System information design for new air interface (NR) vehicle-to-everything (V2X) side link operation

Abstract

A system information design for new air interface (NR) vehicle-to-everything (V2X) side link operation is provided. The present disclosure relates to embodiments of new air interface (NR) vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. Some embodiments generate a system information block (SIB) message with a configuration for the V2X communication mode, and transmit the SIB message to a user equipment (UE). The V2X communication mode comprises a unicast mode, a multicast mode and a broadcast mode. Exemplary configurations include sidelink communication using a V2X communication mode.

Description

[0001] This application is a divisional application of an invention patent application with an application date of February 13, 2020, application number 202080013678.7, and invention name “System information design for new radio (NR) vehicle-to-everything (V2X) side link operation”.

[0002] CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0003] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62 / 805,234, filed on February 13, 2019, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. Technical Field

[0004] Various embodiments may generally relate to the field of wireless communications. Summary of the invention

[0005] Some embodiments may include an apparatus for new radio (NR) vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. The apparatus includes a processing circuit and a radio front-end circuit. The processing circuit may generate a system information block (SIB) message with a configuration for a V2X communication mode. The radio front-end circuit may transmit the SIB message to a user equipment (UE).

[0006] In these embodiments, the V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0007] In these embodiments, the SIB message may include a first SIB message from the SIB message having a first configuration from the configuration for a first V2X communication mode from the V2X communication mode, and a second SIB message from the SIB message having a second configuration from the configuration for a second V2X communication mode from the V2X communication mode.

[0008] In these embodiments, the first V2X communication mode or the second V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0009] In these embodiments, the first configuration may include sidelink communications using a broadcast operation.

[0010] In these embodiments, the second configuration may include sidelink communications using unicast operation.

[0011] In these embodiments, the apparatus may comprise a next generation Node B (gNB) or a portion thereof.

[0012] Some embodiments may include a method for new radio (NR) vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. The method includes: generating a plurality of system information block (SIB) messages having a plurality of configurations for a plurality of V2X communication modes; and transmitting the SIB messages to a user equipment (UE).

[0013] In these embodiments, the V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0014] In these embodiments, the SIB message may include a first SIB message from the SIB message having a first configuration from the configuration for a first V2X communication mode from the V2X communication mode, and a second SIB message from the SIB message having a second configuration from the configuration for a second V2X communication mode from the V2X communication mode.

[0015] In these embodiments, the first V2X communication mode or the second V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0016] In these embodiments, the first configuration may include sidelink communications using a broadcast operation.

[0017] Some embodiments may include an apparatus for new radio (NR) vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. The apparatus may include a memory and a processor. The memory may store program instructions. When executing the program instructions, the processor may generate multiple system information block (SIB) messages having multiple configurations for multiple V2X communication modes, and transmit the SIB messages to a user equipment (UE).

[0018] In these embodiments, the V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0019] In these embodiments, the SIB message may include a first SIB message from the SIB message having a first configuration from the configuration for a first V2X communication mode from the V2X communication mode, and a second SIB message from the SIB message having a second configuration from the configuration for a second V2X communication mode from the V2X communication mode.

[0020] In these embodiments, the first V2X communication mode or the second V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0021] In these embodiments, the first configuration may include sidelink communications using a broadcast operation.

[0022] Unless otherwise expressly stated, any of the above embodiments may be combined with any other embodiment (or combination of embodiments). The foregoing description of one or more specific implementations provides illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of the embodiments to the precise form disclosed. In view of the above teachings, modifications and variations are possible or can be obtained from the practice of various embodiments. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0023] The present disclosure is described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, the same reference numerals indicate the same or functionally similar elements. In addition, the leftmost digit of a reference numeral identifies the drawing in which the reference numeral first appears. In the drawings:

[0024] Figure 1 shows a flow chart of a process for when a V2X application requiring unicast or broadcast operation is initiated according to some embodiments;

[0025] Figure 2 An exemplary architecture of a system illustrating a network according to various embodiments;

[0026] Figure 3 An exemplary architecture of a system including a first CN according to various embodiments is shown;

[0027] Figure 4 shows the architecture of a system including a second CN according to various embodiments;

[0028] Figure 5 Examples of infrastructure equipment according to various embodiments are shown;

[0029] Figure 6 illustrates an example of a platform according to various embodiments;

[0030] Figure 7 shows exemplary components of a baseband circuit and a radio front end module (RFEM) according to various embodiments;

[0031] Figure 8 illustrates various protocol functions that may be implemented in a wireless communication device according to various embodiments;

[0032] Fig. 9 illustrates components of a core network according to various embodiments;

[0033] Fig.10 is a block diagram illustrating components of a system for supporting network function virtualization (NFV) according to some embodiments; and

[0034] Fig.11is a block diagram illustrating components capable of reading instructions from a machine-readable medium or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and performing any one or more of the methods discussed herein, according to some embodiments;

[0035] Fig.12 shows a flow chart for a first V2X communication process according to some embodiments; and

[0036] Fig.13 A flow chart for a second V2X communication process according to some embodiments is shown.

[0037] The present disclosure will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0038] The following specific embodiments relate to the accompanying drawings. The same figure numbers may be used to identify the same or similar elements in different drawings. In the following description, for the purpose of illustration and not limitation, specific details, such as specific structures, architectures, interfaces, technologies, etc., are set forth to provide a thorough understanding of various aspects of various embodiments. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art who benefit from the present disclosure that various aspects of various embodiments may be practiced in other examples that deviate from these specific details. In some cases, descriptions of well-known devices, circuits, and methods are omitted so that the description of various embodiments will not be obscured by unnecessary details. For the purposes of this document, the phrase "A or B" refers to (A), (B), or (A and B).

[0039] Overview

[0040] As New Radio (NR) becomes more and more common, and as the concept of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) becomes more and more popular, system information needs to be designed to provide resource allocation and configuration information to all user equipment (UE) in the vicinity of the next generation Node B (gNB), so that they can perform V2X communication in an efficient manner according to the type of transmission they are interested in (e.g., to a specific UE or in a broadcast manner). Among other things, the embodiments of the present disclosure provide solutions for separate configurations for unicast / multicast and broadcast operations, and solutions for UEs to request such configuration information from the gNB on demand. Therefore, the embodiments of the present disclosure help to effectively spread system information (including resource configuration) for V2X communication in unicast, multicast, and broadcast modes, and can be applicable to remotely driven and autonomous vehicles operating in efficient unicast, multicast, and broadcast communications.

[0041] In addition, as the 3GPP V2X standard evolves to incorporate advanced V2X use cases beyond road safety applications, mechanisms need to be developed that enable vehicle-mounted UEs to perform V2X transmissions to other UEs in their vicinity in a variety of different ways. Generally speaking, a specific UE may transmit V2X messages to another specific UE (unicast), a group of UEs (multicast), or all UEs (broadcast). There are certain V2X use cases that are more suitable for specific operating modes, i.e., extended sensors are more likely to rely on broadcast transmissions rather than unicast, while for others such as platooning, both unicast and multicast may be relevant (broadcast is less likely than broadcast). In addition, a given vehicle-mounted UE (V-UE) may have different capabilities defined, such that it may not support certain advanced features (i.e., high data rate exchanges via sidelink unicast) and can only perform broadcast operations. Since it is expected that the initial deployment will be a mix of LTE- and NR-based V2X UEs, it is expected that multiple NR V-UEs will operate primarily in broadcast mode to ensure reverse compatibility. Therefore, there are differences in the configuration required for broadcast operation and unicast / multicast operation.

[0042] In LTE, during Rel-15 work, a new System Information Block (SIB) was defined to carry basic configuration from V2X to complement the pre-existing SIB21. In particular, SIB26 was defined and contains V2X sidelink configuration, which is used in conjunction with the configuration included in SIB21. For NR, since V2X design is still nascent, the same principles may apply (e.g. on future releases), and having a modular design for system information blocks would be beneficial given the number and support of unicast, multicast, and broadcast operations on the sidelink.

[0043] Some embodiments of the present disclosure may provide a SIB solution using one or more of the following options:

[0044] a single SIB containing the configuration for V2X sidelink communications applicable to the communication mode; and / or

[0045] Contains separate SIBs for different / unique configurations for V2X communications. A UE may potentially acquire some or all of the SIBs to obtain the relevant configuration.

[0046] The first option follows the LTE behavior as a baseline, but has the disadvantage of not giving much flexibility in terms of differential configuration.The second option may include partitioning the configuration information based on casting type.

[0047] For example, some embodiments of the present invention may include:

[0048] In particular, a configuration comprising a separate SIB for V2X sidelink communications using broadcast operation; and / or

[0049] A separate SIB containing the configuration for V2X sidelink communications using unicast (and optionally multicast) operation.

[0050] Performing this cast-based configuration can have several benefits. The most important is the independence given to the gNB in ​​selecting specific carrier frequencies and resource pools for unicast vs. broadcast operation. For example, if a specific V2X carrier frequency is to be allocated only for unicast operation, then the SIB for broadcast operation will not include that V2X carrier as one of the possible options for the UE to use. Alternatively, if the gNB wants to allocate that carrier only for Mode 1 operation for broadcast operation, it may include the frequency in the "Broadcast SIB" without an associated resource pool, in which case the UE must use Mode 1.

[0051] Some implementations may utilize resource pools / carriers specific to a particular playout type (i.e., unicast or broadcast). The above scheme allows for efficient configuration via different SIB configurations, depending on what is ultimately designed. Additionally, if the carrier frequency is suitable for both unicast and broadcast operation, an "incremental" configuration approach may be employed if there is commonality between the unicast and multicast configurations to avoid duplication. Another benefit of this is a different configuration for the "congestion priority" metric when selecting resources in Mode 2.

[0052] To provide some background, cbr-pssch-TxConfigList-r15 is defined in LTE, which indicates a mapping between a packet priority level (PPPP) and a channel busy ratio (CBR) range within which transmission of packets with that priority range is valid. For embodiments of the present disclosure utilizing NR, a similar congestion metric may be implemented to determine congestion / resource usage for a particular resource pool. Based on this, a particular UE may select (or skip) resources for V2X transmissions based on a mapping to a particular QoS metric (PPPP in the case of LTE).

[0053] Since unicast and broadcast data QoS may generally be different, the configuration may be different depending on whether resources are selected to perform unicast or broadcast transmission. This may be achieved by the above method, where the metric (e.g., QFI class or PC5 5QI / PQI) may be configured separately for unicast and broadcast. Similarly, the configuration for synchronization frequency and the packet repetition configuration may be configured independently for UEs in unicast and broadcast modes.

[0054] At the same time, if the carrier frequency or resource pool is shared between unicast operation and broadcast operation, the UE may use the relevant configuration for each transmission (unicast or broadcast), or a default value may be set so that such UE follows a specific configuration (so that there is no conflict). In addition, the system information may carry configuration information about whether SL HARQ ACK / NACK is enabled or disabled in the cell / frequency of unicast and / or multicast. When there is a scheduled UE that provides resources for another UE performing TX / RX in mode 2(d) of UE autonomous resource selection mode operation, resource pool configuration for supporting this case may also be supported (including whether the gNB supports this feature and the resource configuration for such operation). It should be noted that this is all within the control of the gNB.

[0055] An example of the structure of two separate SIBs and some examples of configuration therein are shown below:

[0056]

[0057]

[0058] In the case where there is commonality between the synchronization and resource allocation configurations between two SIBs (unicast and broadcast), the unicast SIB may include only incremental (different from broadcast) configurations for a given carrier frequency. SL-InterFreqInfoListV2X indicates the synchronization and resource allocation configurations for adjacent frequencies for V2X sidelink communication. SL-CBR-PPPP-TxConfigList indicates the mapping between packet QoS (PQI) and congestion ranges for transmitting n resource pools on the carrier indicated in the SIB for V2X communication. SL-V2X-PacketDuplicationConfig indicates configuration information for sidelink packet duplication for V2X sidelink communication. SL-V2X-SyncFreqList indicates a list of candidate carrier frequencies that can be used for synchronization of V2X sidelink communication. It should be noted that the above configuration is not an exhaustive list of configurations for V2X sidelink communication.

[0059] A related aspect to the above discussion is the availability of system information broadcast by the gNB via dedicated signaling. As mentioned above, one of the features in NR is the concept of SI on demand, whereby the gNB transmits certain SI only after receiving a SI request from the UE, rather than broadcasting all SIBs. For idle / inactive mode UEs within coverage, the UE can use specific RACH resources and / or preambles to send a request to the gNB, which then acknowledges and transmits the requested SIBs. This framework is already in place for NR and can be implemented for V2X as well.

[0060] Using the above method of dividing the system information for V2X configuration into blocks for unicast and broadcast operation, the configuration containing SIBs for unicast operation can be transmitted on demand (rather than always broadcast). This also reduces the signaling overhead on the gNB side, and ultimately, it can choose whether to include this SIB in the list of SIBs indicated as on demand in the SI-SchedulingInfo IE. For V-UEs out of coverage, since they cannot obtain system information anyway, pre-configuration is used for the purpose (which is similar to LTE).

[0061] Exemplary Operation Methods

[0062] Figure 1 A flow chart of a process for when a V2X application requiring unicast or broadcast operation is initiated according to some embodiments is shown. The present disclosure is not limited to this operational description. On the contrary, it will be apparent to a person skilled in the relevant art that other operational control flows are also within the scope and spirit of the present disclosure. The following discussion describes an exemplary operational control flow 100 for a process when a V2X application requiring unicast or broadcast operation is initiated as described above. The exemplary operational control flow 100 may be executed by one or more of the processors or processor circuits described herein, including those included in the application circuit 605 or 705, the baseband circuit 610 or 710, and / or the processor 1110, each of which will be described in further detail below.

[0063] In operation 102 , the operational control flow 100 initiates a V2X application.

[0064] In operation 104, the operational control flow 100 checks whether unicast operation or broadcast operation is required. If unicast operation is required, the operational control flow 100 proceeds to operation 106. Otherwise, when broadcast operation is required, the operational control flow 100 proceeds to operation 116.

[0065] In operation 106, the operation control flow 100 checks whether the relevant SIB is being broadcast. If the relevant SIB is being broadcast, the operation control flow 100 proceeds to operation 108. Otherwise, when the relevant SIB is not being broadcast, the operation control flow 100 proceeds to operation 110.

[0066] In operation 108 , the operational control flow 100 acquires the SIB using the SI request procedure.

[0067] In operation 110, the operation control flow 100 checks whether there is an incremental configuration. The operation control flow 100 may obtain the configuration for the broadcast operation at operation 110 from the SIB. When there is an incremental configuration, the operation control flow 100 proceeds to operation 114. Otherwise, when there is no incremental configuration, the operation control flow 100 proceeds to operation 110.

[0068] In operation 112, the operational control flow 100 initiates a data transfer process.

[0069] In operation 114, the operation control flow 100 obtains relevant configuration from the broadcast SIB.

[0070] Exemplary Systems

[0071] Figure 2 An exemplary architecture of a system of a network according to various embodiments is shown. The following description is provided for an exemplary system 200 that operates in conjunction with the Long Term Evolution (LTE) system standard and the fifth generation (5G) or NR system standard provided by the third generation partnership project (3GPP) technical specifications. However, the exemplary embodiments are not limited in this regard, and the embodiments may be applied to other networks that benefit from the principles described herein, such as future 3GPP systems (e.g., sixth generation (6G)) systems, IEEE 802.16 protocols (e.g., WMAN, WiMAX, etc.), etc.

[0072] like Figure 2 As shown, system 200 includes user equipment (UE) 201a and UE 201b (collectively referred to as "UE 201"). In this example, UE 201 is shown as a smart phone (e.g., a handheld touch screen mobile computing device that can connect to one or more cellular networks), but may also include any mobile or non-mobile computing device, such as a consumer electronic device, a mobile phone, a smart phone, a feature phone, a tablet computer, a wearable computer device, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a pager, a wireless handheld device, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), an in-vehicle entertainment (ICE) device, an instrument panel (IC), a head-up display (HUD) device, an on-board diagnostic (OBD) device, a dashtop mobile equipment (DME), a mobile data terminal (MDT), an electronic engine management system (EEMS), an electronic / engine electronic control unit (ECU), an electronic / engine electronic control module (ECM), an embedded system, a microcontroller, a control module, an engine management system (EMS), a networked or "smart" appliance, an MTC device, an M2M, an Internet of Things (IoT) device, etc.

[0073] In some embodiments, any of the UEs 201 may be an Internet of Things (IoT) UE, which may include a network access layer designed for low-power IoT applications that utilize short-term UE connections. The IoT UE may utilize technologies such as machine-to-machine (M2M) or machine-type communication (MTC) to exchange data with an MTC server or device via a public land mobile network (PLMN), proximity services (ProSe) or device-to-device (D2D) communication, a sensor network, or an IoT network. The M2M or MTC data exchange may be a machine-initiated data exchange. The IoT network describes interconnected IoT UEs, which may include uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices (within the Internet infrastructure) with short-lived connections. The IoT UE may execute background applications (e.g., keep-alive messages, status updates, etc.) to facilitate connectivity to the IoT network.

[0074] UE 201 may be configured to connect (e.g., be communicatively coupled) to a radio access network (RAN) 210. In some embodiments, RAN 210 may be a next generation (NG) RAN or 5G RAN, an evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN), or a legacy RAN, such as a UTRAN or a GSM EDGE radio access network (GERAN). As used herein, the term "NGRAN" or the like may refer to a RAN 210 operating in an NR or 5G system 200, while the term "E-UTRAN" or the like may refer to a RAN 210 operating in an LTE or 4G system 200. UE 201 utilizes connections (or channels) 203 and 204, respectively, each of which includes a physical communication interface or layer (discussed in further detail below).

[0075] In this example, connection 203 and connection 204 are shown as air interfaces to achieve communication coupling, and may be consistent with the following cellular communication protocols, such as the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol, the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network protocol, the Push-to-Talk (PTT) protocol, the Push-to-Talk over Cellular (POC) protocol, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) protocol, the 3GPP LTE protocol, the 5G protocol, the NR protocol, and / or any of the other communication protocols discussed herein. In some embodiments, the UE 201 may directly exchange communication data via a ProSe interface 205. The ProSe interface 205 may alternatively be referred to as a sidelink (SL) interface 205 and may include one or more logical channels, including, but not limited to, a physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH), a physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH), a physical sidelink downlink channel (PSDCH), and a physical sidelink broadcast channel (PSBCH).

[0076] UE 201b is shown as being configured to access access point (AP) 206 (also referred to as "WLAN node 206," "WLAN 206," "WLAN terminal 206," "WT 206," etc.) via connection 207. Connection 207 may include a local wireless connection, such as a connection consistent with any IEEE 802.11 protocol, wherein AP 206 would include wireless fidelity. router. In this example, AP 206 is shown as being connected to the Internet without being connected to the core network of the wireless system (described in further detail below). In various embodiments, UE 201b, RAN 210, and AP 206 may be configured to utilize LWA operation and / or LWIP operation. LWA operation may involve UE 201b in the RRC_CONNECTED state being configured by RAN nodes 211a-b to utilize radio resources of LTE and WLAN. LWIP operation may involve UE 201b using WLAN radio resources (e.g., connection 207) via an IPsec protocol tunnel to authenticate and encrypt packets (e.g., IP packets) sent through connection 207. IPsec tunneling may include encapsulating the entire original IP packet and adding a new packet header, thereby protecting the original header of the IP packet.

[0077] The RAN 210 may include one or more AN nodes or RAN nodes 211a and 211b (collectively referred to as "RAN nodes 211") that enable connections 203 and 204. As used herein, the terms "access node", "access point", etc. may describe equipment that provides radio baseband functionality for data and / or voice connections between a network and one or more users. These access nodes may be referred to as BS, gNB, RAN node, eNB, NodeB, RSU, TRxP or TRP, etc., and may include ground stations (e.g., terrestrial access points) or satellite stations that provide coverage within a geographic area (e.g., a cell). As used herein, the terms "NG RAN node" and the like may refer to a RAN node 211 (e.g., a gNB) operating in an NR or 5G system 200, while the terms "E-UTRAN node" and the like may refer to a RAN node 211 (e.g., an eNB) operating in an LTE or 4G system 200. According to various embodiments, the RAN node 211 may be implemented as one or more of a dedicated physical device such as a macrocell base station and / or a low power (LP) base station for providing a femtocell, picocell or other similar cell with a smaller coverage area, smaller user capacity or higher bandwidth than a macrocell.

[0078] In some embodiments, all or part of the RAN node 211 may be implemented as one or more software entities running on a server computer as part of a virtual network that may be referred to as a CRAN and / or a virtual baseband unit pool (vBBUP). In these embodiments, the CRAN or vBBUP may implement RAN functional splits, such as PDCP splits, where the RRC and PDCP layers are operated by the CRAN / vBBUP, while other L2 protocol entities are operated by individual RAN nodes 211; MAC / PHY splits, where the RRC, PDCP, RLC, and MAC layers are operated by the CRAN / vBBUP, and the PHY layer is operated by individual RAN nodes 211; or "lower PHY" splits, where the RRC, PDCP, RLC, MAC layers, and upper portions of the PHY layers are operated by the CRAN / vBBUP, and the lower portions of the PHY layers are operated by individual RAN nodes 211. This virtualization framework allows idle processor cores of the RAN node 211 to execute other virtualized applications. In some embodiments, a separate RAN node 211 may represent a separate RAN node 211 connected to the RAN node 211 via a separate F1 interface ( Figure 2 In these embodiments, the gNB-DU may include one or more remote radio heads or RFEMs (see, e.g., Figure 5 ), and the gNB-CU may be operated by a server (not shown) located in the RAN 210 or by a server pool in a manner similar to CRAN / vBBUP. In addition or alternatively, one or more of the RAN nodes 211 may be a next generation eNB (ng-eNB), which is a next generation eNB that provides E-UTRA user plane and control plane protocol terminals to the UE 201 and is connected to the 5GC (e.g., Figure 4 RAN node of CN 420).

[0079] In a V2X scenario, one or more of the RAN nodes 211 may be an RSU or act as an RSU. The term "roadside unit" or "RSU" may refer to any traffic infrastructure entity used for V2X communication. The RSU may be implemented in or by a suitable RAN node or a stationary (or relatively stationary) UE, wherein an RSU implemented in or by a UE may be referred to as a "UE-type RSU", an RSU implemented in or by an eNB may be referred to as an "eNB-type RSU", an RSU implemented in or by a gNB may be referred to as a "gNB-type RSU", and so on. In one example, the RSU is a computing device coupled to a radio frequency circuit located on the road side that provides connectivity support to a passing vehicle UE 201 (vUE201). The RSU may also include internal data storage circuitry for storing intersection map geometry, traffic statistics, media, and applications / software for sensing and controlling ongoing vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The RSU may operate on the 5.9 GHz Direct Short Range Communication (DSRC) band to provide extremely low latency communications required for high-speed events, such as collision avoidance, traffic warnings, etc. In addition or alternatively, the RSU may operate on the cellular V2X band to provide the aforementioned low latency communications as well as other cellular communication services. In addition or alternatively, the RSU may operate as a Wi-Fi hotspot (2.4 GHz band) and / or provide connectivity to one or more cellular networks to provide uplink and downlink communications. Some or all of the RF circuits of the computing device and the RSU may be encapsulated in a weather-resistant enclosure suitable for outdoor installation, and may include a network interface controller to provide a wired connection (e.g., Ethernet) to a traffic signal controller and / or a backhaul network.

[0080] Any of the RAN nodes 211 may terminate the air interface protocol and may be the first point of contact for the UE 201. In some embodiments, any of the RAN nodes 211 may perform various logical functions of the RAN 210, including but not limited to the functions of a radio network controller (RNC), such as radio bearer management, uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management and data packet scheduling, and mobility management.

[0081] In an embodiment, UE 201 may be configured to communicate with each other or with any RAN node in RAN node 211 using OFDM communication signals over a multi-carrier communication channel according to various communication techniques, such as but not limited to OFDMA communication techniques (e.g., for downlink communication) or SC-FDMA communication techniques (e.g., for uplink and ProSe or sidelink communication), although the scope of the embodiment is not limited in this respect. OFDM signals may include multiple orthogonal subcarriers.

[0082] In some embodiments, a downlink resource grid may be used for downlink transmissions from any of the RAN nodes 211 to the UE 201, while uplink transmissions may utilize similar techniques. The grid may be a time-frequency grid, referred to as a resource grid or a time-frequency resource grid, which is a physical resource in the downlink in each time slot. For OFDM systems, such a time-frequency plane representation is a common practice, which makes wireless resource allocation intuitive. Each column and each row of the resource grid corresponds to an OFDM symbol and an OFDM subcarrier, respectively. The duration of the resource grid in the time domain corresponds to a time slot in a radio frame. The smallest time-frequency unit in the resource grid is represented as a resource element. Each resource grid includes a plurality of resource blocks, which describe the mapping of certain physical channels to resource elements. Each resource block includes a set of resource elements; in the frequency domain, this may represent the minimum amount of resources that can currently be allocated. Such resource blocks are used to transmit several different physical downlink channels.

[0083] According to various embodiments, UE 201 and RAN node 211 communicate data (e.g., transmit data and receive data) through a licensed medium (also referred to as "licensed spectrum" and / or "licensed frequency band") and an unlicensed shared medium (also referred to as "unlicensed spectrum" and / or "unlicensed frequency band"). The licensed spectrum may include channels operating in a frequency range of approximately 400 MHz to approximately 3.8 GHz, while the unlicensed spectrum may include a 5 GHz frequency band.

[0084] To operate in the unlicensed spectrum, the UE 201 and the RAN node 211 may operate using LAA, eLAA, and / or feLAA mechanisms. In these implementations, the UE 201 and the RAN node 211 may perform one or more known medium sensing operations and / or carrier sensing operations to determine whether one or more channels in the unlicensed spectrum are unavailable or otherwise occupied before transmitting in the unlicensed spectrum. The medium / carrier sensing operations may be performed according to a listen-before-talk (LBT) protocol.

[0085] LBT is a mechanism by which equipment (e.g., UE 201, RAN node 211, etc.) senses the medium (e.g., a channel or carrier frequency) and transmits when the medium is sensed to be idle (or when a particular channel in the medium is sensed to be unoccupied). The medium sensing operation may include CCA, which utilizes at least ED to determine whether other signals are present on the channel in order to determine whether the channel is occupied or idle. The LBT mechanism allows cellular / LAA networks to coexist with existing systems in unlicensed spectrum and with other LAA networks. ED may include sensing RF energy over a period of time on an expected transmission band and comparing the sensed RF energy to a predefined or configured threshold.

[0086] Typically, existing systems in the 5 GHz band are WLANs based on IEEE 802.11 technology. WLAN uses a contention-based channel access mechanism called CSMA / CA. Here, when a WLAN node (e.g., a mobile station (MS) such as UE 201, AP 206, etc.) intends to transmit, the WLAN node may first perform CCA before transmission. In addition, in the case where more than one WLAN node senses the channel as idle and transmits at the same time, a backoff mechanism is used to avoid conflicts. The backoff mechanism may be a counter randomly introduced within the CWS that increases exponentially when a conflict occurs and is reset to a minimum value when the transmission is successful. The LBT mechanism designed for LAA is somewhat similar to the CSMA / CA of WLAN. In some embodiments, the LBT process of a DL or UL transmission burst (including PDSCH or PUSCH transmission, respectively) may have a LAA contention window of variable length between X and YECCA time slots, where X and Y are the minimum and maximum values ​​of the CWS of LAA. In one example, the minimum CWS for LAA transmissions may be 9 microseconds (μs); however, the size of the CWS and MCOT (eg, transmission burst) may be based on government regulatory requirements.

[0087] The LAA mechanism is built on the CA technology of the LTE-Advanced system. In CA, each aggregated carrier is called a CC. A CC may have a bandwidth of 1.4MHz, 3MHz, 5MHz, 10MHz, 15MHz, or 20MHz, and up to five CCs may be aggregated, so the maximum aggregated bandwidth is 100MHz. In an FDD system, the number of aggregated carriers may be different for DL ​​and UL, where the number of UL CCs is equal to or lower than the number of DL component carriers. In some cases, each CC may have a different bandwidth from other CCs. In a TDD system, the number of CCs and the bandwidth of each CC are typically the same for DL ​​and UL.

[0088] CA also includes individual serving cells to provide individual CCs. The coverage of the serving cells may be different, for example, because CCs on different frequency bands will experience different path losses. The primary serving cell or PCell provides the PCC for both UL and DL, and handles activities related to RRC and NAS. Other serving cells are called SCells, and each SCell provides a separate SCC for both UL and DL. SCCs can be added and removed as needed, and changing PCCs may require UE 201 to undergo switching. In LAA, eLAA, and feLAA, some or all of the SCells may operate in an unlicensed spectrum (referred to as "LAA SCells"), and the LAA SCells are assisted by the PCells operating in the licensed spectrum. When a UE is configured with more than one LAA SCell, the UE may receive UL grants on the configured LAA SCells, indicating different PUSCH start positions within the same subframe.

[0089] The PDSCH carries user data and higher layer signaling to the UE 201. The PDCCH carries, among other information, information about the transport format and resource allocation related to the PDSCH channel. It may also inform the UE 201 about the transport format, resource allocation, and HARQ information related to the uplink shared channel. Typically, downlink scheduling (allocation of control and shared channel resource blocks to UE 201b within a cell) may be performed at any of the RAN nodes 211 based on channel quality information fed back from any of the UEs 201. Downlink resource allocation information may be sent on the PDCCH for (e.g., allocated to) each of the UEs 201.

[0090] PDCCH uses CCE to transmit control information. Before being mapped to resource elements, the PDCCH complex-valued symbols can first be organized into quadruplets, which can then be arranged using a sub-block interleaver for rate matching. One or more of these CCEs can be used to transmit each PDCCH, where each CCE can correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements, respectively, called REGs. Four quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) symbols can be mapped to each REG. Depending on the size of the DCI and channel conditions, one or more CCEs can be used to transmit the PDCCH. There may be four or more different PDCCH formats defined in LTE with different numbers of CCEs (e.g., aggregation levels, L=1, 2, 4, or 8).

[0091] Some embodiments may use the concept of resource allocation for control channel information, which is an extension of the above concept. For example, some embodiments may utilize EPDCCH that uses PDSCH resources for control information transmission. One or more ECCEs may be used to transmit EPDCCH. Similar to the above, each ECCE may correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements, referred to as EREG. In some cases, ECCE may have other numbers of EREGs.

[0092] RAN nodes 211 may be configured to communicate with each other via interface 212. In some embodiments where system 200 is an LTE system (eg, when CN 220 is a Figure 3 320 in the EPC 220), the interface 212 may be an X2 interface 212. The X2 interface may be defined between two or more RAN nodes 211 (e.g., two or more eNBs, etc.) connected to the EPC 220, and / or between two eNBs connected to the EPC 220. In some embodiments, the X2 interface may include an X2 user plane interface (X2-U) and an X2 control plane interface (X2-C). The X2-U provides a flow control mechanism for user data packets transmitted over the X2 interface, and may be used to transmit information about the delivery of user data between eNBs. For example, the X2-U provides specific sequence number information about user data transmitted from the MeNB to the SeNB; information about the successful in-sequence delivery of PDCP PDUs from the SeNB to the UE 201 for user data; information about PDCP PDUs that are not delivered to the UE 201; information about the current minimum expected buffer size at the SeNB for transmitting user data to the UE; and the like. X2-C provides intra-LTE access mobility functions, including context transfer from source eNB to target eNB, user plane transmission control, etc.; load management functions; and inter-cell interference coordination functions.

[0093] When system 200 is a 5G or NR system (e.g., when CN 220 is Figure 4In some embodiments (when the 5GC 420 in the 5GC 220 is connected), the interface 212 may be an Xn interface 212. The Xn interface is defined between two or more RAN nodes 211 (e.g., two or more next-generation node Bs (gNBs), etc.) connected to the 5GC 220, between a RAN node 211 (e.g., a gNB) and an evolved node B (eNB) connected to the 5GC 220, and / or between two eNBs connected to the 5GC 220. In some embodiments, the Xn interface may include an Xn user plane (Xn-U) interface and an Xn control plane (Xn-C) interface. The Xn-U provides non-guaranteed delivery of user plane protocol data units (PDUs) and supports / provides data forwarding and flow control functions. The Xn-C provides management and error handling functions for managing the functions of the Xn-C interface; mobility support for the UE 201 in a connected mode (e.g., CM-CONNECTED) includes functions for managing UE mobility in a connected mode between one or more RAN nodes 211. The mobility support may include context transfer from the old (source) serving RAN node 211 to the new (target) serving RAN node 211; and control of the user plane tunnel between the old (source) serving RAN node 211 and the new (target) serving RAN node 211. The protocol stack of Xn-U may include a transport network layer built on an Internet Protocol (IP) transport layer and a user plane GPRS tunneling protocol (GTP-U) layer on top of a user datagram protocol (UDP) and / or IP layer for carrying user plane PDUs. The Xn-C protocol stack may include an application layer signaling protocol (referred to as the Xn Application Protocol (Xn-AP)) and a transport network layer built on a stream control transmission protocol (SCTP). SCTP may be on top of the IP layer and provide guaranteed delivery of application layer messages. In the transport IP layer, point-to-point transport is used to deliver signaling PDUs. In other specific implementations, the Xn-U protocol stack and / or the Xn-C protocol stack may be the same or similar to the user plane and / or control plane protocol stacks shown and described herein.

[0094] RAN 210 is shown as being communicatively coupled to a core network—in this embodiment, communicatively coupled to a core network (CN) 220. The CN 220 may include a plurality of network elements 222 configured to provide various data and telecommunication services to customers / subscribers (e.g., users of UE 201) connected to the CN 220 via the RAN 210. The components of the CN 220 may be implemented in one physical node or separate physical nodes, including components for reading and executing instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium). In some embodiments, network function virtualization (NFV) may be used to virtualize any or all of the above network node functions via executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable storage media (described in further detail below). A logical instance of the CN 220 may be referred to as a network slice, and a logical instance of a portion of the CN 220 may be referred to as a network sub-slice. The NFV architecture and infrastructure may be used to virtualize one or more network functions onto physical resources comprising a combination of industry-standard server hardware, storage hardware, or switches (alternatively performed by proprietary hardware). In other words, the NFV system may be used to perform a virtual or reconfigurable implementation of one or more EPC components / functions.

[0095] In general, the application server 230 may be an element that provides applications that use IP bearer resources with a core network (e.g., Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Packet Service (PS) domain, LTE PS data service, etc.). The application server 230 may also be configured to support one or more communication services for the UE 201 via the CN 220 (e.g., VoIP sessions, PTT sessions, group communication sessions, social network services, etc.).

[0096] In some embodiments, CN 220 may be a 5GC (referred to as "5GC 220", etc.), and RAN 210 may be connected to CN 220 via an NG interface 213. In some embodiments, NG interface 213 may be divided into two parts: an NG user plane (NG-U) interface 214, which carries traffic data between RAN node 211 and UPF; and an S1 control plane (NG-C) interface 215, which is a signaling interface between RAN node 211 and AMF. Figure 4 An implementation of CN 220 as 5GC 220 is discussed in more detail.

[0097] In some embodiments, CN 220 may be a 5G CN (referred to as "5GC 220", etc.), while in other embodiments, CN 220 may be an EPC. In the case where CN 220 is an EPC (referred to as "EPC 220", etc.), RAN 210 may be connected to CN 220 via an S1 interface 213. In some embodiments, S1 interface 213 may be divided into two parts: an S1 user plane (S1-U) interface 214, which carries traffic data between RAN node 211 and S-GW; and an S1-MME interface 215, which is a signaling interface between RAN node 211 and MME. Figure 3 An exemplary architecture in which CN 220 is EPC 220 is shown in FIG.

[0098] Example Architecture

[0099] Figure 3 FIG. 2 shows an exemplary architecture of a system 300 including a first CN 320 according to various embodiments. In this example, the system 300 may implement the LTE standard, wherein the CN 320 is a Figure 2 The EPC 320 corresponding to the CN 220. In addition, the UE 301 can communicate with Figure 2 The UE 201 is the same as or similar to the UE 201, and the E-UTRAN 310 may be Figure 2 The CN 320 may be a RAN that is the same as or similar to the RAN 210 of the present invention and may include the RAN node 211 discussed previously. The CN 320 may include a mobility management entity (MEE) 321, a serving gateway (S-GW) 322, a PDN gateway (P-GW) 323, a home subscriber server (HSS) 324, and a serving GPRS support node (SGSN) 325.

[0100] The MME 321 may be similar in function to the control plane of a traditional SGSN, and may implement mobility management (MM) functions to keep track of the current location of the UE 301. The MME 321 may perform various MM procedures to manage mobility aspects of the access, such as gateway selection and tracking area list management. MM (also referred to as "EPS MM" or "EMM" in the E-UTRAN system) may refer to all applicable procedures, methods, data stores, etc. for maintaining knowledge of the current location of the UE 301, providing user identity confidentiality to users / subscribers, and / or performing other similar services. Each UE 301 and MME 321 may include an MM or EMM sublayer, and when the attachment procedure is successfully completed, an MM context may be established in the UE 301 and the MME 321. The MM context may be a data structure or database object that stores MM-related information of the UE 301. MME 321 may be coupled to HSS 324 via an S6a reference point, to SGSN 325 via an S3 reference point, and to S-GW 322 via an S11 reference point.

[0101] SGSN 325 may be a node that serves UE 301 by tracking the location of individual UE 301 and performing security functions. In addition, SGSN 325 may perform inter-EPC node signaling for mobility between 2G / 3G and E-UTRAN 3GPP access networks; PDN and S-GW selection as specified by MME 321; handling of UE 301 time zone functions, as specified by MME 321; and MME selection for handover to E-UTRAN 3GPP access network. The S3 reference point between MME 321 and SGSN 325 may enable user and bearer information exchange for inter-3GPP access network mobility in an idle state and / or an active state.

[0102] The HSS 324 may include a database for network users, which includes subscription-related information for supporting network entities in handling communication sessions. The EPC 320 may include one or several HSSs 324, depending on the number of mobile subscribers, the capacity of the equipment, the organization of the network, etc. For example, the HSS 324 may provide support for routing / roaming, authentication, authorization, naming / addressing solutions, location dependencies, etc. The S6a reference point between the HSS 324 and the MME 321 may enable the transfer of subscription and authentication data for authenticating / authorizing users to access the EPC 320 between the HSS 324 and the MME 321.

[0103] The S-GW 322 may terminate the S1 (S1-U) interface for the user plane towards the RAN 310 and route data packets between the RAN 310 and the EPC 320. In addition, the S-GW 322 may be a local mobility anchor point for inter-RAN node handovers and also provide an anchor for inter-3GPP mobility. Other responsibilities may include lawful interception, charging, and enforcement of certain policies. The S11 reference point between the S-GW 322 and the MME 321 provides a control plane between the MME 321 and the S-GW 322. The S-GW 322 may be coupled to the P-GW 323 via the S5 reference point.

[0104] The P-GW 323 may terminate the SGi interface toward the PDN 330. The P-GW 323 may communicate with the PDN 330 via the IP interface 225 (see, e.g. Figure 2 ) routes data packets between EPC 320 and an external network, such as a network including application server 230 (alternatively referred to as "AF"). In some embodiments, P-GW 323 may communicate with the EPC 320 via IP communication interface 225 (see, e.g., Figure 2 ) is communicatively coupled to an application server ( Figure 2 Application server 230 or Figure 3 The S5 reference point between the P-GW 323 and the S-GW 322 provides user plane tunneling and tunnel management between the P-GW 323 and the S-GW 322. The S5 reference point may also be used for S-GW 322 relocation due to the mobility of the UE 301 and whether the S-GW 322 needs to connect to a non-colocated P-GW 323 for the required PDN connectivity. The P-GW 323 may also include nodes for policy implementation and charging data collection, such as a PCEF (not shown). In addition, the SGi reference point between the P-GW 323 and the packet data network (PDN) 330 may be an operator-external public, private PDN, or an internal operator packet data network, such as for providing IMS services. The P-GW 323 may be coupled to the PCRF 326 via the Gx reference point.

[0105] PCRF 326 is a policy and charging control element of EPC 320. In a non-roaming scenario, there may be a single PCRF 326 in a domestic public land mobile network (HPLMN) associated with an Internet Protocol Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN) session of UE 301. In a roaming scenario with local traffic breakout, there may be two PCRFs associated with the IP-CAN session of UE 301: a domestic PCRF (H-PCRF) in the HPLMN and a visited PCRF (V-PCRF) in a visited public land mobile network (VPLMN). PCRF 326 may be communicatively coupled to application server 330 via P-GW 323. Application server 330 may signal PCRF 326 to indicate a new service flow and select appropriate QoS and charging parameters. PCRF 326 may configure the rule to a PCEF (not shown) with the appropriate TFT and QCI, which starts QoS and charging as specified by application server 330. The Gx reference point between PCRF 326 and P-GW 323 may allow for the transfer of QoS policies and charging rules from PCRF 326 to PCEF in P-GW 323. The Rx reference point may reside between PDN 330 (or "AF 330") and PCRF 326.

[0106] Figure 4 The architecture of a system 400 including a second CN 420 according to various embodiments is shown. The system 400 is shown to include a UE 401, which may be the same or similar to the previously discussed UE 201 and UE 301; a (R) AN 410, which may be the same or similar to the previously discussed RAN 210 and RAN 310, and which may include the previously discussed RAN node 211; and a data network (DN) 403, which may be, for example, an operator service, Internet access, or a 3rd party service; and a 5GC 420. The 5GC 420 may include an authentication server function (AUSF) 422; an access and mobility management function (AMF) 421; a session management function (SMF) 424; a network exposure function (NEF) 423; a PCF 426; a network repository function (NRF) 425; a UDM 427; an application function (AF) 428; a user plane function (UPF) 402; and a network slice selection function (NSSF) 429.

[0107] UPF 402 may act as an anchor point for intra-RAT and inter-RAT mobility, an external PDU session point interconnected with DN 403, and a branch point to support multi-host PDU sessions. UPF 402 may also perform packet routing and forwarding, perform packet inspection, perform the user plane portion of policy rules, lawful interception of packets (UP collection), perform traffic usage reporting, perform QoS processing (e.g., packet filtering, gating, UL / DL rate enforcement) on the user plane, perform uplink traffic verification (e.g., SDF to QoS flow mapping), transport level packet marking in uplink and downlink, and perform downlink packet buffering and downlink data notification triggering. UPF 402 may include an uplink classifier for supporting routing of business flows to data networks. DN 403 may represent various network operator services, Internet access, or third-party services. DN 403 may include or be similar to the application server 230 discussed previously. UPF 402 interacts with SMF 424 via the N4 reference point between SMF 424 and UPF 402.

[0108] AUSF 422 stores data for authentication of UE 401 and handles authentication-related functions. AUSF 422 may facilitate a common authentication framework for various access types. AUSF 422 communicates with AMF 421 via the N12 reference point between AMF 421 and AUSF 422; and communicates with UDM 427 via the N13 reference point between UDM 427 and AUSF 422. In addition, AUSF 422 may present an interface based on Nausf services.

[0109] AMF 421 may be responsible for registration management (e.g., responsible for registering UE 401, etc.), connection management, reachability management, mobility management, and lawful interception of AMF-related events, and access authentication and authorization. AMF 421 may be the termination point of the N11 reference point between AMF 421 and SMF 424. AMF 421 provides transport for session management (SM) messages between UE 401 and SMF 424, and acts as a transparent proxy for routing SM messages. AMF 421 may also provide a transport for UE 401 and SMS function (SMSF) ( Figure 4The AMF 421 may provide transport for short message service (SMS) messages between the (R)AN410 and the UE 401 (not shown). The AMF 421 may act as a security anchor function (SEAF), which may include interaction with the AUSF 422 and the UE 401, and reception of intermediate keys established as a result of the UE 401 authentication process. In the case of using authentication based on a universal user identity module (USIM), the AMF 421 may retrieve security material from the AUSF 422. The AMF 421 may also include a secure content management (SCM) function that receives keys from the SEA for deriving access network specific keys. In addition, the AMF 421 may be a termination point for the RAN CP interface, which may include or be the N2 reference point between the (R)AN410 and the AMF 421; and the AMF 421 may be a termination point for NAS (N1) signaling, and perform NAS encryption and integrity protection.

[0110] The AMF 421 may also support NAS signaling with the UE 401 over the N3 IWF interface. The N3 IWF may be used to provide access to untrusted entities. The N3 IWF may be the termination point for the N2 interface between the (R) AN 410 and the AMF 421 for the control plane, and may be the termination point for the N3 reference point between the (R) AN 410 and the UPF 402 for the user plane. Thus, the AMF 421 processes N2 signaling for protocol data unit (PDU) sessions and QoS from the SMF 424 and the AMF 421, encapsulates / decapsulates packets for IPSec and N3 tunneling, marks N3 user plane packets in the uplink, and performs QoS corresponding to N3 packet markings, taking into account QoS requirements associated with such markings received over N2. N3IWF may also relay uplink and downlink control plane NAS signaling between UE 401 and AMF 421 via the N1 reference point between UE 401 and AMF 421, and relay uplink and downlink user plane packets between UE 401 and UPF 402. N3IWF also provides a mechanism for establishing an IPsec tunnel with UE 401. AMF 421 may present an interface based on Namf services, and may be an N14 reference point between two AMFs 421 and an AMF 421 with 5G-EIR ( Figure 4 The termination point of the N17 reference point between (not shown).

[0111] UE 401 may need to register with AMF 421 in order to receive network services. Registration Management (RM) is used to register UE 401 with the network (e.g., AMF 421) or deregister the UE, and establish a UE context in the network (e.g., AMF 421). UE 401 may operate in the RM-REGISTERED state or the RM-DEREGISTERED state. In the RM-DEREGISTERED state, UE 401 is not registered with the network, and the UE context in AMF 421 does not maintain valid location or routing information of UE 401, so AMF 421 cannot reach UE 401. In the RM-REGISTERED state, UE 401 is registered with the network, and the UE context in AMF421 may maintain valid location or routing information of UE 401, so AMF 421 can reach UE 401. In the RM-REGISTERED state, UE 401 may perform a mobility registration update procedure, perform a periodic registration update procedure triggered by expiration of a periodic update timer (e.g., to notify the network that UE 401 is still active), and perform a registration update procedure to update UE capability information or renegotiate protocol parameters with the network, etc.

[0112] AMF 421 stores one or more RM contexts for UE 401, each RM context being associated with a specific access to the network. An RM context may be a data structure, a database object, or the like, which indicates or stores, among other things, a registration status and a periodic update timer for each access type. AMF 421 may also store a 5GC mobility management (MM) context which may be the same or similar to the (E)MM context discussed previously. In various embodiments, AMF 421 stores CE mode B restriction parameters for UE 401 in an associated MM context or RM context. AMF 421 may also derive values ​​from usage setting parameters of the UE already stored in the UE context (and / or MM / RM context) when necessary.

[0113] Connection Management (CM) establishes and releases a signaling connection between the UE 401 and the AMF 421 through the N1 interface. The signaling connection is used to enable NAS signaling exchange between the UE 401 and the CN 420, and includes a signaling connection between the UE and the AN (e.g., a radio resource control (RRC) connection or a UE-N3IWF connection for non-3GPP access) and an N2 connection of the UE 401 between the AN (e.g., the RAN 410) and the AMF 421. The UE 401 may operate in one of two CM states (CM-IDLE mode or CM-CONNECTED mode). When the UE 401 operates in the CM-IDLE state / mode, the UE 401 may not have a non-access stratum (NAS) signaling connection established with the AMF 421 through the N1 interface, and there may be a (R) AN 410 signaling connection (e.g., N2 and / or N3 connection) for the UE 401. When the UE 401 operates in the CM-CONNECTED state / mode, the UE 401 may have a NAS signaling connection established with the AMF 421 through the N1 interface, and there may be a (R)AN 410 signaling connection (e.g., N2 and / or N3 connection) for the UE 401. Establishing an N2 connection between the (R)AN 410 and the AMF 421 may cause the UE 401 to transition from the CM-IDLE mode to the CM-CONNECTED mode, and when the N2 signaling between the (R)AN 410 and the AMF 421 is released, the UE 401 may transition from the CM-CONNECTED mode to the CM-IDLE mode.

[0114] SMF 424 is responsible for session management (SM) (e.g., session establishment, modification, and release, including tunnel maintenance between UPF and AN nodes); UE IP address allocation and management (including optional authorization); selection and control of user plane (UP) functions; configuring traffic steering of UPF to route traffic to the correct destination; terminating the interface towards the policy control function; control part of policy enforcement and QoS; lawful interception (for SM events and interface with LI system); terminating the SM part of NAS messages; downlink data notification; initiating AN-specific SM information sent to AN via access and mobility management function (AMF) through N2; and determining the session and service continuity (SSC) mode of the session. SM may refer to the management of a protocol data unit (PDU) session, and a PDU session or "session" may refer to a PDU connectivity service that provides or enables the exchange of PDUs between a UE 401 and a data network (DN) 403 identified by a data network name (DNN). The PDU session may be established upon request by UE 401, modified upon request by UE 401 and 5GC 420, and released upon request by UE 401 and 5GC 420 using NAS SM signaling exchanged between UE 401 and SMF 424 over the N1 reference point. Upon request from an application server, 5GC 420 may trigger a specific application in UE 401. In response to receiving a trigger message, UE 401 may deliver the trigger message (or relevant parts / information of the trigger message) to one or more identified applications in UE 401. The identified applications in UE 401 may establish a PDU session to a specific DNN. SMF 424 may check whether the UE 401 request complies with user subscription information associated with UE 401. In this regard, SMF 424 may retrieve and / or request to receive update notifications about SMF 424 level subscription data from UDM 427.

[0115] SMF 424 may include the following roaming functions: handling local execution to apply QoS SLA (VPLMN); charging data collection and charging interface (VPLMN); lawful interception (for SM events and interface with LI system, in VPLMN); and support interaction with external DN to transmit signaling for PDU session authorization / authentication through external DN. In roaming scenarios, an N16 reference point between two SMFs 424 may be included in the system 400, which may be located between an SMF 424 in a visited network and another SMF 424 in a home network. In addition, SMF 424 may present an interface based on Nsmf services.

[0116] NEF 423 provides a device for securely exposing services and capabilities provided by 3GPP network functions for third parties, internal exposure / re-exposure, application functions (e.g., AF 428), edge computing or fog computing systems, etc. In such embodiments, NEF 423 can authenticate, authorize and / or restrict AF. NEF 423 can also convert information exchanged with AF 428 and information exchanged with internal network functions. For example, NEF 423 can convert between AF service identifiers and internal 5GC information. NEF 423 can also receive information from other network functions (NFs) based on their exposure capabilities. This information can be stored at NEF 423 as structured data, or stored at a data storage NF using a standardized interface. The stored information can then be re-exposed to other NFs and AFs by NEF 423, and / or used for other purposes such as analysis. In addition, NEF 423 can present an interface based on Nnef services.

[0117] NRF 425 supports service discovery functionality, receives network function (NF) discovery requests from NF instances, and provides information about discovered NF instances to NF instances. NRF 425 also maintains information about available NF instances and services supported by these instances. As used herein, the term "instantiation" and the like may refer to the creation of an instance, and "instance" may refer to the specific occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during the execution of a program code. In addition, NRF 425 may present an interface based on Nnrf services.

[0118] The PCF 426 provides for control plane functions to enforce their policy rules and may also support a unified policy framework for managing network behavior. The PCF 426 may also implement a front end (FE) to access subscription information related to policy decisions in the UDR of the UDM 427. The PCF 426 communicates with the AMF 421 via the N15 reference point between the PCF 426 and the AMF 421, which may include the PCF 426 in the visited network and the AMF 421 in the case of a roaming scenario. The PCF 426 communicates with the AF 428 via the N5 reference point between the PCF 426 and the AF 428; and communicates with the SMF 424 via the N7 reference point between the PCF 426 and the SMF 424. The system 400 and / or the CN 420 may also include an N24 reference point between the PCF 426 (in the home network) and the PCF 426 in the visited network. In addition, the PCF 426 may present an interface based on Npcf services.

[0119] UDM 427 processes subscription-related information to support network entities in handling communication sessions and stores subscription data of UE 401. For example, subscription data may be transmitted between UDM 427 and AMF 421 via an N8 reference point between UDM 427 and AMF. UDM 427 may include two parts: Application Front End (FE) and UDR ( Figure 4 FE and UDR are not shown in the figure). UDR stores subscription data and policy data of UDM 427 and PCF 426, and / or structured data for exposure and application data of NEF 423 (including PFD for application detection, application request information of multiple UE 401). Nudr service-based interface can be presented by UDR 221 to allow UDM 427, PCF 426 and NEF 423 to access specific sets of stored data, as well as read, update (e.g., add, modify), delete and subscribe to notifications of related data changes in UDR. UDM may include UDM-FE, which is responsible for handling credentials, location management, subscription management, etc. In different transactions, several different front ends may serve the same user. UDM-FE accesses subscription information stored in UDR, and performs authentication credential processing, user identification processing, access authorization, registration / mobility management and subscription management. UDR interacts with SMF424 via the N10 reference point between UDM 427 and SMF 424. UDM 427 may also support SMS management, where SMS-FE implements similar application logic discussed previously. In addition, UDM 427 may present an interface based on Nudm services.

[0120] AF 428 provides the impact of applications on traffic routing, provides access to NCE, and interacts with the policy framework for policy control. NCE is a mechanism that allows 5GC 420 and AF 428 to provide information to each other via NEF 423, which can be used for edge computing implementation. In such implementations, network operators and third-party services can be hosted near the UE 401 access point of the attachment to achieve effective service delivery through reduced end-to-end delay and load on the transmission network. For edge computing implementation, 5GC can select UPF 402 near UE 401 and perform traffic steering from UPF402 to DN 403 via the N6 interface. This can be based on UE subscription data, UE location and information provided by AF 428. In this way, AF428 will affect UPF (re) selection and traffic routing. Based on operator deployment, when AF 428 is considered a trusted entity, the network operator allows AF 428 to interact directly with the relevant NF. In addition, AF 428 can present an interface based on Naf services.

[0121] NSSF 429 selects a set of network slice instances to serve UE 401. If necessary, NSSF 429 also determines the allowed network slice selection assistance information (NSSAI) and the mapping to the subscribed single NSSAI (S-NSSAI). NSSF 429 also determines the set of access and mobility management functions (AMFs) to serve UE 401, or a list of candidate AMFs 421, based on appropriate configuration and possibly by querying NRF 425. The selection of a set of network slice instances for UE 401 may be triggered by AMF 421, where UE 401 registers by interacting with NSSF 429, which may cause changes to AMF 421. NSSF 429 interacts with AMF 421 via the N22 reference point between AMF 421 and NSSF 429; and via the N31 reference point ( Figure 4 4 (not shown) communicates with another NSSF 429 in the visited network. In addition, the NSSF 429 may present an interface based on the Nnssf service.

[0122] As previously discussed, CN 420 may include an SMS function (SMSF) that may be responsible for Short Message Service (SMS) subscription checking and verification, and relaying SM messages to / from other entities, such as SMS-GMSC / IWMSC / SMS routers, to / from UE 401. SMS also interacts with AMF 421 and UDM 427 for notification procedures that UE 401 is available for SMS transmission (e.g., setting a UE unreachable flag and notifying UDM 427 when UE 401 is available for SMS).

[0123] CN 420 may also include Figure 4 Other elements not shown in the diagram, such as data storage system / architecture, 5G equipment identity register (EIR), security edge protection proxy (SEPP), etc. The data storage system may include structured data storage function (SDSF), unstructured data storage network function (UDSF), etc. Any network function (NF) is connected via any NF and UDSF ( Figure 4 The N18 reference point between the NF and NF (not shown) stores or retrieves unstructured data in or from the UDSF (e.g., UE context). Individual NFs may share a UDSF for storing their respective unstructured data, or individual NFs may each have their own UDSF located at or near a single NF. In addition, the UDSF may present an interface based on the Nudsf service ( Figure 45G-EIR may be a NF that checks the status of PEI to determine whether to blacklist a specific equipment / entity from the network; and SEPP may be a non-transparent proxy that performs topology hiding, message filtering, and policing on the inter-public land mobile network (PLMN) control plane interface.

[0124] Additionally, there may be more reference points and / or service-based interfaces between NF services in a NF; however, for clarity, Figure 4 These interfaces and reference points are omitted. In one example, CN 420 may include an Nx interface, which is an inter-CN interface between an MME (e.g., MME 321) and an AMF 421, so as to achieve interworking between CN 420 and CN 320. Other exemplary interfaces / reference points may include an interface based on N5g-EIR services presented by 5G-EIR, an N27 reference point between an NF repository function (NRF) in a visited network and an NRF in a home network; and an N31 reference point between a network slice selection function (NSSF) in a visited network and an NSSF in a home network.

[0125] Exemplary Infrastructure Equipment

[0126] Figure 5 An example of infrastructure equipment 500 according to various embodiments is shown. Infrastructure equipment 500 (or "system 500") can be implemented as a base station, a radio head, a RAN node (such as the RAN node 211 and / or AP 206 shown and described previously), an application server 230, and / or any other element / device discussed herein. In other examples, system 500 can be implemented in or by a UE.

[0127] System 500 includes: application circuit 505, baseband circuit 510, one or more radio front end modules (RFEM) 515, memory circuit 520, power management integrated circuit (PMIC) 525, power tee circuit 530, network controller circuit 535, network interface connector 540, satellite positioning circuit 545 and user interface 550. In some embodiments, device 500 may include additional elements, such as, for example, memory / storage, display, camera, sensor or input / output (I / O) interface. In other embodiments, the following components may be included in more than one device. For example, the circuit may be separately included in more than one device for cloud radio access network (CRAN), vBBU or other similar specific implementations.

[0128] Application circuit 505 includes circuits such as, but not limited to, one or more processors (processor cores), cache memory, and one or more of the following: a low dropout regulator (LDO), an interrupt controller, a serial interface such as SPI, I 2 C or general programmable serial interface module, real-time clock (RTC), timer-counter including interval timer and watchdog timer, general input / output (I / O or IO), memory card controller such as secure digital (SD) multimedia card (MMC) or similar products, universal serial bus (USB) interface, mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) interface and joint test access group (JTAG) test access port. The processor (or core) of application circuit 505 may be coupled with or may include memory / storage element, and may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory or storage device to enable various applications or operating systems to run on system 500. In some embodiments, the memory / storage element may be an on-chip memory circuit, which may include any suitable volatile and / or non-volatile memory, such as DRAM, SRAM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash memory, solid-state memory and / or any other type of memory device technology, such as those discussed herein.

[0129] The processor of the application circuit 505 may include, for example, one or more processor cores (CPUs), one or more application processors, one or more graphics processing units (GPUs), one or more reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors, one or more Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processors, one or more complex instruction set computing (CISC) processors, one or more digital signal processors (DSPs), one or more FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more microprocessors or controllers, or any suitable combination thereof. In some embodiments, the application circuit 505 may include or may be a dedicated processor / controller for operating according to various embodiments herein. As an example, the processor of the application circuit 505 may include one or more Intel FPGAs. or Processor: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Processor, Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) or Processor; ARM-based processors licensed by ARM Holdings, Ltd., such as the ARM Cortex-A series processors provided by Cavium (TM), Inc. and MIPS-based designs from MIPS Technologies, Inc., such as the MIPSWarrior P-class processor; etc. In some embodiments, system 500 may not utilize application circuit 505, and instead may include a dedicated processor / controller to process IP data received from, for example, an EPC or 5GC.

[0130] In some embodiments, the application circuit 505 may include one or more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices, etc. The one or more hardware accelerators may include, for example, computer vision (CV) and / or deep learning (DL) accelerators. For example, the programmable processing device may be one or more field programmable devices (FPDs), such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), etc.; programmable logic devices (PLDs), such as complex PLDs (CPLDs), high capacity PLDs (HCPLDs), etc.; ASICs, such as structured ASICs, etc.; programmable SoCs (PSoCs); etc. In such embodiments, the circuits of the application circuit 505 may include logic blocks or logic architectures, as well as other interconnected resources that can be programmed to perform various functions such as the processes, methods, functions, etc. of the various embodiments discussed herein. In such an embodiment, the circuitry of the application circuit 505 may include a memory unit (e.g., an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), a flash memory, a static memory (e.g., a static random access memory (SRAM), an anti-fuse, etc.)) for storing logic blocks, logic architectures, data, etc. in a look-up table (LUT), etc.

[0131] The baseband circuit 510 may be implemented, for example, as a solder-in substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board, or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. Figure 7 The various hardware electronic components of baseband circuit 510 are discussed.

[0132] The user interface circuit 550 may include one or more user interfaces designed to enable a user to interact with the system 500 or peripheral component interfaces designed to enable peripheral components to interact with the system 500. The user interface may include, but is not limited to, one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), one or more indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)), a physical keyboard or keypad, a mouse, a touch pad, a touch screen, a speaker or other audio transmitting device, a microphone, a printer, a scanner, a headset, a display screen or display device, etc. The peripheral component interface may include, but is not limited to, a non-volatile memory port, a universal serial bus (USB) port, an audio jack, a power interface, etc.

[0133] The radio front end module (RFEM) 515 may include a millimeter wave (mmWave) RFEM and one or more sub-millimeter wave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some embodiments, the one or more sub-millimeter wave RFICs may be physically separated from the mmWave RFEM. The RFIC may include one or more antennas or antenna arrays (see, e.g., below). Figure 7 The antenna array 711 is a connector and the RFEM can be connected to multiple antennas. In an alternative implementation, both millimeter wave and sub-millimeter wave radio functions can be implemented in the same physical RFEM 515 that combines both millimeter wave antennas and sub-millimeter waves.

[0134] The memory circuit 520 may include one or more of the following: a volatile memory such as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and / or a synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), a non-volatile memory (NVM) including a high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as a "flash memory"), a phase change random access memory (PRAM), a magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc., and may be combined with and The memory circuit 520 may be implemented as one or more of: a solder-in package integrated circuit, a socket memory module, and a plug-in memory card.

[0135] The PMIC 525 may include a voltage regulator, a surge protector, a power alarm detection circuit, and one or more backup power sources such as batteries or capacitors. The power alarm detection circuit may detect one or more of a brownout (undervoltage) and a surge (overvoltage) condition. The power tee circuit 530 provides power extracted from the network cable to provide both power and data connections for the infrastructure equipment 500 using a single cable.

[0136] The network controller circuit 535 provides a connection to the network using a standard network interface protocol such as Ethernet, Ethernet based on a GRE tunnel, Ethernet based on multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), or some other suitable protocol. A physical connection can be used to provide a network connection to / from the infrastructure equipment 500 via a network interface connector 540, which can be an electrical connection (commonly referred to as a "copper interconnect"), an optical connection, or a wireless connection. The network controller circuit 535 may include one or more dedicated processors and / or FPGAs for communicating using one or more of the aforementioned protocols. In some embodiments, the network controller circuit 535 may include multiple controllers for providing connections to other networks using the same or different protocols.

[0137] The positioning circuit 545 includes circuits for receiving and decoding signals transmitted / broadcasted by the positioning network of the global satellite navigation system (GNSS). Examples of navigation satellite constellations (or GNSS) include the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia's Global Navigation System (GLONASS), the European Union's Galileo system, China's Beidou Navigation Satellite System, regional navigation systems or GNSS augmentation systems (e.g., using the Indian constellation (NAVIC), Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), France's Doppler Orbit Chart and Satellite Integrated Radio Positioning (DORIS), etc. for navigation), etc. The positioning circuit 545 includes various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, etc. for facilitating OTA communications) to communicate with components of the positioning network such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. In some embodiments, the positioning circuit 545 may include a micro technology (micro PNT) IC for positioning, navigation, and timing, which uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking / estimation without GNSS assistance. The positioning circuit 545 may also be part of or interact with the baseband circuit 510 and / or RFEM 515 to communicate with nodes and components of the positioning network. The positioning circuit 545 may also provide location data and / or time data to the application circuit 505, which may use the data to synchronize operations with various infrastructure (e.g., RAN node 211, etc.), etc.

[0138] Figure 5 The components shown communicate with each other using interface circuitry that may include any number of bus and / or interconnect (IX) technologies, such as Industry Standard Architecture (ISA), Extended ISA (EISA), Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), Peripheral Component Interconnect Extended (PCIx), PCI express (PCIe), or any number of other technologies. The bus / IX may be a proprietary bus, such as used in a system on a chip (SoC) based system. Other bus / IX systems may be included, such as I 2 C interface, SPI interface, point-to-point interface and power bus, etc.

[0139] Figure 6 An example of a platform 600 (or "device 600") according to various embodiments is shown. In some embodiments, the computer platform 600 may be suitable for use as a UE 201, a UE 301, an application server 230, and / or any other element / device discussed herein. The platform 600 may include any combination of components shown in the example. The components of the platform 600 may be implemented as an integrated circuit (IC), part of an IC, a discrete electronic device, or other modules, logic, hardware, software, firmware, or a combination thereof adapted in the computer platform 600, or as components otherwise incorporated within a chassis of a larger system. Figure 6 The block diagram is intended to show a high-level view of the components of computer platform 600. However, some of the components shown may be omitted, additional components may be present, and different arrangements of the components shown may occur in other implementations.

[0140] Application circuit 605 includes circuits such as, but not limited to, one or more processors (or processor cores), cache memory, and LDO, interrupt controller, serial interface (such as SPI), I 2 The processor (or core) of the application circuit 605 may be coupled to or may include a memory / storage element and may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory or storage device to enable various applications or operating systems to run on the system 600. In some embodiments, the memory / storage element may be an on-chip memory circuit that may include any suitable volatile and / or non-volatile memory, such as DRAM, SRAM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash memory, solid-state memory, and / or any other type of memory device technology, such as those discussed herein.

[0141] The processor of the application circuit 605 may include, for example, one or more processor cores, one or more application processors, one or more GPUs, one or more RISC processors, one or more ARM processors, one or more CISC processors, one or more DSPs, one or more FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more microprocessors or controllers, multi-threaded processors, ultra-low voltage processors, embedded processors, some other known processing elements, or any suitable combination thereof. In some embodiments, the application circuit 605 may include or may be a dedicated processor / controller for operating according to various embodiments herein.

[0142] As an example, the processor of the application circuit 605 may include a processor based on Architecture Core TM Processors such as Quark TM 、Atom TM , i3, i5, i7 or MCU class processors, or available from Santa Clara, CA The processor of application circuit 605 may also be one or more of the following: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Processor or Accelerated Processing Unit (APU); from Inc.'s A5-A9 processors, Snapdragon by Technologies, Inc. TM Processor, Texas Instruments, Open Multimedia Applications Platform(OMAP) TM processors; MIPS-based designs from MIPS Technologies, Inc., such as the MIPS Warrior M-class, Warrior I-class, and Warrior P-class processors; ARM-based designs licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd., such as the ARM Cortex-A, Cortex-R, and Cortex-M series processors; etc. In some embodiments, the application circuit 605 can be part of a system on a chip (SoC), in which the application circuit 605 and other components are formed as a single integrated circuit or a single package, such as from company( Edison Corporation TM or Galileo TM SoC board.

[0143] Additionally or alternatively, the application circuit 605 may include circuits such as, but not limited to, one or more field programmable devices (FPDs), such as FPGAs, etc.; programmable logic devices (PLDs), such as complex PLDs (CPLDs), high capacity PLDs (HCPLDs), etc.; ASICs, such as structured ASICs, etc.; programmable SoCs (PSoCs); etc. In such embodiments, the circuits of the application circuit 605 may include logic blocks or logic structures, and other interconnected resources that may be programmed to perform various functions such as the processes, methods, functions, etc. of the various embodiments discussed herein. In such embodiments, the circuits of the application circuit 605 may include memory cells (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, static memory (e.g., static random access memory (SRAM), anti-fuse, etc.)) for storing logic blocks, logic structures, data, etc. in a lookup table (LUT), etc.

[0144] Baseband circuit 610 may be implemented, for example, as a solder-in substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board, or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. Figure 7 The various hardware electronic components of baseband circuit 610 are discussed.

[0145] The RFEM 615 may include a millimeter wave (mmWave) RFEM and one or more sub-millimeter wave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some embodiments, the one or more sub-millimeter wave RFICs may be physically separated from the mmWave RFEM. The RFIC may include one or more antennas or antenna arrays (see, e.g., below). Figure 7 The antenna array 711 is connected to the RFEM and the RFEM can be connected to multiple antennas. In an alternative embodiment, both millimeter wave and sub-millimeter wave radio functions can be implemented in the same physical RFEM 615 that combines both millimeter wave antennas and sub-millimeter waves.

[0146] The memory circuit 620 may include any number and type of memory devices for providing a fixed amount of system memory. For example, the memory circuit 620 may include one or more of the following: volatile memory, including random access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM) and / or synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM); and non-volatile memory (NVM), including high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as flash memory), phase change random access memory (PRAM), magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc. The memory circuit 620 may be developed according to a Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) based low power double data rate (LPDDR) design (such as LPDDR2, LPDDR3, LPDDR4, etc.). The memory circuit 620 may be implemented as one or more of a solder-in package integrated circuit, a single die package (SDP), a dual die package (DDP), or a quad die package (Q17P), a socketed memory module, a dual in-line memory module (DIMM) including a micro DIMM or a mini DIMM, and / or soldered to a motherboard via a ball grid array (BGA). In a low-power implementation, the memory circuit 620 may be an on-chip memory or register associated with the application circuit 605. In order to provide persistent storage of information (such as data, applications, operating systems, etc.), the memory circuit 620 may include one or more mass storage devices, which may include, among others, a solid state disk drive (SSDD), a hard disk drive (HDD), a micro HDD, a resistive change memory, a phase change memory, a holographic memory, or a chemical memory. For example, the computer platform 600 may be combined with a memory device obtained from and Three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memory.

[0147] Removable memory circuitry 623 may include devices, circuitry, housings / casings, ports or receptacles, etc., for coupling portable data storage devices to platform 600. These portable data storage devices may be used for mass storage and may include, for example, flash memory cards (e.g., Secure Digital (SD) cards, micro SD cards, xD picture cards, etc.), as well as USB flash drives, optical disks, external HDDs, etc.

[0148] The platform 600 may further include an interface circuit (not shown) for connecting external devices to the platform 600. External devices connected to the platform 600 via the interface circuit include a sensor circuit 621 and an electromechanical component (EMC) 622, and a removable memory device coupled to a removable memory circuit 623.

[0149] Sensor circuitry 621 comprises a device, module, or subsystem that is intended to detect events or changes in its environment, and to send information about the detected events (sensor data) to some other device, module, subsystem, etc. Examples of such sensors include, among others: an inertial measurement unit (IMU) including an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and / or a magnetometer; a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) or a nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) including a three-axis accelerometer, a three-axis gyroscope, and / or a magnetometer; a level sensor; a flow sensor; a temperature sensor (e.g., a thermistor); a pressure sensor; a barometric pressure sensor; a gravity meter; an altimeter; an image capture device (e.g., a camera or a lensless aperture); a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor; a proximity sensor (e.g., an infrared radiation detector, etc.), a depth sensor, an ambient light sensor, an ultrasonic transceiver; a microphone or other similar audio capture device; etc.

[0150] The EMC 622 includes devices, modules or subsystems that are intended to enable the platform 600 to change its state, position and / or orientation or to move or control mechanisms or (sub) systems. In addition, the EMC 622 can be configured to generate messages / signaling and send messages / signaling to other components of the platform 600 to indicate the current state of the EMC 622. Examples of EMC 622 include one or more power switches, relays (including electromechanical relays (EMR) and / or solid-state relays (SSR)), actuators (e.g., valve actuators, etc.), audible sound generators, visual warning devices, motors (e.g., DC motors, stepper motors, etc.), wheels, thrusters, propellers, claws, clamps, hooks and / or other similar electromechanical components. In some embodiments, the platform 600 is configured to operate one or more EMC 622 based on one or more capture events and / or instructions or control signals received from service providers and / or various clients.

[0151] In some embodiments, the interface circuit connects the platform 600 to the positioning circuit 645. The positioning circuit 645 includes a circuit for receiving and decoding signals transmitted / broadcasted by the positioning network of the GNSS. Examples of navigation satellite constellations (or GNSS) may include the GPS of the United States, the GLONASS of Russia, the Galileo system of the European Union, the Beidou navigation satellite system of China, regional navigation systems or GNSS augmentation systems (e.g., NAVIC, QZSS of Japan, DORIS of France, etc.), etc. The positioning circuit 645 includes various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, etc. for facilitating OTA communication) to communicate with components of the positioning network such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. In some embodiments, the positioning circuit 645 may include a micro PNT IC that uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking / estimation without GNSS assistance. The positioning circuit 645 may also be part of the baseband circuit 610 and / or the RFEM 615 or interact with it to communicate with nodes and components of the positioning network. Positioning circuitry 645 may also provide position data and / or time data to application circuitry 605, which may use the data to synchronize operations with various infrastructure (e.g., radio base stations) for use in turn-by-turn navigation applications, etc.

[0152] In some embodiments, the interface circuit connects the platform 600 to a near field communication (NFC) circuit 640. The NFC circuit 640 is configured to provide contactless short-range communication based on the radio frequency identification (RFID) standard, wherein a magnetic field induction is used to enable communication between the NFC circuit 640 and an NFC-enabled device (e.g., an "NFC touch point") external to the platform 600. The NFC circuit 640 includes an NFC controller coupled to an antenna element and a processor coupled to the NFC controller. The NFC controller may be a chip / IC that provides NFC functionality to the NFC circuit 640 by executing NFC controller firmware and an NFC stack. The NFC stack may be executed by the processor to control the NFC controller, and the NFC controller firmware may be executed by the NFC controller to control the antenna element to transmit a short-range RF signal. The RF signal may power a passive NFC tag (e.g., a microchip embedded in a sticker or wristband) to transfer stored data to the NFC circuit 640, or initiate data transmission between the NFC circuit 640 and another active NFC device (e.g., a smart phone or an NFC-enabled POS terminal) near the platform 600.

[0153] The driver circuit 646 may include software and hardware elements that operate to control specific devices embedded in, attached to, or otherwise communicatively coupled to the platform 600. The driver circuit 646 may include various drivers to allow other components of the platform 600 to interact with or control various input / output (I / O) devices that may be present in or connected to the platform 600. For example, the driver circuit 646 may include: a display driver for controlling and allowing access to a display device, a touch screen driver for controlling and allowing access to a touch screen interface of the platform 600, a sensor driver for obtaining sensor readings of the sensor circuit 621 and controlling and allowing access to the sensor circuit 621, an EMC driver for obtaining an actuator position of the EMC 622 and / or controlling and allowing access to the EMC 622, a camera driver for controlling and allowing access to an embedded image capture device, and an audio driver for controlling and allowing access to one or more audio devices.

[0154] A power management integrated circuit (PMIC) 625 (also referred to as “power management circuit 625”) may manage power provided to various components of the platform 600. Specifically, the PMIC 625 may control power selection, voltage scaling, battery charging, or DC-DC conversion relative to the baseband circuit 610. When the platform 600 is capable of being powered by a battery 630, for example, when the device is included in the UE 201, UE 301, the PMIC 625 may be generally included.

[0155] In some embodiments, the PMIC 625 may control or otherwise be part of various power saving mechanisms of the platform 600. For example, if the platform 600 is in the RRC_Connected state, in which the platform is still connected to the RAN node because it expects to receive traffic soon, then after a period of inactivity, the platform may enter a state known as discontinuous reception mode (DRX). During this state, the platform 600 may be powered off for short time intervals, thereby saving power. If there is no data traffic activity for an extended period of time, the platform 600 may transition to the RRC_Idle state, in which the device is disconnected from the network and no operations such as channel quality feedback, handover, etc. are performed. The platform 600 enters a very low power state and performs paging, in which the device wakes up periodically again to listen to the network and then powers off again. The platform 600 may not receive data in this state; in order to receive data, the platform must transition back to the RRC_Connected state. Additional power saving modes may prevent the device from using the network for longer than the paging interval (ranging from a few seconds to a few hours). During this time, the device is completely unable to connect to the network and can be completely powered off. Any data sent during this time will be significantly delayed, and it is assumed that the delay is acceptable.

[0156] The battery 630 can power the platform 600, but in some examples, the platform 600 can be mounted in a fixed location and can have a power source coupled to the grid. The battery 630 can be a lithium-ion battery, a metal-air battery such as a zinc-air battery, an aluminum-air battery, a lithium-air battery, etc. In some embodiments, such as in V2X applications, the battery 630 can be a typical lead-acid car battery.

[0157] In some embodiments, the battery 630 may be a "smart battery" that includes or is coupled to a battery management system (BMS) or a battery monitoring integrated circuit. The BMS may be included in the platform 600 to track the state of charge (SoCh) of the battery 630. The BMS may be used to monitor other parameters of the battery 630, such as the state of health (SoH) and state of function (SoF) of the battery 630 to provide fault prediction. The BMS transmits information of the battery 630 to the application circuit 605 or other components of the platform 600. The BMS may also include an analog-to-digital (ADC) converter that allows the application circuit 605 to directly monitor the voltage of the battery 630 or the current from the battery 630. The battery parameters may be used to determine actions that the platform 600 may perform, such as transmission frequency, network operation, sensing frequency, etc.

[0158] A power block or other power source coupled to the grid can be coupled to the BMS to charge the battery 630. In some examples, the power block XS30 can be replaced with a wireless power receiver to obtain power wirelessly, for example, through a loop antenna in the computer platform 600. In these examples, a wireless battery charging circuit can be included in the BMS. The specific charging circuit selected can depend on the size of the battery 630 and therefore the current required. Charging can be performed using the aviation fuel standard published by the Aviation Fuel Alliance, the Qi wireless charging standard published by the Wireless Power Alliance, or the Rezence charging standard published by the Wireless Power Alliance.

[0159] The user interface circuit 650 includes various input / output (I / O) devices present in or connected to the platform 600, and includes one or more user interfaces designed to implement user interaction with the platform 600 and / or a peripheral component interface designed to implement interaction with the peripheral components of the platform 600. The user interface circuit 650 includes input device circuits and output device circuits. The input device circuit includes any physical or virtual means for accepting input, including, in particular, one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), a physical keyboard, a keypad, a mouse, a touchpad, a touch screen, a microphone, a scanner, a headset, etc. The output device circuit includes any physical or virtual means for displaying information or otherwise conveying information (such as sensor readings, actuator positions, or other similar information). The output device circuitry may include any number and / or combination of audio or visual displays, including, in particular, one or more simple visual outputs / indicators (e.g., binary status indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)) and multi-character visual outputs, or more complex outputs (such as display devices or touch screens (e.g., liquid crystal displays (LCDs), LED displays, quantum dot displays, projectors, etc.)), where outputs of characters, graphics, multimedia objects, etc. are generated or produced by the operation of the platform 600. The output device circuitry may also include speakers or other audio emitting devices, printers, etc. In some embodiments, the sensor circuit 621 may be used as an input device circuit (e.g., an image capture device, a motion capture device, etc.) and one or more EMCs may be used as output device circuits (e.g., actuators for providing tactile feedback, etc.). In another example, an NFC circuit may be included to read an electronic tag and / or connect to another NFC-enabled device, the NFC circuit including an NFC controller and a processing device coupled to an antenna element. The peripheral component interface may include, but is not limited to, a non-volatile memory port, a USB port, an audio jack, a power interface, etc.

[0160] Although not shown, the components of platform 600 communicate with each other using a suitable bus or interconnect (IX) technology, which may include any number of technologies, including ISA, EISA, PCI, PCIx, PCIe, a time-triggered protocol (TTP) system, a FlexRay system, or any number of other technologies. The bus / IX may be a proprietary bus / IX, such as used in SoC-based systems. Other bus / IX systems, such as I 2 C interface, SPI interface, point-to-point interface and power bus, etc.

[0161] Exemplary baseband circuits and radio front-end modules

[0162] Figure 7 1 shows exemplary components of a baseband circuit 710 and a radio front end module (RFEM) 1215 according to various embodiments. The baseband circuit 710 corresponds to Figure 5 The baseband circuit 510 and Figure 6 Baseband circuit 610. RFEM 1215 corresponds to Figure 5 RFEM 515 and Figure 6 RFEM 615. As shown, RFEM 1215 may include radio frequency (RF) circuitry 706, front end module (FEM) circuitry 708, and an antenna array 711 coupled together at least as shown.

[0163] The baseband circuit 710 includes circuits and / or control logic components that are configured to execute various radio / network protocols and radio control functions that enable communication with one or more radio networks via the RF circuit 706. The radio control functions may include, but are not limited to, signal modulation / demodulation, encoding / decoding, radio frequency shifting, etc. In some embodiments, the modulation / demodulation circuit of the baseband circuit 710 may include fast Fourier transform (FFT), precoding, or constellation mapping / demapping functions. In some embodiments, the encoding / decoding circuit of the baseband circuit 710 may include convolution, tail-biting convolution, turbo, Viterbi, or low-density parity check (LDPC) encoder / decoder functions. The implementation of the modulation / demodulation and encoder / decoder functions is not limited to these examples, and may include other suitable functions in other embodiments. The baseband circuit 710 is configured to process baseband signals received from the receive signal path of the RF circuit 706 and generate baseband signals for the transmit signal path of the RF circuit 706. The baseband circuit 710 is configured to communicate with the application circuit 505 / 605 (see Figure 5 and Figure 6 ) to generate and process baseband signals and control the operation of RF circuit 706. Baseband circuit 710 handles various radio control functions.

[0164] The aforementioned circuits and / or control logic components of the baseband circuit 710 may include one or more single-core or multi-core processors. For example, the one or more processors may include a 3G baseband processor 704A, a 4G / LTE baseband processor 704B, a 5G / NR baseband processor 704C, or some other baseband processors 704D for other existing generations, generations under development or generations to be developed in the future (e.g., the sixth generation (6G), etc.). In other embodiments, some or all of the functions of the baseband processors 704A-704D may be included in a module stored in the memory 704G and executed via a central processing unit (CPU) 704E. In other embodiments, some or all of the functions of the baseband processors 704A-704D may be provided as a hardware accelerator (e.g., FPGA, ASIC, etc.) loaded with an appropriate bitstream or logic block stored in a corresponding memory unit. In various embodiments, the memory 704G stores program code of a real-time OS (RTOS), which, when executed by the CPU 704E (or other baseband processor), enables the CPU 704E (or other baseband processor) to manage resources of the baseband circuit 710, schedule tasks, etc. Examples of RTOS may include: Operating System Embedded (OSE) provided TM , by Mentor Nucleus RTOS provided TM , by Mentor Versatile Real-Time Executive (VRTX) provided by Express Provided by ThreadX TM ,Depend on FreeRTOS and REX OS provided by OpenKernel (OK) OKL4 provided, or any other suitable RTOS, such as those discussed herein. In addition, the baseband circuit 710 includes one or more audio digital signal processors (DSPs) 704F. The audio DSP 704F includes elements for compression / decompression and echo cancellation, and may include other suitable processing elements in other embodiments.

[0165] In some embodiments, each of processors 704A-704E includes a corresponding memory interface to send data to / receive data from memory 704G. Baseband circuit 710 may also include one or more interfaces for communicatively coupling to other circuits / devices, such as an interface for sending data to / receiving data from a memory external to baseband circuit 710; an interface for sending data to / receiving data from a memory external to the baseband circuit; Figures 5 and 6An application circuit interface for sending data to / receiving data from the application circuit 505 / 605; Figure 7 RF circuit 706 to send data / receive data from the RF circuit RF circuit interface; for receiving data from one or more wireless hardware elements (e.g., near field communication (NFC) components, Low power consumption components, components, etc.) to send data / receive data from these wireless hardware elements; and a power management interface for sending power or control signals to / receiving power or control signals from the PMIC 625.

[0166] In an alternative embodiment (which can be combined with the above embodiment), the baseband circuit 710 includes one or more digital baseband systems, which are coupled to each other and to the CPU subsystem, the audio subsystem and the interface subsystem via an interconnection subsystem. The digital baseband subsystem can also be coupled to the digital baseband interface and the mixed signal baseband subsystem via another interconnection subsystem. Each interconnection subsystem in the interconnection subsystem may include a bus system, a point-to-point connector, a network on chip (NOC) structure and / or some other suitable bus or interconnection technology, such as those discussed herein. The audio subsystem may include a DSP circuit, a buffer memory, a program memory, a voice processing accelerator circuit, a data converter circuit (such as an analog-to-digital converter circuit and a digital-to-analog converter circuit), an analog circuit including one or more of an amplifier and a filter, and / or other similar components. In one aspect of the present disclosure, the baseband circuit 710 may include a protocol processing circuit with one or more control circuit instances (not shown) to provide control functions for the digital baseband circuit and / or the radio frequency circuit (e.g., the radio front end module 1215).

[0167] although Figure 7, but in some embodiments, the baseband circuit 710 includes various processing devices (e.g., "multi-protocol baseband processor" or "protocol processing circuit") for operating one or more wireless communication protocols and various processing devices for implementing PHY layer functions. In these embodiments, the PHY layer functions include the aforementioned radio control functions. In these embodiments, the protocol processing circuit operates or implements various protocol layers / entities of one or more wireless communication protocols. In a first example, when the baseband circuit 710 and / or the RF circuit 706 are part of a millimeter wave communication circuit or some other suitable cellular communication circuit, the protocol processing circuit may operate an LTE protocol entity and / or a 5G / NR protocol entity. In a first example, the protocol processing circuit will operate MAC, RLC, PDCP, SDAP, RRC, and NAS functions. In a second example, when the baseband circuit 710 and / or the RF circuit 706 are part of a Wi-Fi communication system, the protocol processing circuit may operate one or more IEEE-based protocols. In a second example, the protocol processing circuit will operate Wi-Fi MAC and logical link control (LLC) functions. The protocol processing circuitry may include one or more memory structures (e.g., 704G) for storing program codes and data for operating protocol functions, and one or more processing cores for executing program codes and performing various operations using data. The baseband circuitry 710 may also support radio communications for more than one wireless protocol.

[0168] The various hardware elements of the baseband circuit 710 discussed herein may be implemented as, for example, a solder-in substrate including one or more integrated circuits (ICs), a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board, or a multi-chip module containing two or more ICs. In one example, the components of the baseband circuit 710 may be appropriately combined in a single chip or a single chipset, or disposed on the same circuit board. In another example, some or all of the components of the baseband circuit 710 and the RF circuit 706 may be implemented together, such as, for example, a system on a chip (SoC) or a system-level package (SiP). In another example, some or all of the components of the baseband circuit 710 may be implemented as a separate SoC communicatively coupled to the RF circuit 706 (or multiple instances of the RF circuit 706). In yet another example, some or all of the components of the baseband circuit 710 and the application circuit 505 / 605 may be implemented together as a separate SoC mounted to the same circuit board (e.g., a "multi-chip package").

[0169] In some embodiments, the baseband circuit 710 provides communications compatible with one or more radio technologies. For example, in some embodiments, the baseband circuit 710 supports communications with E-UTRAN or other WMANs, WLANs, WPANs. Embodiments in which the baseband circuit 710 is configured to support radio communications of more than one wireless protocol may be referred to as multi-mode baseband circuits.

[0170] RF circuit 706 may enable communication with a wireless network through a non-solid medium using modulated electromagnetic radiation. In various embodiments, RF circuit 706 may include switches, filters, amplifiers, etc. to facilitate communication with a wireless network. RF circuit 706 may include a receive signal path, which may include circuits for down-converting an RF signal received from FEM circuit 708 and providing a baseband signal to baseband circuit 710. RF circuit 706 may also include a transmit signal path, which may include circuits for up-converting a baseband signal provided by baseband circuit 710 and providing an RF output signal for transmission to FEM circuit 708.

[0171] In some embodiments, the receive signal path of the RF circuit 706 may include a mixer circuit 706A, an amplifier circuit 706B, and a filter circuit 706C. In some embodiments, the transmit signal path of the RF circuit 706 may include a filter circuit 706C and a mixer circuit 706A. The RF circuit 706 may also include a synthesizer circuit 706D, which is used to synthesize the frequencies used by the mixer circuit 706A of the receive signal path and the transmit signal path. In some embodiments, the mixer circuit 706A of the receive signal path may be configured to down-convert the RF signal received from the FEM circuit 708 based on the synthesized frequency provided by the synthesizer circuit 706D. The amplifier circuit 706B may be configured to amplify the down-converted signal, and the filter circuit 706C may be a low pass filter (LPF) or a band pass filter (BPF), which is configured to remove unwanted signals from the down-converted signal to generate an output baseband signal. The output baseband signal may be provided to the baseband circuit 710 for further processing. In some embodiments, the output baseband signal may be a zero frequency baseband signal, although this is not required.In some embodiments, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect, the mixer circuit 706A of the receive signal path may include a passive mixer.

[0172] In some embodiments, mixer circuit 706A of the transmit signal path may be configured to upconvert an input baseband signal based on a synthesized frequency provided by synthesizer circuit 706D to generate an RF output signal for FEM circuit 708. The baseband signal may be provided by baseband circuit 710 and may be filtered by filter circuit 706C.

[0173] In some embodiments, the mixer circuit 706A of the receive signal path and the mixer circuit 706A of the transmit signal path may include two or more mixers and may be arranged for quadrature down conversion and quadrature up conversion, respectively. In some embodiments, the mixer circuit 706A of the receive signal path and the mixer circuit 706A of the transmit signal path may include two or more mixers and may be arranged for image suppression (e.g., Hartley image suppression). In some embodiments, the mixer circuit 706A of the receive signal path and the mixer circuit 706A of the transmit signal path may be arranged for direct down conversion and direct up conversion, respectively. In some embodiments, the mixer circuit 706A of the receive signal path and the mixer circuit 706A of the transmit signal path may be configured for superheterodyne operation.

[0174] In some embodiments, the output baseband signal and the input baseband signal may be analog baseband signals, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. In some alternative embodiments, the output baseband signal and the input baseband signal may be digital baseband signals. In these alternative embodiments, the RF circuit 706 may include an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) circuit, and the baseband circuit 710 may include a digital baseband interface to communicate with the RF circuit 706.

[0175] In some dual-mode embodiments, separate radio IC circuits may be provided to process signals for each spectrum, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect.

[0176] In some embodiments, synthesizer circuit 706D may be a fractional-N synthesizer or a fractional-N / N+1 synthesizer, but the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect, as other types of frequency synthesizers may also be suitable. For example, synthesizer circuit 706D may be a delta-sigma synthesizer, a frequency multiplier, or a synthesizer including a phase-locked loop with a frequency divider.

[0177] Synthesizer circuit 706D may be configured to synthesize an output frequency based on the frequency input and the divider control input for use by mixer circuit 706A of RF circuit 706. In some embodiments, synthesizer circuit 706D may be a fractional-N / N+1 synthesizer.

[0178] In some embodiments, the frequency input may be provided by a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), although this is not required. The divider control input may be provided by the baseband circuit 710 or the application circuit 505 / 605 according to the desired output frequency. In some embodiments, the divider control input (e.g., N) may be determined from a lookup table based on the channel indicated by the application circuit 505 / 605.

[0179] The synthesizer circuit 706D of the RF circuit 706 may include a frequency divider, a delay locked loop (DLL), a multiplexer, and a phase accumulator. In some embodiments, the frequency divider may be a dual-mode frequency divider (DMD), and the phase accumulator may be a digital phase accumulator (DPA). In some embodiments, the DMD may be configured to divide the input signal by N or N+1 (e.g., based on carry) to provide a fractional division ratio. In some example embodiments, the DLL may include a cascaded, tunable, delay element, a phase detector, a charge pump, and a D-type flip-flop set. In these embodiments, the delay element may be configured to divide the VCO cycle into Nd equal phase groups, where Nd is the number of delay elements in the delay line. In this way, the DLL provides negative feedback to help ensure that the total delay through the delay line is one VCO cycle.

[0180] In some embodiments, the synthesizer circuit 706D can be configured to generate a carrier frequency as an output frequency, while in other embodiments, the output frequency can be a multiple of the carrier frequency (e.g., twice the carrier frequency, four times the carrier frequency) and can be used with a quadrature generator and divider circuit to generate multiple signals with multiple different phases relative to each other at the carrier frequency. In some embodiments, the output frequency can be the LO frequency (fLO). In some embodiments, the RF circuit 706 can include an IQ / polarity converter.

[0181] The FEM circuitry 708 may include a receive signal path that may include circuitry configured to operate on RF signals received from the antenna array 711, amplify the received signals, and provide an amplified version of the received signals to the RF circuitry 706 for further processing. The FEM circuitry 708 may also include a transmit signal path that may include circuitry configured to amplify signals for transmission provided by the RF circuitry 706 for transmission by one or more antenna elements in the antenna array 711. In various embodiments, amplification by the transmit or receive signal paths may be accomplished only in the RF circuitry 706, only in the FEM circuitry 708, or in both the RF circuitry 706 and the FEM circuitry 708.

[0182] In some embodiments, the FEM circuit 708 may include a TX / RX switch to switch between transmission mode and reception mode operation. The FEM circuit 708 may include a receive signal path and a transmit signal path. The receive signal path of the FEM circuit 708 may include an LNA to amplify a received RF signal and provide the amplified received RF signal as an output (e.g., provided to the RF circuit 706). The transmit signal path of the FEM circuit 708 may include a power amplifier (PA) for amplifying an input RF signal (e.g., provided by the RF circuit 706), and one or more filters for generating an RF signal for subsequent transmission by one or more antenna elements of the antenna array 711.

[0183] The antenna array 711 includes one or more antenna elements, each of which is configured to convert electrical signals into radio waves to travel through the air and to convert received radio waves into electrical signals. For example, the digital baseband signal provided by the baseband circuit 710 is converted into an analog RF signal (e.g., a modulated waveform), which is amplified and transmitted via the antenna elements of the antenna array 711 including one or more antenna elements (not shown). The antenna elements may be omnidirectional, directional, or a combination thereof. The antenna elements may be formed into a variety of arrangements as known and / or discussed herein. The antenna array 711 may include a microstrip antenna or a printed antenna fabricated on the surface of one or more printed circuit boards. The antenna array 711 may be formed as a patch of metal foil of various shapes (e.g., a patch antenna) and may be coupled to the RF circuit 706 and / or the FEM circuit 708 using a metal transmission line or the like.

[0184] Exemplary Protocol Functionality That May Be Implemented in a Wireless Communication Device

[0185] The processor of the application circuit 505 / 605 and the processor of the baseband circuit 710 can be used to execute elements of one or more instances of the protocol stack. For example, the processor of the baseband circuit 710 can be used alone or in combination to perform layer 3, layer 2, or layer 1 functions, and the processor of the application circuit 505 / 605 can utilize data received from these layers (e.g., packet data) and further perform layer 4 functions (e.g., transport communication protocol (TCP) layer and user datagram protocol (UDP) layer). As mentioned herein, layer 3 may include a radio resource control (RRC) layer, which will be described in further detail below. As mentioned herein, layer 2 may include a medium access control (MAC) layer, a radio link control (RLC) layer, and a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) layer, which will be described in further detail below. As mentioned herein, layer 1 may include a physical (PHY) layer of a UE / RAN node, which will be described in further detail below.

[0186] Figure 8Various protocol functions that can be implemented in a wireless communication device according to various embodiments are shown. Specifically, Figure 8 An arrangement 800 is included to show the interconnection between various protocol layers / entities. Various protocol layers / entities operating in conjunction with 5G / NR system standards and LTE system standards are provided. Figure 8 The following description, but Figure 8 Some or all aspects of the invention may also be applicable to other wireless communication network systems.

[0187] In addition to other higher layer functions not shown, the protocol layers of arrangement 800 may also include one or more of PHY 810, MAC 820, RLC 830, PDCP 840, SDAP 847, RRC 855, and NAS layer 857. These protocol layers may include one or more service access points (e.g., Figure 8 Items 859, 856, 850, 849, 845, 835, 825 and 815).

[0188] PHY 810 can transmit and receive physical layer signals 805, which can be received from or transmitted to one or more other communication devices. Physical layer signals 805 may include one or more physical channels, such as those discussed herein. PHY 810 may also perform link adaptation or adaptive modulation and coding (AMC), power control, cell search (e.g., for initial synchronization and switching purposes) and other measurement items used by higher layers (e.g., RRC 855). PHY 810 may also further perform error detection on transmission channels, forward error correction (FEC) encoding / decoding of transmission channels, modulation / demodulation of physical channels, interleaving, rate matching, mapping to physical channels, and MIMO antenna processing. In some embodiments, an instance of PHY 810 may process a request from an instance of MAC 820 via one or more PHY-SAP 815 and provide an indication thereof. According to some embodiments, the request and indication transmitted via PHY-SAP 815 may include one or more transmission channels.

[0189] Instances of MAC 820 process requests from instances of RLC 830 and provide indications thereto via one or more MAC-SAPs 825. These requests and indications transmitted via MAC-SAP 825 may include one or more logical channels. MAC 820 may perform mapping between logical channels and transport channels, multiplexing MAC SDUs from one or more logical channels onto TBs to be delivered to PHY 810 via transport channels, demultiplexing MAC SDUs from TBs delivered from PHY 810 via transport channels to one or more logical channels, multiplexing MAC SDUs onto TBs, scheduling information reporting, error correction through HARQ, and logical channel prioritization.

[0190] An instance of RLC 830 processes requests from an instance of PDCP 840 and provides indications thereto via one or more radio link control service access points (RLC-SAPs) 835. These requests and indications transmitted via RLC-SAPs 835 may include one or more logical channels. RLC 830 may operate in a variety of operating modes, including: transparent mode (TM), unacknowledged mode (UM), and acknowledged mode (AM). RLC 830 may perform transmission of upper layer protocol data units (PDUs), error correction through automatic repeat request (ARQ) for AM data transmission, and concatenation, segmentation, and reassembly of RLC SDUs for UM and AM data transmission. RLC 830 may also perform resegmentation of RLC data PDUs for AM data transmission, reorder RLC data PDUs for UM and AM data transmission, detect duplicate data for UM and AM data transmission, discard RLC SDUs for UM and AM data transmission, detect protocol errors for AM data transmission, and perform RLC re-establishment.

[0191] An instance of PDCP 840 processes requests from an instance of RRC 855 and / or an instance of SDAP 847 and provides indications to them via one or more Packet Data Convergence Protocol Service Points (PDCP-SAP) 845. These requests and indications transmitted via PDCP-SAP 845 may include one or more radio bearers. PDCP 840 may perform header compression and decompression of IP data, maintain PDCP sequence numbers (SNs), perform in-order delivery of upper layer PDUs when lower layers are reestablished, eliminate duplication of lower layers when reestablishing lower layer SDUs for radio bearers mapped on RLC AM, encrypt and decrypt control plane data, perform integrity protection and integrity verification on control plane data, control timer-based data discard, and perform security operations (e.g., encryption, decryption, integrity protection, integrity verification, etc.).

[0192] An instance of SDAP 847 processes requests from one or more higher layer protocol entities via one or more SDAP-SAPs 849 and provides instructions thereto. These requests and instructions transmitted via SDAP-SAPs 849 may include one or more QoS flows. SDAP 847 may map QoS flows to DRBs and vice versa, and may also mark QFIs in DL packets and UL packets. A single SDAP entity 847 may be configured for a separate PDU session. In the UL direction, NG-RAN 210 may control the mapping of QoS flows to DRBs in two different ways (reflective mapping or explicit mapping). For reflective mapping, SDAP 847 of UE 201 may monitor the QFI of the DL packets of each DRB, and may apply the same mapping to packets flowing in the UL direction. For DRBs, SDAP 847 of UE 201 may map UL packets belonging to a QoS flow corresponding to the QoS flow ID and PDU session observed in the DL packets of the DRB. To implement the reflective mapping, the NG-RAN 410 may mark the DL packets with a QoS flow ID over the Uu interface. The explicit mapping may involve the RRC 855 configuring the SDAP 847 with explicit mapping rules of QoS flows to DRBs, which may be stored and followed by the SDAP 847. In some embodiments, the SDAP 847 may be used only in NR implementations and may not be used in LTE implementations.

[0193] The RRC 855 configures aspects of one or more protocol layers, which may include one or more instances of PHY 810, MAC 820, RLC 830, PDCP 840, and SDAP 847, via one or more Management Service Access Points (M-SAPs). In some embodiments, instances of the RRC 855 may process requests from and provide indications to one or more NAS entities 857 via one or more RRC-SAPs 856. The main services and functions of the RRC 855 may include broadcasting of system information (e.g., included in a MIB or SIB related to NAS), broadcasting of system information related to the access stratum (AS), paging, establishment, maintenance, and release of an RRC connection between the UE 201 and the RAN 210 (e.g., RRC connection paging, RRC connection establishment, RRC connection modification, and RRC connection release), establishment, configuration, maintenance, and release of point-to-point radio bearers, security functions including key management, inter-RAT mobility, and measurement configuration for UE measurement reporting. These MIBs and SIBs may include one or more IEs, each of which may include a separate data field or data structure.

[0194] NAS 857 forms the highest layer of the control plane between UE 201 and AMF 421. NAS 857 supports the mobility and session management procedures of UE 201 to establish and maintain an IP connection between UE 201 and P-GW in the LTE system.

[0195] According to various embodiments, one or more protocol entities of the arrangement 800 may be implemented in the UE 201, the RAN node 211, the AMF 421 in the NR implementation or the MME 321 in the LTE implementation, the UPF 402 in the NR implementation or the S-GW 322 and the P-GW 323 in the LTE implementation, etc., for control plane or user plane communication protocol stacks between the aforementioned devices. In such embodiments, one or more protocol entities that may be implemented in one or more of the UE 201, the gNB 211, the AMF 421, etc. are capable of communicating with corresponding peer protocol entities that may be implemented in or on another device (using the services of the corresponding lower layer protocol entities to perform such communication). In some embodiments, the gNB-CU of gNB 211 may host the RRC 855, SDAP 847, and PDCP 840 of the gNB that control the operation of one or more gNB-DUs, and the gNB-DUs of gNB 211 may each host the RLC 830, MAC 820, and PHY 1310 of gNB 211.

[0196] In a first example, the control plane protocol stack may include, in order from the highest layer to the lowest layer, NAS 1357, RRC 1355, PDCP 840, RLC 830, MAC 1320, and PHY 1310. In this example, an upper layer 860 may be built on top of NAS 1357, which includes an IP layer 861, SCTP 862, and an application layer signaling protocol (AP) 863.

[0197] In a NR specific implementation, AP 863 can be an NG application protocol layer (NGAP or NG-AP) 863 for the NG interface 213 defined between the NG-RAN node 211 and the AMF 421, or AP 863 can be an Xn application protocol layer (XnAP or Xn-AP) 863 for the Xn interface 212 defined between two or more RAN nodes 211.

[0198] The NG-AP 863 supports the functions of the NG interface 213 and may include an elementary procedure (EP). The NG-AP EP may be an interaction unit between the NG-RAN node 211 and the AMF 421. The NG-AP 863 services may include two groups: UE-associated services (e.g., services related to the UE 201) and non-UE-associated services (e.g., services related to the entire NG interface instance between the NG-RAN node 211 and the AMF 421). These services may include functions including, but not limited to: a paging function for sending a paging request to the NG-RAN node 211 involved in a specific paging area; a UE context management function for allowing the AMF 421 to establish, modify and / or release the UE context in the AMF 421 and the NG-RAN node 211; a mobility function for the UE 201 in ECM-CONNECTED mode, for intra-system HO to support mobility within the NG-RAN, and for inter-system HO to support mobility from / to the EPS system; a NAS signaling transport function for transmitting or rerouting NAS messages between the UE 201 and the AMF 421; a NAS node selection function for determining the association between the AMF 421 and the UE 201; an NG interface management function for setting up the NG interface and monitoring errors through the NG interface; a warning message sending function for providing a means to transmit a warning message via the NG interface or to cancel an ongoing warning message broadcast; a NAS signaling transport function for transmitting or rerouting NAS messages between the UE 201 and the AMF 421; a NAS node selection function for determining the association between the AMF 421 and the UE 201; a ... via the CN 220 A configuration transmission function for requesting and transmitting RAN configuration information (eg, SON information, performance measurement (PM) data, etc.) between two RAN nodes 211; and / or other similar functions.

[0199] The XnAP 863 supports the functions of the Xn interface 212 and may include XnAP basic mobility procedures and XnAP global procedures. The XnAP basic mobility procedures may include procedures for handling UE mobility within the NG RAN 211 (or E-UTRAN 310), such as handover preparation and cancellation procedures, SN state transfer procedures, UE context retrieval and UE context release procedures, RAN paging procedures, procedures related to dual connectivity, etc. The XnAP global procedures may include procedures that are not related to a specific UE 201, such as Xn interface setup and reset procedures, NG-RAN update procedures, cell activation procedures, etc.

[0200] In an LTE specific implementation, AP 863 can be an S1 application protocol layer (S1-AP) 863 for the S1 interface 213 defined between the E-UTRAN node 211 and the MME, or AP 863 can be an X2 application protocol layer (X2AP or X2-AP) 863 for the X2 interface 212 defined between two or more E-UTRAN nodes 211.

[0201] The S1 application protocol layer (S1-AP) 863 supports the functions of the S1 interface, and similar to the NG-AP discussed previously, the S1-AP may include an S1-AP EP. The S1-AP EP may be an interaction unit between the E-UTRAN node 211 and the MME 321 within the LTE CN 220. The S1-AP 863 services may include two groups: UE-associated services and non-UE-associated services. The functions performed by these services include, but are not limited to: E-UTRAN Radio Access Bearer (E-RAB) management, UE capability indication, mobility, NAS signaling transmission, RAN Information Management (RIM) and configuration transmission.

[0202] The X2AP 863 supports the functions of the X2 interface 212 and may include an X2AP basic mobility procedure and an X2AP global procedure. The X2AP basic mobility procedure may include a procedure for handling UE mobility within the E-UTRAN 220, such as a handover preparation and cancellation procedure, an SN state transfer procedure, a UE context retrieval and a UE context release procedure, a RAN paging procedure, a procedure related to dual connectivity, etc. The X2AP global procedure may include a procedure that is not related to a specific UE 201, such as an X2 interface setup and reset procedure, a load indication procedure, an error indication procedure, a cell activation procedure, etc.

[0203] The SCTP layer (alternatively referred to as the SCTP / IP layer) 862 provides guaranteed delivery of application layer messages (e.g., NGAP or XnAP messages in NR implementations, or S1-AP or X2AP messages in LTE implementations). SCTP 862 can ensure reliable delivery of signaling messages between the RAN node 211 and the AMF 421 / MME 321 based in part on the IP protocol supported by IP 861. The Internet Protocol layer (IP) 861 can be used to perform packet addressing and routing functions. In some embodiments, the IP layer 861 can deliver and transmit PDUs using point-to-point transport. In this regard, the RAN node 211 may include L2 and L1 layer communication links (e.g., wired or wireless) with the MME / AMF to exchange information.

[0204] In a second example, the user plane protocol stack may include SDAP 847, PDCP 840, RLC 830, MAC 1320, and PHY 1310 in order from the highest layer to the lowest layer. The user plane protocol stack may be used for communication between UE 201, RAN node 211, and UPF 402 in NR implementation, or communication between S-GW 322 and P-GW 323 in LTE implementation. In this example, the upper layer 851 may be built on top of SDAP 847 and may include a user datagram protocol (UDP) and IP security layer (UDP / IP) 852, a general packet radio service (GPRS) tunneling protocol layer (GTP-U) 853 for the user plane, and a user plane PDU layer (UP PDU) 863.

[0205] The transport network layer 854 (also referred to as the "transport layer") may be built on top of the IP transport, and the GTP-U 853 may be used on top of the UDP / IP layer 852 (including the UDP layer and the IP layer) to carry the user plane PDU (UP-PDU). The IP layer (also referred to as the "Internet layer") may be used to perform packet addressing and routing functions. The IP layer may assign IP addresses to user data packets, for example, in any of the IPv4, IPv6, or PPP formats.

[0206] GTP-U 853 is used to carry user data within the GPRS core network and between the radio access network and the core network. For example, the transmitted user data can be a packet in any of the IPv4, IPv6 or PPP formats. UDP / IP 852 provides a checksum for data integrity, a port number for addressing different functions at the source and destination, and encryption and authentication of selected data flows. The RAN node 211 and the S-GW 322 can exchange user plane data via a protocol stack including an L1 layer (e.g., PHY810), an L2 layer (e.g., MAC 820, RLC 830, PDCP 840 and / or SDAP 847), a UDP / IP layer 852, and a GTP-U 853 using an S1-U interface. The S-GW 322 and the P-GW 323 can exchange user plane data via a protocol stack including an L1 layer, an L2 layer, a UDP / IP layer 852, and a GTP-U 853 using an S5 / S8a interface. As previously discussed, the NAS protocol supports the mobility of UE 201 and session management procedures to establish and maintain an IP connection between UE 201 and P-GW 323.

[0207] In addition, despite Figure 8863 and / or transport network layer 854. The application layer may be a layer where a user of UE 201, RAN node 211, or other network element interacts with a software application, for example, executed by application circuitry 505 or application circuitry 605, respectively. The application layer may also provide one or more interfaces for the software application to interact with the communication system of UE 201 or RAN node 211, such as baseband circuitry 710. In some embodiments, the IP layer and / or the application layer provide the same or similar functionality as layers 5 to 7 of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, or portions thereof (e.g., OSI layer 7—application layer, OSI layer 6—presentation layer, and OSI layer 5—session layer).

[0208] Fig. 9 Components of a core network according to various embodiments are shown. The components of CN 320 may be implemented in one physical node or in separate physical nodes, including components for reading and executing instructions from a machine-readable medium or a computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium). In some embodiments, the components of CN 420 may be implemented in the same or similar manner as discussed herein with respect to the components of CN 320. In some embodiments, NFV is used to virtualize any or all of the above-mentioned network node functions via executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable storage media (described in further detail below). A logical instance of CN 320 may be referred to as a network slice 901, and each logical instance of CN 320 provides specific network functions and network characteristics. A logical instance of a portion of CN 320 may be referred to as a network sub-slice 902 (e.g., a network sub-slice 902 is shown as including a P-GW 323 and a PCRF 326).

[0209] As used herein, the terms "instantiation" and the like may refer to the creation of an instance, and "instance" may refer to the concrete occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during the execution of program code. A network instance may refer to information identifying a domain, which may be used for traffic detection and routing in different IP domains or in the case of overlapping IP addresses. A network slice instance may refer to a set of network function (NF) instances and the resources (e.g., computing, storage, and networking resources) required to deploy a network slice.

[0210] Regarding 5G systems (see e.g. above Figure 4), a network slice always includes a radio access network (RAN) part and a core network (CN) part. Support for network slicing relies on the principle that traffic for different slices is handled by different protocol data unit (PDU) sessions. The network can implement different network slices by scheduling and also by providing different L1 / L2 configurations. If NAS has provided an RRC message, UE 401 provides auxiliary information for network slice selection in an appropriate radio resource control (RRC) message. Although the network can support a large number of slices, the UE does not need to support more than 8 slices at the same time.

[0211] The network slice may include a CN 420 control plane and user plane network functions (NFs), a next generation radio access network (NG-RAN) 410 in the serving PLMN, and an N3IWF function in the serving PLMN. Each network slice may have a different S-NSSAI and / or may have a different SST. The NSSAI includes one or more S-NSSAIs, and each network slice is uniquely identified by the S-NSSAI. The network slice may differ in terms of supported features and network function optimizations, and / or multiple network slice instances may deliver the same service / function, but differ for different groups of UE 401 (e.g., enterprise users). For example, each network slice may deliver different committed services and / or may be dedicated to a specific customer or enterprise. In this example, each network slice may have a different S-NSSAI with the same SST but with a different slice differentiator. In addition, a single UE may be served simultaneously by one or more network slice instances via 5GAN and be associated with eight different S-NSSAIs. In addition, an AMF 421 instance serving a single UE 401 may belong to each network slice instance serving the UE.

[0212] Network slicing in NG-RAN 410 involves RAN slice awareness. RAN slice awareness includes differentiated handling of traffic for different network slices that have been pre-configured. Slice awareness in NG-RAN 410 is introduced at the PDU session level by indicating the S-NSSAI corresponding to the PDU session in all signaling including PDU session resource information. How NG-RAN 410 supports slice activation in terms of NG-RAN functions (e.g., a set of network functions including each slice) is implementation-dependent. NG-RAN 410 selects the RAN portion of the network slice using assistance information provided by UE 401 or 5GC 420 that explicitly identifies one or more of the pre-configured network slices in the PLMN. NG-RAN 410 also supports resource management and policy enforcement between slices per SLA. A single NG-RAN node supports multiple slices, and NG-RAN 410 can also apply appropriate RRM policies for the SLA in place to each supported slice. NG-RAN 410 can also support QoS differentiation within a slice.

[0213] If available, the NG-RAN 410 may also use UE assistance information for selecting an AMF 421 during the initial attach. The NG-RAN 410 uses the assistance information for routing the initial NAS to the AMF 421. If the NG-RAN 410 is not able to select the AMF 421 using the assistance information, or the UE 401 does not provide any such information, the NG-RAN 410 sends the NAS signaling to the default AMF 421, which may be in the pool of AMFs 421. For subsequent access, the UE 401 provides the temp ID assigned to the UE 401 by the 5GC 420 to enable the NG-RAN 410 to route the NAS message to the appropriate AMF 421, as long as the temp ID is valid. The NG-RAN 410 knows and can reach the AMF 421 associated with the temp ID. Otherwise, the method for initial attach applies.

[0214] The NG-RAN 410 supports resource isolation between slices. NG-RAN 410 resource isolation can be achieved through RRM policies and protection mechanisms that should avoid starvation of shared resources in the case where one slice disrupts the service level agreement of another slice. In some embodiments, NG-RAN 410 resources can be fully assigned to a slice. How the NG-RAN 410 supports resource isolation is implementation-dependent.

[0215] Some slices may be only partially available in the network. Awareness in the NG-RAN 410 of the slices supported in its neighboring cells may be beneficial for inter-frequency mobility in connected mode. Slice availability may not change within the registration area of ​​the UE. The NG-RAN 410 and 5GC 420 are responsible for handling service requests for slices that may or may not be available in a given area. Granting or denying access to a slice may depend on factors such as support for the slice, availability of resources, and support of the requested service by the NG-RAN 410.

[0216] UE 401 may be associated with multiple network slices simultaneously. In the case where UE 401 is associated with multiple slices simultaneously, only one signaling connection is maintained and for intra-frequency cell reselection, UE 401 attempts to camp on the best cell. For inter-frequency cell reselection, dedicated priorities may be used to control the frequency that UE 401 camps on. 5GC 420 will verify that UE 401 has the right to access the network slice. Prior to receiving the Initial Context Setup Request message, NG-RAN 410 may be allowed to apply some temporary / local policies based on the awareness of the specific slice that UE 401 is requesting access to. During the Initial Context Setup, NG-RAN 410 is informed of the slice for which resources are being requested.

[0217] Network Function Virtualization (NFV) architecture and infrastructure can be used to virtualize one or more NFs (alternatively executed by proprietary hardware) onto physical resources including a combination of industry standard server hardware, storage hardware or switches. In other words, the NFV system can be used to perform a virtual or reconfigurable implementation of one or more EPC components / functions.

[0218] Fig.10 1000 is a block diagram illustrating components of a system 1000 for supporting network function virtualization (NFV) according to some embodiments. The system 1000 is shown to include a virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM) 1002, a network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) 1004, a virtualized network function manager (VNFM) 1006, VNFs 1008, an element manager (EM) 1010, a network function virtualization orchestrator (NFVO) 1012, and a network manager (NM) 1014.

[0219] The VIM 1002 manages resources of the NFVI 1004. The NFVI 1004 may include physical or virtual resources and applications (including hypervisors) for executing the system 1000. The VIM 1002 may utilize the NFVI 1004 to manage the lifecycle of virtual resources (e.g., creation, maintenance, and teardown of virtual machines (VMs) associated with one or more physical resources), track VM instances, track performance, failures, and security of VM instances and associated physical resources, and expose VM instances and associated physical resources to other management systems.

[0220] The VNFM 1006 can manage the VNF 1008. The VNF 1008 can be used to perform Evolved Packet Core (EPC) components / functions. The VNFM 1006 can manage the lifecycle of the VNF 1008 and track the performance, failures, and security of the virtual aspects of the VNF 1008. The EM 1010 can track the performance, failures, and security of the functional aspects of the VNF 1008. The tracking data from the VNFM 1006 and the EM 1010 can include, for example, PM data used by the VIM 1002 or the NFVI 1004. Both the VNFM 1006 and the EM 1010 can scale up / down the number of VNFs of the system 1000.

[0221] The NFVO 1012 may coordinate, authorize, release, and engage the resources of the NFVI 1004 in order to provide the requested service (e.g., to execute an EPC function, component, or slice). The NM 1014 provides an end-user functional package responsible for network management, which may include network elements with VNFs, non-virtualized network functions, or both (management of the VNFs may occur via the EM 1010).

[0222] Fig.11 is a block diagram illustrating components capable of reading instructions from a machine-readable medium or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and performing any one or more of the methods discussed herein, according to some embodiments. Specifically, Fig.11 A schematic diagram of hardware resources 1100 is shown, including one or more processors (or processor cores) 1110, one or more memory / storage devices 1120, and one or more communication resources 1130, each of which may be communicatively coupled via a bus 1640. For embodiments in which node virtualization (e.g., NFV) is utilized, a hypervisor 1102 may be executed to provide an execution environment for one or more network slices / sub-slices to utilize the hardware resources 1100.

[0223] Processor 1110 may include, for example, processor 1112 and processor 1114. Processor 1110 may be, for example, a central processing unit (CPU), a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) processor, a graphics processing unit (GPU), a DSP such as a baseband processor, an ASIC, an FPGA, a radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), another processor (including those discussed herein), or any suitable combination thereof.

[0224] The memory / storage device 1120 may include main memory, disk storage, or any suitable combination thereof. The memory / storage device 1120 may include, but is not limited to, any type of volatile or non-volatile memory, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, solid-state storage, etc.

[0225] The communication resources 1130 may include an interconnect or network interface component or other suitable device to communicate with one or more peripheral devices 1104 or one or more databases 1106 via the network 1108. For example, the communication resources 1130 may include a wired communication component (e.g., for coupling via USB), a cellular communication component, an NFC component, (or Low power consumption) components, components and other communication components.

[0226] The instructions 1150 may include software, programs, applications, applet, applications, or other executable code for causing at least any one of the processors 1110 to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. The instructions 1150 may reside in whole or in part in at least one of the processor 1110 (e.g., in a cache memory of the processor), the memory / storage device 1120, or any suitable combination thereof. In addition, any portion of the instructions 1150 may be transmitted to the hardware resources 1100 from any combination of the peripheral device 1104 or the database 1106. Thus, the memory of the processor 1110, the memory / storage device 1120, the peripheral device 1104, and the database 1106 are examples of computer-readable and machine-readable media.

[0227] Other exemplary operating methods

[0228] Fig.12A flow chart for a first V2X communication process according to some embodiments is shown. Conversely, it will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the relevant art that other operational control flows are also within the scope and spirit of the present disclosure. The following discussion describes an example operational control flow 1200 for the first V2X communication process described above. The example operational control flow 1200 may be performed by one or more of the processors or processor circuits described herein, including those included in the application circuit 605 or 705, the baseband circuit 610 or 710, and / or the processor 1110.

[0229] In operation 1202 , the operational control flow 1200 generates or causes generation of a system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for a corresponding vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode.

[0230] In operation 1204, the operational control flow 1200 transmits or causes the SIB message to be transmitted to the user equipment (UE).

[0231] Fig.13 A flow chart for a second V2X communication process according to some embodiments is shown. On the contrary, it will be apparent to a person skilled in the relevant art that other operation control flows are also within the scope and spirit of the present disclosure. The following discussion describes an exemplary operation control flow 1300 for the above-mentioned R second V2X communication process. The exemplary operation control flow 1300 may be executed by one or more of the processors or processor circuits described herein, including those included in the application circuit 605 or 705, the baseband circuit 610 or 710, and / or the processor 1314.

[0232] In operation 1302 , the operational control flow 1300 generates or causes generation of a first system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for a first vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode.

[0233] At operation 1304 , the operational control flow 1300 generates or causes generation of a second system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for a second vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode.

[0234] In operation 1306, the operation control flow 1300 transmits or causes the first SIB message or the second SIB message to be transmitted to a user equipment (UE).

[0235] Exemplary embodiments

[0236] The exemplary embodiments described herein are illustrative and not exhaustive. These exemplary embodiments are not intended to be limiting.

[0237] Some embodiments may include an apparatus. The apparatus may include processing circuitry and radio front-end circuitry. The processing circuitry may generate a system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for a corresponding vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode. The radio front-end circuitry may transmit the SIB message to a user equipment (UE).

[0238] In these embodiments, the V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0239] Some embodiments may include an apparatus. The apparatus may include processing circuitry and radio front-end circuitry. The processing circuitry may generate a first system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for a first vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode and a second system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for a second vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode. The radio front-end circuitry may transmit the first SIB message and / or the second SIB message to a user equipment (UE).

[0240] In these embodiments, the first V2X communication mode may be a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0241] In these embodiments, the configuration for the first V2X communication mode may be used for sidelink communications using broadcast operation, and / or the configuration for the second V2X communication mode may be used for sidelink communications using unicast operation.

[0242] Some embodiments may include an apparatus. The apparatus may include processing circuitry and radio front-end circuitry. The processing circuitry may generate a system information block (SIB) having a configuration for a corresponding vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode. The radio front-end circuitry may transmit the SIB to a user equipment (UE).

[0243] In these embodiments, the V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0244] Some embodiments may include an apparatus. The apparatus may include processing circuitry and radio front-end circuitry. The processing circuitry may generate a first system information block (SIB) having a configuration for a first vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode and a second system information block (SIB) having a configuration for a second vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode. The radio front-end circuitry may transmit the first SIB and / or the second SIB to a user equipment (UE).

[0245] In these embodiments, the first V2X communication mode may be a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0246] In these embodiments, the configuration for the first V2X communication mode may be sidelink communication using broadcast operation, and / or the configuration for the second V2X communication mode may be sidelink communication using unicast operation.

[0247] In these embodiments, the apparatus may be a next generation Node B (gNB) or a portion thereof.

[0248] Some embodiments may include a method. The method includes generating or causing a system information block (SIB) message having a corresponding vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode to be generated; and transmitting or causing the SIB message to be transmitted to a user equipment (UE).

[0249] In these embodiments, the V2X communication mode may include a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0250] Some embodiments may include a method. The method includes generating a first system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for a first vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode or causing a first system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for the first vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode to be generated; generating a second system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for a second vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode or causing a second system information block (SIB) message having a configuration for the second vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication mode to be generated; and transmitting the first SIB message or the second SIB message to a user equipment (UE) or causing the first SIB message or the second SIB message to be transmitted.

[0251] In these embodiments, the first V2X communication mode may be a unicast mode or a broadcast mode.

[0252] In these embodiments, the configuration for the first V2X communication mode may be sidelink communication using broadcast operation, and / or the configuration for the second V2X communication mode may be sidelink communication using unicast operation.

[0253] In these embodiments, the method may be performed by a next generation Node B (gNB) or a portion thereof.

[0254] Some embodiments may include a method for supporting modular system information design to support V2X communications over NR sidelink. The method may include options for designing system information for NR V2X sidelink operation, such as:

[0255] Use a single V2X System Information Block (SIB) that is always broadcast; and / or

[0256] The usage of different separate SIBs for sidelink operations including different V2X configurations.

[0257] In these embodiments, different SIBs may be distinguished based on the applicability of the configuration therein to different operating modes, ie, playout type (unicast vs. multicast / broadcast).

[0258] In these embodiments, incremental configuration may be performed by the gNB such that there is no overlap between the contents of the SIBs. In these embodiments, such incremental configuration may contain different congestion-to-priority mapping rules for the same set of resources, thereby allowing different UEs to behave differently on the same resource pool.

[0259] In these embodiments, the TX UE may choose to acquire the relevant SIB (or SIBs) based on the type of transmission it intends to perform (ie, unicast, broadcast).

[0260] In these embodiments, one, some, or all of the SIBs may be sent by the gNB in ​​a broadcast or on-demand manner.

[0261] Some embodiments may include an apparatus comprising means for performing one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of the above embodiments, or any other method or process described herein.

[0262] Some embodiments may include one or more non-transitory computer-readable media that include instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of an electronic device, cause the electronic device to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of the above embodiments or any other method or process described herein.

[0263] Some embodiments may include an apparatus comprising logic components, modules, or circuits for performing one or more elements of the method described in or related to any of the above embodiments or any other method or process described herein.

[0264] Some embodiments may include methods, techniques, or processes, or portions or components thereof, as described in or related to any of the above embodiments.

[0265] Some embodiments may include a device comprising: one or more processors and one or more computer-readable media, the one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform a method, technique, or process, or portion thereof, as described in or related to any of the above embodiments.

[0266] Some embodiments may include signals, or portions or components thereof, as described in or in connection with any of the above embodiments.

[0267] Some embodiments may include signals in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

[0268] Some embodiments may include methods of communicating in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

[0269] Some embodiments may include a system for providing wireless communications as shown and described herein.

[0270] Some embodiments may include an apparatus for providing wireless communications as shown and described herein.

[0271] Some embodiments may include an apparatus comprising means for performing one or more of the methods described above in conjunction with the embodiments described above.

[0272] Some embodiments may include an apparatus including circuitry configured to perform one or more of the methods described above in conjunction with the embodiments described above.

[0273] Some embodiments may include an apparatus according to any of the above embodiments, wherein the apparatus or any part thereof is implemented in or by a user equipment (UE).

[0274] Some embodiments may include a method according to any of the above embodiments, wherein the method or any part thereof is implemented in or by a user equipment (UE).

[0275] Some embodiments may include an apparatus according to any of the above embodiments, wherein the apparatus or any part thereof is implemented in or by a base station (BS).

[0276] Some embodiments may include a method according to any of the above embodiments, wherein the method or any part thereof is implemented in or by a base station (BS).

[0277] Unless otherwise expressly stated, any of the above embodiments may be combined with any other embodiment (or combination of embodiments). The foregoing description of one or more specific implementations provides illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of the embodiments to the precise form disclosed. In view of the above teachings, modifications and variations are possible or can be obtained from the practice of various embodiments.

[0278] abbreviation

[0279] For purposes of this disclosure, the following abbreviations may be applied to the examples and embodiments discussed herein but are not intended to be limiting.

[0280] 3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project

[0281] 4G Fourth Generation

[0282] 5G Fifth Generation

[0283] 5GC 5G Core Network

[0284] ACK

[0285] AF Application Function

[0286] AM Confirmation Mode

[0287] AMBR Aggregate Maximum Bit Rate

[0288] AMF Access and Mobility Management Function

[0289] AN Access Network

[0290] ANR Automatic Neighbor Relation

[0291] AP application protocol, antenna port, access point

[0292] API Application Programming Interface

[0293] APN Access Point Name

[0294] ARP Assignment Reserve Priority

[0295] ARQ Automatic Repeat Request

[0296] AS Access Layer

[0297] ASN.1 Abstract Syntax Notation One

[0298] AUSF authentication server function

[0299] AWGN Additive White Gaussian Noise

[0300] BCH Broadcast Channel

[0301] BER Bit Error Rate

[0302] BFD Beam Fault Detection

[0303] BLER Block Error Rate

[0304] BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying

[0305] BRAS Broadband Remote Access Server

[0306] BSS Business Support System

[0307] BS Base Station

[0308] BSR Buffer Status Report

[0309] BW Bandwidth

[0310] BWP Bandwidth Part

[0311] C-RNTI Cell Radio Network Temporary Identifier

[0312] CA Carrier Aggregation, Certification Authority

[0313] CAPEX Capital Expenditure

[0314] CBRA Contention-based random access

[0315] CC component carrier, country code, encryption checksum

[0316] CCA Clear Channel Assessment

[0317] CCE Control Channel Element

[0318] CCCH Common Control Channel

[0319] CE Coverage Enhancement

[0320] CDM Content Delivery Network

[0321] CDMA Code Division Multiple Access

[0322] CFRA Contention-free random access

[0323] CG Cell Group

[0324] CI Cell ID

[0325] CID Cell ID (eg, positioning method)

[0326] CIM Common Information Model

[0327] CIR Carrier to Interference Ratio

[0328] CK Cryptographic Key

[0329] CM Connection Management, Conditional Mandatory

[0330] CMAS Commercial Mobile Alert Service

[0331] CMD command

[0332] CMS Cloud Management System

[0333] CO Conditional optional

[0334] CoMP Coordinated Multipoint

[0335] CORESET Control Resource Set

[0336] COTS Commercial Off-the-Shelf

[0337] CP Control Plane, Cyclic Prefix, Attachment Point

[0338] CPD Connection Point Descriptor

[0339] CPE user terminal equipment

[0340] CPICH Common Pilot Channel

[0341] CQI Channel Quality Indicator

[0342] CPU CSI processing unit, central processing unit

[0343] C / R Command / Response field bit

[0344] CRAN Cloud Radio Access Network, Cloud RAN

[0345] CRB Common Resource Block

[0346] CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check

[0347] CRI Channel State Information Resource Indicator, CSI-RS Resource Indicator

[0348] C-RNTI Cell RNTI

[0349] CS Circuit Switched

[0350] CSAR Cloud Service Archive

[0351] CSI Channel State Information

[0352] CSI-IM CSI interference measurement

[0353] CSI-RS CSI reference signal

[0354] CSI-RSRP CSI reference signal received power

[0355] CSI-RSRQ CSI reference signal reception quality

[0356] CSI-SINR CSI signal to interference plus noise ratio

[0357] CSMA Carrier Sense Multiple Access

[0358] CSMA / CA CSMA with collision avoidance

[0359] CSS Common Search Space, Cell Specific Search Space

[0360] CTS Clear to Send

[0361] CW codeword

[0362] CWS Contention Window Size

[0363] D2D Device to Device

[0364] DC dual connection, direct current

[0365] DCI Downlink Control Information

[0366] DF deployment preferences

[0367] DL Downlink

[0368] DMTF Distributed Management Task Force

[0369] DPDK Data Plane Development Kit

[0370] DM-RS, DMRS Demodulation Reference Signal

[0371] DN Data Network

[0372] DRB Data Radio Bearer

[0373] DRS Discovery Reference Signal

[0374] DRX Discontinuous Reception

[0375] DSL Domain Specific Language, Digital Subscriber Line

[0376] DSLAM DSL Access Multiplexer

[0377] DwPTS Downlink Pilot Time Slot

[0378] E-LAN ​​Ethernet Local Area Network

[0379] E2E End-to-End

[0380] ECCA Extended Clear Channel Assessment, Extended CCA

[0381] ECCE Enhanced Control Channel Element, Enhanced CCE

[0382] ED Energy Detection

[0383] EDGE Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (GSM Evolution)

[0384] EGMF exposes governance management functions

[0385] EGPRS Enhanced GPRS

[0386] EIR Equipment Identity Register

[0387] eLAA Enhanced License Assisted Access, enhanced LAA

[0388] EM Element Manager

[0389] eMBB Enhanced Mobile Broadband

[0390] EMS Element Management System

[0391] eNB Evolved Node B, E-UTRAN Node B

[0392] EN-DC E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity

[0393] EPC Evolved Packet Core

[0394] EPDCCH Enhanced PDCCH, Enhanced Physical Downlink Control Channel

[0395] EPRE Energy per resource element

[0396] EPS Evolved Packet System

[0397] EREG Enhanced REG, Enhanced Resource Element Group

[0398] ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute

[0399] ETWS Earthquake and Tsunami Warning System

[0400] eUICC embedded UICC, embedded universal integrated circuit card

[0401] E-UTRA Evolved UTRA

[0402] E-UTRAN Evolved UTRAN

[0403] EV2X Enhanced V2X

[0404] F1AP F1 Application Protocol

[0405] F1-C F1 control plane interface

[0406] F1-U F1 User Plane Interface

[0407] FACCH Fast Associated Control Channel

[0408] FACCH / F Fast Associated Control Channel / Full Rate

[0409] FACCH / H Fast Associated Control Channel / Half Rate

[0410] FACH Forward Access Channel

[0411] FAUSCH Fast Uplink Signalling Channel

[0412] FB Function Block

[0413] FBI Feedback

[0414] FCC Federal Communications Commission

[0415] FCCH Frequency Correction Channel

[0416] FDD Frequency Division Duplex

[0417] FDM Frequency Division Multiplexing

[0418] FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access

[0419] FE Front End

[0420] FEC Forward Error Correction

[0421] FFS for further study

[0422] FFT Fast Fourier Transform

[0423] feLAA Further Enhanced License Assisted Access, Further Enhanced LAA FN Frame Number

[0424] FPGA Field Programmable Gate Array

[0425] FR Frequency Range

[0426] G-RNTI GERAN Radio Network Temporary Identity

[0427] GERAN GSM EDGE RAN, GSM EDGE Radio Access Network GGSN Gateway GPRS Support Node

[0428] GLONASS GLObal'naya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (Chinese: Global Navigation Satellite System)

[0429] gNB Next Generation Node B

[0430] gNB-CU gNB centralized unit, next generation Node B centralized unit gNB-DU gNB distributed unit, next generation Node B distributed unit GNSS Global Navigation Satellite System

[0431] GPRS General Packet Radio Service

[0432] GSM Global System for Mobile Communications, Mobile Association

[0433] GTP GPRS Tunneling Protocol

[0434] GTP-U GPRS Tunneling Protocol for the User Plane

[0435] GTS Go to sleep signal (related to WUS)

[0436] GUMMEI Globally Unique MME Identifier

[0437] GUTI Globally Unique Temporary UE Identifier

[0438] HARQ Hybrid ARQ, Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request

[0439] HANDO,HO switch

[0440] HFN Superframe Number

[0441] HHO Hard Handover

[0442] HLR Home Location Register

[0443] HN Home Network

[0444] HO Handover

[0445] HPLMN Home Public Land Mobile Network

[0446] HSDPA High Speed ​​Downlink Packet Access

[0447] HSN Hopping Sequence Number

[0448] HSPA High Speed ​​Packet Access

[0449] HSS Home Subscriber Server

[0450] HSUPA High Speed ​​Uplink Packet Access

[0451] HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol

[0452] HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (https is http / 1.1 over SSL (i.e. port 443))

[0453] I-Block Information Block

[0454] ICCID Integrated Circuit Card Identifier

[0455] ICIC Inter-cell Interference Coordination

[0456] ID, identifier

[0457] IDFT Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform

[0458] IE Information Elements

[0459] IBE In-Band Emission

[0460] IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

[0461] IEI Information Element Identifier

[0462] IEIDL Information Element Identifier Data Length

[0463] IETF Internet Engineering Task Force

[0464] IF Infrastructure

[0465] IM Interference Measurement, Intermodulation, IP Multimedia

[0466] IMC IMS credentials

[0467] IMEI International Mobile Equipment Identity

[0468] IMGI International Mobile Group Identity

[0469] IMPI IP Multimedia Privacy Identity

[0470] IMPU IP Multimedia Public Identity

[0471] IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem

[0472] IMSI International Mobile Subscriber Identity IoT

[0473] IP Internet Protocol

[0474] IPsec IP security, Internet Protocol security IP-CAN IP connection access network

[0475] IP-M IP Multicast

[0476] IPv4 Internet Protocol version 4 IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 IR

[0477] IS Synchronization

[0478] IRP Integration Reference Point

[0479] ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network

[0480] ISIM IM Service Identity Module

[0481] ISO International Organization for Standardization

[0482] ISP Internet Service Provider

[0483] IWF interworking function

[0484] I-WLAN Intercommunication WLAN K is the constraint length of the convolutional code and the USIM individual key. kB kilobyte (500 bytes)

[0485] kbps kilobits per second

[0486] Kc Cryptographic key

[0487] Ki Individual user authentication key

[0488] KPI Key Performance Indicator

[0489] KQI Key Quality Indicator

[0490] KSI Key Set Identifier

[0491] ksps kilosymbols per second

[0492] KVM Kernel Virtual Machine

[0493] L1 Layer 1 (physical layer)

[0494] L1-RSRP Layer 1 reference signal received power L2 Layer 2 (Data Link Layer)

[0495] L3 Layer 3 (Network Layer)

[0496] LAA License Assisted Access

[0497] LAN Local Area Network

[0498] LBT Listen before you speak

[0499] LCM Lifecycle Management

[0500] LCR Low Chip Rate

[0501] LCS Location Services

[0502] LCID Logical Channel IDLI layer indicator

[0503] LLC Logical Link Control, Low Layer Compatibility

[0504] LPLMN Local PLMN LPP LTE Positioning Protocol

[0505] LSB Least Significant Bit

[0506] LTE Long Term Evolution

[0507] LWA LTE-WLAN Aggregation

[0508] LWIP LTE / WLAN radio level integration with IPsec tunneling LTE Long Term Evolution

[0509] M2M Machine to Machine

[0510] MAC Medium Access Control (Protocol Layer Context)

[0511] MAC Message Authentication Code (Security / Cryptography Context)

[0512] MAC-A MAC for authentication and key agreement (TSG T WG3 context)

[0513] MAC-I MAC for data integrity of signaling messages (TSG TWG3 context)

[0514] MANO Management and Orchestration

[0515] MBMS Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service

[0516] MBSFN Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service Single Frequency Network

[0517] MCC Mobile Country Code

[0518] MCG Master Cell Group

[0519] MCOT Maximum Channel Occupancy Time

[0520] MCS Modulation and Coding Scheme

[0521] MDAF Management Data Analysis Function

[0522] MDAS Management Data Analysis Service

[0523] Minimization of MDT-driven testing

[0524] ME Mobile Equipment

[0525] MeNB Master eNB

[0526] MER message error rate

[0527] MGL Measurement Gap Length

[0528] MGRP measurement gap repetition period

[0529] MIB Master Information Block, Management Information Base

[0530] MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output

[0531] MLC Mobile Location Center

[0532] MM Mobility Management

[0533] MME Mobility Management Entity

[0534] MN Master Node

[0535] MO measurement object, mobile station calling

[0536] MPBCH MTC Physical Broadcast Channel

[0537] MPDCCH MTC Physical Downlink Control Channel

[0538] MPDSCH MTC Physical Downlink Shared Channel

[0539] MPRACH MTC Physical Random Access Channel

[0540] MPUSCH MTC Physical Uplink Shared Channel

[0541] MPLS Multi-Protocol Label Switching

[0542] MS Mobile Station

[0543] MSB Most Significant Bit

[0544] MSC Mobile Switching Center

[0545] MSI minimum system information, MCH scheduling information

[0546] MSID Mobile Station Identifier

[0547] MSIN Mobile Station Identification Number

[0548] MSISDN Mobile Subscriber ISDN Number

[0549] MT mobile station called, mobile terminal

[0550] MTC Machine Type Communication

[0551] mMTC Massive MTC, Massive Machine Type Communication

[0552] MU-MIMO Multi-User MIMO

[0553] MWUS MTC wake-up signal, MTC WUS

[0554] NACK Negative Acknowledgement

[0555] NAI Network Access Identifier

[0556] NAS Non-Access Stratum, Non-Access Stratum

[0557] NCT Network Connection Topology

[0558] NEC network capabilities exposed

[0559] NE-DC NR-E-UTRA dual connectivity

[0560] NEF Network Exposure Function

[0561] NF Network Function

[0562] NFP Network Forwarding Path

[0563] NFPD Network Forwarding Path Descriptor

[0564] NFV Network Function Virtualization

[0565] NFVI NFV Infrastructure

[0566] NFVO NFV Orchestrator

[0567] NG Next generation, next generation

[0568] NGEN-DC NG-RAN E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity

[0569] NM Network Manager

[0570] NMS Network Management System

[0571] N-PoP Network Point of Presence

[0572] NMIB, N-MIB Narrowband MIB

[0573] NPBCH Narrowband Physical Broadcast Channel

[0574] NPDCCH Narrowband Physical Downlink Control Channel

[0575] NPDSCH Narrowband Physical Downlink Shared Channel

[0576] NPRACH Narrowband Physical Random Access Channel

[0577] NPUSCH Narrowband Physical Uplink Shared Channel

[0578] NPSS Narrowband Primary Synchronization Signal

[0579] NSSS Narrowband Secondary Synchronization Signal

[0580] NR New air interface, neighbor relationship

[0581] NRF NF Repository Functionality

[0582] NRS Narrowband Reference Signal NS Network Services

[0583] NSA Non-standalone operation mode

[0584] NSD Network Service Descriptor

[0585] NSR Network Service Record

[0586] NSSAI Network Slice Selection Assistance Information S-NNSAI Single NSSAI NSSF network slice selection function

[0587] NW Network

[0588] NWUS Narrowband wake-up signal, narrowband WUS NZP Non Zero Power

[0589] O&M Operation and Maintenance

[0590] ODU2 Optical Channel Data Unit - Type 2

[0591] OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

[0592] OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access

[0593] OOB Out of Band

[0594] OOS Out of Sync

[0595] OPEX Operational Expenses

[0596] OSI Other System Information

[0597] OSS Operation Support System

[0598] OTA

[0599] PAPR Peak to Average Power Ratio

[0600] PAR Peak to Average Ratio

[0601] PBCH Physical Broadcast Channel

[0602] PC Power Control, Personal Computer PCC primary component carrier, primary CC

[0603] PCell Primary Cell

[0604] PCI Physical Cell ID, Physical Cell Identity PCEF Policy and Charging Enforcement Function

[0605] PCF Policy Control Function

[0606] PCRF Policy Control and Charging Rules Function PDCP Packet Data Convergence Protocol, Packet Data Convergence Protocol Layer

[0607] PDCCH Physical Downlink Control Channel

[0608] PDCP Packet Data Convergence Protocol

[0609] PDN Packet Data Network, Public Data Network

[0610] PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared Channel

[0611] PDU Protocol Data Unit

[0612] PEI Permanent Equipment Identifier

[0613] PFD Packet Flow Description

[0614] P-GW PDN Gateway

[0615] PHICH Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel

[0616] PHY Physical Layer

[0617] PLMN Public Land Mobile Network

[0618] PIN Personal Identification Number

[0619] PM performance measurement

[0620] PMI Precoding matrix indicator

[0621] PNF Physical Network Function

[0622] PNFD Physical Network Functional Descriptor

[0623] PNFR Physical Network Function Record

[0624] POC PTT over Cellular

[0625] PP,PTP Point to Point

[0626] PPP Point-to-Point Protocol

[0627] PRACH Physical RACH

[0628] PRB Physical Resource Block

[0629] PRG Physical Resource Group

[0630] ProSe Proximity Services, Proximity-Based Services

[0631] PRS Positioning Reference Signal

[0632] PRR Packet Receive Radio

[0633] PS Packet Service

[0634] PSBCH Physical Sidelink Broadcast Channel

[0635] PSDCH Physical Sidelink Downlink Channel

[0636] PSCCH Physical Sidelink Control Channel

[0637] PSSCH Physical Sidelink Shared Channel

[0638] PSCell Primary SCell

[0639] PSS Primary Synchronization Signal

[0640] PSTN Public Switched Telephone Network

[0641] PT-RS Phase Tracking Reference Signal

[0642] PTT Push to Talk

[0643] PUCCH Physical Uplink Control Channel

[0644] PUSCH Physical Uplink Shared Channel

[0645] QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation

[0646] QCI QoS Class Identifier

[0647] QCL Quasi-Co-sited

[0648] QFI QoS flow ID, QoS flow identifier

[0649] QoS Quality of Service

[0650] QPSK Quadrature (Quaternary) Phase Shift Keying

[0651] QZSS Quasi-Zenith Satellite System

[0652] RA-RNTI Random Access RNTI

[0653] RAB Radio Access Bearer, Random Access Burst

[0654] RACH Random Access Channel

[0655] RADIUS Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service

[0656] RAN Radio Access Network

[0657] RAND random number (for authentication)

[0658] RAR Random Access Response

[0659] RAT Radio Access Technology

[0660] RAU Routing Area Update

[0661] RB Resource Block, Radio Bearer

[0662] RBG Resource Block Group

[0663] REG Resource Element Group

[0664] Rel Release

[0665] REQ Request

[0666] RF

[0667] RI Rank Indicator

[0668] RIV Resource Indicator Value RL Radio Link

[0669] RLC Radio Link Control, Radio Link Control Layer RLC AM RLC Acknowledgement Mode

[0670] RLC UM RLC Unacknowledged Mode

[0671] RLF Radio Link Failure

[0672] RLM Radio Link Monitoring

[0673] RLM-RS Reference signal for RLM RM Registration Management

[0674] RMC Reference Measurement Channel

[0675] RMSI Remaining MSI, Remaining Minimum System Information RN Relay Node

[0676] RNC Radio Network Controller RNL Radio Network Layer

[0677] RNTI Radio Network Temporary Identifier ROHC Robust Header Compression

[0678] RRC Radio Resource Control, Radio Resource Control Layer RRM Radio Resource Management

[0679] RS reference signal

[0680] RSRP Reference Signal Received Power RSRQ Reference Signal Received Quality RSSI Reference Signal Strength Indicator RSU Road Side Unit

[0681] RSTD Reference Signal Time Difference

[0682] RTP Real Time Protocol

[0683] RTS Ready to Send

[0684] RTT Round Trip Time

[0685] Rx receive, receive, receiver S1AP S1 Application Protocol

[0686] S1-MME is used for S1 control plane

[0687] S1-U S1 for user plane

[0688] S-GW Service Gateway

[0689] S-RNTI SRNC Radio Network Temporary Identifier

[0690] S-TMSI SAE temporary mobile station identifier

[0691] SA Standalone Operation Mode

[0692] SAE system architecture evolution

[0693] SAP Service Access Point

[0694] SAPD Service Access Point Descriptor

[0695] SAPI Service Access Point Identifier

[0696] SCC Secondary Component Carrier, Secondary CC

[0697] SCell Secondary Cell

[0698] SC-FDMA Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access

[0699] SCG Secondary Cell Group

[0700] SCM Security Context Management

[0701] SCS Subcarrier Spacing

[0702] SCTP Stream Control Transmission Protocol

[0703] SDAP Service Data Adaptation Protocol, Service Data Adaptation Protocol Layer

[0704] SDL Supplemental Downlink

[0705] SDNF Structured Data Storage Network Function

[0706] SDP Service Discovery Protocol (Bluetooth related)

[0707] SDSF structured data storage function

[0708] SDU Service Data Unit

[0709] SEAF Security Anchoring Function

[0710] SeNB Assisted eNB

[0711] SEPP Security Edge Protection Proxy

[0712] SFI Slot Format Indicator

[0713] SFTD Space Frequency Time Diversity, SFN and Frame Timing Difference

[0714] SFN System Frame Number

[0715] SgNB

[0716] SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node

[0717] S-GW Service Gateway

[0718] SI System Information

[0719] SI-RNTI System Information RNTI

[0720] SIB System Information Block

[0721] SIM Subscriber Identity Module

[0722] SIP Session Initiation Protocol

[0723] SiP System in Package

[0724] SL Side Link

[0725] SLA Service Level Agreement

[0726] SM Session Management

[0727] SMF session management functions

[0728] SMS Short Message Service

[0729] SMSF SMS Function

[0730] SMTC SSB-based measurement timing configuration

[0731] SN Secondary node, serial number

[0732] SoC System on Chip

[0733] SON Self-Organizing Network

[0734] SpCell Special Cell

[0735] SP-CSI-RNTI Semi-persistent CSI RNTI

[0736] SPS Semi-persistent Scheduling

[0737] SQN Serial Number

[0738] SR Scheduling Request

[0739] SRB Signalling Radio Bearer

[0740] SRS Sounding Reference Signal

[0741] SS Sync Signal

[0742] SSB Synchronization Signal Block, SS / PBCH Block

[0743] SSBRI SS / PBCH block resource indicator, synchronization signal block resource indicator

[0744] SSC Session and Service Continuity

[0745] SS-RSRP Reference signal received power based on synchronization signal

[0746] SS-RSRQ Reference signal reception quality based on synchronization signal

[0747] SS-SINR Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio based on synchronization signal

[0748] SSS Secondary synchronization signal

[0749] SSSG Search Space Group

[0750] SSSIF Search Space Set Indicator

[0751] SST Slice / Service Type

[0752] SU-MIMO Single User MIMO

[0753] SUL Supplementary Uplink

[0754] TA Timing Advance, Tracking Area

[0755] TAC Tracking Area Code

[0756] TAG Timing Advance Group

[0757] TAU Tracking Area Updates

[0758] TB Transfer Block

[0759] TBS Transport Block Size

[0760] TBD To be defined

[0761] TCI Transmission Configuration Indicator

[0762] TCP transport communication protocol

[0763] TDD Time Division Duplex

[0764] TDM Time Division Multiplexing

[0765] TDMA Time Division Multiple Access

[0766] TE Terminal Equipment

[0767] TEID Tunnel Endpoint Identifier

[0768] TFT Business Flow Template

[0769] TMSI Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity

[0770] TNL Transport Network Layer

[0771] TPC Transmit Power Control

[0772] TPMI Transmitted Precoding Matrix Indicator

[0773] TR Technical Report

[0774] TRP,TRxP Transmission Receive Point

[0775] TRS Tracking Reference Signal

[0776] TRx Transceiver

[0777] TS Technical Specifications, Technical Standards

[0778] TTI Transmission Time Interval

[0779] Tx transmission, transmission, transmitter

[0780] U-RNTI UTRAN Radio Network Temporary Identity

[0781] UART Universal Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter

[0782] UCI Uplink Control Information

[0783] UE User Equipment

[0784] UDM Unified Data Management

[0785] UDP User Datagram Protocol

[0786] UDSF Unstructured Data Storage Network Function

[0787] UICC Universal Integrated Circuit Card

[0788] UL Uplink

[0789] UM Unconfirmed Mode

[0790] UML Unified Modeling Language

[0791] UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

[0792] UP User Plane

[0793] UPF User Plane Function

[0794] URI Uniform Resource Identifier

[0795] URL Uniform Resource Locator

[0796] URLLC Ultra-Reliable Low Latency

[0797] USB Universal Serial Bus

[0798] USIM Universal Subscriber Identity Module

[0799] USS UE-specific search space

[0800] UTRA UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access

[0801] UTRAN Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network

[0802] UwPTS Uplink Pilot Time Slot

[0803] V2I Vehicle to Infrastructure

[0804] V2P Vehicle to Pedestrian

[0805] V2V Vehicle to Vehicle

[0806] V2X: Vehicle-to-Everything

[0807] VIM Virtualization Infrastructure Manager

[0808] VL Virtual Link

[0809] VLAN Virtual LAN, Virtual Local Area Network

[0810] VM Virtual Machine

[0811] VNF Virtualized Network Function

[0812] VNFFG VNF forwarding graph

[0813] VNFFGD VNF Forwarding Graph Descriptor

[0814] VNFM VNF Manager

[0815] VoIP Voice over IP, Voice over Internet Protocol

[0816] VPLMN Visited Public Land Mobile Network

[0817] VPN Virtual Private Network

[0818] VRB Virtual Resource Block

[0819] WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access

[0820] WLAN Wireless Local Area Network

[0821] WMAN Wireless Metropolitan Area Network

[0822] WPAN Wireless Personal Area Network

[0823] X2-C X2 control plane

[0824] X2-U X2 user plane

[0825] XML Extensible Markup Language

[0826] 2ES Expected User Response

[0827] XOR

[0828] ZC Zadoff-Chu

[0829] ZP Zero Power

[0830] Example Terms

[0831] For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply to the examples and embodiments discussed herein but are not intended to be limiting.

[0832] As used herein, the term "circuit" refers to, is part of, or includes a hardware component such as an electronic circuit, a logic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and / or a memory (shared, dedicated, or group) configured to provide the described functions, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a field programmable device (FPD) (e.g., a field programmable gate array (FPGA), a programmable logic device (PLD), a complex PLD (CPLD), a high capacity PLD (HCPLD), a structured ASIC, or a programmable SoC), a digital signal processor (DSP), etc. In some embodiments, the circuit may execute one or more software or firmware programs to provide at least some of the described functions. The term "circuit" may also refer to a combination of one or more hardware elements and a program code for performing the functions of the program code (or a combination of circuits used in an electrical or electronic system). In these embodiments, the combination of hardware elements and program code may be referred to as a specific type of circuit.

[0833] As used herein, the term "processor circuit" refers to, is part of, or includes a circuit capable of sequentially and automatically performing a series of arithmetic or logical operations or recording, storing, and / or transmitting digital data. The term "processor circuit" may refer to one or more application processors, one or more baseband processors, a physical central processing unit (CPU), a single-core processor, a dual-core processor, a triple-core processor, a quad-core processor, and / or any other device capable of executing or otherwise operating computer-executable instructions (such as program code, software modules, and / or functional processes). The terms "application circuit" and / or "baseband circuit" may be considered synonymous with "processor circuit" and may be referred to as "processor circuit".

[0834] As used herein, the term "interface circuit" refers to a circuit that enables, is a part of, or includes information exchange between two or more components or devices. The term "interface circuit" may refer to one or more hardware interfaces, such as a bus, an I / O interface, a peripheral component interface, a network interface card, etc.

[0835] As used herein, the term "user equipment" or "UE" refers to a device that has radio communication capabilities and can describe a remote user of network resources in a communication network. The term "user equipment" or "UE" may be considered synonymous with, and may be referred to as, a client, a mobile phone, a mobile device, a mobile terminal, a user terminal, a mobile unit, a mobile station, a mobile user, a subscriber, a user, a remote station, an access agent, a user agent, a receiver, a radio equipment, a reconfigurable radio equipment, a reconfigurable mobile device, etc. In addition, the term "user equipment" or "UE" may include any type of wireless / wired device or any computing device that includes a wireless communication interface.

[0836] As used herein, the term "network element" refers to physical or virtualized equipment and / or infrastructure for providing wired or wireless communication network services. The term "network element" may be considered synonymous with and / or referred to as a networked computer, networking hardware, network equipment, network node, router, switch, hub, bridge, radio network controller, RAN equipment, RAN node, gateway, server, virtualized VNF, NFVI, etc.

[0837] As used herein, the term "computer system" refers to any type of interconnected electronic devices, computer devices, or components thereof. Additionally, the terms "computer system" and / or "system" may refer to various components of a computer that are communicatively coupled to one another. Furthermore, the terms "computer system" and / or "system" may refer to multiple computer devices and / or multiple computing systems that are communicatively coupled to one another and configured to share computing and / or networking resources.

[0838] As used herein, the terms "appliance", "computer appliance", etc. refer to a computer device or computer system with program code (e.g., software or firmware) that is specifically designed to provide specific computing resources. A "virtual appliance" is a virtual machine image to be implemented by a device equipped with a hypervisor that virtualizes or emulates a computer appliance or is otherwise dedicated to providing specific computing resources.

[0839] As used herein, the term "resource" refers to a physical or virtual device, a physical or virtual component within a computing environment, and / or a physical or virtual component within a specific device, such as a computer device, a mechanical device, a memory space, a processor / CPU time and / or a processor / CPU usage rate, a processor and accelerator load, a hardware time or usage rate, a power supply, an input / output operation, a port or a network socket, a channel / link allocation, throughput, memory usage rate, storage, a network, a database and an application, a unit of work, etc. "Hardware resources" may refer to computing, storage and / or network resources provided by physical hardware elements. "Virtualized resources" may refer to computing, storage and / or network resources provided by a virtualized infrastructure to an application, a device, a system, etc. The term "network resources" or "communication resources" may refer to resources that a computer device / system can access via a communication network. The term "system resources" may refer to any kind of shared entity that provides a service, and may include computing resources and / or network resources. System resources may be considered as a set of coherent functions, network data objects or services that can be accessed through a server, wherein such system resources reside on a single host or multiple hosts and can be clearly identified.

[0840] As used herein, the term "channel" refers to any tangible or intangible transmission medium for transmitting data or data streams. The term "channel" may be synonymous and / or equivalent to "communication channel", "data communication channel", "transmission channel", "data transmission channel", "access channel", "data access channel", "link", "data link", "carrier", "radio frequency carrier" and / or any other similar terms representing a path or medium through which data is transmitted. In addition, the term "link" as used herein refers to a connection between two devices for transmitting and receiving information over a RAT.

[0841] As used herein, the terms "instantiate," "instantiate," and the like refer to the creation of an instance. "Instance" also refers to a specific occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during the execution of program code.

[0842] The terms "coupled," "communicatively coupled," and their derivatives are used herein. The term "coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other, may mean that two or more elements are in indirect contact with each other but still cooperate or interact with each other, and / or may mean that one or more other elements are coupled or connected between the elements said to be coupled to each other. The term "directly coupled" may mean that two or more elements are in direct contact with each other. The term "communicatively coupled" may mean that two or more elements may be in contact with each other by means of communication, including through a wire or other interconnect connection, through a wireless communication channel or link, etc.

[0843] The term "information element" refers to a structural element that contains one or more fields. The term "field" refers to the individual contents of an information element, or a data element that contains the contents.

[0844] The term "SMTC" refers to the SSB-based measurement timing configuration configured by SSB-MeasurementTimingConfiguration.

[0845] The term "SSB" refers to SS / PBCH block.

[0846] The term "primary cell" refers to an MCG cell operating on a primary frequency, where the UE either performs an initial connection establishment procedure or initiates a connection re-establishment procedure.

[0847] The term "primary SCG cell" refers to an SCG cell in which a UE performs random access when reconfiguration is performed using a synchronization procedure for DC operation.

[0848] The term "secondary cell" refers to a cell that provides additional radio resources on top of a special cell for a UE configured with CA.

[0849] The term "secondary cell group" refers to a subset of serving cells including a PSCell for a UE configured with DC and zero or more secondary cells.

[0850] The term "serving cell" refers to a primary cell for a UE in RRC_CONNECTED without CA / DC configured, where there is only one serving cell including the primary cell.

[0851] The term "serving cell" refers to a cell set including a special cell for a UE configured with CA / in RRC_CONNECTED and all secondary cells.

[0852] The term "special cell" refers to the PCell of the MCG or the PSCell of the SCG for DC operation; otherwise, the term "special cell" refers to the Pcell.

[0853] As described above, various aspects of the present technology may include collecting and using data available from various sources, thereby (for example) improving or enhancing functionality. The present disclosure contemplates that, in some instances, these collected data may include personal information data that uniquely identifies or can be used to contact or locate a specific person. Such personal information data may include demographic data, location-based data, phone numbers, email addresses, Twitter IDs, home addresses, data or records related to the user's health or fitness level (e.g., vital sign measurements, medication information, exercise information), date of birth, or any other identifying information or personal information. The present disclosure recognizes that the use of such personal information data in the present technology can be used to benefit users.

[0854] The present disclosure envisions that entities responsible for collecting, analyzing, disclosing, transmitting, storing or otherwise using such personal information data will comply with established privacy policies and / or privacy practices. Specifically, such entities should implement and adhere to privacy policies and practices that are recognized as meeting or exceeding industry or government requirements for maintaining the privacy and security of personal information data. Such policies should be easily accessible to users and should be updated as the collection and / or use of data changes. Personal information from users should be collected for the legitimate and reasonable purposes of the entity and not shared or sold outside of these legitimate uses. In addition, such collection / sharing should only be done after receiving the user's informed consent. In addition, such entities should consider taking any necessary steps to defend and safeguard access to such personal information data and ensure that others who have access to personal information data comply with their privacy policies and processes. In addition, such entities may subject themselves to third-party assessments to demonstrate their compliance with widely accepted privacy policies and practices. In addition, policies and practices should be adjusted to specific types of personal information data collected and / or accessed, and to applicable laws and standards that include specific considerations of jurisdiction. For example, in the United States, the collection or access of certain health data may be governed by federal and / or state laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), while health data in other countries may be subject to other regulations and policies and should be handled accordingly. Therefore, different privacy practices should be maintained in each country for different types of personal data.

[0855] Regardless of the foregoing, the present disclosure also contemplates implementation schemes in which users selectively block the use or access of personal information data. That is, the present disclosure contemplates providing hardware elements and / or software elements to prevent or block access to such personal information data. For example, the present technology may be configured to allow users to selectively participate in "opt-in" or "opt-out" of collecting personal information data at any time during (for example) registration for a service or thereafter. In addition to providing "opt-in" and "opt-out" options, the present disclosure contemplates providing notifications related to access or use of personal information. For example, a user may be notified that their personal information data will be accessed when downloading an application, and then reminded again just before the personal information data is accessed by the application.

[0856] In addition, it is an object of the present disclosure that personal information data should be managed and processed to minimize the risk of unintentional or unauthorized access or use. Risks can be minimized by limiting data collection and deleting data once it is no longer needed. In addition, and when applicable, including in certain health-related applications, data de-identification can be used to protect the privacy of users. De-identification can be facilitated by removing specific identifiers (e.g., date of birth, etc.), controlling the amount or specificity of stored data (e.g., collecting location data at the city level rather than at the address level), controlling how data is stored (e.g., aggregating data between users), and / or other methods when appropriate.

[0857] Thus, while the present disclosure may broadly cover the use of personal information data to implement one or more of the various disclosed embodiments, the present disclosure also contemplates that various embodiments may also be implemented without access to such personal information data. That is, various embodiments of the present technology will not fail to function properly due to the lack of all or part of such personal information data.

Claims

1. A user equipment UE: A radio front-end circuit configured to receive a plurality of system information block (SIB) messages from an access node (AN), the plurality of SIB messages having a plurality of configurations for a plurality of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication modes; and A processing circuit configured to obtain a first configuration for a first communication mode from a first SIB message, and to obtain a second configuration for a second communication mode from a second SIB message, wherein: The second SIB message includes a delta associated with common resources between the first configuration and the second configuration.

2. The access node AN according to claim 1, wherein the first communication mode or the second communication mode comprises: Unicast mode; or Broadcast mode.

3. The UE according to claim 1, wherein the first configuration or the second configuration comprises: Sidelink communication using broadcast operation.

4. The UE according to claim 1, wherein the first configuration or the second configuration comprises: Sidelink communication using unicast operation. The UE according to claim 1 , wherein the UE comprises a vehicle-mounted UE or a part thereof.

6. The UE of claim 1, wherein the increment comprises different congestion-to-priority mapping rules for the common resources. 7 . The UE of claim 1 , wherein the common resource comprises a carrier frequency applicable to the first communication mode and the second communication mode.

8. A method for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, the method comprising: Receiving, by a user equipment UE, a plurality of system information block SIB messages from an access node AN, the plurality of SIB messages having a plurality of configurations for a plurality of V2X communication modes; as well as The UE obtains a first configuration for a first communication mode from a first SIB message, and obtains a second configuration for a second communication mode from a second SIB message, wherein the second SIB message includes an increment associated with a common resource between the first configuration and the second configuration.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the first communication mode or the second communication mode comprises: Unicast mode; or Broadcast mode.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the first configuration comprises: Sidelink communication using broadcast operation.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein the second configuration comprises: Sidelink communication using unicast operation.

12. The method according to claim 8, wherein the method is implemented by a vehicle-mounted UE or a part thereof.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein the increment comprises different congestion-to-priority mapping rules for the common resource.

14. The method of claim 8, wherein the common resource comprises a carrier frequency applicable to the first communication mode and the second communication mode.

15. An apparatus comprising: Memory; as well as A processor, the processor being configured to: receiving a plurality of system information block (SIB) messages from an access node AN, the plurality of SIB messages having a plurality of configurations for a plurality of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication modes, and A first configuration for a first communication mode is obtained from a first SIB message, and a second configuration for a second communication mode is obtained from a second SIB message, wherein the second SIB message includes a delta associated with a common resource between the first configuration and the second configuration.

16. The apparatus according to claim 15, wherein the first communication mode or the second communication mode comprises: Unicast mode; or Broadcast mode.

17. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the first configuration comprises: Sidelink communication using broadcast operation.

18. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the second configuration comprises: Sidelink communication using unicast operation.

19. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the increment comprises different congestion-to-priority mapping rules for the common resource.

20. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the common resource comprises a carrier frequency applicable to the first communication mode and the second communication mode.

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