Traffic condition aware semi-persistent scheduling

Abstract

The radio access network node determines a change in traffic condition directed to the user equipment. The condition change may include jitter caused by the core network component, or the condition change may include a lack of traffic to be transmitted to the user equipment. The node may determine an offset to compensate for jitter and transmit the offset to the user equipment for use by the user equipment to modify a previously scheduled semi-persistent scheduling opportunity. The node transmits jitter-altered downlink traffic according to the semi-persistent scheduling opportunity that has been offset-modified. If there is no traffic data at the node to be transmitted to the user equipment, the node may transmit an activation / deactivation indication for the user equipment to deactivate monitoring of previously scheduled semi-persistent scheduling opportunities or activate monitoring of different opportunity resources.

Description

[0001] Related Applications

[0002] This application claims priority to U.S. Non - Provisional Patent Application No. 17 / 992,861, filed on November 22, 2022, and entitled "Business Condition Awareness Semi - Persistent Scheduling", the entire content of the priority application of which is hereby incorporated by reference. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0003] The term "New Radio" (NR) associated with the fifth - generation mobile wireless communication system ("5G") refers to the technical aspects used in the radio access network ("RAN"), including several quality of service classes (QoS), which include ultra - reliable and low - latency communication ("URLLC"), enhanced mobile broadband ("eMBB"), and massive machine - type communication ("mMTC"). The URLLC QoS class is associated with strict latency requirements (e.g., low latency or low signal / message delay) and high reliability of radio performance, while traditional eMBB use cases may be associated with high - capacity wireless communication, which may allow less strict latency requirements (e.g., higher latency than URLLC) and less reliable radio performance than URLLC. The performance requirements of mMTC may be lower than those of eMBB use cases. Some use - case applications involving mobile devices or mobile user equipment (such as smart phones, wireless tablet computers, smart watches, etc.) may impose variations on the given RAN resource load or demand. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0004] A simplified summary of the disclosed subject matter is presented below in order to provide a basic understanding of some of the embodiments. This summary is not an extensive overview of the various embodiments. It is neither intended to identify key or critical elements of the various embodiments nor to depict the scope of the various embodiments. Its sole purpose is to present some concepts of the present disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description that is presented later.

[0005] In an example embodiment, a method includes determining, by a radio access node (“RAN”) including a processor, a scheduling change of a scheduled downlink semi-persistent scheduling (“SPS”) resource element previously allocated to a user equipment (“UE”) or scheduled for transmitting traffic data thereto, based on a change in downlink traffic conditions; transmitting an indication of the scheduling change to the user equipment; and transmitting traffic to the user equipment according to the scheduling change. The indication of the scheduling change may include an offset indication or an activate / deactivate / null indication. In an embodiment, the example method may include determining a jitter associated with the change in downlink traffic conditions, wherein the indication of the scheduling change includes an offset to a first semi-persistent scheduling resource element. The jitter may be caused by interference, latency due to core network components, or latency caused by another source. The offset may include a time offset. The offset may include a frequency offset, or the offset may include a timing offset.

[0006] In an embodiment, transmitting the indication of the scheduling change may include transmitting the indication of the scheduling change in a scheduling control channel resource element that may be transmitted as an SPS configuration before the RAN determines the change in traffic conditions.

[0007] The indication of the scheduling change may be an activate / deactivate / null indication that includes a deactivate instruction to deactivate a first semi-persistent scheduling resource element, wherein the indication of the scheduling change includes an activate instruction to activate a second semi-persistent scheduling element. In an embodiment, the second semi-persistent scheduling resource element may be offset in time or frequency with respect to the first semi-persistent scheduling element.

[0008] In an embodiment, the indication of the scheduling change may be scrambled with a device-specific or device-group-specific scrambling code. Thus, only the UE device or UE device group to which the downlink traffic buffered at the RAN is directed can decode the indication of the scheduling change. In an embodiment, the indication of the scheduling change may be transmitted in at least one jitter indication indicating a semi-persistent scheduling time offset and a codebook of at least one corresponding semi-persistent scheduling resource element.

[0009] In an embodiment, the indication of the scheduling change may include a null traffic indication corresponding to an air-conditioned scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resource element, which indicates that the user equipment will stop decoding the air-conditioned scheduled semi-persistent scheduling element. This may be equivalent to an instruction for a UE lacking traffic to enter a sleep mode for a certain amount of time, or the scheduling change indication indicates a corresponding scheduled SPS occasion that the UE is to skip monitoring and decoding. The indication of the scheduling change may indicate to stop decoding only the air-conditioned scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resource among multiple scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resource elements. After the time corresponding to the indicated occasion to be skipped has passed, the UE may resume monitoring and decoding the configured SPS resources without receiving further SPS indications.

[0010] In an embodiment, the indication of the scheduling change may be scrambled according to a device-specific semi-persistent scheduling scrambling code or sequence, or a device-group-specific semi-persistent scheduling scrambling code or sequence.

[0011] In another embodiment, a radio access node of a communication network includes a processor configured to: determine a service condition change corresponding to a change in the service condition applicable to a user equipment; determine a scheduling change of a scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion corresponding to the user equipment based on the service condition change; transmit a scheduling change indication indicating the scheduling change to the user equipment; and transmit a service to the user equipment according to the scheduling change. The service change may be due to jitter or lack of service of a UE that is currently scheduled to monitor and decode downlink service according to an SPS resource or resource set.

[0012] The processor of the radio access node may also be configured to determine jitter associated with the service condition change to generate a determined jitter, wherein the scheduling change indication includes an offset from a first semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion, wherein the offset corresponds to the determined jitter. The scheduling change indication may include a deactivation instruction for deactivating the first semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion, wherein the scheduling change indication includes an activation instruction for activating a second semi-persistent scheduling funding occasion, and wherein the second semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion is offset relative to the first semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion. The offset may include an offset relative to time or an offset relative to frequency.

[0013] The processor of the radio access node may also be configured to transmit a jitter indication configuration, the jitter indication configuration including at least one jitter indication indicating at least one corresponding semi-persistent scheduling timing offset, wherein the scheduling change indication includes a jitter indication, and the user equipment is to use the jitter indication to determine a semi-persistent scheduling timing offset among the at least one corresponding semi-persistent scheduling timing offsets from the jitter indication configuration to generate a determined semi-persistent scheduling timing offset, which is to be used to process downlink service received from the radio access node. The jitter indication configuration may be part of a codebook for the user equipment to determine an offset based on an indication code (such as a two-bit code). The scheduling change indication includes a no-service indication corresponding to an empty scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion, which indicates that the user equipment does not attempt to decode the empty scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion. The scheduling change indication includes an indication of a plurality of upcoming semi-persistent scheduling resource occasions for the user equipment to receive future downlink service.

[0014] In yet another embodiment, a non-transitory machine-readable medium may include executable instructions that, when executed by a processor of a network node of a communication network, facilitate performing operations that may include determining jitter associated with a change in downlink traffic conditions to produce a determined jitter; scheduling a change to a scheduled downlink semi-persistent scheduling occasion assigned to a user equipment based on the determined jitter; determining a scheduling change indication that includes an offset applicable to a first semi-persistent scheduling occasion, wherein the offset is based on the determined jitter; transmitting the scheduling change indication indicating the change to the user equipment; and transmitting traffic to the user equipment according to the change. The scheduling change indication includes a deactivation instruction that deactivates the first semi-persistent scheduling occasion, wherein the scheduling change indication includes an activation instruction that activates a second semi-persistent scheduling occasion, and wherein the second semi-persistent scheduling occasion is offset relative to the first semi-persistent scheduling occasion based on the offset. The scheduling change indication may be anonymized using a device-specific code or a device-group specific scrambling code. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0015] Figure 1 A wireless communication system environment is shown.

[0016] Figure 2 An example virtual reality apparatus is shown.

[0017] Figure 3 Offset semi-persistent scheduling resource elements are shown to minimize performance degradation due to jitter.

[0018] Figure 4 An example offset semi-persistent scheduling resource element information represented as a codebook is shown.

[0019] Figure 5 A timing diagram of an example method embodiment for offsetting semi-persistent scheduling resource elements to minimize the impact of jitter is shown.

[0020] Figure 6 An example embodiment of adaptive SPS configuration activation and deactivation of semi-persistent scheduling resource elements based on a change in traffic to be transmitted to a user equipment is shown.

[0021] Figure 7 A change in configuration information based on a change in traffic to be transmitted to a user equipment is shown, which is represented as a codebook.

[0022] Figure 8 A timing diagram of an example method for configuring semi-persistent scheduling resources for a user equipment based on a change in traffic to be transmitted to the user equipment is shown.

[0023] Figure 9 A flowchart of an example method for configuring semi-persistent scheduling resources based on a change in traffic conditions is shown.

[0024] Figure 10 A block diagram of an example method is shown.

[0025] Figure 11 A block diagram of an example user equipment is shown.

[0026] Figure 12 A block diagram of an example non - transitory machine - readable medium is shown.

[0027] Figure 13 An example computer environment is shown.

[0028] Figure 14 A block diagram of an example wireless UE is shown. Detailed Description

[0029] First, those skilled in the art will readily understand that the present embodiments have broad utility and applicability. Many methods, embodiments, and adaptations of the present application, as well as many variations, modifications, and equivalent arrangements, will be clearly or reasonably suggested from the substance or scope of the various embodiments of the present application, in addition to those described herein.

[0030] Accordingly, although the present application has been described in detail herein with respect to various embodiments, it should be understood that the present disclosure is an illustration of one or more concepts expressed by various example embodiments and is merely for providing a complete and enabling disclosure. The following disclosure is not intended and should not be construed to limit the present application or otherwise exclude any such other embodiments, adaptations, variations, modifications, and equivalent arrangements. The present embodiments described herein are only limited by the appended claims and their equivalents.

[0031] As used in the present disclosure, in some embodiments, the terms "component", "system", etc. are intended to refer to or include a computer - related entity or an entity associated with an operating device having one or more specific functions, where the entity can be hardware, a combination of hardware and software, software, or software in execution. For example, a component can be, but is not limited to, a process running on a processor, a processor, an object, an executable file, an execution thread, computer - executable instructions, a program, and / or a computer. By way of illustration and not limitation, both an application running on a server and the server can be components.

[0032] One or more components can reside within an executing process and / or thread, and the components can be located on one computer and / or distributed between two or more computers. Additionally, the components can execute from various computer-readable media on which various data structures are stored. The components can communicate via local and / or remote procedures, such as in accordance with a signal having one or more data packets (e.g., data from one component that interacts with another component in a local system, a distributed system, and / or across a network such as the Internet via the signal with other systems). As another example, a component can be a device having specific functionality provided by mechanical parts operated by electrical or electronic circuitry, which is operated by a software application or a firmware application executed by a processor, where the processor can be internal or external to the device and executes at least a portion of the software or firmware application. As yet another example, a component can be a device that provides specific functionality through electronic components without the need for mechanical parts, and the electronic components can include a processor therein to execute at least a portion of the software or firmware that imparts the functionality to the electronic components. Although the various components are shown as separate components, it should be understood that multiple components can be implemented as a single component, or a single component can be implemented as multiple components without departing from the example embodiments.

[0033] As used herein, the term "facilitate" in the context of a system, device, or component "facilitates" one or more actions or operations, in relation to the nature of a complex computing environment in which multiple components and / or multiple devices may be involved in some computing operations. Non-limiting examples of actions that may or may not involve multiple components and / or multiple devices include transmitting or receiving data, establishing a connection between devices, determining intermediate results for obtaining a result, etc. In this regard, a computing device or component can facilitate an operation by playing any role in the completion of the operation. When the operation of a component is described herein, it should thus be understood that, in cases where the operation is described as being facilitated by a component, the operation can optionally be completed in cooperation with one or more other computing devices or components, such as but not limited to sensors, antennas, audio and / or visual output devices, other devices, etc.

[0034] In addition, various embodiments can be implemented using standard programming and / or engineering techniques to produce software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof to control a computer to implement the methods, apparatuses, or articles of manufacture of the disclosed subject matter. As used herein, the term "article of manufacture" is intended to include a computer program accessible from any computer-readable (or machine-readable) device or computer-readable (or machine-readable) storage / communication medium. For example, computer-readable storage media can include, but are not limited to, magnetic storage devices (e.g., hard disks, floppy disks, magnetic strips), optical disks (e.g., compact discs (CDs), digital versatile discs (DVDs)), smart cards, and flash memory devices (e.g., cards, sticks, key drives). Of course, those skilled in the art will recognize that many modifications can be made to such configurations without departing from the scope or spirit of the various embodiments.

[0035] The PDCCH of a 5G NR system can convey downlink and uplink control information to a cellular device. Compared with the control channel design of the fourth generation (e.g., LTE), the 5G control channel can meet the requirements of URLLC and eMBB use cases and can provide effective coexistence between these different QoS classes.

[0036] Different from the fourth-generation control channel, the 5G PDCCH channel can perform beamforming using the preferred channel vector of each UE, in which a demodulation reference signal for demodulation assistance ("DMRS") is embedded. The PDCCH can be modulated by a fixed QPSK modulation scheme and has a conservative coding rate, such that the reliability of receiving the PDCCH channel at the UE device is maximized. For example, in order to meet the reliability level of URLLC 10e-5, the PDCCH channel decoding capability can be enhanced at the device side.

[0037] The resource size of each PDCCH channel can carry the downlink control information ("DCI") of one or more UEs, can be time-varying, and can be referred to as the PDCCH aggregation level. In particular, and to enhance PDCCH decoding, the network can increase the resource size of the PDCCH channel and thus adopt a more conservative and less resource-efficient PDCCH coding rate. This means that the same amount of PDCCH control information is transmitted at a stronger coding rate (i.e., more redundant bits for error detection and correction) at the cost of consuming more channel resources for transmitting PDCCH information.

[0038] There are two types of PDCCH channels. First, UE-specific PDCCH, where a single UE / device periodically monitors a set of channel resources. Once configured, the device will attempt to blindly decode those candidate resources in case they might carry DCI information. This DCI information includes configurations regarding scheduled uplink or downlink grants, transmission configurations, and information regarding common system signaling and updates. Additionally, blind decoding is the process when the UE attempts to decode the DCI with all possible transmission configurations and aggregation levels. This means a high power consumption on the device side; however, this is necessary because the UE does not yet know the actual configuration of the PDCCH channel and the corresponding transmission. After successfully decoding the PDCCH, it should be aware of this. In the active mode, the UE can monitor one or more configured PDCCH search spaces, where a search space means a set of candidate resources that can carry PDCCH / DCI information. The search space definition can be used to refer to different sizes (i.e., aggregation levels) of the PDCCH channel, and thus, the resource size required to carry the PDCCH can be different.

[0039] The common PDCCH search space is monitored by all UEs. Those common PDCCH channels typically carry DCI information associated with all devices. Examples include system updates and control information, all UE power control information, and general system information.

[0040] For each scheduled downlink or uplink transmission, there is usually a preamble PDCCH control transmission that notifies the UE device of the resources scheduled by the network for the transmission, as well as the transmission configuration for the transmission in the uplink or the reception in the downlink. Therefore, PDCCH transmission is regarded as signaling overhead, which should always be minimized and is necessary for the device to successfully transmit and / or receive.

[0041] As an example use case illustrating the example embodiments disclosed herein, virtual reality (“VR”) applications and VR variants (e.g., mixed and augmented reality) perform optimally at certain times when using NR radio resources associated with URLLC, while at other times, a lower performance level may be sufficient. A virtual reality smart glasses device can consume NR radio resources at a given broadband data rate with more stringent radio latency and reliability criteria to provide a satisfactory end-user experience.

[0042] The 5G system should support “Extended Reality” (“XR”) services. XR services can include VR applications, which are widely adopted XR applications that provide immersive environments that can stimulate the end user's senses such that he or she may be “tricked” into feeling within an environment different from the one in which he or she is actually located. XR services can include Augmented Reality (“AR”) applications, which can enhance the real-world environment by providing additional virtual-world elements via the user's senses, which focus on real-world elements in the user's actual surrounding environment. XR services can include Mixed Reality (“MR”) applications, which facilitate the merging or convergence of the virtual and real worlds such that the end user of the XR service interacts with elements of both his or her real environment and virtual environment simultaneously.

[0043] Different XR use cases can be associated with certain radio performance objectives. As is common for XR scenarios and different from URLLC or eMBB, high-capacity links with strict radio and reliability levels are generally required to obtain a satisfactory end-user experience. For example, compared to a 5 Mbps URLLC link with a 1 ms radio budget, some XR applications require a 100 Mbps link with a few milliseconds of allowed radio latency. Therefore, 5G radio design and associated procedures can adapt to the new XR QoS categories and associated objectives.

[0044] XR services can be facilitated by traffic having certain characteristics associated with the XR service. For example, XR traffic can generally be periodic, with time-varying packet sizes and packet arrival rates. Additionally, different packet traffic for a single XR session can have different impacts on the end-user experience. For example, smart glasses streaming 180-degree high-resolution frames may use a large portion of the broadband service capacity to meet the user experience. However, the frames for the pose direction (e.g., the front direction) to be presented to the user are the most important for a satisfactory user experience, while the frames for the peripheral vision to be presented to the user have less impact on the user experience and can thus be associated with lower QoS requirements for transporting the packet traffic compared to the QoS requirements for transporting the pose direction traffic flow. Therefore, flow differentiation that prioritizes some flows or some packets of an XR session over other flows or packets can facilitate the efficient use of the capacity of the communication system to transport traffic. Additionally, due to limited form factors of the devices, XR-enabled devices (e.g., smart glasses, projection wearables, etc.) may be more power-constrained than traditional mobile handsets. Therefore, techniques for maximizing power-saving operation on XR-capable devices are desirable. Thus, for example, user equipment devices accessing traffic flows of XR services or XR sessions can be associated with certain QoS metrics to meet the performance objectives of the XR service in terms of perceived data rate or end-to-end latency and reliability.

[0045] Services with high capacity requirements, such as virtual reality applications, may even pose performance challenges to 5G NR capabilities. Therefore, although 5G NR systems may facilitate and support higher performance capabilities, the radio interface should still be optimized to support the extremely high capacity and low latency requirements of XR applications and XR data services. Semi-persistent scheduling ("SPS") can be used to support services with high capacity requirements without consuming too much control channel overhead. Using SPS, the radio access network can allocate a set of periodic data resources to an active user equipment device without dynamically transmitting separate control channel information corresponding to each data resource or resource element. Therefore, compared with scheduling each resource, the SPS implementation generally results in less control overhead and optimized power saving gains at the user equipment device because the user equipment device only schedules data channel resources according to the SPS scheduling scheme and does not have to perform repeated blind decoding of the control channel to determine the scheduling of the data channel resources.

[0046] However, since the arrival time of data services sent to the user equipment is unknown in advance, the radio access network node ("RAN") usually configures multiple SPS resource scheduling sets for the device, for example, with various resource timings and different periodicities, so that when the service payload part arrives at the RAN, the network can transmit the service payload during the first available SPS resource time / timing. However, the packet arrivals of virtual reality services may exhibit time-varying jitter, for example due to specific application entities or traffic variations in the core network. The RAN can configure SPS resource set configurations with different start times to reduce service buffer delays. Although such scheduling of multiple SPS resource sets can mitigate performance degradation due to jitter, the user equipment may attempt to monitor and decode many data channel resources that may not correspond (e.g., contain traffic data directed to the user equipment), which typically results in poor power consumption performance of the user equipment (e.g., inefficient use of the UE battery power). Therefore, as disclosed herein, power-efficient, low-latency SPS scheduling facilitates services with high capacity requirements. The power-efficient and latency-minimized SPS scheduling techniques disclosed herein include dynamically offsetting SPS resource sets based on changes in downlink traffic due to jitter, and activating / deactivating scheduled SPS resources by instructing the user equipment to skip monitoring and attempt to decode scheduled SPS resources that do not contain incoming traffic for the user equipment to save device power at the user equipment.

[0047] Turning now to the drawings, Figure 1FIG. 0 shows an example of a wireless communication system 100 that supports blind decoding of PDCCH candidates or search spaces in accordance with aspects of the present disclosure. The wireless communication system 100 may include one or more base stations 105, one or more UEs 115, and a core network 130. In some examples, the wireless communication system 100 may be a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, an LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) network, an LTE-A Pro network, or a New Radio (NR) network. In some examples, the wireless communication system 100 may support enhanced broadband communication, ultra-reliable (e.g., mission-critical) communication, low-latency communication, communication with low-cost and low-complexity devices, or any combination thereof. As shown, examples of UEs 115 may include smart phones, cars or other vehicles, or drones or other aircraft. Another example of a UE may be a virtual reality appliance 117, such as smart glasses, virtual reality headsets, augmented reality headsets, and other similar devices that may provide images, video, audio, tactile, gustatory, or olfactory sensations to a wearer. A UE (such as, the VR appliance 117) may transmit or receive wireless signals to or from a RAN base station 105 via a long-range wireless link 125, or the UE / VR appliance may receive or transmit wireless signals via a short-range wireless link 137, which may include a wireless link with the UE device 115, such as a Bluetooth link, a Wi-Fi link, etc. A UE, such as the appliance 117, may communicate via multiple wireless links simultaneously, such as via a link 125 with a base station 105 and via a short-range wireless link. The VR appliance 117 may also communicate with the wireless UE via a cable or other wired connection. The RAN or its components may be implemented by one or more computer components that may be referenced Figure 12 as described.

[0048] Continuing the discussion Figure 1 , the base stations 105 may be dispersed throughout a geographic area to form the wireless communication system 100 and may be devices of different forms or having different capabilities. The base stations 105 and the UEs 115 may communicate wirelessly via one or more communication links 125. Each base station 105 may provide a coverage area 110 over which the UEs 115 and the base stations 105 may establish one or more communication links 125. The coverage area 110 may be an example of a geographic area over which the base stations 105 and the UEs 115 may support signal communication according to one or more radio access technologies.

[0049] The UEs 115 may be dispersed throughout the coverage area 110 of the wireless communication system 100, and each UE 115 may be stationary or mobile, or both, at different times. The UEs 115 may be devices of different forms or having different capabilities. Figure 1 Some example UEs 115 are shown in Figure 1As shown, the UE 115 described herein can communicate with various types of equipment, such as other UEs 115, base stations 105, or network devices (e.g., core network nodes, relay devices, integrated access and backhaul (IAB) nodes, or other network devices).

[0050] Base stations 105 can communicate with the core network 130, with each other, or both. For example, base stations 105 can interface with the core network 130 via one or more backhaul links 120 (e.g., via S1, N2, N3, or other interfaces). Base stations 105 can communicate directly (e.g., directly between base stations 105) or indirectly (e.g., via the core network 130) or both with each other via backhaul links 120 (e.g., via X2, Xn, or other interfaces). In some examples, backhaul links 120 can include one or more wireless links.

[0051] One or more of the base stations 105 described herein can include or can be referred to by those of ordinary skill in the art as base transceiver stations, radio base stations, access points, radio transceivers, NodeB, eNodeB (eNB), next-generation NodeB, or giga NodeB (any of which can be referred to as bNodeB or gNB), home NodeB, home eNodeB, or other suitable terms.

[0052] UE 115 can include or can be referred to as a mobile device, wireless device, remote device, handheld device, or subscriber device, or some other suitable term, where "device" can also be referred to as unit, station, terminal, or client, among other examples. UE 115 can also include or can be referred to as a personal electronic device, such as a cellular phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), tablet computer, laptop computer, personal computer, or router. In some examples, UE 115 can include or be referred to as a wireless local loop (WLL) station, Internet of Things (IoT) device, Internet of Everything (IoE) device, or machine type communication (MTC) device, among other examples, which can be implemented in various objects such as appliances, vehicles, or smart meters, among other examples.

[0053] UE 115 is capable of communicating with various types of devices, such as other UEs 115 that can sometimes act as repeaters, as well as base stations 105 and network equipment, including macro eNBs or gNBs, small cell eNBs or gNBs, or relay base stations, among other examples, as Figure 1 shown.

[0054] UE 115 and base station 105 can communicate wirelessly with each other via one or more communication links 125 over one or more carriers. The term "carrier" may refer to a set of radio frequency spectrum resources having a defined physical layer structure for supporting communication link 125. For example, a carrier for communication link 125 may include a portion (e.g., bandwidth part (BWP)) of a radio frequency spectrum band that operates according to one or more physical layer channels of a given radio access technology (e.g., LTE, LTE-A, LTE-A Pro, NR). Each physical layer channel may carry acquisition signaling (e.g., synchronization signals, system information), control signaling for coordinating carrier operation, user data, or other signaling. The wireless communication system 100 may use carrier aggregation or multi-carrier operation to support communication with UE 115. UE 115 may be configured with multiple downlink component carriers and one or more uplink component carriers according to a carrier aggregation configuration. Carrier aggregation may be used with both frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) component carriers.

[0055] In some examples (e.g., in a carrier aggregation configuration), a carrier may also have acquisition signaling or control signaling for coordinating the operation of other carriers. A carrier may be associated with a frequency channel (e.g., evolved universal mobile telecommunication system terrestrial radio access (e-UTRA) absolute radio frequency channel number (EARFCN)) and may be positioned according to a channel raster for discovery by UE 115. A carrier may operate in a stand-alone mode, where UE 115 may perform initial acquisition and connection via the carrier, or the carrier may operate in a non-stand-alone mode, where a connection is anchored using a different carrier (e.g., the same or a different radio access technology).

[0056] The communication link 125 shown in the wireless communication system 100 may include an uplink transmission from UE 115 to base station 105, or a downlink transmission from base station 105 to UE 115. A carrier may carry downlink or uplink communication (e.g., in FDD mode), or may be configured to carry both downlink and uplink communication, e.g., in TDD mode).

[0057] A carrier can be associated with a specific bandwidth of the radio frequency spectrum, and in some examples, the carrier bandwidth can be referred to as the "system bandwidth" of the carrier or the wireless communication system 100. For example, the carrier bandwidth can be one of a plurality of determined bandwidths of a carrier of a specific radio access technology (e.g., 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 40, or 80 megahertz (MHz)). Devices of the wireless communication system 100 (e.g., the base station 105, the UE 115, or both) can have a hardware configuration that supports communication through a specific carrier bandwidth, or can be configured to support communication through one of the carrier bandwidths in a carrier bandwidth aggregation. In some examples, the wireless communication system 100 can include a base station 105 or a UE 115 that supports simultaneous communication via carriers associated with multiple carrier bandwidths. In some examples, each served UE 115 can be configured to operate through a portion (e.g., a subband, a BWP) or all of the carrier bandwidth.

[0058] The signal waveform transmitted through a carrier can be composed of multiple subcarriers (e.g., using a multi-carrier modulation (MCM) technique, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) or discrete Fourier transform spread OFDM (DFT-S-OFDM)). In a system that employs an MCM technique, a resource element can be composed of a symbol period (e.g., the duration of a modulation symbol) and a subcarrier, where the symbol period and the subcarrier spacing are inversely proportional. The number of bits carried by each resource element may depend on the modulation scheme (e.g., the order of the modulation scheme, the coding rate of the modulation scheme, or both). Therefore, the more resource elements received by the UE 115 and the higher the order of the modulation scheme, the higher the data rate of the UE may be. Wireless communication resources can refer to a combination of radio frequency spectrum resources, time resources (e.g., search spaces), or spatial resources (e.g., spatial layers or beams), and using multiple spatial layers can further improve the data rate or data integrity of communication with the UE 115.

[0059] One or more parameters of a carrier can be supported, where the parameters can include the subcarrier spacing (Δf) and the cyclic prefix. A carrier can be divided into one or more BWPs with the same or different parameters. In some examples, the UE 115 can be configured with multiple BWPs. In some examples, a single BWP for a carrier can be active at a given time, and the communication for the UE 115 can be restricted to one or more active BWPs.

[0060] The time interval of the base station 105 or the UE 115 can be expressed as a multiple of a basic time unit. For example, the basic time unit can refer to T s = 1 / (Δf max ·N f ) seconds of sampling period, where Δf maxmay represent the maximum supported subcarrier spacing, and N f may represent the maximum supported discrete Fourier transform (DFT) size. The time intervals of the communication resources may be organized according to each radio frame having a specified duration (e.g., 10 milliseconds (ms)). Each radio frame may be identified by a system frame number (SFN) (e.g., ranging from 0 to 1023).

[0061] Each frame may include a plurality of consecutively numbered subframes or time slots, and each subframe or time slot may have the same duration. In some examples, a frame may be divided (e.g., in the time domain) into subframes, and each subframe may be further divided into a plurality of time slots. Alternatively, each frame may include a variable number of time slots, and the number of time slots may depend on the subcarrier spacing. Each time slot may include a plurality of symbol periods, e.g., depending on the length of the cyclic prefix appended to each symbol period). In some wireless communication systems 100, a time slot may be further divided into a plurality of mini time slots containing one or more symbols. In addition to the cyclic prefix, each symbol period may contain one or more (e.g., N f ) sampling periods. The duration of a symbol period may depend on the subcarrier spacing or the operating frequency band.

[0062] A subframe, time slot, mini time slot, or symbol may be the smallest scheduling unit of the wireless communication system 100 (e.g., in the time domain), and may be referred to as a transmission time interval (TTI). In some examples, the TTI duration (e.g., the number of symbol periods in a TTI) may be variable. Additionally or alternatively, the smallest scheduling unit of the wireless communication system 100 may be dynamically selected (e.g., in a burst of shortened TTIs (sTTIs)).

[0063] According to various techniques, physical channels can be multiplexed on a carrier. For example, one or more of time division multiplexing (TDM) techniques, frequency division multiplexing (FDM) techniques, or hybrid TDM-FDM techniques can be used to multiplex physical control channels and physical data channels on a downlink carrier. The control region of the physical control channel (e.g., control resource set (CORESET)) can be defined by multiple symbol periods and can extend to the system bandwidth of the carrier or a subset of the system bandwidth. One or more control regions (e.g., CORESET) can be configured for the set of UEs 115. For example, one or more of the UEs 115 can monitor or search for a control region or space for control information according to one or more search space sets, and each search space set can include one or more control channel candidates in one or more aggregation levels arranged in a cascaded manner. The aggregation level of the control channel candidate can refer to multiple control channel resources (e.g., control channel elements (CCE)) associated with the coded information of a control information format with a given payload size. The search space set can include a common search space set configured to send control information to multiple UEs 115 and a UE-specific search space set for sending control information to a specific UE 115. Other search spaces and configurations for monitoring and decoding them are disclosed herein, which are novel and not traditional.

[0064] The base station 105 can provide communication coverage via one or more cells, such as macro cells, small cells, hotspots, or other types of cells, or any combination thereof. The term "cell" can refer to a logical communication entity for communicating with the base station 105 (e.g., via a carrier) and can be associated with an identifier for distinguishing adjacent cells (e.g., physical cell identifier (PCID), virtual cell identifier (VCID), or other identifier). In some examples, a cell can also refer to the geographical coverage area 110 or a portion of the geographical coverage area 110 (e.g., a sector) on which the logical communication entity operates. Depending on various factors, such as the capacity of the base station 105, the range of such cells can range from a smaller area (e.g., a structure, a subset of a structure) to a larger area. For example, a cell can be or include a building, a subset of a building, or an external space between or overlapping with the geographical coverage area 110, and other examples.

[0065] Macro cells typically cover a relatively large geographical area (e.g., with a radius of several kilometers) and can allow the UE 115 to have unrestricted access through a service subscription with the network provider that supports the macro cell. Compared with macro cells, small cells can be associated with base stations 105 with lower power, and small cells can operate in the same or different (e.g., licensed, unlicensed) frequency bands as macro cells. Small cells can provide unrestricted access to UEs 115 with a service subscription with the network provider, or can provide restricted access to UEs 115 associated with the small cell (e.g., UEs 115 in a closed subscriber group (CSG), UEs 115 associated with users in a home or office). The base station 105 can support one or more cells and can also use one or more component carriers to support communication through one or more cells.

[0066] In some examples, a carrier can support multiple cells and can configure different cells according to different protocol types (e.g., MTC, narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB)), and these protocol types can provide access for different types of devices.

[0067] In some examples, the base station 105 can be movable and thus provide communication coverage for a mobile geographical coverage area 110. In some examples, different geographical coverage areas 110 associated with different technologies can overlap, but different geographical coverage areas 110 can be supported by the same base station 105. In other examples, overlapping geographical coverage areas 110 associated with different technologies can be supported by different base stations 105. The wireless communication system 100 can include, for example, a heterogeneous network in which different types of base stations 105 provide coverage for various geographical coverage areas 110 using the same or different radio access technologies.

[0068] The wireless communication system 100 can support synchronous or asynchronous operation. For synchronous operation, the base stations 105 can have similar frame timings, and transmissions from different base stations 105 can be approximately aligned in time. For asynchronous operation, the base stations 105 can have different frame timings, and in some examples, transmissions from different base stations 105 may not be aligned in time. The techniques described herein can be used for synchronous or asynchronous operation.

[0069] Some UEs 115, such as MTC or IoT devices, can be low-cost or low-complexity devices and can provide automated communication between machines (e.g., via machine-to-machine (M2M) communication). M2M communication or MTC can refer to data communication technologies that allow devices to communicate with each other or with the base station 105 without human intervention. In some examples, M2M communication or MTC can include communication from devices that integrate sensors or meters to measure or capture information and relay such information to a central server or application that utilizes the information or presents the information to a person interacting with the application. Some UEs 115 can be designed to collect information or implement automated behavior of machines or other devices. Examples of applications of MTC devices include smart metering, inventory monitoring, water level monitoring, equipment monitoring, medical monitoring, wildlife monitoring, weather and geological event monitoring, fleet management and tracking, remote security sensing, physical access control, and transaction-based commercial charging.

[0070] Some UEs 115 can be configured to operate in power-saving modes, such as half-duplex communication (e.g., a mode that supports one-way communication via transmission or reception, but not both transmission and reception simultaneously). In some examples, half-duplex communication can be performed at a reduced peak rate. Other power-saving techniques for UEs 115 include entering a deep sleep power-saving mode when not participating in active communication, operating on limited bandwidth (e.g., according to narrowband communication), or a combination of these techniques. For example, some UEs 115 can be configured to operate using a narrowband protocol type that is associated with a defined portion or range within a carrier, within a guard band of the carrier, or outside the carrier (e.g., a set of subcarriers or resource blocks (RBs)).

[0071] The wireless communication system 100 can be configured to support ultra-reliable communication or low-latency communication, or various combinations thereof. For example, the wireless communication system 100 can be configured to support ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) or mission-critical communication. The UE 115 can be designed to support ultra-reliable, low-latency, or critical functions (e.g., mission-critical functions). Ultra-reliable communication can include private communication or group communication and can be supported by one or more mission-critical services, such as mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT), mission-critical video (MCVideo), or mission-critical data (MCData). Support for mission-critical functions may include prioritization of services, and mission-critical services can be used for public safety or general commercial applications. The terms ultra-reliable, low-latency, mission-critical, and ultra-reliable low-latency may be used interchangeably herein.

[0072] In some examples, the UE 115 is also capable of communicating directly with other UEs 115 via a device-to-device (D2D) communication link 135 (e.g., using peer-to-peer (P2P) or D2D protocols). The communication link 135 may include a sidelink communication link. One or more UEs 115 utilizing D2D communication may be within the geographical coverage area 110 of the base station 105. Other UEs 115 in this group may be outside the geographical coverage area 110 of the base station 105 or otherwise unable to receive transmissions from the base station 105. In some examples, a group of UEs 115 communicating via D2D communication may utilize a one-to-many (1:M) system in which a UE transmits to each other UE in the group. In some examples, the base station 105 facilitates resource scheduling for D2D communication. In other cases, D2D communication is performed between UEs 115 without involving the base station 105.

[0073] In some systems, the D2D communication link 135 may be an example of a communication channel between vehicles (e.g., UE 115), such as a sidelink communication channel. In some examples, vehicles may communicate using vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, or some combination of these communications. Vehicles may emit signal information associated with traffic conditions, signal scheduling, weather, safety, emergencies, or any other information associated with the V2X system. In some examples, vehicles in a V2X system may communicate with roadside infrastructure such as roadside units, or with the network, or with both, via one or more RAN network nodes (e.g., base station 105) using vehicle-to-network (V2N) communication.

[0074] The core network 130 may provide user authentication, access authorization, tracking, Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity, and other access, routing, or mobility functions. The core network 130 may be an evolved packet core (EPC) or a 5G core (5GC), which may include at least one control plane entity that manages access and mobility (e.g., a mobility management entity (MME), an access and mobility management function (AMF)) and at least one user plane entity that routes packets or interconnects to external networks (e.g., a serving gateway (S-GW), a packet data network (PDN) gateway (P-GW), or a user plane function (UPF)). The control plane entity may manage non-access stratum (NAS) functions such as the mobility, authentication, and bearer management of UEs 115 served by the base station 105 associated with the core network 130. User IP packets may be passed through the user plane entity, which may provide IP address allocation and other functions. The user plane entity may be connected to the IP services 150 of one or more network operators. The IP services 150 may include access to the Internet, an intranet(s), an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), or packet-switched streaming services.

[0075] Some network devices in a network device, such as base station 105, may include subcomponents, such as access network entity 140, which may be an example of an access node controller (ANC). Each access network entity 140 may communicate with UE 115 via one or more other access network transport entities 145, which may be referred to as radio heads, intelligent radio heads, or transmit / receive points (TRPs). Each access network transport entity 145 may include one or more antenna panels. In some configurations, the various functions of each access network entity 140 or base station 105 may be distributed across various network devices, such as radio heads and ANCs, or consolidated into a single network device (e.g., base station 105).

[0076] Wireless communication system 100 may operate using one or more frequency bands, typically in the range of 300 megahertz (MHz) to 300 gigahertz (GHz). Generally, the region from 300 MHz to 3 GHz is referred to as the ultra-high frequency (UHF) region or the decimeter band, because the wavelength ranges from approximately one decimeter to one meter in length. UHF waves may be blocked or redirected by buildings and environmental features, but these waves can penetrate structures sufficiently to enable macrocells to serve UEs 115 located indoors. Compared to transmissions at smaller frequencies and longer wavelengths using the high frequency (HF) or very high frequency (VHF) portions of the spectrum below 300 MHz, UHF wave transmissions may be associated with smaller antennas and shorter distances (e.g., less than 100 kilometers).

[0077] Wireless communication system 100 may also operate in the super-high frequency (SHF) region using a frequency band from 3 GHz to 30 GHz (also referred to as the centimeter band), or in the extremely high frequency (EHF) region of the spectrum (e.g., from 30 GHz to 300 GHz), also referred to as the millimeter band. In some examples, wireless communication system 100 may support millimeter wave (mmW) communication between UE 115 and base station 105, and the EHF antennas of the respective devices may be smaller and closer-spaced than UHF antennas. In some examples, this may facilitate the use of antenna arrays within the devices. However, the propagation of EHF transmissions may be subject to even greater atmospheric attenuation and shorter distances than SHF or UHF transmissions. The techniques disclosed herein may be used for transmissions using one or more different frequency regions, and the specified use of frequency bands across these frequency regions may vary by country or regulatory authority.

[0078] The wireless communication system 100 can utilize both licensed and unlicensed radio frequency spectrum bands. For example, the wireless communication system 100 can employ licensed-assisted access (LAA), LTE-unlicensed (LTE-U) radio access technology, or NR technology in an unlicensed band such as the 5 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band. When operating in an unlicensed radio frequency spectrum band, devices such as the base station 105 and the UE 115 can employ carrier sensing for collision detection and avoidance. In some examples, operation in the unlicensed band can be based on a carrier aggregation configuration that combines component carriers operating in a licensed band (e.g., LAA). Operation in the unlicensed spectrum can include downlink transmission, uplink transmission, P2P transmission, or D2D transmission, among other examples.

[0079] The base station 105 or the UE 115 can be equipped with multiple antennas, which can be used to employ techniques such as transmit diversity, receive diversity, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication, or beamforming. The antennas of the base station 105 or the UE 115 can be located within one or more antenna arrays or antenna panels, which can support MIMO operation or transmit or receive beamforming. For example, one or more base station antennas or antenna arrays can be co-located at an antenna assembly, such as an antenna tower. In some examples, the antennas or antenna arrays associated with the base station 105 can be located at different geographical locations. The base station 105 can have an antenna array that has multiple rows and columns of antenna ports, and the base station 105 can use these antenna ports to support beamforming for communication with the UE 115. Similarly, the UE 115 can have one or more antenna arrays that can support various MIMO or beamforming operations. Additionally or alternatively, the antenna panel can support radio frequency beamforming of signals transmitted via the antenna ports.

[0080] The base station 105 or the UE 115 can use MIMO communication to exploit multipath signal propagation and improve spectral efficiency by transmitting or receiving multiple signals via different spatial layers. Such techniques can be referred to as spatial multiplexing. For example, a transmitting device can transmit multiple signals via different antennas or different combinations of antennas. Similarly, a receiving device can receive multiple signals via different antennas or different combinations of antennas. Each of the multiple signals can be referred to as a separate spatial stream and can carry bits associated with the same data stream (e.g., the same codeword) or different data streams (e.g., different codewords). Different spatial layers can be associated with different antenna ports for channel measurement and reporting. MIMO techniques include single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO) (where multiple spatial layers are transmitted to the same receiving device) and multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) (where multiple spatial layers are transmitted to multiple devices).

[0081] Beamforming, which can also be referred to as spatial filtering, directional transmission, or directional reception, is a signal processing technique that can be used in a transmitting device or a receiving device (such as base station 105, UE 115) to shape or manipulate an antenna beam (such as a transmission beam, a reception beam) along a spatial path between the transmitting device and the receiving device. Beamforming can be achieved by combining signals transmitted via the antenna elements of an antenna array such that some signals propagating in a particular orientation relative to the antenna array experience constructive interference while others experience destructive interference. The adjustment of the signals transmitted via the antenna elements can include the transmitting device or the receiving device applying an amplitude offset, a phase offset, or both to the signals carried via the antenna elements associated with the device. The adjustment associated with each of the antenna elements can be defined by a set of beamforming weights associated with a particular orientation (e.g., relative to the antenna array of the transmitting device or the receiving device, or relative to some other orientation).

[0082] Base station 105 or UE 115 can use beam scanning techniques as part of the beamforming operation. For example, base station 105 can use multiple antennas or antenna arrays (e.g., antenna panels) to perform beamforming operations for directional communication with UE 115. Some signals (such as synchronization signals, reference signals, beam selection signals, or other control signals) can be transmitted by base station 105 multiple times in different directions. For example, base station 105 can transmit signals according to different sets of beamforming weights associated with different transmission directions. Transmissions in different beam directions can be used to identify (e.g., by a transmitting device such as base station 105 or by a receiving device such as UE 115) the beam directions for later transmission or reception by base station 105.

[0083] Some signals, such as data signals associated with a particular receiving device, can be transmitted by base station 105 in a single beam direction (e.g., the direction associated with a receiving device such as UE 115). In some examples, the beam direction associated with the transmission along a single beam direction can be determined based on the signals transmitted in one or more beam directions. For example, UE 115 can receive one or more of the signals transmitted by base station 105 in different directions and can report to base station 105 an indication of the signal that UE 115 received with the highest signal quality or other acceptable signal quality.

[0084] In some examples, transmissions of a device (e.g., base station 105 or UE 115) can be performed using multiple beam directions, and the device can use a combination of digital precoding or radio frequency beamforming to generate a combined beam for transmission (e.g., from base station 105 to UE 115). UE 115 can report feedback indicating precoding weights for one or more beam directions, and the feedback can correspond to a configured number of beams across the system bandwidth or one or more subbands. Base station 105 can transmit reference signals (e.g., cell-specific reference signal (CRS), channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS)), which can be precoded or not precoded. UE 115 can provide feedback for beam selection, which can be a precoding matrix indicator (PMI) or codebook-based feedback (e.g., multi-panel type codebook, linear combination type codebook, port selection type codebook). Although these techniques are described with reference to signals transmitted by base station 105 in one or more directions, UE 115 can employ similar techniques to transmit signals multiple times in different directions (e.g., to identify beam directions for subsequent transmissions or receptions for UE 115) or to transmit signals in a single direction (e.g., to transmit data to a receiving device).

[0085] When receiving various signals (such as synchronization signals, reference signals, beam selection signals, or other control signals) from base station 105, a receiving device (e.g., UE 115) can attempt multiple receiving configurations (e.g., directional listening). For example, the receiving device can attempt multiple receiving directions by: receiving via different antenna subarrays, processing received signals according to different antenna subarrays, receiving according to different sets of receive beamforming weights applied to signals received at multiple antenna elements of an antenna array (e.g., different sets of directional listening weights), or processing received signals according to different sets of receive beamforming weights applied to signals received at different antenna elements of the antenna array, any of which can be referred to as "listening" according to different receiving configurations or receiving directions. In some examples, the receiving device can use a single receiving configuration to receive along a single beam direction, e.g., when receiving a data signal. The single receiving configuration can be aligned in a beam direction determined based on listening according to different receiving configuration directions (e.g., based on listening according to multiple beam directions, determining the beam direction with the highest signal strength, highest signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), or other acceptable signal quality).

[0086] The wireless communication system 100 can be a packet-based network operating according to a layered protocol stack. In the user plane, the communication at the bearer or Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) layer can be IP-based. The Radio Link Control (RLC) layer can perform packet segmentation and reassembly for communication over logical channels. The Medium Access Control (MAC) layer can perform priority handling and multiplex logical channels into transport channels. The MAC layer can also use error detection techniques, error correction techniques, or both to support retransmissions at the MAC layer to improve link efficiency. In the control plane, the Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol layer can provide the establishment, configuration, and maintenance of an RRC connection between the UE 115 and the base station 105 or the core network 130 that supports the radio bearers for user plane data. At the physical layer, the transport channels can be mapped to physical channels.

[0087] The UE 115 and the base station 105 can support retransmissions of data to increase the likelihood of successful data reception. Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) feedback is a technique for increasing the likelihood of correctly receiving data over the communication link 125. HARQ can include a combination of error detection (e.g., using Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)), Forward Error Correction (FEC), and retransmission (e.g., Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ)). HARQ can improve throughput at the MAC layer in poor radio conditions (e.g., low signal-to-noise ratio conditions). In some examples, the device can support same-slot HARQ feedback, where the device can provide HARQ feedback for data received in a previous symbol in a particular slot during that slot. In other cases, the device can provide HARQ feedback in a subsequent slot or according to some other time interval.

[0088] Now turning to Figure 2 , the figure shows a Virtual Reality (“VR”) application system 200. In system 200, a wearable VR apparatus 117 is shown from the perspective of the wearer or viewer. The VR apparatus 117 can include a central or posture visual display portion 202, a left visual display portion 204, and a right visual display portion 206, which can be used to display primary visual information, left peripheral visual information, and right peripheral visual information, respectively. As shown, portions 202, 204, and 206 are depicted by different lines, but it should be understood that hardware or software can facilitate a gradual transition from the display of primary information and peripheral information.

[0089] As discussed above, different XR use cases may require different corresponding radio performances. Generally, for XR use cases, but different from URLLC or eMBB use cases, high-capacity radio links for carrying XR data services (e.g., data streams containing visual information) are required, with strict radio grades (e.g., latency) and reliability grades to obtain a reasonable end-user experience. For example, compared with a 5 Mbps URLLC link with a 1 ms radio latency budget, some XR applications require a 100 Mbps link with an allowed radio latency of about 2 mS.

[0090] Through research, several characteristics of XR data services have been determined: (1) XR service characteristics are usually periodic, where the packet size and packet arrival rate are time-varying; (2) Due to the limited form factor of the device, devices supporting XR may have greater power limitations than traditional mobile handsets (such as smart glasses, projection wearables, etc.); (3) Multiple data packet streams corresponding to different visual information of a given XR session are not perceived by the user as having the same impact on the end-user experience.

[0091] Therefore, in addition to requiring XR-specific power usage efficiency, smart glasses (such as wearable appliance 117) streaming 180-degree high-resolution frames also require broadband capacity to provide the best user experience. However, it has been determined that data corresponding to frames carrying primary or central visual information (i.e., posture or front direction) is the most important for end-user satisfaction, while frames corresponding to peripheral visual information have less impact on the user experience. Therefore, accepting higher latency for less important traffic flows allows resources that would otherwise be allocated to less important traffic flows to be used for traffic flows corresponding to more important services or devices carrying more important services, which can be used to optimize the overall capacity and performance of a wireless communication system (such as a 5G communication system using NR technology, methods, systems, or devices). For example, a wireless data traffic flow carrying visual information for display on the central or pose visual display portion 202 may be prioritized over a wireless data traffic flow carrying visual information for the left visual display portion 204 or the right visual display portion 206.

[0092] The performance of a communication network in providing XR services can be determined at least in part based on the user satisfaction of the XR services. Users of each XR service can be associated with certain QoS metrics to meet the performance objectives of the user service in terms of perceived data rate, end-to-end latency, and reliability.

[0093] 5G NR radio systems typically include a Physical Downlink Control Channel (“PDCCH”), which can be used to convey downlink and uplink control information to cellular devices. 5G control channels can facilitate operations according to the requirements of URLLC and eMBB use cases and can facilitate effective coexistence between such different QoS classes.

[0094] Semi-Persistent Scheduling (“SPS”).

[0095] SPS scheduling enables the network to allocate channel resources for active devices for future traffic flows without the need to transmit control channel information for each resource occurrence. For example, with a single control channel transmission, the RAN can configure multiple future resource opportunities for a device, which repeat periodically, at which potential traffic data destined for that device is transmitted. Additionally, data transmitted at the SPS data resource opportunity can be pre-transmitted with a pre-configured and pre-determined transmission configuration, which includes a selected Modulation and Coding Scheme (“MCS”).

[0096] Accordingly, the device attempts to decode the configured SPS data channel resources. If there is no traffic at the RAN destined for a given user equipment during an SPS channel opportunity, the network / RAN can utilize the channel resources scheduled for the given user equipment for other device transmissions, which enhances the overall network spectral efficiency. Accordingly, in such a case, the given user equipment device should fail to decode the received payload at the configured, scheduled SPS resource opportunity since the traffic is not destined for the given user user equipment device. Such decoding failures can result in significantly inferior battery performance at the user equipment.

[0097] For services or applications with high capacity requirements, such as virtual reality, traffic typically arrives at the RAN node in an approximate periodicity (e.g., traffic flows at some predictable, steady rate). Accordingly, adjusting the SPS resource periodicity to match the incoming traffic arrival rate to reduce traffic buffering times can result in satisfactory performance. However, the jitter may vary compared to the overall traffic flow rate of virtual reality traffic. Accordingly, the concepts, aspects, examples, and embodiments disclosed herein facilitate improved latency and energy efficiency performance with scheduled SPS resources regarding application-specific or service-specific jitter associated with virtual reality applications and services.

[0098] SPS scheduling enables the network RAN to allocate future and periodic data resources to devices without the need for prior control channel transmission before each data resource. For periodic traffic, where the network matches the SPS resource periodicity with the traffic arrival periodicity, SPS scheduling can be effective in reducing control channel overhead and the corresponding device processing burden. However, for use cases such as virtual reality services, application-specific or service / specific jitter (which is typically time-varying (e.g., changing)) may interfere with the periodicity of traffic arriving at the RAN. This can lead to a mismatch between the SPS configuration and the traffic arrival rate, and thus result in reduced spectral efficiency and increased traffic buffering at the RAN due to the time-varying nature of the jitter associated with the traffic arriving at the RAN. Poor battery performance of user equipment may be attributed to user equipment devices configured with SPS attempting to decode the configured SPS resource opportunities that do not contain their downlink traffic, thus wasting device battery and processing power.

[0099] Currently, user equipment devices are configured with SPS configurations that are determined independently of real-time jitter variations, which can occur with respect to virtual reality use cases. This can cause user equipment to monitor multiple SPS resource opportunities or frequencies that do not contain the user equipment's traffic, thus inefficiently consuming more device battery. As disclosed herein, SPS resource opportunities or frequencies with dynamic time offset configurations that depend on changes in traffic conditions (such as real-time jitter) facilitate user equipment devices to avoid attempting to decode SPS resources that do not contain traffic destined for them, and thus facilitate reducing or eliminating decoding failures and the consequent wasted battery power consumption. The concepts, aspects, examples, and embodiments disclosed herein facilitate dynamically and adaptively changing the SPS resource configuration according to changes in traffic conditions such as those that may be caused by jitter.

[0100] Dynamic semi-persistent scheduling time offset.

[0101] Due to jitter in traffic arrival at the RAN node, the network typically configures multiple SPS occasions, which start at different relative times. Thus, when a latency-critical portion of SPS traffic arrives late relative to a scheduled active SPS occasion, the network does not have to buffer the traffic until the next occurrence of that SPS occasion. Instead, the network transmits the buffered SPS traffic on the next available SPS resource occasion. However, the SPS device will have to monitor, receive, and attempt to decode more SPS occasions, resulting in poor power-saving performance. Thus, as disclosed herein, a dynamic indication of an adaptive time offset for each active single or group of SPS occasions facilitates shifting or “rescheduling” one or more SPS resource elements (e.g., time or frequency). Based on real-time jitter determined by the RAN, the RAN can transmit a control channel indication to one or more user equipment devices configured with SPS resource elements to indicate a timing offset for one or more of the upcoming SPS occasions. The network can avoid configuring many SPS resource occasions, which may cause one or more user equipment devices to monitor fewer SPS resource occasions (e.g., instead of configuring more SPS resource occasions to handle jitter-affected traffic, scheduling fewer SPS resources, where each SPS resource is more likely to contain jitter-affected traffic), while still effectively receiving latency-critical traffic.

[0102] The control channel carrying the SPS timing or frequency offset indication can be scrambled with a device-specific scrambling code. In an embodiment, the control channel can scramble the SPS offset indication with a device-group-specific scrambling code, and thus one or more SPS devices can receive the timing offset indication. The timing offset indication means a timing offset for a certain upcoming group of SPS resource occasions, where the offset can be in milliseconds, half-slots, slots, sub-frames, or frames. In an embodiment, the RAN can broadcast or multicast a codebook of SPS timing indications, where an index or row is associated with a certain timing offset and one or more SPS occasions.

[0103] Now turning to Figure 3, the figure shows an example offset semi-persistent scheduling 300 of resource elements to minimize performance degradation due to jitter. The SPS timing offset 305 can be transmitted from the RAN serving the user equipment to the user equipment in the offset indication 310. The SPS offset indication 310 can be transmitted via the SPS control channel resource, which can include a control channel resource dedicated to SPS-specific control channel information and indication. The SPS control channel resource can be monitored and decoded by a single user equipment or a group of active user equipment devices configured to receive downlink traffic according to the SPS configuration. Therefore, the SPS timing offset indication 310 can be scrambled by a pre-configured SPS device-specific or device-group-specific scrambling code assigned from the RAN node to the active SPS device. Thus, the user equipment device can decode the configured SPS control channel, determine the indicated timing offset 305, and determine which SPS resource occasions to apply the offset to. For example, a single timing offset 305 included in the offset indication 310 can be associated with multiple future active SPS resource occasions 315 and 317, thus generating offset occasions 316 and 318 respectively. In another example, the signal timing offset can be applied to only one SPS resource - for example, the offset 305 can be applied to the SPS occasion 317 to generate the offset occasion 318, and not to the SPS occasion 315 (in this case, the offset occasion 316 will not be scheduled). The timing offset 305 can be configured in units of milliseconds or the number of OFDM symbols, sub-slots, slots, or frames, thus providing adaptive SPS timing adjustment for different levels of packet arrival jitter at the serving RAN.

[0104] After decoding the SPS offset indication 310, the user equipment can offset the start times of the SPS resource occasions 315 and 317, and thus avoid monitoring and decoding these now pre-scheduled SPS resources - due to the indicated timing offset 305, there will be no traffic available for transmission and reception according to the previous SPS timing resources.

[0105] As Figure 4 shown in the example in Figure 3 , the network node / RAN can configure the user equipment device with a list or codebook 400 of SPS occasion timing offset indications 405, where each SPS occasion timing offset indication 405 is associated with a corresponding timing offset 415 (such as the offset 305 described in reference Figure 3The visual representations in the medium are timing instants 315 and 317, and subsequent possible but unshown sequential timing instants), and based on the jitter experienced in real time, the RAN can transmit selected timing offset indications to one or more active SPS devices in the SPS control channel, where the offset indication can be determined by the RAN such that the offset 415 compensates for the detected jitter (e.g., jitter caused by the application layer). Figure 3 In an example, the scheduling change indication 310 shown may include an offset indication, such as "01" shown as cell 405B in table 400 of

[0106] In the example, Figure 3 The scheduling change indication 310 shown may include an offset indication, such as Figure 4 "01" shown as cell 405B in table 400 of Figure 3 which is associated with the SPS resource set "J" shown in cell 410B NS, and this cell 410B NS is associated with the offset "x2" shown in cell 415B (the offset x2 may correspond to Figure 3 the cancellation 305 shown in Figure 3 ). Thus, if the user equipment receives the scheduling change indication 310 and decodes the scheduling indication according to the device-specific scrambling code, the user equipment can delay the monitoring of the previously scheduled timing instants 315 and 317 by the amount specified by x2, such that instead, the user equipment monitors the downlink traffic data during timing instants 316 and 318 respectively, where timing instant 315 and the offset timing instant 316 are separated by the offset x2, and timing instant 317 and the offset timing instant 318 are also separated by the offset x2. Similarly, if the scheduling change indication includes "10", i.e., Figure 3 a different scheduled SPS timing instant (other than timing instants 315 and 317) not shown in Figure 4 ), the user equipment will delay the monitoring and decoding of the scheduled SPS timing instant by x3, or if the scheduling indication includes "11", the user equipment will monitor and decode the SPS timing instant (

[0107] Now turning to Figure 5, which shows a timing diagram 500 that shows the action of configuring UE 115 with offset semi-persistent resource elements, which may include timing / opportunity resources or frequency resources. At action 505, the serving RAN 105 may determine a jitter-aware semi-persistent scheduling configuration and transmit the jitter-aware SPS configuration to UE 115 at action 510. The jitter-aware SPS configuration may include control channel resource opportunities to carry dynamic SPS opportunity timing offsets (e.g., timing, frequency, or periodicity information of the SPS control channel), list-associated timing offsets, and the mapping of the associated time offset to the active SPS configuration set or opportunity. The jitter-aware SPS configuration transmitted at action 510 may include one or more scrambling codes assigned to UE / WTRU 115 (the scrambling codes may be device-specific or specific to a group of devices including UE 115). At action 512, the RAN 105 determines a change in traffic conditions and a change to the scheduled SPS opportunity based thereon, and at action 513 transmits an indication of the determined scheduling change to UE / WRTU 115 in one or more control channel opportunities, which may have been configured by the configuration transmitted at action 510. At action 515, UE / WTRU 115 monitors and blindly decodes the configured SPS control channel opportunities based on the assigned WTRU-specific or WTRU-group common scrambling code. At action 520, UE / WTRU 115 determines the timing offset of one or more SPS opportunities based on the scheduled change indication received, monitored, and decoded at action 515. At action 525, UE / WTRU 115 updates its SPS configuration based on the timing offset determined at action 520. At action 530, the RAN 105 transmits downlink traffic to UE / WTRU 115 via SPS opportunities that have been offset according to the offset indicated in the control channel opportunities transmitted from the RAN at action 513 and decoded by UE 115 at action 515. At action 535, UE / WTRU monitors and receives the downlink traffic transmitted from the RAN 105 at action 530 according to the data channel opportunities corresponding to the offset SPS opportunities based on the timing offset determined at action 520.

[0108] Adaptive SPS Configuration Activation.

[0109] A user equipment device may be configured to monitor SPS resource occasions. If no traffic data arrives at a user equipment or group of user equipments configured to receive traffic via an SPS occasion, the RAN serving the user equipment may utilize SPS resources to deliver traffic to other user equipments via resources not configured for SPS delivery. However, a user equipment configured to receive traffic via SPS scheduled resources typically monitors the configured SPS resources for traffic directed to the user equipment availability and may thus attempt to decode the full set of SPS occasion data resources, which may result in poor battery performance. Thus, as disclosed herein, a dynamic indication (which may include a null indication or a deactivation indication) directed to a user equipment configured for SPS traffic reception or a group of devices configured to receive traffic via SPS scheduled resources facilitates identification by the user equipment of whether there is traffic incoming via one or more configured upcoming SPS resource occasions. Thus, if the SPS traffic indication means there is no available SPS traffic during the current SPS occasion, the SPS-configured user equipment device may avoid attempting to decode the SPS data channel resource set. The proposed null or deactivation indication may be transmitted via limited control channel resources, where the indication is scrambled according to a device-specific or group-of-devices-specific SPS scrambling code or sequence. The SPS activation / deactivation indication may be associated with multiple scheduled SPS resource occasions. Thus, the SPS null / deactivation indication may indicate the availability of SPS traffic for an SPS device or group of devices over multiple future SPS occasions and effectively dynamically activate those SPS occasions for user equipment monitoring and reception while deactivating SPS occasions that will not contain traffic directed to the user equipment.

[0110] As disclosed and described above, jitter-aware SPS scheduling may configure SPS occasions with different start timings using an offset determined based on jitter, thus reducing traffic buffering latency. Additionally, as discussed above, current techniques aimed at reducing buffering latency caused by jitter may configure many multiple SPS occasions with many different start times to facilitate reducing buffering latency caused by jitter. Although the jitter-aware embodiments disclosed and described herein reduce buffering latency relative to current techniques, a user equipment configured to monitor SPS resources may attempt to decode a set of SPS resources that do not include downlink traffic data directed to the user equipment, even when applying a jitter-based offset. This may typically result in poor battery power performance.

[0111] In addition to, or as an alternative to, the standalone embodiments, a dynamic activation / deactivation indication may be generated and transmitted from the serving RAN to the UE, the indication including scheduling information corresponding to currently active, currently scheduled SPS resource occasions (e.g., resource elements such as the timing or frequency resources for which the UE has been configured or scheduled for downlink traffic).

[0112] As Figure 6 shown, the control channel may carry SPS occasions, or SPS group occasion activation / deactivation indications. The SPS activation / deactivation indication may indicate to a device monitoring the SPS control channel to activate one or more SPS occasions (e.g., occasion 625 or 630) or deactivate which occasions (e.g., occasions 610, 615, 620) from the set of active, currently scheduled SPS occasions. Thus, when decoding the transmitted SPS activation / deactivation indication, the user equipment may monitor and attempt to decode the received SPS service on the activated SPS occasions indicated by indication 605. The UE device may skip monitoring and decoding of configured SPS occasions that are not dynamically activated according to the SPS activation indication 605, thus resulting in a power saving gain for the battery of the user equipment, since the user equipment realizes based on indication 605 that the network will not transmit SPS service to the user equipment, or transmit SPS service to the SPS multicast group of devices of which the user equipment is a member. Similar to the SPS timing offset codebook 400 described in reference Figure 4 The SPS occasion activation / deactivation codebook 700 or list shown in Figure 7 may be used to facilitate the configuration of the user equipment based on the indication received in indication 605 shown in Figure 6 . The configured codebook 700 may indicate to the user equipment an index list 710, where each index is associated with one or more of the active SPS occasion resources or resource sets. Thus, when decoding a certain SPS activation indication from the SPS control channel to generate the activation / deactivation indication code 705, the user equipment may monitor and receive SPS resource occasions according to the resource or resource set 710, which corresponds to the decoded activation or deactivation code 705 generated by the decoded activation / deactivation indication 605 shown in Figure 6 . As shown by the cell block 710D in Figure 7 , the SPS activation indication indicating an empty or no SPS resource occasion may indicate deactivation of SPS scheduling for the user equipment or a group of user equipment (e.g., for a UE or UE group corresponding to a given scrambling code).

[0113] In an embodiment, Figure 6 the activation / deactivation indication 605 shown in Figure 7 in combination with a codebook (such as the codebook 700 shown in Figure 6 ) may indicate to the user equipment to deactivate Figure 6 all occasions 610, 615, 620 shown in and activate occasions 625 and 630. It should be understood that, for illustrative purposes, occasions 610, 615, 620 are shown at different frequency resources from occasions 625 and 630, but

[0114] In an embodiment, Figure 6 The activation / deactivation indication 605 shown in combination with the codebook 700 may indicate that the user equipment deactivates less than all of the occasions 610, 615, 620 (e.g., only deactivate occasion 615), and activates less than all of the occasions 625 and 630 (e.g., only activate occasion 630). It should be understood that for illustrative purposes, the configured SPS occasions 610, 615, 620 may continue with more occasions at the same period and frequency, but Figure 6 only three occasions are shown in. Similarly, the activation / deactivation indication 605 may activate more than one SPS occasion 625 and 630, but for illustrative purposes, Figure 6 only two are shown in.

[0115] In an example, Figure 6 the indication 605 shown in may include Figure 7 the indication "11" shown in the cell 705D of, which will indicate to the user equipment that has received the indication 605 to deactivate the SPS occasions 610, 615, 620 without activating other SPS occasions, such as Figure 6 the SPS occasions 625 and 630 shown in. As described above, this may occur when the RAN that sends the indication 605 has no traffic to deliver to the user equipment that receives and successfully decodes the indication 605. Therefore, when the RAN determines a change in the traffic condition (e.g., no traffic to deliver to a given UE), the UE does not need to attempt to decode the SPS occasions 610, 615, 620, and thus does not waste processor and battery resources on failed attempts to decode and receive traffic.

[0116] It should be understood that if the activation / deactivation indication 605 includes an instruction to only deactivate the configured SPS resources, such an activation / deactivation indication may be regarded as an instruction for the user equipment that receives the activation / deactivation indication to enter the sleep mode when there are no other scheduled occasions to monitor, decode, or otherwise receive downlink traffic from the RAN that transmitted the activation / deactivation indication. Thus, as Figure 6 shown, the activation / deactivation indication 605 may be referred to as an activation / deactivation indication. The activation / deactivation indication may be referred to as an empty or sleep indication, or an activation / deactivation / empty indication, because the indication may include an instruction for the receiving UE to skip monitoring of downlink traffic for certain downlink occasions, where the UE is configured to resume monitoring and decoding of the previously scheduled SPS resources for downlink traffic data after the certain occasions for which skipping is indicated have passed. In an embodiment, the activation / deactivation / empty indication may include an instruction to only deactivate monitoring of the SPS resources. In an embodiment, the activation / deactivation / empty indication may include an instruction to only activate monitoring of the SPS resources.

[0117] Now turning to Figure 8 , which shows a timing diagram of an exemplary method 800 for configuring a user equipment UE 115 with semi-persistent scheduling resources based on changes in traffic transmitted from a RAN to the user equipment. At action 805, the RAN 105 determines an SPS configuration that may include adaptive activation / deactivation indication configuration information and transmits, at action 810, the SPS configuration generated at action 805 to the UE 115. The adaptive activation / deactivation SPS configuration may include control channel resource occasions that carry SPS occasion activation / deactivation indications (e.g., timing, frequency, and periodicity information of an SPS control channel), a list of activation and deactivation indications that may be mapped to one or more available SPS configuration sets, and one or more scrambling codes that may be assigned to the UE / WTRU 115. At action 813, the RAN 105 determines a change in the traffic condition and determines a scheduling change based on the determined traffic condition. For example, a change in the traffic condition may include a temporary or permanent absence of downlink traffic data directed to the UE 115 via the configured SPS resource occasions. At action 814, the RAN 105 transmits an activation / deactivation indication to the UE 115, such as the indication 605 shown and described with reference to Figure 6 . Continuing Figure 8 the description, the UE / WTRU 115 receives, at action 815, the activation / deactivation indication transmitted at action 814.

[0118] At action 820, the UE 115 may monitor and decode a configured SPS control channel occasion that may be configured via the configuration transmitted at action 810, based on a scrambling code specifically corresponding to the UE 115 or specifically corresponding to a UE / WTRU group of user equipment of which the UE 115 is a member. At action 825, in the event that the UE / WTRU 115 decodes an SPS occasion-specific or SPS occasion-group-specific activation / deactivation indication received at action 815, the UE / WTRU 115 may monitor, decode, and receive downlink data via an SPS data channel according to one or more activation SPS occasions indicated in the activation / deactivation indication received at action 815 (e.g., the UE 115 may monitor, decode, and receive downlink data via occasions 625 and 630, as Figure 6As shown, these occasions may already have been activated according to the activation / deactivation indication 605). In the situation where the activation / deactivation indication specific to the SPS occasion or SPS occasion group received at operation 620 is decoded, if the indication indicates that the SPS occasion configured by the configuration received at operation 810 should be skipped, the UE / WTRU may enter the sleep mode, or skip the monitoring and reception of downlink data via the SPS data channel occasion configured by the configuration received at operation 810. It should be understood that the activation / deactivation code may be referred to as an activation / deactivation / null indication and may be used to indicate that the UE 115 sleeps if there is no traffic buffered at the RAN 105 currently directed to the UE.

[0119] Now turning to Figure 9 , the figure shows a flowchart of an exemplary method 900 for configuring a UE with semi-persistent scheduling resources based on a change in traffic conditions (such as jitter) or the lack of traffic data to be transmitted to a user equipment during a scheduled SPS resource occasion. Method 900 begins at operation 905. At operation 910, the RAN schedules semi-persistent scheduling resources for transmitting downlink traffic to a user equipment or a group of user equipments. The scheduling at operation 910 may include transmitting an SPS configuration to the user equipment or the group of user equipments, as described elsewhere herein. At operation 915, the RAN receives an indication of downlink traffic or downlink traffic directed to the user equipment or the group of user equipments. At operation 920, the RAN may determine a change in traffic conditions. For example, the RAN may determine that a component of the core network, such as Figure 1 the network 130 shown in, may have caused jitter in the traffic data directed to the user equipment or the group of user equipments. In another example, the traffic condition determined at operation 920 in Figure 9 may be that the RAN currently has no traffic data buffered to be transmitted to the user equipment or the group of user equipments.

[0120] At action 925, the RAN determines whether the change in the service condition is due to jitter. If the determination made at action 925 is that, due to jitter, the service condition has caused a potential latency in the downlink service directed to the user equipment, the RAN may determine, at action 930, an offset corresponding to the jitter. The offset may include a value expressed in milliseconds, bytes, frames, or other units of measure, and the offset may be equal to the jitter, or the offset may be different from the jitter. For example, the offset may be slightly longer or larger than the latency caused by the jitter. At action 935, the RAN may transmit the offset determined at action 930 to the user equipment or group of user equipment in an indication of the scheduling change. The indication of the scheduling change or the scheduling change indication may be encrypted or encoded according to a user equipment specific or group of user equipment specific scrambling code or other type of code, which will enable the scheduling change indication to be decoded by the user equipment or group of user equipment, but not by other user equipment or other groups of user equipment. At action 910, the scrambling code or other type of code may be transmitted in a configuration transmitted from the RAN to the user equipment or group of user equipment. The RAN transmits, at action 955, the downlink service directed to the user equipment or group of user equipment according to the scheduling change indication, which the user equipment or group of user equipment receives and uses to modify or adjust the semi-persistent scheduling resources, which may have been scheduled according to the configuration transmitted at action 910, for receiving the service at action 957. Method 900 proceeds to action 960.

[0121] Returning to the description of action 925, if the determination made at action 925 is that the change in condition determined at action 920 is not due to jitter, method 900 proceeds to action 940. If, at action 940, it is determined that the change in condition determined at action 920 corresponds to, or there is no service at the RAN directed to the user equipment or group of user equipment indicated in the configuration transmitted at action 910, method 900 proceeds to action 945.

[0122] At action 945, the RAN generates an activation / deactivation / indication. The activation / deactivation / null indication may be scrambled with a device- or group-specific scrambling code. At action 950, the RAN transmits the activation / deactivation / null indication to a user equipment or a group of user equipments where there is no downlink traffic at the RAN. The user equipment or the group of user equipments may decode the activation / deactivation / null indication and skip monitoring and decoding of the scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resources according to the activation / deactivation / null indication. At action 955, the RAN transmits downlink traffic according to the activation / deactivation / null indication. For example, if the change in the traffic condition determined at action 920 is that there is no downlink traffic to be transmitted to the user equipment or the group of user equipments, the transmission at action 955 may include not transmitting downlink traffic data to the user equipment. If the activation / deactivation / null indication indicates that some of the configured semi-persistent scheduling resources are to be deactivated but not all of the semi-persistent scheduling resources are to be deactivated, the RAN thus transmits downlink traffic data. If the activation / deactivation / null indication generated at action 945 and transmitted at action 950 indicates to the intended user equipment or group of user equipments that some of the currently scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resources should be deactivated and other non-yet-scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resources should be activated, the transmission of traffic at action 955 may include transmitting downlink traffic data during the newly activated semi-persistent scheduling resources but not transmitting downlink data during the newly deactivated semi-persistent scheduling resources. Method 900 ends at action 960.

[0123] Now turning to Figure 10 , the figure illustrates an example embodiment method 1000, which includes at block 1005, based on a change in the downlink traffic condition, determining, by a radio access node including a processor, a scheduling change of a scheduled downlink semi-persistent scheduling resource element assigned to a user equipment; at block 1010, transmitting an indication of the scheduling change to the user equipment; at block 1015, transmitting traffic to the user equipment according to the scheduling change; at block 1020, determining a jitter associated with the change in the downlink traffic condition; at block 1025, wherein the indication of the scheduling change includes an offset to a first semi-persistent scheduling resource element; at block 1030, wherein transmitting the indication of the scheduling change includes transmitting the indication of the scheduling change in a scheduled control channel element; and at block 1035, wherein the indication of the scheduling change is scrambled with a device-specific or device-group-specific scrambling code.

[0124] Now turning to Figure 11, the figure shows an example system 1100 that includes, in block 1105, a radio access node of a communication network, the radio access node including a processor configured to: determine a service condition change corresponding to a change in a service condition applicable to a user equipment; in block 1110, determine a scheduling change of a scheduled semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion corresponding to the user equipment based on the service condition change; in block 1115, transmit a scheduling change indication indicating the scheduling change to the user equipment; in block 1120, transmit service to the user equipment according to the scheduling change; and in block 1125, wherein the scheduling change indication includes a deactivation instruction for deactivating a first semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion, wherein the scheduling change indication includes an activation instruction for activating a second semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion, and wherein the second semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion is offset relative to the first semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion.

[0125] Now turning to Figure 12 , the figure shows a non-transitory machine-readable medium 1200 that includes, in block 1205, executable instructions that, when executed by a processor of a network node of a communication network, facilitate performance of operations including: determining jitter associated with a downlink service condition change to produce a determined jitter; in block 1210, scheduling a change to a scheduled downlink semi-persistent scheduling occasion assigned to a user equipment based on the determined jitter; in block 1215, determining a scheduling change indication that includes an offset applicable to a first semi-persistent scheduling occasion, wherein the offset is based on the determined jitter; in block 1220, transmitting the scheduling change indication indicating the change to the user equipment; and in step 1225, transmitting service to the user equipment according to the change.

[0126] To provide additional context for the various embodiments described herein, Figure 13 and the following discussion is intended to provide a brief, general description of a suitable computing environment 1300 in which various embodiments of the embodiments described herein may be implemented. While the embodiments have been described above in the general context of computer-executable instructions that may run on one or more computers, those skilled in the art will recognize that the embodiments may also be implemented in combination with other program modules and / or as a combination of hardware and software.

[0127] Generally, program modules include routines, programs, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. In addition, those skilled in the art will understand that the methods may be practiced with other computer system configurations, including single-processor or multi-processor computer systems, minicomputers, mainframe computers, IoT devices, distributed computing systems, and personal computers, handheld computing devices, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronic devices, etc., each of which may be operably coupled to one or more associated devices.

[0128] The embodiments shown herein can also be implemented in a distributed computing environment where certain tasks are performed by remote processing devices linked through a communication network. In a distributed computing system, program modules can be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.

[0129] Computing devices generally include various media, which can include computer-readable storage media, machine-readable storage media, and / or communication media, and these two terms are used differently from each other herein, as described below. Computer-readable storage media or machine-readable storage media can be any available storage media accessible by a computer, and include both volatile and non-volatile media, as well as both removable and non-removable media. By way of example and not limitation, computer-readable storage media or machine-readable storage media can be implemented in conjunction with any method or technology for storing information, such as computer-readable or machine-readable instructions, program modules, structured data, or unstructured data.

[0130] Computer-readable storage media can include, but are not limited to, random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory or other memory technologies, compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), digital versatile disc (DVD), Blu-ray disc (BD), or other optical disc storage, magnetic tape cartridges, tapes, magnetic disk storage, or other magnetic storage devices, solid state drives, or other solid state storage devices, or other tangible and / or non-transitory media that can be used to store the desired information. In this regard, the terms "tangible" or "non-transitory" as applied to storage, memory, or computer-readable media herein should be understood to exclude only propagating transitory signals themselves as a modifier, and do not relinquish the right to all standard storage, memory, or computer-readable media that do not solely propagate transitory signals themselves.

[0131] One or more local or remote computing devices can access computer-readable storage media, for example, via an access request, query, or other data retrieval protocol, for performing various operations on the information stored in the media.

[0132] Communication media typically embody computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other structured or unstructured data in a data signal, such as a modulated data signal, for example, a carrier wave or other transmission mechanism, and include any information conveyance or transmission medium. The term "modulated data signal" or signals refers to a signal in which one or more of its characteristics are set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in one or more signals. By way of example and not limitation, communication media include wired media, such as a wired network or a direct wired connection, and wireless media, such as acoustic, RF, infrared, and other wireless media.

[0133] Refer again to Figure 13, An example environment 1300 for implementing various embodiments of the aspects described herein includes a computer 1302, which includes a processing unit 1304, a system memory 1306, and a system bus 1308. The system bus 1308 couples system components including, but not limited to, the system memory 1306 to the processing unit 1304. The processing unit 1304 can be any of a variety of commercially available processors and can include a cache memory. Dual microprocessors and other multi-processor architectures can also be used as the processing unit 1304.

[0134] The system bus 1308 can be any of several types of bus structures, which can further interconnect with a memory bus (with or without a memory controller), a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of commercially available bus architectures. The system memory 1306 includes a ROM 1310 and a RAM 1312. The basic input / output system (BIOS) can be stored in a non-volatile memory such as ROM, erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), EEPROM, which contains basic routines that facilitate the transfer of information between elements within the computer 1302, such as during startup. The RAM 1312 can also include high-speed RAM, such as static RAM for caching data.

[0135] The computer 1302 also includes an internal hard disk drive (HDD) 1314 (e.g., EIDE, SATA), one or more external storage devices 1316 (e.g., a magnetic floppy disk drive (FDD) 1316, a memory stick or flash drive reader, a memory card reader, etc.), and an optical disk drive 1320 (e.g., which can read from or write to a CD-ROM disk, DVD, BD, etc.). Although the internal HDD 1314 is shown as being within the computer 1302, the internal HDD 1312 can also be configured for external use in a suitable chassis (not shown). Additionally, although not shown in the environment 1300, a solid-state drive (SSD) can be used in addition to or instead of the HDD 1314. The HDD 1314, the external storage device 1316, and the optical disk drive 1320 can be connected to the system bus 1308 via an HDD interface 1324, an external storage device interface 1326, and an optical drive interface 1328, respectively. The interface 1324 for external drive implementations can include at least one or both of the universal serial bus (USB) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1394 interface technologies. Other external drive connection technologies are also contemplated within the embodiments described herein.

[0136] The drive and its associated computer-readable storage medium provide non-volatile storage of data, data structures, computer-executable instructions, and the like. For computer 1302, the drive and storage medium are adapted to store any data in a suitable digital format. Although the above description of computer-readable storage media refers to corresponding types of storage devices, those skilled in the art should understand that other types of storage media that are computer-readable, whether currently existing or to be developed in the future, may also be used in the exemplary operating environment, and further, any such storage media may contain computer-executable instructions for performing the methods described herein.

[0137] Multiple program modules may be stored in the drive and RAM 1312, including operating system 1330, one or more applications 1332, other program modules 1334, and program data 1336. All or part of the operating system, applications, modules, and / or data may also be cached in RAM 1312. The systems and methods described herein may be implemented using a variety of commercially available operating systems or combinations of operating systems.

[0138] Computer 1302 may optionally include emulation technology. For example, a hypervisor (not shown) or other intermediary may emulate the hardware environment of operating system 1330, and the emulated hardware may optionally be different from Figure 13 the hardware shown therein. In such an embodiment, operating system 1330 may include one VM among multiple virtual machines (VMs) hosted at computer 1302. Additionally, operating system 1330 may provide a runtime environment, such as a Java runtime environment or a.NET framework, for applications 1332. The runtime environment is a consistent execution environment that allows applications 1332 to run on any operating system that includes the runtime environment. Similarly, operating system 1330 may support containers, and applications 1332 may be in the form of containers, which are lightweight, independent, executable software packages that include, for example, code, runtime, system tools, system libraries, and application settings.

[0139] Furthermore, computer 1302 may include a security module, such as a Trusted Platform Module (TPM). For example, for a TPM, a boot component hashes the next boot component in a timely manner before loading the next boot component and waits for the result to match a security value. This process may occur at any layer in the code execution stack of computer 1302, e.g., applied to the application execution level or the operating system (OS) kernel level, thereby achieving security at any level of code execution.

[0140] Users can input commands and information into computer 1302 through one or more wired / wireless input devices, such as keyboard 1338, touch screen 1340, and pointing devices, such as mouse 1342. Other input devices (not shown) may include a microphone, infrared (IR) remote control, radio frequency (RF) remote control or other remote controls, joystick, virtual reality controller and / or virtual reality headset, gamepad, stylus, image input device (e.g., (multiple) cameras), gesture sensor input device, vision motion sensor input device, emotion or face detection device, biometric input device (e.g., fingerprint or iris scanner), etc. These and other input devices are typically connected to processing unit 1304 through input device interface 1344, which may be coupled to system bus 1308, but may also be connected through other interfaces, such as parallel port, IEEE 1394 serial port, game port, USB port, IR interface, interfaces, etc.

[0141] Monitor 1346 or other types of display devices may also be connected to system bus 1308 via an interface (such as video adapter 1348). In addition to monitor 1346, a computer typically includes other peripheral output devices (not shown), such as speakers, printers, etc.

[0142] Computer 1302 may operate in a networking environment using a logical connection to one or more remote computers (such as, (multiple) remote computers 1350) via wired and / or wireless communication. (Multiple) remote computers 1350 may be workstations, server computers, routers, personal computers, portable computers, microprocessor-based entertainment appliances, peer devices, or other common network nodes, and typically include many or all of the elements described with respect to computer 1302, although only memory / storage device 1352 is shown for simplicity. The depicted logical connections include wired / wireless connections to local area network (LAN) 1354 and / or a larger network (such as wide area network (WAN) 1356). Such LAN and WAN networking environments are common in offices and companies and facilitate enterprise-wide computer networks, such as intranets, all of which may be connected to a global communication network, such as the Internet.

[0143] When used in a LAN networking environment, computer 1302 may be connected to local network 1354 through a wired and / or wireless communication network interface or adapter 1358. Adapter 1358 may facilitate wired or wireless communication with LAN 1354, which may also include a wireless access point (AP) disposed thereon for communicating with adapter 1358 in wireless mode.

[0144] When used in a WAN networking environment, computer 1302 may include a modem 1360, or may be connected to a communication server on WAN 1356 via other measures for establishing communication on the WAN 1356 (such as via the Internet). The modem 1360 may be an internal or external wired or wireless device and may be connected to the system bus 1308 via the input device interface 1344. In a networking environment, program modules depicted relative to computer 1302 or portions thereof may be stored in the remote memory / storage device 1352. It should be understood that the network connections shown are examples and that other measures for establishing a communication link between computers may be used.

[0145] When used in a LAN or WAN networking environment, in addition to or instead of the external storage device 1316 as described above, computer 1302 may access a cloud storage system or other network-based storage systems. Generally, the connection between computer 1302 and the cloud storage system may be established via the LAN 1354 or the WAN 1356, for example, via the adapter 1358 or the modem 1360, respectively. When connecting computer 1302 to an associated cloud storage system, the external storage interface 1326 may manage the storage provided by the cloud storage system with the help of the adapter 1358 and / or the modem 1360, just as it manages other types of external storage devices. For example, the external storage device interface 1326 may be configured to provide access to cloud storage sources as if those sources were physically connected to computer 1302.

[0146] Computer 1302 is operable to communicate with any wireless device or entity operably disposed in wireless communication, such as printers, scanners, desktop and / or portable computers, portable data assistants, communication satellites, any equipment or location associated with a wirelessly detectable tag (such as kiosks, newsstands, shelves, etc.) and telephones. This may include Wi-Fi and wireless technologies. Thus, the communication may be of a predefined structure like a traditional network, or merely an ad hoc communication between at least two devices.

[0147] Go to Figure 14, which shows a block diagram of an example UE 1460. The UE 1460 can include a smart phone, a wireless tablet computer, a laptop computer with wireless capabilities, a wearable device, a machine device that can facilitate vehicle telematics, a tracking device, a remote sensing device, etc. The UE 1460 includes a first processor 1430, a second processor 1432, and a shared memory 1434. The UE 1460 includes radio front-end circuitry 1462, which may be referred to herein as a transceiver, but should be understood to generally include transceiver circuitry, separate filters, and separate antennas for facilitating signal transmission and reception on wireless links (such as Figure 1 one or more of the wireless links 125, 135, and 137 shown in). Additionally, the transceiver 1462 can include multiple sets of circuitry, or can be tunable to accommodate different frequency ranges, different modulation schemes, or different communication protocols to facilitate long-range wireless links such as the link, device-to-device links such as the link 135, and short-range wireless links such as the link 137.

[0148] Continuing Figure 14 the description, the UE 1460 may also include a SIM 1464 or a SIM profile, which may include information stored in a memory (memory 34 or a separate memory section) for facilitating wireless communication with Figure 1 the RAN 105 or the core network 130 shown in. Figure 14 The SIM 1464 is shown as a single component in the shape of a traditional SIM card, but it should be understood that the SIM 1464 can represent multiple SIM cards, multiple SIM profiles, or multiple eSIMs, some or all of which can be implemented in hardware or software. It should be understood that the SIM profile can include information such as security certificates (e.g., encryption keys, values that can be used to generate encryption keys, or shared values shared between the SIM 1464 and another device, which can be Figure 1 a component of the RAN 105 or the core network 130 shown in). The SIM profile 1464 can also include identification information unique to the SIM or SIM profile, such as an International Mobile Subscriber Identity (“IMSI”) or information that can constitute an IMSI.

[0149] SIM 1464 is shown as being coupled to both the first processor portion 1430 and the second processor portion 1432. Such an implementation can provide the advantage that the first processor portion 30 may not need to request or receive information or data from the SIM 1464 that the second processor 1432 may request, thus eliminating the use of the first processor as a "middleman" when the second processor uses information from the SIM when performing its functions and executing applications. The first processor 1430, which can be a modem processor or a baseband processor, is shown as being smaller than the processor 1432, which can be a more complex application processor, to visually indicate the relative levels of complexity (i.e., processing power and performance) between the two processor portions and the corresponding relative levels of operating power consumption. Keeping the UE 1460 in a dormant / inactive / low-power state when it does not require the second processor portion 1432 to execute applications and process data associated with the applications provides the advantage that power consumption can be reduced when the UE only needs to use the first processor portion 1430 to monitor carrier management and mobility management / maintenance procedures configured for routines in a listening mode, or when monitoring the search space configured for the UE while the second processor portion remains inactive / dormant.

[0150] The UE 1460 may also include sensors 1466, such as temperature sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes, barometers, humidity sensors, etc., that can provide signals to the first processor 1430 or the second processor 1432. The output device 1468 may include, for example, one or more visual displays (e.g., computer monitors, VR appliances, etc.), acoustic transducers (such as speakers or microphones), vibration components, etc. The output device 1468 may include software that interfaces with output devices external to the UE 1460 (such as visual displays, speakers, microphones, tactile devices, olfactory or gustatory devices, etc.).

[0151] The following glossary given in Table 1 may apply to one or more descriptions of the embodiments disclosed herein.

[0152]

[0153]

[0154] Table 1

[0155] The foregoing description includes non-limiting examples of various embodiments. Of course, it is not possible to describe every possible combination of components or methods for the purpose of describing the disclosed subject matter, and those skilled in the art will recognize that further combinations and permutations of various embodiments are possible. The disclosed subject matter is intended to cover all such changes, modifications, and variations that fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.

[0156] Regarding the various functions performed by the above components, devices, circuits, systems, etc., unless otherwise indicated, the terms used to describe such components (including references to "means") also include any structure that performs the specified function of the component (e.g., functional equivalent forms), even if not structurally equivalent to the disclosed structure. Further, although a particular feature of the disclosed subject matter may be disclosed with respect to only one of several implementations, such feature may be combined with one or more other features of other implementations, as may be desired and advantageous for any given or particular application.

[0157] The terms "exemplary" and / or "illustrative" or variations thereof that may be used herein are intended to be used as examples, instances, or illustrations. To avoid doubt, the subject matter disclosed herein is not limited by such examples. Further, any aspect or design described herein as "exemplary" and / or "illustrative" is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or superior to other aspects or designs, nor does it imply the exclusion of equivalent structures and techniques known to those of ordinary skill in the art. Additionally, where the terms "comprising", "having", "including", and other similar words are used in the detailed description or claims, such terms are intended to be inclusive in a manner similar to the term "including" as an open transitional word and do not exclude any additional or other elements.

[0158] The term "or" as used herein is intended to mean an inclusive "or" rather than an exclusive "or". For example, the phrase "A or B" is intended to include instances of A, B, and both A and B. Further, the articles "a" and "an" as used in this application and the appended claims should generally be construed to mean "one or more", unless the context clearly dictates otherwise or specifically refers to the singular form.

[0159] The term "set" as used herein does not include the empty set, i.e., a set with no elements. Thus, a "set" in this disclosure includes one or more elements or entities. Similarly, the term "group" as utilized herein refers to a collection of one or more entities.

[0160] Unless the context clearly dictates otherwise, the terms "first", "second", "third", etc. as used in the claims are for clarity only and do not otherwise indicate or imply any temporal order. For example, "a first determination", "a second determination", and "a third determination" do not indicate or imply that the first determination is to be made before the second determination, and vice versa, and so on.

[0161] The description of the illustrated embodiments of the present disclosure provided herein, including the description in the abstract, is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the disclosed embodiments to the precise forms disclosed. While specific embodiments and examples are described herein for illustrative purposes, those skilled in the art will recognize that various modifications can be made within the scope of such embodiments and examples. In this regard, while the subject matter is described herein in connection with various embodiments and the corresponding drawings, it should be understood that, where applicable, other similar embodiments can be used, or modifications and additions can be made to the described embodiments to perform the same, similar, alternative, or substitute functions of the disclosed subject matter without departing from the disclosed subject matter. Accordingly, the disclosed subject matter should not be limited to any single embodiment described herein, but should be construed in breadth and scope in accordance with the appended claims.

Claims

1. A method, comprising: Determining, by a radio access node comprising a processor, a scheduling change of a scheduled downlink semi - persistent scheduling resource element allocated to a user equipment based on a change in the condition of downlink traffic; Transmitting an indication of the scheduling change to the user equipment; and Transmitting traffic to the user equipment according to the scheduling change.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising: Determining a jitter associated with the change in the downlink traffic condition, wherein the indication of the scheduling change comprises an offset to a first semi - persistent scheduling resource element.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the offset comprises a time offset.

4. The method according to claim 2, wherein the offset comprises a frequency offset.

5. The method according to claim 2, wherein the transmission of the indication of the scheduling change comprises: Transmitting the indication of the scheduling change in a scheduled control channel element.

6. The method according to claim 2, wherein the indication of the scheduling change comprises a deactivation instruction for deactivating the first semi - persistent scheduling resource element, wherein the indication of the scheduling change comprises an activation instruction for activating a second semi - persistent scheduling resource element, and wherein the second semi - persistent scheduling resource element is offset relative to the first semi - persistent scheduling resource element.

7. The method according to claim 2, wherein the indication of the scheduling change is scrambled using a device - specific scrambling code or a device - group - specific scrambling code.

8. The method according to claim 2, wherein the indication of the scheduling change is transmitted in at least one jitter indication indicating a semi - persistent scheduling time offset and a codebook of at least one corresponding semi - persistent scheduling resource element.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein the indication of the scheduling change comprises a no - traffic indication corresponding to an air - conditioned scheduled semi - persistent scheduling resource element, the no - traffic indication indicating that the user equipment will stop decoding the air - conditioned scheduled semi - persistent scheduling element.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein the indication of the scheduling change indicates to stop decoding only the air - conditioned scheduled semi - persistent scheduling resource element among a plurality of scheduled semi - persistent scheduling resource elements.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein the indication of the scheduling change is scrambled according to a device - specific semi - persistent scheduling scrambling code or sequence or a device - group - specific semi - persistent scheduling scrambling code or sequence.

12. A radio access node of a communication network, comprising: A processor configured to: Determine a traffic condition change corresponding to a change in the condition of traffic applicable to a user equipment; Determine a scheduling change of a scheduled semi - persistent scheduling resource occasion corresponding to the user equipment based on the traffic condition change; Transmit a scheduling change indication indicating the scheduling change to the user equipment; and Transmit traffic to the user equipment according to the scheduling change.

13. The radio access node according to claim 12, wherein the processor is further configured to: Determine a jitter associated with the traffic condition change to generate a determined jitter, wherein the scheduling change indication comprises an offset to a first semi - persistent scheduling resource occasion, and wherein the offset corresponds to the determined jitter.

14. The radio access node according to claim 13, wherein the scheduling change indication includes a deactivation instruction for deactivating a first semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion, wherein the scheduling change indication includes an activation instruction for activating a second semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion, and wherein the second semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion is offset relative to the first semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion.

15. The radio access node according to claim 13, wherein the processor is further configured to: transmit a jitter indication configuration, the jitter indication configuration including at least one jitter indication indicating at least one corresponding semi-persistent scheduling timing offset, wherein the scheduling change indication includes a jitter indication, the jitter indication to be used by the user equipment to determine a semi-persistent scheduling timing offset of the at least one corresponding semi-persistent scheduling timing offset from the jitter indication configuration to generate a determined semi-persistent scheduling timing offset to be used for processing downlink traffic received from the radio access node.

16. The radio access node according to claim 12, wherein the scheduling change indication includes a no-traffic indication corresponding to an air conditioner semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion, the no-traffic indication indicating that the user equipment does not attempt to decode the air conditioner semi-persistent scheduling resource occasion.

17. The radio access node according to claim 16, wherein the scheduling change indication includes an indication of a plurality of upcoming semi-persistent scheduling resource occasions for the user equipment to receive future downlink traffic.

18. A non-transitory machine-readable medium, including executable instructions that, when executed by a processor of a network node of a communication network, facilitate performing operations, including: determining a jitter associated with a change in a downlink traffic condition to generate a determined jitter; scheduling a change to a scheduled downlink semi-persistent scheduling occasion allocated to a user equipment based on the determined jitter; determining a scheduling change indication, the scheduling change indication including an offset applicable to a first semi-persistent scheduling occasion, wherein the offset is based on the determined jitter; transmitting the scheduling change indication indicating the change to the user equipment; and transmitting traffic to the user equipment according to the change.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable medium according to claim 18, wherein the scheduling change indication includes a deactivation instruction for deactivating the first semi-persistent scheduling occasion, wherein the scheduling change indication includes an activation instruction for activating a second semi-persistent scheduling occasion, and wherein based on the offset, the second semi-persistent scheduling occasion is offset relative to the first semi-persistent scheduling occasion.

20. The non-transitory machine-readable medium according to claim 18, wherein the scheduling change indication is anonymized using a device-specific code or a device-group specific scrambling code.

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