data transmission (SDT) to the UE via the at least one transceiver, the small data transmission (SDT) permitting the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRS for positioning resources.

[0268] Clause 53. A base station as described in any of clauses 46 to 52, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0269] Clause 54. The base station of clause 53, wherein the first SRS for positioning an activation request comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0270] Clause 55. A base station as described in any of clauses 46 to 54, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time at which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0271] Clause 56. A base station as set forth in any of clauses 46 to 55, wherein the pre-configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for positioning a second SRS of the configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0272] Clause 57. A base station according to clause 56, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: send a second SRS for a positioning activation request for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server to the UE via the at least one transceiver, the second SRS for the positioning activation request including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0273] Clause 58. A base station according to any one of clauses 46 to 57, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: receive a deactivation request for deactivating the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources from the UE via the at least one transceiver; and send a small data transmission (SDT) to the UE via the at least one transceiver, wherein the small data transmission (SDT) permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0274] Clause 59. The base station of Clause 58, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0275] Clause 60. A base station as set forth in any of clauses 46 to 59, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0276] Clause 61. A base station as set forth in any of clauses 46 to 60, wherein the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0277] Clause 62. A base station as described in any of clauses 46 to 61, wherein the only one cell of the first plurality of cells is a serving cell for the UE.

[0278] Clause 63. A user equipment (UE), comprising: a preconfigured component for receiving a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; a component for receiving a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session, the first SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a second set of parameters for the first SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and wherein the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters; and a component for sending one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

[0279] Clause 64. The UE of clause 63, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0280] Clause 65. The UE of clause 64, wherein the first SRS for positioning activation request comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0281] Clause 66. A UE as described in any of clauses 63 to 65, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time for which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0282] Clause 67. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 63 to 66, wherein the pre-configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for positioning a second SRS of the configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0283] Clause 68. The UE according to clause 67 further includes: a component for receiving a second SRS for a positioning activation request for a second positioning session, the second SRS for the positioning activation request including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configured second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configured that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0284] Clause 69. A UE according to any one of clauses 63 to 68, wherein the UE further comprises: a component for sending a deactivation request for the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources; and a component for receiving a small data transmission (SDT), wherein the small data transmission (SDT) permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources.

[0285] Clause 70. The UE of clause 69, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0286] Clause 71. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 69 to 70, wherein the deactivation request is sent in a Radio Resource Control (RRC) message or a Medium Access Control Control Element (MAC-CE).

[0287] Clause 72. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 63 to 71, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0288] Clause 73. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 63 to 72, wherein the first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0289] Clause 74. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 63 to 73, wherein the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0290] Clause 75. A UE as described in any of clauses 63 to 74, wherein the second set of parameters indicates the spatial relationship, path loss reference and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0291] Clause 76. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 63 to 75, wherein the only one cell of the first plurality of cells is a serving cell for the UE.

[0292] Clause 77. A base station comprising: a component for pre-configuring a user equipment (UE) with at least a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; and a component for sending a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server to the UE, the first SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a second set of parameters for the first SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and wherein the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

[0293] Clause 78. The base station of clause 77, further comprising means for receiving a request for pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration from the location server, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

[0294] Clause 79. The base station of clause 78, further comprising: means for sending a response to the location server, the response comprising at least the first set of parameters.

[0295] Clause 80. A base station as defined in any of clauses 77 to 79, further comprising means for receiving assistance information from the location server for determining the second set of parameters.

[0296] Clause 81. A base station as described in clause 80, wherein the auxiliary information includes a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, a synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

[0297] Clause 82. A base station according to any one of clauses 77 to 81, wherein the base station also includes: a component for receiving an SRS activation request from the UE; a component for sending a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server based on determining that auxiliary information for determining the second set of parameters has not yet been received from the location server; and a component for receiving the additional SRS configuration information from the location server, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and wherein the first SRS for positioning the activation request is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

[0298] Clause 83. A base station according to any one of clauses 77 to 82, wherein the base station further includes: a component for receiving a deactivation request from the location server, the deactivation request being used to deactivate the transmission of one or more SRS for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; and a component for sending a small data transmission (SDT) to the UE, the small data transmission (SDT) permitting the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRS for positioning resources.

[0299] Clause 84. A base station as described in any of clauses 77 to 83, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0300] Clause 85. The base station of clause 84, wherein the first SRS for positioning an activation request comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0301] Clause 86. A base station as described in any of clauses 77 to 85, wherein the pre-configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time when the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0302] Clause 87. A base station as described in any of clauses 77 to 86, wherein the pre-configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0303] Clause 88. According to the base station of Clause 87, the base station also includes: a component for sending a second SRS for a positioning activation request for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server to the UE, the second SRS for the positioning activation request including a fourth set of parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0304] Clause 89. A base station according to any one of clauses 77 to 88, wherein the base station further includes: a component for receiving a deactivation request from the UE for deactivating the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources; and a component for sending a small data transmission (SDT) to the UE, wherein the small data transmission (SDT) permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0305] Clause 90. The base station of clause 89, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0306] Clause 91. A base station as set forth in any of clauses 77 to 90, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0307] Clause 92. A base station as set forth in any of clauses 77 to 91, wherein the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0308] Clause 93. A base station as described in any of clauses 77 to 92, wherein the only one cell of the first plurality of cells is a serving cell for the UE.

[0309] Clause 94. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions, which, when executed by a user equipment (UE), causes the UE to: receive a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receive a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session, the first SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a second set of parameters for the first SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and wherein the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters; and send one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

[0310] Clause 95. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of Clause 94, wherein the preconfiguration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0311] Clause 96. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of Clause 95, wherein the first SRS for positioning an activation request comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0312] Clause 97. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 94 to 96, wherein the preconfiguration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, the time at which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0313] Clause 98. A non-transitory computer-readable medium as described in any of clauses 94 to 97, wherein the pre-configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0314] Clause 99. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to clause 98, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer executable instructions that, when executed by the UE, cause the UE to perform the following operations: receive a second SRS for a positioning activation request for a second positioning session, the second SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a fourth set of parameters for positioning configured second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters comprises parameters for positioning configured second SRS that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0315] Clause 100. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 94 to 99, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer executable instructions that, when executed by the UE, cause the UE to: send a request to deactivate the transmission of the one or more SRSs used to locate resources; and receive a small data transmission (SDT), wherein the small data transmission (SDT) permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used to locate resources.

[0316] Clause 101. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of clause 100, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement results message for the first positioning session.

[0317] Clause 102. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any of clauses 100 to 101, wherein the deactivation request is sent in a radio resource control (RRC) message or a medium access control control element (MAC-CE).

[0318] Clause 103. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any one of clauses 94 to 102, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0319] Clause 104. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any of clauses 94 to 103, wherein the first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0320] Clause 105. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any one of clauses 94 to 104, wherein the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0321] Clause 106. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any one of clauses 94 to 105, wherein the second set of parameters indicates a spatial relationship, a path loss reference, and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0322] Clause 107. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any of clauses 94 to 106, wherein the only one cell of the first plurality of cells is a serving cell for the UE.

[0323] Clause 108. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions, which, when executed by a base station, cause the base station to: pre-configure a user equipment (UE) using at least a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; and send to the UE a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, the first SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a second set of parameters for the first SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and wherein the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

[0324] Clause 109. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to clause 108, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to perform the following operations: receiving a request for a pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration from the location server, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

[0325] Clause 110. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of clause 109, further comprising computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to: send a response to the location server, the response comprising at least the first set of parameters.

[0326] Clause 111. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 108 to 110, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to perform the following operations: receive auxiliary information from the location server for determining the second set of parameters.

[0327] Clause 112. A non-transitory computer-readable medium as described in clause 111, wherein the assistance information includes a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

[0328] Clause 113. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 108 to 112, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to: receive an SRS activation request from the UE; based on determining that auxiliary information for determining the second set of parameters has not yet been received from the location server, send a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server; and receive the additional SRS configuration information from the location server, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and wherein the first SRS for positioning the activation request is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

[0329] Clause 114. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 108 to 113, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to perform the following operations: receiving from the location server a deactivation request for deactivating the transmission of one or more SRSs for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; and sending a small data transmission (SDT) to the UE, wherein the small data transmission (SDT) permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0330] Clause 115. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any one of clauses 108 to 114, wherein the preconfiguration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0331] Clause 116. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of Clause 115, wherein the first SRS for positioning an activation request comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0332] Clause 117. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 108 to 116, wherein the preconfiguration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time when the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0333] Clause 118. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any of clauses 108 to 117, wherein the pre-configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0334] Clause 119. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to clause 118, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to perform the following operations: send a second SRS to the UE for a positioning activation request for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server, the second SRS for the positioning activation request comprising a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters comprises parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0335] Clause 120. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 108 to 119, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to: receive a deactivation request from the UE to deactivate the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources; and send a small data transmission (SDT) to the UE, wherein the small data transmission (SDT) permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0336] Clause 121. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of Clause 120, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement results message for the first positioning session.

[0337] Clause 122. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any one of clauses 108 to 121, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0338] Clause 123. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any one of clauses 108 to 122, wherein the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0339] Clause 124. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any of clauses 108 to 123, wherein the only one cell of the first plurality of cells is a serving cell for the UE.

[0340] Additional specific implementation examples are described in the following numbered clauses:

[0341] Clause 1. A method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising: receiving a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; sending a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, the first SRS for the positioning activation request requesting permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; receiving a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and sending one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0342] Clause 2. A method according to clause 1, wherein: the first SRS used for positioning the activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the first plurality of cells, the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters, and the one or more SRSs for positioning resources are sent based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

[0343] Clause 3. The method of clause 2, wherein: the first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration, and the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0344] Clause 4. A method according to any one of clauses 2 to 3, wherein the second set of parameters indicates the spatial relationship, path loss reference and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0345] Clause 5. The method of any one of clauses 1 to 4, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0346] Clause 6. The method of Clause 5, wherein the first SRS used for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0347] Clause 7. A method according to any one of clauses 1 to 6, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time when the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0348] Clause 8. A method according to any of clauses 1 to 7, wherein: the first SRS for positioning configuration also includes a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, and the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0349] Clause 9. The method according to Clause 8 further includes: receiving a second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session, the second SRS for the positioning activation message including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0350] Clause 10. The method according to any one of clauses 1 to 9 further comprises: sending a request to deactivate the transmission of the one or more SRSs used to locate resources; and receiving a deactivation message, the deactivation message permitting the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used to locate resources.

[0351] Clause 11. The method of clause 10, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0352] Clause 12. A method as described in any of clauses 1 to 11, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0353] Clause 13. A method of wireless communication performed by a base station, the method comprising: pre-configuring a user equipment (UE) using at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receiving from the UE an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and sending to the UE a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and sending to the location server a positioning information update message, the positioning information update message indicating that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

[0354] Clause 14. A method according to clause 13, wherein: the first SRS used for positioning the activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the first plurality of cells, and the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

[0355] Clause 15. The method of clause 14, further comprising: receiving assistance information from the location server for determining the second set of parameters.

[0356] Clause 16. The method of clause 15, wherein the assistance information comprises a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

[0357] Clause 17. A method according to any one of clauses 14 to 16, the method further comprising: sending a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server based on determining that auxiliary information for determining the second set of parameters has not yet been received from the location server; and receiving the additional SRS configuration information from the location server, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and wherein the first SRS for positioning activation message is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

[0358] Clause 18. According to the method described in any one of clauses 14 to 17, the method further includes: receiving a deactivation request from the location server, the deactivation request being used to deactivate the sending of one or more SRS for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; and sending a deactivation message to the UE, the deactivation message permitting the deactivation of the sending of the one or more SRS for positioning resources.

[0359] Clause 19. A method according to any one of clauses 14 to 18, wherein: the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells, and the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell in the first plurality of cells.

[0360] Clause 20. The method of any of clauses 13 to 19, further comprising: receiving a request for pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration from the location server, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

[0361] Clause 21. The method of clause 20, further comprising: sending a response to the location server, the response comprising at least the first set of parameters.

[0362] Clause 22. The method of any of clauses 13 to 21, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0363] Clause 23. The method of Clause 22, wherein the first SRS used for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0364] Clause 24. A method according to any one of clauses 13 to 23, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time at which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0365] Clause 25. A method as described in any of clauses 13 to 24, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0366] Clause 26. The method according to Clause 25 further includes: sending a second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server to the UE, the second SRS for the positioning activation message including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0367] Clause 27. According to the method described in any one of clauses 13 to 26, the method further includes: receiving a deactivation request from the UE to deactivate the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources; and sending a deactivation message to the UE, the deactivation message permitting the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources.

[0368] Clause 28. The method of Clause 27, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0369] Clause 29. A user equipment (UE), the user equipment (UE) comprising: one or more memories; one or more transceivers; and one or more processors, the one or more processors being communicatively coupled to the one or more memories and the one or more transceivers, the one or more processors being configured individually or in combination to: receive a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration via the one or more transceivers, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; send a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server via the one or more transceivers, the first SRS for the positioning activation request requesting permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; receive a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session via the one or more transceivers, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send one or more SRSs for positioning resources via the one or more transceivers based on the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0370] Clause 30. A UE according to clause 29, wherein: the first SRS used for positioning activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the first plurality of cells, the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters, and the one or more SRSs for positioning resources are sent based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

[0371] Clause 31. A UE according to clause 30, wherein: the first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration, and the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0372] Clause 32. A UE as described in any of clauses 30 to 31, wherein the second set of parameters indicates the spatial relationship, path loss reference and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0373] Clause 33. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 29 to 32, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0374] Clause 34. The UE of clause 33, wherein the first SRS used for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0375] Clause 35. A UE according to any one of clauses 29 to 34, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time at which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0376] Clause 36. A UE according to any of clauses 29 to 35, wherein: the first SRS for positioning configuration also includes a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, and the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0377] Clause 37. A UE according to clause 36, wherein the one or more processors are further configured, individually or in combination, to: receive, via the one or more transceivers, a second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session, the second SRS for the positioning activation message comprising a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0378] Clause 38. A UE according to any one of clauses 29 to 37, wherein the one or more processors are further configured, individually or in combination, to: send a deactivation request for the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources via the one or more transceivers; and receive a deactivation message via the one or more transceivers, the deactivation message permitting the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources.

[0379] Clause 39. The UE of clause 38, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0380] Clause 40. A UE as set out in any of clauses 29 to 39, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0381] Clause 41. A base station, the base station comprising: one or more memories; one or more transceivers; and one or more processors, the one or more processors being communicatively coupled to the one or more memories and the one or more transceivers, the one or more processors being configured, individually or in combination, to: pre-configure a user equipment (UE) with at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receive from the UE, via the one or more transceivers, an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send, via the one or more transceivers, to the UE a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send, via the one or more transceivers, a positioning information update message to the location server, wherein the positioning information update message indicates that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

[0382] Clause 42. A base station according to clause 41, wherein: the first SRS used for positioning activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the first plurality of cells, and the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

[0383] Clause 43. The base station of Clause 42, wherein the one or more processors, individually or in combination, are further configured to: receive assistance information from the location server via the one or more transceivers for determining the second set of parameters.

[0384] Clause 44. A base station as described in clause 43, wherein the assistance information includes a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

[0385] Clause 45. A base station according to any one of clauses 42 to 44, wherein the one or more processors are further configured, individually or in combination, to: send a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server via the one or more transceivers based on determining that auxiliary information for determining the second set of parameters has not yet been received from the location server; and receive the additional SRS configuration information from the location server via the one or more transceivers, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and wherein the first SRS for positioning activation message is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

[0386] Clause 46. A base station according to any one of clauses 42 to 45, wherein the one or more processors are further configured, individually or in combination, to: receive from the location server via the one or more transceivers a deactivation request for deactivating the sending of one or more SRSs for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; and send a deactivation message to the UE via the one or more transceivers, the deactivation message permitting the deactivation of the sending of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0387] Clause 47. A base station according to any of clauses 42 to 46, wherein: the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells, and the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell in the first plurality of cells.

[0388] Clause 48. A base station according to any one of clauses 41 to 47, wherein the one or more processors are further configured, individually or in combination, to: receive a request for a pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration from the location server via the one or more transceivers, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

[0389] Clause 49. The base station of Clause 48, wherein the one or more processors, individually or in combination, are further configured to: send a response to the location server via the one or more transceivers, the response comprising at least the first set of parameters.

[0390] Clause 50. A base station as described in any of clauses 41 to 49, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0391] Clause 51. The base station of clause 50, wherein the first SRS used for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0392] Clause 52. A base station according to any one of clauses 41 to 51, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time when the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0393] Clause 53. A base station as described in any of clauses 41 to 52, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0394] Clause 54. A base station according to clause 53, wherein the one or more processors are further configured, individually or in combination, to: send a second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server to the UE via the one or more transceivers, the second SRS for the positioning activation message including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0395] Clause 55. A base station according to any one of clauses 41 to 54, wherein the one or more processors are further configured, individually or in combination, to: receive a deactivation request for deactivating the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources from the UE via the one or more transceivers; and send a deactivation message to the UE via the one or more transceivers, the deactivation message permitting the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0396] Clause 56. The base station of Clause 55, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0397] Clause 57. A user equipment (UE), comprising: a preconfigured component for receiving a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; a component for sending a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, the first SRS request for the positioning activation request permitting the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; a component for receiving a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS indication for the positioning activation message permits the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and a component for sending one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0398] Clause 58. A UE according to clause 57, wherein: the first SRS used for positioning activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the first plurality of cells, the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters, and the one or more SRSs for positioning resources are sent based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

[0399] Clause 59. A UE according to clause 58, wherein: the first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration, and the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0400] Clause 60. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 58 to 59, wherein the second set of parameters indicates a spatial relationship, a path loss reference and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0401] Clause 61. A UE as set forth in any of clauses 57 to 60, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0402] Clause 62. The UE of clause 61, wherein the first SRS used for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0403] Clause 63. A UE according to any one of clauses 57 to 62, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time at which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0404] Clause 64. A UE according to any of clauses 57 to 63, wherein: the first SRS for positioning configuration also includes a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, and the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0405] Clause 65. The UE according to clause 64 further includes: a component for receiving a second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session, the second SRS for the positioning activation message including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0406] Clause 66. A UE according to any one of clauses 57 to 65, wherein the UE further comprises: a component for sending a deactivation request for the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources; and a component for receiving a deactivation message, wherein the deactivation message permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs used for positioning resources.

[0407] Clause 67. The UE of clause 66, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0408] Clause 68. A UE as set out in any of clauses 57 to 67, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0409] Clause 69. A base station, comprising: a component for pre-configuring a user equipment (UE) using at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; a component for receiving from the UE an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and a component for sending to the UE a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and a component for sending to the location server a positioning information update message, the positioning information update message indicating that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

[0410] Clause 70. A base station according to clause 69, wherein: the first SRS used for positioning activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the first plurality of cells, and the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

[0411] Clause 71. The base station of clause 70, further comprising means for receiving assistance information from the location server for determining the second set of parameters.

[0412] Clause 72. A base station according to clause 71, wherein the auxiliary information includes a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, a synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

[0413] Clause 73. A base station according to any one of clauses 70 to 72, wherein the base station also includes: a component for sending a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server based on determining that auxiliary information for determining the second set of parameters has not yet been received from the location server; and a component for receiving the additional SRS configuration information from the location server, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and wherein the first SRS for positioning activation message is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

[0414] Clause 74. A base station according to any one of clauses 70 to 73, wherein the base station further includes: a component for receiving a deactivation request from the location server, the deactivation request being used to deactivate the sending of one or more SRS for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; and a component for sending a deactivation message to the UE, the deactivation message permitting the deactivation of the sending of the one or more SRS for positioning resources.

[0415] Clause 75. A base station according to any of clauses 70 to 74, wherein: the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells, and the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell in the first plurality of cells.

[0416] Clause 76. A base station according to any of clauses 69 to 75, the base station further comprising: means for receiving a request for a pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration from the location server, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

[0417] Clause 77. The base station of clause 76, further comprising: means for sending a response to the location server, the response comprising at least the first set of parameters.

[0418] Clause 78. A base station as described in any of clauses 69 to 77, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0419] Clause 79. The base station of clause 78, wherein the first SRS used for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0420] Clause 80. A base station according to any of clauses 69 to 79, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, a time when the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0421] Clause 81. A base station as described in any of clauses 69 to 80, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further includes a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0422] Clause 82. According to the base station of Clause 81, the base station also includes: a component for sending a second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server to the UE, the second SRS for the positioning activation message including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0423] Clause 83. A base station according to any one of clauses 69 to 82, wherein the base station further includes: a component for receiving a deactivation request from the UE for deactivating the sending of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources; and a component for sending a deactivation message to the UE, wherein the deactivation message permits the deactivation of the sending of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0424] Clause 84. The base station of clause 83, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

[0425] Clause 85. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions, which, when executed by a user equipment (UE), causes the UE to: receive a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; send a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; receive a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send one or more SRSs for positioning resources based on the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0426] Clause 86. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to clause 85, wherein: the first SRS for positioning the activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters, and the one or more SRSs for positioning resources are sent based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

[0427] Clause 87. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to clause 86, wherein: the first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration, and the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

[0428] Clause 88. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any one of clauses 86 to 87, wherein the second set of parameters indicates a spatial relationship, a path loss reference, and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration.

[0429] Clause 89. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any one of clauses 85 to 88, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0430] Clause 90. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of Clause 89, wherein the first SRS for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0431] Clause 91. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 85 to 90, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, the time when the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0432] Clause 92. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 85 to 91, wherein: the first SRS for positioning configuration also includes a third set of parameters for the second SRS for positioning configuration, and the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0433] Clause 93. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to clause 92, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium also includes computer executable instructions that, when executed by the UE, cause the UE to perform the following operations: receive a second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session, the second SRS for the positioning activation message including a fourth set of parameters for positioning configured second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters for positioning configured second SRS that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0434] Clause 94. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 85 to 93, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions which, when executed by the UE, cause the UE to: send a deactivation request for the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources; and receive a deactivation message, wherein the deactivation message permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0435] Clause 95. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of Clause 94, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement results message for the first positioning session.

[0436] Clause 96. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any of clauses 85 to 95, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

[0437] Clause 97. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions, which, when executed by a base station, cause the base station to: pre-configure a user equipment (UE) using at least a first set of parameters of a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receive from the UE an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send to the UE a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; and send to the location server a positioning information update message, wherein the positioning information update message indicates that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

[0438] Clause 98. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to clause 97, wherein: the first SRS used for positioning the activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, the second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and the second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

[0439] Clause 99. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of clause 98, further comprising computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to: receive assistance information from the location server for determining the second set of parameters.

[0440] Clause 100. A non-transitory computer-readable medium as described in clause 99, wherein the assistance information includes a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

[0441] Clause 101. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 98 to 100, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to perform the following operations: based on determining that auxiliary information for determining the second set of parameters has not yet been received from the location server, send a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server; and receive the additional SRS configuration information from the location server, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and wherein the first SRS for positioning the activation message is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

[0442] Clause 102. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 98 to 101, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to perform the following operations: receiving from the location server a deactivation request for deactivating the sending of one or more SRSs for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; and sending a deactivation message to the UE, wherein the deactivation message permits the deactivation of the sending of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0443] Clause 103. A non-transitory computer-readable medium as described in any one of clauses 98 to 102, wherein: the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells, and the values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell in the first plurality of cells.

[0444] Clause 104. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 97 to 103, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to perform the following operations: receiving a request for a pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration from the location server, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

[0445] Clause 105. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of clause 104, further comprising computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to: send a response to the location server, the response comprising at least the first set of parameters.

[0446] Clause 106. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of any of clauses 97 to 105, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0447] Clause 107. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of Clause 106, wherein the first SRS for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

[0448] Clause 108. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 97 to 107, wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of the first plurality of cells for which the first set of parameters is valid, the time at which the first set of parameters is valid, or any combination thereof.

[0449] Clause 109. A non-transitory computer-readable medium as described in any of clauses 97 to 108, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration also includes a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

[0450] Clause 110. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to clause 109, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer executable instructions that, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to perform the following operations: sending a second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server to the UE, the second SRS for the positioning activation message comprising a fourth set of parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters comprises parameters for positioning configuration of the second SRS that are not included in the third set of parameters.

[0451] Clause 111. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to any one of clauses 97 to 110, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium further comprises computer-executable instructions which, when executed by the base station, cause the base station to: receive a deactivation request from the UE for deactivating the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources; and send a deactivation message to the UE, wherein the deactivation message permits the deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

[0452] Clause 112. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of Clause 111, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement results message for the first positioning session.

[0453] Those skilled in the art will appreciate that information and signals may be represented using any of a variety of different techniques and methods. For example, data, instructions, commands, information, signals, bits, symbols, and chips that may be mentioned throughout the above description may be represented by voltage, current, electromagnetic waves, magnetic fields or magnetic particles, light fields or optical particles, or any combination thereof.

[0454] In addition, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the various exemplary logic blocks, modules, circuits and algorithmic steps described in conjunction with the aspects disclosed herein can be implemented as electronic hardware, computer software or a combination of the two. In order to clearly illustrate this interchangeability of hardware and software, various exemplary components, blocks, modules, circuits and steps have been generally described above in terms of their functionality. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware or software depends on the specific application and the design constraints proposed to the entire system. The technician can implement the described functionality in different ways for each specific application, but such specific implementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from the scope of the present disclosure.

[0455] The various illustrative logical blocks, modules, and circuits described in conjunction with the various aspects disclosed herein may be implemented or performed with a general purpose processor, a digital signal processor (DSP), an ASIC, a field programmable gate array (FPGA) or other programmable logic device, discrete gate or transistor logic, discrete hardware components, or any combination thereof designed to perform the functions described herein. A general purpose processor may be a microprocessor, but in an alternative, the processor may be any conventional processor, controller, microcontroller, or state machine. The processor may also be implemented as a combination of computing devices, such as a combination of a DSP and a microprocessor, a plurality of microprocessors, a combination of one or more microprocessors and a DSP core, or any other such configuration.

[0456] The methods, sequences and / or algorithms described in conjunction with the various aspects disclosed herein may be directly embodied in hardware, in a software module executed by a processor, or in a combination of the two. The software module may reside in a random access memory (RAM), a flash memory, a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable ROM (EPROM), an electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), a register, a hard disk, a removable disk, a CD-ROM, or any other form of storage medium known in the art. An example storage medium is coupled to a processor so that the processor can read information from the storage medium and write information to the storage medium. In an alternative, the storage medium may be integral with the processor. The processor and the storage medium may reside in an ASIC. The ASIC may reside in a user terminal (e.g., UE). In an alternative, the processor and the storage medium may reside in a user terminal as discrete components.

[0457] In one or more example aspects, the function can be implemented in hardware, software, firmware or any combination thereof. If implemented in software, the function can be stored on a computer-readable medium or sent by a computer-readable medium as one or more instructions or codes. Computer-readable media include both computer storage media and communication media, including any medium that facilitates the transfer of computer programs from one place to another. Storage media can be any available medium that can be accessed by a computer. By way of example and not limitation, such computer-readable media may include RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage devices, disk storage devices or other magnetic storage devices or any other medium that can be used to carry or store desired program codes in the form of instructions or data structures and can be accessed by a computer. Moreover, any connection is appropriately referred to as a computer-readable medium. For example, if the software is sent from a website, a server or other remote source using a coaxial cable, an optical fiber cable, a twisted pair, a digital subscriber line (DSL) or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio and microwaves, then coaxial cable, optical fiber cable, twisted pair, DSL or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio and microwaves are included in the definition of the medium. Disk and disc, as used herein, include compact disc (CD), laser disc, optical disc, digital versatile disc (DVD), floppy disk and Blu-ray disc, where disks usually reproduce data magnetically, while discs reproduce data optically with lasers. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media.

[0458] Although the foregoing disclosure illustrates the exemplary aspects of the present disclosure, it should be noted that various changes and modifications may be made herein without departing from the scope of the present disclosure as defined by the appended claims. For example, the functions, steps and / or actions of the method claims according to the various aspects of the present disclosure as described herein do not need to be performed in any particular order. In addition, any component, function, action or instruction described or claimed herein should not be interpreted as critical or necessary unless explicitly described as such. In addition, as used herein, the terms "set", "group", etc. are intended to include one or more items and can be used interchangeably with "at least one", "one or more", etc. In addition, as used herein, the terms "having", etc. are intended to be open terms that do not limit the elements they modify (for example, an element "having" A may also have B). In addition, the phrase "based on" is intended to mean "based at least in part on", unless explicitly stated otherwise. In addition, as used herein, the term "or" is intended to be inclusive when used in succession and can be used interchangeably with "and / or", unless otherwise explicitly stated (e.g., if used in conjunction with "either of the two" or "only one of them"), or the alternatives are mutually exclusive (e.g., "one or more" should not be interpreted as "one and more"). In addition, although components, functions, actions, and instructions can be described or claimed in the singular, the plural can be considered unless explicitly stated to be limited to the singular. Therefore, as used herein, the articles "one", "a", "the", and "said" are intended to include one or more items and can be used interchangeably with "at least one", "one or more", etc. Additionally, as used herein, the terms "at least one" and "one or more" encompass "one" component, function, action, or instruction that performs or is capable of performing the functionality described or claimed, and also encompass "two or more" components, functions, actions, or instructions that perform or are capable of performing the functionality described or claimed in combination.

Claims

1. A method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising: receiving a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; Sending a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; receiving a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates that the UE is permitted to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; as well as One or more SRSs for positioning resources are sent based on the first SRS for positioning configuration.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein: The first SRS for positioning the activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, The second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, the second set of parameters including parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters, and The one or more SRSs for positioning resources are sent based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein: The first set of parameters indicates time and frequency resources of the first SRS for positioning configuration, and The values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the second set of parameters indicates a spatial relationship, a path loss reference, and time alignment information of the first SRS for positioning configuration. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the first SRS used for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters. The method of claim 5 , wherein the first SRS used for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of said first plurality of cells for which said first set of parameters is valid, the time at which the first set of parameters is effective, or Any combination of them.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein: The first SRS for positioning configuration also includes a third set of parameters of a second SRS for positioning configuration, and The third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

9. The method according to claim 8, further comprising: A second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session is received, wherein the second SRS for the positioning activation message includes a fourth set of parameters for the second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

10. The method according to claim 1, further comprising: sending a deactivation request for transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources; as well as A deactivation message is received, the deactivation message permitting deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources. The method according to claim 10 , wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells.

13. A method of wireless communication performed by a base station, the method comprising: pre-configuring a user equipment (UE) with at least a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receiving, from the UE, an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; as well as Sending a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session to the UE, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates that the UE is permitted to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; as well as A positioning information update message is sent to the location server, where the positioning information update message indicates that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.

14. The method according to claim 13, wherein: The first SRS for positioning the activation message includes a second set of parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration, The second set of parameters is valid for only one cell of the first plurality of cells, and The second set of parameters includes parameters of the first SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the first set of parameters.

15. The method according to claim 14, further comprising: Assistance information for determining the second set of parameters is received from the location server.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the assistance information comprises a path loss reference, a spatial relationship, a synchronization signal block (SSB) information for the base station, or any combination thereof.

17. The method according to claim 14, further comprising: sending a request for additional SRS configuration information to the location server based on determining that assistance information for determining the second set of parameters has not been received from the location server; as well as receiving the additional SRS configuration information from the location server, wherein the second set of parameters is determined based on the additional SRS configuration information, and The first SRS used for positioning the activation message is sent after receiving the additional SRS configuration information.

18. The method according to claim 14, further comprising: receiving, from the location server, a deactivation request to deactivate transmission of one or more SRSs for positioning resources sent by the UE based on the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters; as well as A deactivation message is sent to the UE, the deactivation message permitting deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

19. The method of claim 14, wherein: wherein the values ​​of the first set of parameters are the same for all cells in the first plurality of cells, and The values ​​of the second set of parameters are specific to the only one cell of the first plurality of cells.

20. The method according to claim 13, further comprising: A request for pre-configured SRS for positioning configuration is received from the location server, the request indicating desired parameters of one or more SRS for positioning configuration.

21. The method according to claim 20, further comprising: A response is sent to the location server, the response including at least the first set of parameters.

22. The method of claim 13, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further indicates an identifier of the first set of parameters.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the first SRS used for positioning an activation message comprises the identifier of the first set of parameters.

24. The method of claim 13, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further indicates: a list of identifiers of said first plurality of cells for which said first set of parameters is valid, the time at which the first set of parameters is effective, or Any combination of them.

25. The method of claim 13, wherein the first SRS for positioning configuration further comprises a third set of parameters for a second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the third set of parameters is valid for a second plurality of cells.

26. The method according to claim 25, further comprising: A second SRS for a positioning activation message for a second positioning session between the UE and the location server is sent to the UE, wherein the second SRS for the positioning activation message includes a fourth set of parameters for the second SRS for positioning configuration, wherein the fourth set of parameters is valid for only one cell among the second plurality of cells, and wherein the fourth set of parameters includes parameters of the second SRS for positioning configuration that are not included in the third set of parameters.

27. The method according to claim 13, further comprising: receiving, from the UE, a deactivation request to deactivate transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources; as well as A deactivation message is sent to the UE, the deactivation message permitting deactivation of the transmission of the one or more SRSs for positioning resources.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the deactivation request is included in a measurement result message for the first positioning session.

29. A user equipment (UE), the user equipment (UE) comprising: one or more memories; one or more transceivers; and one or more processors, the one or more processors being communicatively coupled to the one or more memories and the one or more transceivers, the one or more processors being individually or in combination configured to: receiving, via the one or more transceivers, a pre-configuration of a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; Sending, via the one or more transceivers, a first SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; receiving, via the one or more transceivers, a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; as well as One or more SRSs for positioning resources are transmitted via the one or more transceivers based on the first SRS for positioning configuration.

30. A base station, comprising: one or more memories; one or more transceivers; and one or more processors, the one or more processors being communicatively coupled to the one or more memories and the one or more transceivers, the one or more processors being individually or in combination configured to: pre-configuring a user equipment (UE) with at least a first set of parameters for a first sounding reference signal (SRS) for positioning configuration, wherein the first set of parameters is valid for a first plurality of cells; receiving, from the UE via the one or more transceivers, an SRS for a positioning activation request for a first positioning session between the UE and a location server, wherein the SRS for the positioning activation request requests permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; as well as Sending, via the one or more transceivers, a first SRS for a positioning activation message for the first positioning session to the UE, wherein the first SRS for the positioning activation message indicates permission for the UE to send an SRS for positioning resources according to the first SRS for positioning configuration; as well as A positioning information update message is sent to the location server via the one or more transceivers, where the positioning information update message indicates that the first SRS for positioning configuration has been activated in the UE.