Uplink quality of service (QOS) during network energy saving (NES) state

Abstract

As discussed herein, there may be one or more methods, systems, and / or devices, that address activation of one or more conditional configured grant (CG) resources during a network energy savings (NES) state. A wireless transmit / receive unit (WTRU) may be configured with one or more forwarding configurations to apply during the NES state such as a cell discontinuous reception (DRX) mode, including a cell DRX active period and / or a cell DRX non-active period. The WTRU may be configured with one or more quality of service (QoS) conditions to determine whether one or more data units may be transmitted in the cell DRX mode. The WTRU may determine, based on the one or more QoS conditions, whether to use the one or more conditional CG resources to transmit the one or more data units in the cell DRX mode. The WTRU may also transmit an indication associated with the transmission.

Description

UPLINK QUALITY OF SERVICE (QOS) DURING NETWORK ENERGY SAVING (NES) STATECROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

[0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Serial No. 63 / 531 , 247 filed August 7, 2023, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein.BACKGROUND

[0002] In wireless communications systems, a device may be attached to a network. In order to save energy, both from a device perspective and a network perspective, each entity, i.e. the device and the network, may operate and / or switch between multiple periods of low and / or no energy states. The device may require transmission of data to the network when the network operates in the low and / or no energy states. In such cases, an uplink transmission from the device to the network may need to use different resources when the network operates in different energy states. Therefore, there is a need for a configuration to manage the uplink transmission in the different energy states, and there is also a need for an improvement of such states, especially for the transmission of the data during the low and / or no energy states.SUMMARY

[0003] As discussed herein, there may be one or more methods, systems, and / or devices, that address activation of conditional configured grant (CG) resources during a network energy saving (NES) state, such as but not limited to a cell discontinuous reception (DRX) state. A wireless transmit / receive unit (WTRU) may be configured with one or more forwarding configurations to apply during a cell DRX active period and / or a cell DRX inactive period. The WTRU may determine whether to use the conditional CG resources to transmit data and / or an indication during the cell DRX active period and / or the cell DRX inactive period.

[0004] In an embodiment, a method implemented by a WTRU is provided. The method includes receiving configuration information regarding one or more logical channels, one or more conditional CGs, one or more default CGs, an association between the one or more logical channels and at least one of: the one or more conditional CGs, the one or more default CGs, or one or more quality of service (QoS) conditions. The one or more QoS conditions are associated with one or more data unit transmissions during a cell discontinuous reception (DRX) inactive period using a conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs. On a condition that a cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and a QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions is met for a data unit, the method includes selecting the conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs. The method further includes transmittingthe data unit using one or more resources of the selected conditional CG. The data unit transmission comprises a request to deactivate a cell DRX mode. On a condition that the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and none of the one or more QoS conditions are met, the method includes transmitting the data unit using one or more resources of a default CG of the one or more default CGs in a subsequent cell DRX active period.

[0005] In an embodiment, a WTRU comprising a memory, a receiver, a transmitter, and a processor is provided. The memory is configured to store a data unit. The receiver is configured to receive configuration information regarding one or more logical channels, one or more conditional CGs, one or more default CGs, an association between the one or more logical channels and at least one of: the one or more conditional CGs, the one or more default CGs, or one or more QoS conditions. The one or more QoS conditions are associated with one or more data unit transmissions during a cell DRX inactive period using a conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs. The transmitter and processor are configured to, on a condition that a cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and a QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions is met for the data unit, select the conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs, and transmit the data unit using one or more resources of the selected conditional CG. The data unit transmission comprises a request to deactivate a cell DRX mode. The transmitter and processor are configured to, on a condition that the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and none of the one or more QoS conditions are met, transmit the data unit using one or more resources of a default CG of the one or more default CGs in a subsequent cell DRX active period.

[0006] In an embodiment, the WTRU receives an indication that the cell DRX mode is activated.

[0007] In an embodiment, the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is implicit in the transmission of the data unit using the one or more resources of the selected conditional CG.

[0008] In an embodiment, the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is explicit and multiplexed with the data unit.

[0009] In an embodiment, the one or more QoS conditions include a remaining time of the data unit.

[0010] In an embodiment, the one or more QoS conditions include an importance of the data unit.

[0011] In an embodiment, a method performed by a WTRU is provided. The method includes receiving configuration information regarding one or more conditional CGs, one or more default CGs, and one or more QoS conditions. The method further includes transmitting using a conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs during a cell DRX inactive period, a data unit and a request todeactivate a cell DRX mode when a QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions is met for the data unit.

[0012] In an embodiment, the method further includes transmitting the data unit using a default CG of the one or more default CGs during a cell DRX active period when the one or more QoS conditions are not met for the data unit.

[0013] In an embodiment, the method includes selecting the conditional CG for the transmission of the data unit based on a logical channel mapped to the data unit.

[0014] In an embodiment, the configuration information further includes a cell DRX activation indication.

[0015] In an embodiment, the QoS condition is met when a remaining time associated with the data unit is less than a threshold time indicated by the QoS condition.

[0016] In an embodiment, the QoS condition is met when a priority value associated with the data unit exceeds a threshold priority value indicated by the QoS condition.

[0017] In an embodiment, the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is implicit in transmission of the data unit.

[0018] In an embodiment, the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is multiplexed with the data unit.BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0019] A more detailed understanding may be had from the following description, given by way of example in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals in the figures indicate like elements, and wherein:

[0020] FIG. 1A is a system diagram illustrating an example communications system in which one or more disclosed embodiments may be implemented;

[0021] FIG. 1 B is a system diagram illustrating an example wireless transmit / receive unit (WTRU) that may be used within the communications system illustrated in FIG. 1A according to an embodiment;

[0022] FIG. 1 C is a system diagram illustrating an example radio access network (RAN) and an example core network (CN) that may be used within the communications system illustrated in FIG. 1 A according to an embodiment;

[0023] FIG. 1 D is a system diagram illustrating a further example RAN and a further example CN that may be used within the communications system illustrated in FIG. 1A according to an embodiment;

[0024] FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a multi physical uplink shared channel (multi-PUSCH) Configured Grant (CG) configuration according to an embodiment;

[0025] FIG. 3A is a diagram illustrating one or more data units and one or more CG resources according to an embodiment;

[0026] FIG. 3B is a diagram illustrating transmission of the one or more data units using the one or more CG resources illustrated in FIG. 3A according to an embodiment;

[0027] FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an example process according to one or more embodiments disclosed herein;

[0028] FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an example process of transmitting one or more data units according to one or more embodiments discussed herein; and

[0029] FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating an example process of transmitting one or more data units according to one or more embodiments discussed herein.DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0030] As discussed herein, one or more abbreviations in the following (non-exhaustive) list, shown in Table 1 , may be used herein.Table 1

[0031] FIG. 1A is a diagram illustrating an example communications system 100 in which one or more disclosed embodiments may be implemented. The communications system 100 may be a multiple access system that provides content, such as voice, data, video, messaging, broadcast, etc., to multiple wireless users. The communications system 100 may enable multiple wireless users to access such content through the sharing of system resources, including wireless bandwidth. For example, the communications systems 100 may employ one or more channel access methods, such as code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA), single-carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA), zero-tail unique-word discrete Fourier transform Spread OFDM (ZT-UW-DFT-S-OFDM), unique word OFDM (UW-OFDM), resource block-filtered OFDM, filter bank multicarrier (FBMC), and the like.

[0032] As shown in FIG. 1A, the communications system 100 may include wireless transmit / receive units (WTRUs) 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d, a radio access network (RAN) 104, a core network (CN) 106, a public switched telephone network (PSTN) 108, the Internet 110, and other networks 112, though it will be appreciated that the disclosed embodiments contemplate any number of WTRUs, base stations, networks, and / or network elements. Each of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d may be any type of device configured to operate and / or communicate in a wireless environment. By way of example, the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d, any of which may be referred to as a station (ST A), may be configured to transmit and / or receive wireless signals and may include a user equipment (UE), a mobile station, a fixed or mobile subscriber unit, a subscription-based unit, a pager, a cellular telephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a smartphone, a laptop, a netbook, a personal computer, a wireless sensor, a hotspot or Mi-Fi device, an Internet of Things (loT) device, a watch or other wearable, a head-mounted display (HMD), a vehicle, a drone, a medical device and applications (e.g., remote surgery), an industrial device and applications (e.g., a robot and / or other wireless devices operating in an industrial and / or an automated processing chain contexts), a consumer electronics device, a device operating on commercial and / or industrial wireless networks, and the like. Any of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c and 102d may be interchangeably referred to as a UE.

[0033] The communications systems 100 may also include a base station 114a and / or a base station 114b. Each of the base stations 114a, 114b may be any type of device configured to wirelesslyinterface with at least one of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d to facilitate access to one or more communication networks, such as the CN 106, the Internet 110, and / or the other networks 112. By way of example, the base stations 114a, 1 14b may be interchangeable (e.g., as described anywhere herein) with a base transceiver station (BTS), a NodeB, an eNode B (eNB), a Home Node B, a Home eNode B, a next generation NodeB, such as a gNode B (gNB), a new radio (NR) NodeB, a site controller, an access point (AP), a wireless router, and the like. While the base stations 114a, 114b are each depicted as a single element, it will be appreciated that the base stations 114a, 114b may include any number of interconnected base stations and / or network elements.

[0034] The base station 114a may be part of the RAN 104, which may also include other base stations and / or network elements (not shown), such as a base station controller (BSC), a radio network controller (RNC), relay nodes, and the like. The base station 114a and / or the base station 114b may be configured to transmit and / or receive wireless signals on one or more carrier frequencies, which may be referred to as a cell (not shown). These frequencies may be in licensed spectrum, unlicensed spectrum, or a combination of licensed and unlicensed spectrum. A cell may provide coverage for a wireless service to a specific geographical area that may be relatively fixed or that may change over time. The cell may further be divided into cell sectors. For example, the cell associated with the base station 114a may be divided into three sectors. Thus, in one embodiment, the base station 114a may include three transceivers, i.e., one for each sector of the cell. In an embodiment, the base station 114a may employ multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) technology and may utilize multiple transceivers for each sector of the cell. For example, beamforming may be used to transmit and / or receive signals in desired spatial directions.

[0035] The base stations 114a, 114b may communicate with one or more of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d over an air interface 116, which may be any suitable wireless communication link (e.g., radio frequency (RF), microwave, centimeter wave, micrometer wave, infrared (IR), ultraviolet (UV), visible light, etc.). The air interface 116 may be established using any suitable radio access technology (RAT).

[0036] More specifically, as noted above, the communications system 100 may be a multiple access system and may employ one or more channel access schemes, such as CDMA, TDMA, FDMA, OFDMA, SC-FDMA, and the like. For example, the base station 114a in the RAN 104 and the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may implement a radio technology such as Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA), which may establish the air interface 1 16 using wideband CDMA (WCDMA). WCDMA may include communication protocols such as High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and / or Evolved HSPA (HSPA+). HSPA may include High-Speed Downlink (DL) Packet Access (HSDPA) and / or High-Speed Uplink (UL) Packet Access (HSUPA).

[0037] In an embodiment, the base station 114a and the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may implement a radio technology such as Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA), which may establish the air interface 116 using Long Term Evolution (LTE) and / or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) and / or LTE- Advanced Pro (LTE-A Pro).

[0038] In an embodiment, the base station 114a and the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may implement a radio technology such as NR Radio Access, which may establish the air interface 116 using NR.

[0039] In an embodiment, the base station 114a and the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may implement multiple radio access technologies. For example, the base station 114a and the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may implement LTE radio access and NR radio access together, for instance using dual connectivity (DC) principles. Thus, the air interface utilized by WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may be characterized by multiple types of radio access technologies and / or transmissions sent to / from multiple types of base stations (e.g., an eNB and a gNB).

[0040] In other embodiments, the base station 114a and the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may implement radio technologies such as IEEE 802.11 (i.e., Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), IEEE 802.16 (i.e., Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX)), CDMA2000, CDMA2000 1 X, CDMA2000 EV-DO, Interim Standard 2000 (IS-2000), Interim Standard 95 (IS-95), Interim Standard 856 (IS-856), Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), GSM EDGE (GERAN), and the like.

[0041] The base station 114b in FIG. 1 A may be a wireless router, Home Node B, Home eNode B, or access point, for example, and may utilize any suitable RAT for facilitating wireless connectivity in a localized area, such as a place of business, a home, a vehicle, a campus, an industrial facility, an air corridor (e.g., for use by drones), a roadway, and the like. In one embodiment, the base station 114b and the WTRUs 102c, 102d may implement a radio technology such as IEEE 802.11 to establish a wireless local area network (WLAN). In an embodiment, the base station 114b and the WTRUs 102c, 102d may implement a radio technology such as IEEE 802.15 to establish a wireless personal area network (WPAN). In yet another embodiment, the base station 114b and the WTRUs 102c, 102d may utilize a cellular-based RAT (e.g., WCDMA, CDMA2000, GSM, LTE, LTE-A, LTE-A Pro, NR etc.) to establish a picocell or femtocell. As shown in FIG. 1A, the base station 114b may have a direct connection to the Internet 1 10. Thus, the base station 114b may not be required to access the Internet 110 via the CN 106.

[0042] The RAN 104 may be in communication with the CN 106, which may be any type of network configured to provide voice, data, applications, and / or voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services to one or more of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d. The data may have varying quality of service (QoS) requirements, such as differing throughput requirements, latency requirements, error tolerance requirements, reliability requirements, data throughput requirements, mobility requirements, and the like. The CN 106 may provide call control, billing services, mobile location-based services, pre-paid calling, Internet connectivity, video distribution, etc., and / or perform high-level security functions, such as user authentication. Although not shown in FIG. 1A, it will be appreciated that the RAN 104 and / or the CN 106 may be in direct or indirect communication with other RANs that employ the same RAT as the RAN 104 or a different RAT. For example, in addition to being connected to the RAN 104, which may be utilizing a NR radio technology, the CN 106 may also be in communication with another RAN (not shown) employing a GSM, UMTS, CDMA 2000, WiMAX, E-UTRA, or WiFi radio technology.

[0043] The CN 106 may also serve as a gateway for the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d to access the PSTN 108, the Internet 1 10, and / or the other networks 112. The PSTN 108 may include circuit- switched telephone networks that provide plain old telephone service (POTS). The Internet 110 may include a global system of interconnected computer networks and devices that use common communication protocols, such as the transmission control protocol (TCP), user datagram protocol (UDP) and / or the internet protocol (IP) in the TCP / IP internet protocol suite. The networks 112 may include wired and / or wireless communications networks owned and / or operated by other service providers. For example, the networks 112 may include another CN connected to one or more RANs, which may employ the same RAT as the RAN 104 or a different RAT.

[0044] Some or all of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d in the communications system 100 may include multi-mode capabilities (e.g., the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d may include multiple transceivers for communicating with different wireless networks over different wireless links). For example, the WTRU 102c shown in FIG. 1A may be configured to communicate with the base station 114a, which may employ a cellular-based radio technology, and with the base station 114b, which may employ an IEEE 802 radio technology.

[0045] FIG. 1 B is a system diagram illustrating an example WTRU 102. As shown in FIG. 1 B, the WTRU 102 may include a processor 118, a transceiver 120, a transmit / receive element 122, a speaker / microphone 124, a keypad 126, a display / touchpad 128, non-removable memory 130, removable memory 132, a power source 134, a global positioning system (GPS) chipset 136, and / or other peripherals 138, among others. It will be appreciated that the WTRU 102 may include any subcombination of the foregoing elements while remaining consistent with an embodiment.

[0046] The processor 118 may be a general purpose processor, a special purpose processor, a conventional processor, a digital signal processor (DSP), a plurality of microprocessors, one or more microprocessors in association with a DSP core, a controller, a microcontroller, Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), any other type of integrated circuit (IC), a state machine, and the like. The processor 118 may perform signal coding, data processing, power control, input / output processing, and / or any other functionality that enables the WTRU 102 to operate in a wireless environment. The processor 1 18 may be coupled to the transceiver 120, which may be coupled to the transmit / receive element 122. While FIG. 1 B depicts the processor 118 and the transceiver 120 as separate components, it will be appreciated that the processor 118 and the transceiver 120 may be integrated together in an electronic package or chip.

[0047] The transmit / receive element 122 may be configured to transmit signals to, or receive signals from, a base station (e.g ., the base station 114a) over the air interface 116. For example, in one embodiment, the transmit / receive element 122 may be an antenna configured to transmit and / or receive RF signals. In an embodiment, the transmit / receive element 122 may be an emitter / detector configured to transmit and / or receive IR, UV, or visible light signals, for example. In yet another embodiment, the transmit / receive element 122 may be configured to transmit and / or receive both RF and light signals. It will be appreciated that the transmit / receive element 122 may be configured to transmit and / or receive any combination of wireless signals.

[0048] Although the transmit / receive element 122 is depicted in FIG. 1 B as a single element, the WTRU 102 may include any number of transmit / receive elements 122. More specifically, the WTRU 102 may employ MIMO technology. Thus, in one embodiment, the WTRU 102 may include two or more transmit / receive elements 122 (e.g., multiple antennas) for transmitting and receiving wireless signals over the air interface 116.

[0049] The transceiver 120 may be configured to modulate the signals that are to be transmitted by the transmit / receive element 122 and to demodulate the signals that are received by the transmit / receive element 122. As noted above, the WTRU 102 may have multi-mode capabilities. Thus, the transceiver 120 may include multiple transceivers for enabling the WTRU 102 to communicate via multiple RATs, such as NR and IEEE 802.11 , for example.

[0050] The processor 118 of the WTRU 102 may be coupled to, and may receive user input data from, the speaker / microphone 124, the keypad 126, and / or the display / touchpad 128 (e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD) display unit or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display unit). The processor 118 may also output user data to the speaker / microphone 124, the keypad 126, and / or the display / touchpad 128. In addition, the processor 118 may access information from, and store data in,any type of suitable memory, such as the non-removable memory 130 and / or the removable memory 132. The non-removable memory 130 may include random-access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), a hard disk, or any other type of memory storage device. The removable memory 132 may include a subscriber identity module (SIM) card, a memory stick, a secure digital (SD) memory card, and the like. In other embodiments, the processor 118 may access information from, and store data in, memory that is not physically located on the WTRU 102, such as on a server or a home computer (not shown).

[0051] The processor 118 may receive power from the power source 134, and may be configured to distribute and / or control the power to the other components in the WTRU 102. The power source 134 may be any suitable device for powering the WTRU 102. For example, the power source 134 may include one or more dry cell batteries (e.g., nickel-cadmium (NiCd), nickel-zinc (NiZn), nickel metal hydride (NiMH), lithium-ion (Li-ion), etc.), solar cells, fuel cells, and the like.

[0052] The processor 118 may also be coupled to the GPS chipset 136, which may be configured to provide location information (e.g., longitude and latitude) regarding the current location of the WTRU 102. In addition to, or in lieu of, the information from the GPS chipset 136, the WTRU 102 may receive location information over the air interface 116 from a base station (e.g., base stations 114a, 114b) and / or determine its location based on the timing of the signals being received from two or more nearby base stations. It will be appreciated that the WTRU 102 may acquire location information by way of any suitable location-determination method while remaining consistent with an embodiment.

[0053] The processor 1 18 may further be coupled to other peripherals 138, which may include one or more software and / or hardware modules that provide additional features, functionality and / or wired or wireless connectivity. For example, the peripherals 138 may include an accelerometer, an e- compass, a satellite transceiver, a digital camera (for photographs and / or video), a universal serial bus (USB) port, a vibration device, a television transceiver, a hands free headset, a Bluetooth® module, a frequency modulated (FM) radio unit, a digital music player, a media player, a video game player module, an Internet browser, a Virtual Reality and / or Augmented Reality (VR / AR) device, an activity tracker, and the like. The peripherals 138 may include one or more sensors. The sensors may be one or more of a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a hall effect sensor, a magnetometer, an orientation sensor, a proximity sensor, a temperature sensor, a time sensor; a geolocation sensor, an altimeter, a light sensor, a touch sensor, a magnetometer, a barometer, a gesture sensor, a biometric sensor, a humidity sensor and the like.

[0054] The WTRU 102 may include a full duplex radio for which transmission and reception of some or all of the signals (e.g., associated with particular subframes for both the UL (e.g., fortransmission) and DL (e.g for reception) may be concurrent and / or simultaneous. The full duplex radio may include an interference management unit to reduce and or substantially eliminate selfinterference via either hardware (e.g., a choke) or signal processing via a processor (e.g., a separate processor (not shown) or via processor 118). In an embodiment, the WTRU 102 may include a halfduplex radio for which transmission and reception of some or all of the signals (e.g., associated with particular subframes for either the UL (e.g., for transmission) or the DL (e.g., for reception)).

[0055] FIG. 1 C is a system diagram illustrating the RAN 104 and the CN 106 according to an embodiment. As noted above, the RAN 104 may employ an E-UTRA radio technology to communicate with the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c over the air interface 116. The RAN 104 may also be in communication with the CN 106.

[0056] The RAN 104 may include eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c, though it will be appreciated that the RAN 104 may include any number of eNode-Bs while remaining consistent with an embodiment. The eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c may each include one or more transceivers for communicating with the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c over the air interface 116. In one embodiment, the eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c may implement MIMO technology. Thus, the eNode-B 160a, for example, may use multiple antennas to transmit wireless signals to, and / or receive wireless signals from, the WTRU 102a.

[0057] Each of the eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c may be associated with a particular cell (not shown) and may be configured to handle radio resource management decisions, handover decisions, scheduling of users in the UL and / or DL, and the like. As shown in FIG. 1 C, the eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c may communicate with one another over an X2 interface.

[0058] The CN 106 shown in FIG. 1 C may include a mobility management entity (MME) 162, a serving gateway (SGW) 164, and a packet data network (PDN) gateway (PGW) 166. While the foregoing elements are depicted as part of the CN 106, it will be appreciated that any of these elements may be owned and / or operated by an entity other than the CN operator.

[0059] The MME 162 may be connected to each of the eNode-Bs 162a, 162b, 162c in the RAN 104 via an S1 interface and may serve as a control node. For example, the MME 162 may be responsible for authenticating users of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, bearer activation / deactivation, selecting a particular serving gateway during an initial attach of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, and the like. The MME 162 may provide a control plane function for switching between the RAN 104 and other RANs (not shown) that employ other radio technologies, such as GSM and / or WCDMA.

[0060] The SGW 164 may be connected to each of the eNode Bs 160a, 160b, 160c in the RAN 104 via the S1 interface. The SGW 164 may generally route and forward user data packets to / fromthe WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c. The SGW 164 may perform other functions, such as anchoring user planes during inter-eNode B handovers, triggering paging when DL data is available for the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, managing and storing contexts of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, and the like.

[0061] The SGW 164 may be connected to the PGW 166, which may provide the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c with access to packet-switched networks, such as the Internet 110, to facilitate communications between the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c and IP-enabled devices.

[0062] The CN 106 may facilitate communications with other networks. For example, the CN 106 may provide the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c with access to circuit-switched networks, such as the PSTN 108, to facilitate communications between the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c and traditional landline communications devices. For example, the CN 106 may include, or may communicate with, an IP gateway (e.g., an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) server) that serves as an interface between the CN 106 and the PSTN 108. In addition, the CN 106 may provide the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c with access to the other networks 112, which may include other wired and / or wireless networks that are owned and / or operated by other service providers.

[0063] Although the WTRU is described in FIGS. 1A-1 D as a wireless terminal, it is contemplated that in certain representative embodiments that such a terminal may use (e.g., temporarily or permanently) wired communication interfaces with the communication network.

[0064] In representative embodiments, the other network 112 may be a WLAN.

[0065] A WLAN in Infrastructure Basic Service Set (BSS) mode may have an Access Point (AP) for the BSS and one or more stations (STAs) associated with the AP. The AP may have access or an interface to a Distribution System (DS) or another type of wired / wireless network that carries traffic in to and / or out of the BSS. Traffic to STAs that originates from outside the BSS may arrive through the AP and may be delivered to the STAs. Traffic originating from STAs to destinations outside the BSS may be sent to the AP to be delivered to respective destinations. Traffic between STAs within the BSS may be sent through the AP, for example, where the source STA may send traffic to the AP and the AP may deliver the traffic to the destination STA. The traffic between STAs within a BSS may be considered and / or referred to as peer-to-peer traffic. The peer-to-peer traffic may be sent between (e.g., directly between) the source and destination STAs with a direct link setup (DLS). In certain representative embodiments, the DLS may use an 802.11e DLS or an 802.11z tunneled DLS (TDLS). A WLAN using an Independent BSS (IBSS) mode may not have an AP, and the STAs (e.g., all of the STAs) within or using the IBSS may communicate directly with each other. The IBSS mode of communication may sometimes be referred to herein as an “ad-hoc” mode of communication.

[0066] When using the 802.11ac infrastructure mode of operation or a similar mode of operations, the AP may transmit a beacon on a fixed channel, such as a primary channel. The primary channel may be a fixed width (e.g., 20 MHz wide bandwidth) or a dynamically set width. The primary channel may be the operating channel of the BSS and may be used by the STAs to establish a connection with the AP. In certain representative embodiments, Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA / CA) may be implemented, for example in 802.11 systems. For CSMA / CA, the STAs (e.g., every STA), including the AP, may sense the primary channel. If the primary channel is sensed / detected and / or determined to be busy by a particular STA, the particular STA may back off. One STA (e.g., only one station) may transmit at any given time in a given BSS.

[0067] High Throughput (HT) STAs may use a 40 MHz wide channel for communication, for example, via a combination of the primary 20 MHz channel with an adjacent or nonadjacent 20 MHz channel to form a 40 MHz wide channel.

[0068] Very High Throughput (VHT) STAs may support 20MHz, 40 MHz, 80 MHz, and / or 160 MHz wide channels. The 40 MHz, and / or 80 MHz, channels may be formed by combining contiguous 20 MHz channels. A 160 MHz channel may be formed by combining 8 contiguous 20 MHz channels, or by combining two non-contiguous 80 MHz channels, which may be referred to as an 80+80 configuration. For the 80+80 configuration, the data, after channel encoding, may be passed through a segment parser that may divide the data into two streams. Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) processing, and time domain processing, may be done on each stream separately. The streams may be mapped on to the two 80 MHz channels, and the data may be transmitted by a transmitting STA. At the receiver of the receiving STA, the above described operation for the 80+80 configuration may be reversed, and the combined data may be sent to the Medium Access Control (MAC).

[0069] Sub 1 GHz modes of operation are supported by 802.11af and 802.11ah. The channel operating bandwidths, and carriers, are reduced in 802.11 af and 802.11ah relative to those used in 802.11n, and 802.11ac. 802.11af supports 5 MHz, 10 MHz, and 20 MHz bandwidths in the TV White Space (TVWS) spectrum, and 802.11ah supports 1 MHz, 2 MHz, 4 MHz, 8 MHz, and 16 MHz bandwidths using non-TVWS spectrum. According to a representative embodiment, 802.11ah may support Meter Type Control / Machine-Type Communications (MTC), such as MTC devices in a macro coverage area. MTC devices may have certain capabilities, for example, limited capabilities including support for (e.g., only support for) certain and / or limited bandwidths. The MTC devices may include a battery with a battery life above a threshold (e.g., to maintain a very long battery life).

[0070] WLAN systems, which may support multiple channels, and channel bandwidths, such as 802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11af, and 802.11ah, include a channel which may be designated as theprimary channel. The primary channel may have a bandwidth equal to the largest common operating bandwidth supported by all STAs in the BSS. The bandwidth of the primary channel may be set and / or limited by a STA, from among all STAs in operating in a BSS, which supports the smallest bandwidth operating mode. In the example of 802.11ah, the primary channel may be 1 MHz wide for STAs (e.g., MTC type devices) that support (e.g., only support) a 1 MHz mode, even if the AP, and other STAs in the BSS support 2 MHz, 4 MHz, 8 MHz, 16 MHz, and / or other channel bandwidth operating modes. Carrier sensing and / or Network Allocation Vector (NAV) settings may depend on the status of the primary channel. If the primary channel is busy, for example, due to a STA (which supports only a 1 MHz operating mode) transmitting to the AP, all available frequency bands may be considered busy even though a majority of the available frequency bands remains idle.

[0071] In the United States, the available frequency bands, which may be used by 802.11 ah, are from 902 MHz to 928 MHz. In Korea, the available frequency bands are from 917.5 MHz to 923.5 MHz. In Japan, the available frequency bands are from 916.5 MHz to 927.5 MHz. The total bandwidth available for 802.11 ah is 6 MHz to 26 MHz depending on the country code.

[0072] FIG. 1 D is a system diagram illustrating the RAN 104 and the CN 106 according to an embodiment. As noted above, the RAN 104 may employ an NR radio technology to communicate with the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c over the air interface 116. The RAN 104 may also be in communication with the CN 106.

[0073] The RAN 104 may include gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c, though it will be appreciated that the RAN 104 may include any number of gNBs while remaining consistent with an embodiment. The gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may each include one or more transceivers for communicating with the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c over the air interface 116. In one embodiment, the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may implement MIMO technology. For example, gNBs 180a, 108b may utilize beamforming to transmit signals to and / or receive signals from the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c. Thus, the gNB 180a, for example, may use multiple antennas to transmit wireless signals to, and / or receive wireless signals from, the WTRU 102a. In an embodiment, the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may implement carrier aggregation technology. For example, the gNB 180a may transmit multiple component carriers to the WTRU 102a (not shown). A subset of these component carriers may be on unlicensed spectrum while the remaining component carriers may be on licensed spectrum. In an embodiment, the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may implement Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) technology. For example, WTRU 102a may receive coordinated transmissions from gNB 180a and gNB 180b (and / or gNB 180c).

[0074] The WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may communicate with gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c using transmissions associated with a scalable numerology. For example, the OFDM symbol spacingand / or OFDM subcarrier spacing may vary for different transmissions, different cells, and / or different portions of the wireless transmission spectrum. The WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may communicate with gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c using subframe or transmission time intervals (TTIs) of various or scalable lengths (e.g., containing a varying number of OFDM symbols and / or lasting varying lengths of absolute time).

[0075] The gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may be configured to communicate with the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c in a standalone configuration and / or a non-standalone configuration. In the standalone configuration, WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may communicate with gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c without also accessing other RANs (e.g., such as eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c). In the standalone configuration, WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may utilize one or more of gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c as a mobility anchor point. In the standalone configuration, WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may communicate with gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c using signals in an unlicensed band. In a non-standalone configuration WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may communicate with / connect to gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c while also communicating with / connecting to another RAN such as eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c. For example, WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may implement DC principles to communicate with one or more gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c and one or more eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c substantially simultaneously. In the non-standalone configuration, eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c may serve as a mobility anchor for WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c and gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may provide additional coverage and / or throughput for servicing WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c.

[0076] Each of the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may be associated with a particular cell (not shown) and may be configured to handle radio resource management decisions, handover decisions, scheduling of users in the UL and / or DL, support of network slicing, DC, interworking between NR and E-UTRA, routing of user plane data towards User Plane Function (UPF) 184a, 184b, routing of control plane information towards Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) 182a, 182b and the like. As shown in FIG. 1 D, the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may communicate with one another over an Xn interface.

[0077] The CN 106 shown in FIG. 1 D may include at least one AMF 182a, 182b, at least one UPF 184a, 184b, at least one Session Management Function (SMF) 183a, 183b, and possibly a Data Network (DN) 185a, 185b. While the foregoing elements are depicted as part of the CN 106, it will be appreciated that any of these elements may be owned and / or operated by an entity other than the CN operator.

[0078] The AMF 182a, 182b may be connected to one or more of the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c in the RAN 104 via an N2 interface and may serve as a control node. For example, the AMF 182a, 182bmay be responsible for authenticating users of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, support for network slicing (e.g., handling of different protocol data unit (PDU) sessions with different requirements), selecting a particular SMF 183a, 183b, management of the registration area, termination of non- access stratum (NAS) signaling, mobility management, and the like. Network slicing may be used by the AMF 182a, 182b in order to customize CN support for WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c based on the types of services being utilized WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c. For example, different network slices may be established for different use cases such as services relying on ultra-reliable low latency (URLLC) access, services relying on enhanced massive mobile broadband (eMBB) access, services for MTC access, and the like. The AMF 182a, 182b may provide a control plane function for switching between the RAN 104 and other RANs (not shown) that employ other radio technologies, such as LTE, LTE- A, LTE-A Pro, and / or non-3GPP access technologies such as WiFi.

[0079] The SMF 183a, 183b may be connected to an AMF 182a, 182b in the CN 106 via an N11 interface. The SMF 183a, 183b may also be connected to a U PF 184a, 184b in the CN 106 via an N4 interface. The SMF 183a, 183b may select and control the UPF 184a, 184b and configure the routing of traffic through the UPF 184a, 184b. The SMF 183a, 183b may perform other functions, such as managing and allocating UE IP address, managing PDU sessions, controlling policy enforcement and QoS, providing DL data notifications, and the like. A PDU session type may be IP-based, non-IP based, Ethernet-based, and the like.

[0080] The UPF 184a, 184b may be connected to one or more of the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c in the RAN 104 via an N3 interface, which may provide the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c with access to packet-switched networks, such as the Internet 110, to facilitate communications between the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c and IP-enabled devices. The UPF 184, 184b may perform other functions, such as routing and forwarding packets, enforcing user plane policies, supporting multi-homed PDU sessions, handling user plane QoS, buffering DL packets, providing mobility anchoring, and the like.

[0081] The CN 106 may facilitate communications with other networks. For example, the CN 106 may include, or may communicate with, an IP gateway (e.g., an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) server) that serves as an interface between the CN 106 and the PSTN 108. In addition, the CN 106 may provide the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c with access to the other networks 112, which may include other wired and / or wireless networks that are owned and / or operated by other service providers. In one embodiment, the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may be connected to a local DN 185a, 185b through the UPF 184a, 184b via the N3 interface to the UPF 184a, 184b and an N6 interface between the UPF 184a, 184b and the DN 185a, 185b.

[0082] In view of FIGs. 1A-1 D, and the corresponding description of FIGs. 1A-1 D, one or more, or all, of the functions described herein with regard to one or more of: WTRU 102a-d, Base Station 114a- b, eNode-B 160a-c, MME 162, SGW 164, PGW 166, gNB 180a-c, AMF 182a-b, UPF 184a-b, SMF 183a-b, DN 185a-b, and / or any other device(s) described herein, may be performed by one or more emulation devices (not shown). The emulation devices may be one or more devices configured to emulate one or more, or all, of the functions described herein. For example, the emulation devices may be used to test other devices and / or to simulate network and / or WTRU functions.

[0083] The emulation devices may be designed to implement one or more tests of other devices in a lab environment and / or in an operator network environment. For example, the one or more emulation devices may perform the one or more, or all, functions while being fully or partially implemented and / or deployed as part of a wired and / or wireless communication network in order to test other devices within the communication network. The one or more emulation devices may perform the one or more, or all, functions while being temporarily implemented / deployed as part of a wired and / or wireless communication network. The emulation device may be directly coupled to another device for purposes of testing and / or performing testing using over-the-air wireless communications.

[0084] The one or more emulation devices may perform the one or more, including all, functions while not being implemented / deployed as part of a wired and / or wireless communication network. For example, the emulation devices may be utilized in a testing scenario in a testing laboratory and / or a non-deployed (e.g., testing) wired and / or wireless communication network in order to implement testing of one or more components. The one or more emulation devices may be test equipment. Direct RF coupling and / or wireless communications via RF circuitry (e.g., which may include one or more antennas) may be used by the emulation devices to transmit and / or receive data.

[0085] For a given wireless communication scenario, there may be an underlying motivation to improve and make the system more efficient. One such improvement or efficiency may be found in reducing energy consumption. Generally, it is desirable for a network to minimize its power consumption from transmission and reception. It is desirable because such minimization is beneficial for reducing operational costs and environmental sustainability.

[0086] Compared to earlier cellular systems, New Radio (NR) may be considered very efficient from a perspective of minimizing uplink and / or downlink transmissions between the WTRU and the network when data is not transmitted between the WTRU and the network. For example, an always- on cell-specific reference signal (CRS) which is typically used in the earlier cellular systems is not used in the NR for reducing energy consumption. However, there is still potential for further reductionof the energy consumption, for example, by using one or more network energy saving (NES) states, such as but not limited to operating the network in a cell discontinuous reception (DRX) mode.

[0087] For example, when not transmitting the data, the network may consume energy for performing other functions. Examples of such functions include but are not limited to baseband (i.e. digital) processing or beamforming, thereby causing idle power consumption. Such idle power consumption may not be negligible in dense networks even when no WTRU is served during a given period. If the network could turn off these functions when not transmitting to any WTRU, the energy consumption may be further reduced.

[0088] Unlike long-term evolution (LTE), the NR does not require the transmission of an always-on synchronization signal or the reference signal. The NR also supports adaptable bandwidth and multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) capabilities. While some energy savings are possible for the NR compared to the earlier cellular systems, an adaptation of network resources may enable greater efficiency in operating newer deployments and later generations (for e.g., the NR and beyond).

[0089] The NR may facilitate implementation of Extended Reality (XR) applications in the WTRU. Here, the XR is an umbrella term for different types of immersive experiences such as but not limited to Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) or a combination of other such realities. VR applications include a virtually rendered version of a visual and / or audio scene. The rendering is designed to mimic a visual (e.g. stereoscopic three-dimensional (3D)) stimuli and / or an audio-sensory stimuli of real world as naturally as possible to an observer or a user as the observer or the user moves within a limit defined by the VR applications. AR applications may include provision of additional information and / or one or more artificially generated objects, items and / or content overlaid upon a current environment displayed to the observer or the user. MR applications are an advanced form of the AR applications where multiple virtual elements are inserted into a real scene with an intent to provide an illusion that the virtual elements are a part of the real scene. The XR applications may include a combination of a real environment and one or more virtual environments, and may also facilitate human-machine interactions by way of one or more wearables devices.

[0090] As discussed herein, the WTRU may include (e.g., in addition to any other definition provided herein) any XR device and / or node, which in some cases may be implemented in various form factors. An example WTRU (e.g. XR WTRU) may include, but is not limited to, the following: Head Mounted Displays (HMD), optical see-through glasses, camera see-through HMDs for AR and MR, mobile devices with positional tracking and cameras, wearables, haptic gloves, haptic body suit, haptic shoes, and the like. One or more devices, nodes, and / or WTRUs may be grouped into a collaborative XR group for supporting any XR applications, experience, and / or services.

[0091] In the XR applications and / or XR services, a data traffic may include data, such as but not limited to one or more protocol data units (PDUs) which may be associated with an application data Unit (ADU), a PDU set, or a data burst. In an example, multiple PDUs in the PDU set may be associated with different segments and / or components of a video frame or a video slice. The data burst may include one or more PDU sets that may be transmitted and / or received over a time window. For example, a number of PDUs in the PDU set or the data burst transmitted in an uplink (UL) communication and / or received in a downlink (DL) communication may be dependent on a type of a media frame (e.g. 3D video frame or audio frame etc.). The XR applications and / or the XR services are merely an example scenario that may require a certain level of performance, and is not intended to be limiting. As discussed herein, The XR applications and / or the XR services may be discussed as an example of a special case, however, it is intended to be merely a placeholder example for different techniques and / or approaches disclosed herein, which will generally apply to all special cases that require the disclosed techniques and / or approaches.

[0092] A synchronization signal block (SSB) or a synchronization signal / physical broadcast channel (SS / PBCH) block, may include at least one of the following: a primary synchronization signal (PSS), a secondary synchronization signal (SSS), a PBCH (Data, master information block (MIB)) and a PBCH (demodulation reference signal (DMRS)). One or more SSBs may be transmitted by a base station in different directions as one or more beams. A number of SSB beams in an SSB burst set, which may be transmitted periodically within an interval (e.g., 5ms) may depend on a carrier frequency. For example, an SSB burst may contain 4 SSBs for frequency range 1 (FR1) (< 3GHz), 8 SSBs for FR1 (3 to 6GHz) and 64 SSBs for frequency range 2 (FR2).

[0093] A system information (SI) may include at least the MIB and one or more system information blocks (SIBs). The MIB may be received by the WTRU on a broadcast channel (BCH) with a certain periodicity (e.g., 80 ms) and with one or more repetitions (e.g., within 80 ms). The MIB may include one or more parameters that are needed to acquire an SIB1 from a cell. A first transmission of the MIB is scheduled in one or more subframes and the repetitions are scheduled according to a period of the SSB.

[0094] The SIB1 , also referred to as a remaining minimum SI (RMSI), may be received on a DL shared channel (DL-SCH) with a certain periodicity (e.g., 160 ms) and with a variable transmission repetition periodicity (e.g., within 160 ms). The SIB1 may include information regarding an availability and scheduling (e.g., mapping of SIBs to SI message, periodicity, Sl-window size) of other SIBs with an indication of whether one or more SIBs are only provided on-demand and, in that case, a configuration needed by the WTRU to perform an SI request. The SIB1 is a cell-specific SIB.

[0095] The SIBs other than SIB1 and positioning SIBs (posSIBs) are carried in one or more SI messages, which may be received on the DL-SCH. Only the SIBs or the posSIBs having same periodicity may be mapped to same SI message. Any SIB or any posSIB except the SIB1 may be configured to be cell-specific or area specific, using an indication in the SIB1 . The cell-specific SIB is applicable only within the cell that provides the SIB while the area-specific SIB is applicable within an area referred to as an SI area, which includes one or more cells and is identified by systemlnformationArealD.

[0096] A channel state information (CSI), may include at least one of the following: channel quality index (CQI), rank indicator (Rl), precoding matrix index (PMI), an L1 channel measurement (e.g., reference signal receive power (RSRP) such as L1-RSRP, or signal to interference and noise ratio (SIN R)), CSI-RS resource indicator (CRI), SS / PBCH block resource indicator (SSBRI), layer indicator (LI) and / or any other measurement quantity measured by the WTRU from a configured CSI-RS, the SS / PBCH block, or the SSB block.

[0097] An uplink control information (UCI), may include one or more of: CSI, hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback for one or more HARQ processes, a scheduling request (SR), a link recovery request (LRR), a configured grant (CG) uplink control information (UCI), and / or other control information bits that may be transmitted on a physical uplink channel (PUCCH) or a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH).

[0098] One or more channel conditions may be any conditions relating to a state of a radio and / or a channel, which may be determined by the WTRU from one or more of: a WTRU measurement (e.g., L1 / SINR / RSRP, channel quality indicator (CQI) / modulation coding scheme (MCS), channel occupancy, received signal strength indicator (RSSI), power headroom, or exposure headroom etc.), L3 / mobility-based measurements (e.g., reference signal received power (RSRP), reference signal received quality (RSRQ), s-measure), a radio link monitoring (RLM) state, and / or channel availability in an unlicensed spectrum (e.g., whether the channel is occupied based on a determination of a listen before talk (LBT) procedure or whether the channel is deemed to have experienced a consistent LBT failure).

[0099] A physical random access channel (PRACH) resource is a PRACH resource (e.g., in frequency), a PRACH occasion (RO) (e.g., in time), a preamble format (e.g., in terms of a total preamble duration, a sequence length, a guard time duration, and / or in terms of a length of a cyclic prefix), and / or a certain preamble sequence used for transmission of the preamble in a random access procedure.

[0100] A property of scheduling information (e.g., an uplink grant or a downlink assignment) may include at least one of the following: a frequency allocation, an aspect of time allocation, such as a duration, a priority, the MCS, a transport block (TB) size, a number of spatial layers, a number of TBs to be carried, a transmission configuration indication (TCI) state or SRS resource indicator (SRI), a number of repetitions, or whether a grant is a CG type 1 , type 2, or a dynamic grant (DG).

[0101] An indication by downlink control information (DCI), or an indication, may comprise of at least one of the following: An explicit indication by a DCI field or by radio network temporary identifier (RNTI) used to mask cyclic redundancy check (CRC) of a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH). An implicit indication by a property such as a DCI format, DCI size, a control resource set (CORESET), or a search space (SS), an aggregation level, an identity of a first control channel resource (e.g., index of a first control channel element (CCE)) for a DCI, where a mapping between the property and a value may be signaled by radio resource control (RRC) or media access control (MAC). An explicit indication by a DL MAC control element (CE).

[0102] Throughout the embodiments described herein, the network may include any of a base station (e.g., a gNodeB (gNB), transmission and reception point (TRP), a radio access network (RAN) node, or an access node etc.), a core network function (e.g., an access and mobility management function (AMF), a session management function (SMF), a policy control function (PCF), or a network exposure function (NEF) etc.) and an application function (e.g., an edge server function or a remote server function), for example. An NES cell may refer to any network node that may operate and / or be capable of operating in an NES state and / or mode, including any of time, frequency, spatial, and / or power domain adaptation modes.

[0103] The terms network availability state, a cell discontinuous transmission (DTX) mode and / or a cell DTX configuration, and / or the NES state may be used interchangeably herein. The PDU set may include one or more data units (e.g., PDUs) associated with a media unit, or a video frame and / or slice. Such data units within the PDU set or the data burst may be interdependent with each other at an application layer and / or at lower layers (e.g., AS-layers).

[0104] One or more attributes and / or properties of the PDU set may be different from each other in terms of, for example, a number of PDUs in the PDU set, payload sizes, intra-PDU set correlation, importance and / or priority of the data units (e.g. one or more priority values associated with the PDU set of the PDUs therein), status of transmission (e.g., a percentage of PDUs of the PDU set that are transmitted and / or received successfully), an effective data rate, and / or an effective reliability associated with the transmission.

[0105] In an example, the attributes and / or properties associated with the PDUs and / or the PDU set may be visible at one or more AS layers (e.g . , at packet data convergence protocol (PDCP), RLC, MAC, physical (PHY) sub-layers / layers), possibly for supporting additional actions and / or functions (e.g., prioritizing, mapping to a logical channel (LCH), multiplexing into one or more TBs, scheduling, or triggering and / or transmitting an indication etc.).

[0106] The PDU set may be associated with one or more PDU set-level quality of service (QoS) requirements and / or conditions (e.g., data rate, latency, error rate, reliability), which may be applicable for one or more PDUs or all PDUs associated with the PDU set. Different PDUs in the PDU set may be associated with individual PDU-level QoS requirements. A PDU set delay budget (PSDB) may be a time between a reception of a first PDU (e.g., at the WTRU in UL) and a successful delivery of a last arrived PDU of the PDU set (at the network in UL). A PDU set integrated handling indication (PSIHI) indicates whether all the PDUs of the PDU set are needed for a usage of the PDU set by the application layer. A PDU set error rate (PSER) defines an upper bound for a rate of non-congestion related PDU set losses between RAN and the WTRU.

[0107] A jitter may refer to a variation with respect to an expected time instance during which one or more PDUs may be received and / or transmitted. For example, for a set of PDUs that may be expected to be received periodically at different periodic time instances, the jitter may refer to the variation with respect to the periodic time instances (e.g., for the PDU that may be received T1 ms in advance or T2 ms later than an expected time instance at T, the jitter range is T2 - T1 ). The jitter may refer to an instantaneous value or a statistical value (e.g., average, variance, standard deviation, maximum, or minimum etc.). A remaining delay or a remaining time may refer to a time duration remaining for receiving and / or transmitting one or more PDUs of the PDU set before the PSDB. The remaining time may also be referred to as the time to live (TTL) associated with the PDU set. Associations and inter-dependencies, for example, within the PDU set and across multiple PDU sets, including the start and / or end indication of the PDU set and / or the data burst (e.g., via a sequence number, a start and / or end indication, or a timestamp etc.), a start and / or end time, a duration, payload sizes, a periodicity, an importance and / or priority, and / or QoS (e.g., PSDB) may be visible to the AS- layers and / or handled at the AS layers with an associated awareness during the data transmission and / or the data reception.

[0108] Regarding application and / or high layer importance and / or priority, the different PDUs in the PDU set or all the PDUs in the PDU set may be associated with different importance and / or priority values. Such importance and / or priority values may correspond to spatial importance (e.g., a spatial position of the video frame whose data is carried by the PDU and / or the PDU set, where the PDUs and / or the PDU set carrying field of view (FoV) spatial positions may be associated with higher spatialimportance than non-FoV spatial positions) or temporal importance (e.g. , a time sequence of the video and / or application frame whose data is carried by the PDU and / or the PDU set, where the PDUs and / or the PDU sets carrying one or more base video frames such as but not limited to l-frame may be associated with a higher temporal importance than one or more differential video frames such as but not limited to P-frame and / or B-frame). Such importance values and / or priority values may be visible to the AS layers (e.g., with associated identifiers (IDs) and / or markers) during data transmission and / or reception.

[0109] Regarding QoS flows and / or data flows, the PDUs and / or the PDU sets of the application may be encoded and / or delivered by the application to the WTRU (in UL) or the network (in DL) via one or more QoS flows and / or data flows. The different QoS flows carrying the PDUs and / or the PDU sets associated to a specialty application and / or experience (e.g., the XR applications and / or an XR experience) may be visible to the AS-layers (e.g., with associated IDs) and / or handled at the AS layers with the awareness of the association during data transmission and / or reception.

[0110] As disclosed herein, a forwarding configuration may correspond to any of the following: radio bearers (e.g., data radio bearer (DRB), signaling radio bearers (SRB), transport radio bearer, PDU set bearer), LCHs, logical channel groups (LCGs); one or more configuration parameters in the individual layers within the AS protocol stack (e.g., service data adaptation protocol (SDAP), PDCP, RLC, MAC, PHY, other new protocol layers), parameters associated with logical channel prioritization (LCP) (e.g., priority, PBR, BSD), bandwidth parts (BWPs), carriers, radio links and / or interfaces (e.g., Uu links, SLs); and / or, radio resources (e.g., set of one or more frequency, time, and / or spatial resources such as but not limited to symbols, slots, subcarriers, resource elements or beams etc.). For example, the radio resources may be associated with the CGs, the DGs, and / or any other resource grants or grant-free resources.

[0111] The base station (e.g., the gNB or the network node that connects to the WTRU, etc.) may currently use reduced downlink transmission and / or uplink reception activity without an explicit cell DTX pattern and / or cell DRX pattern with one or more restrictions due to a WTRU DRX configuration and any configured transmission and / or reception, such as common channels and / or signals. In one instance, a connected mode DRX (C-DRX) is configured per WTRU. An alignment of one or more DRX cycles or offsets for different WTRUs may be done via the RRC. During a WTRU DRX off period, the WTRU may not expect to monitor the PDCCH, but the WTRU may be allowed to initiate a UL transmission according to one or more configured resources (e.g., using PUCCH, RACH, SR, or CG- PUSCH). Aligning and / or omitting of one or more DRX patterns across multiple WTRU's may be achieved via a base station implementation.

[0112] The cell DTX / DRX patterns may provide mechanisms for informing the WTRU whether the cell stays inactive. This may include enhancements to the WTRU DRX configuration, such as but not limited to, aligning and / or omitting one or more DRX cycles and / or starting offsets of the DRX, for the WTRUs in a connected mode or in an idle and / or inactive mode, thereby potentially allowing longer opportunities for cell inactivity. During the cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX mode, the cell may have no transmission and / or reception or the cell may only implement limited transmission and / or reception. For example, the cell may not need to transmit and / or receive one or more periodic signals and / or channels, such as common channels and / or signals or the WTRU specific signals and / or channels.

[0113] The cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX mode may be applied to at least one or more WTRUs in RRC_CONNECTED state. A periodic cell DTX mode and / or cell DRX mode (e.g., active and non-active periods) may be configured by the base station via a WTRU-specific RRC signalling per serving cell. The cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX mode may be activated and / or de-activated via dynamic L1 signalling and the WTRU-specific RRC signaling. Both the WTRU specific and a group common L1 signalling may be considered for activating and / or deactivating the cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX mode. The cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX modes may be configured and operated separately (e.g., one RRC configuration set for DL and another for UL). The cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX mode may also be configured and operated together. At least the following parameters may be configured per cell DTX mode and / or cell DRX mode configurations: a periodicity, a start slot and / or an offset, an on duration. In one instance, the cell DTX indication may also be a part of the SI update or the SIB signaling. There may be a common time for all the WTRUs to determine the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX statuses.

[0114] The WTRU may determine whether the WTRU may transmit and / or receive on certain resources depending on a network availability state, which implies the base station’s power savings status. An availability state may correspond to an NES state, the cell DTX mode, the cell DRX mode, and / or a base station activity level. An availability state may be uplink specific and / or downlink specific, and may change from symbol to symbol, slot to slot, frame to frame, or on a longer duration granularity. The availability state may be determined by the WTRU or indicated by the network. An availability state may be, for example, “On”, “DL and UL active”, “UL only active”, “off’, “reduced Tx power”, “dormant”, “micro sleep”, “light sleep”, or “deep sleep”. Such states may be abstracted by one or more network configuration parameters and / or values, and a dynamic indication may indicate the active availability state (e.g., by DCI or MAC CE signaling). The “Off” availability state may imply that the base station’s baseband hardware is completely turned off. The “sleep” availability state may imply that the base station wakes up periodically to transmit certain signals (e.g., presence signals, synchronization, or reference signals) or receive certain UL signals. In some availability states, oneor more DL and / or UL resources are not available during certain periods of time, and this enables the network to turn off baseband processing and other activities or functions. One or more measurement resources (e.g., the SSBs or the CSI-RS) may only be made available in certain availability states, including one or more of the following: RLM, BFD, RRM measurements, the CSI-RS feedback configuration, and / or a different power offset for the CSI feedback.

[0115] Under certain conditions, the WTRU may further transmit a request to the network (e.g., a wake-up request or a wake-up signal and / or indication) to modify the availability state to a state for which the resources that would satisfy one or more WTRU requirements are available. The WTRU may determine an availability state from the reception of an availability state indication from, for example, L1 and / or L2 signaling (e.g., a group common DCI or indication), or implicitly determine the availability state from the reception of periodic DL signaling, or lack thereof.

[0116] The WTRU may determine if the resource is available for transmission and / or reception and / or one or more measurements for the determined network availability state if the resource is applicable in the active availability state. Additionally, the WTRU may also adapt the active C-DRX cycle of the WTRU, one or more active spatial elements (e.g., antenna or logical ports of the WTRU), one or more active TRPs, and / or one or more paging occasions as a function of the signaled availability state and / or determined availability state. The WTRU may be configured with one or more sets of NES transmission and / or reception parameters per availability state, such as by broadcast or dedicated configuration signaling. The WTRU may apply a set of NES parameters i.e. an NES parameter set according to the determined availability state and / or the signaled availability state. The WTRU may apply one or more applicable configurations depending on the determined NES state. The set of NES parameters may include at least one of the following: a number of antenna ports, a C-DRX configuration, a measurement configuration (e.g., for RRM, RLM, and / or BFD), the CSI feedback, a CSI-RS configuration, an SSB configuration, CHO or mobility candidates, and / or a set of active TRPs.

[0117] The availability state may be applicable to at least one transmission, reception, and / or measurement resource. The availability state may be applicable to at least one time period such as but not limited to a time slot and / or a time symbol. The availability state may be applicable to a serving cell, a cell group, a frequency band, a bandwidth part, a TRP, a set of spatial elements, or a range of frequencies within a bandwidth part. For example, when the NES state changes in the cell, the WTRU may receive the availability state change indication indicating that the change in the availability state is just for that cell, for all the cells at the same frequency, or / and same RAT.

[0118] The WTRU may consider the active availability state associated with the cell, the carrier, the TRP, or the frequency band to be “Off”, “Deep sleep”, or “Micro sleep” after reception of the DL signaling that changes the availability state of the cell or the TRP. For example, the WTRU may receive a turn-off command on a broadcast signaling, an RRC signaling, the DCI (e.g., a group common DCI), or a DL MAC CE (e.g., indication part of PDSCH). The WTRU may determine the availability state from the reception of the availability state indication from, for example, the L1 and / or L2 signaling (e.g., a group common DCI or an indication) or the broadcast signaling associated with the availability state. For example, the availability state change indication could also be a part of the SI update or the SIB signaling (e.g., in a separate SIB that is not read by a legacy WTRU). There may also be a common time for all the WTRUs in the cell to determine a status of the availability state.

[0119] The WTRU may implicitly assume a certain availability state associated with the cell, carrier, the TRP, or the frequency band (e.g., “Off, “deep sleep”, “micro sleep” or dormant”) from: reception of a paging message (e.g., a paging DCI, a paging PDSCH, or a paging related signal, e.g., PEI), a base station DTX status (e.g., whether the base station is in an active time or an associated activity timer is running), a lack of detection of a presence indication, the availability state of an associated cell, and / or one or more measured channel conditions s) being below, or above, a threshold value.

[0120] The WTRU may be configured to monitor an indication that may characterize the level of network activity (e.g., the availability state). The network activity may be associated with the base station and / or the cell. The WTRU may assume the same availability state for all the cells that are a part of the same base station, for example, the cells of the same MAC entity. The network activity indication (e.g., the presence indication) may comprise of the channel (e.g., a PDCCH) and / or the signal (e.g., a sequence). The activity indication or the NES state change indication and / or command (e.g., referred to as the cell activity indication) may indicate the level of activity the WTRU may expect from the associated base station and / or the cell, for example, reduced activity. The activity indication may contain activity information of other base stations and / or the cells. The activity indication may be the PDCCH containing the group common signaling. For example, the network may transmit the group common DCI to a group of WTRUs (e.g., the WTRUs in the serving cell) indicating the change of the activity state or an activity level in UL and / or DL. The CRC of the PDCCH may be scrambled with a dedicated “activity indication RNTI or an NES-RNTI”. The WTRU may be configured with at least one search space associated with the monitoring occasions of the activity indication PDCCH. The indication may comprise of a go-to-sleep signal, such as a predefined sequence. When the WTRU detects this sequence, the WTRU may expect a reduced activity level over a specific time duration. The WTRU may activate the C-DRX for the period of time indicated. Alternatively, one or more sequences may be used to indicate regular activity and / or reduced activity.

[0121] The signaling within the PDCCH and / or the activity indication may contain at least one or more pieces of information. For example, one piece of information that may be contained within the signaling may be the expected activity level of the associated base stations and / or cells over a specific time interval (e.g., the availability state). The activity levels may be predetermined and / or configured and may, for example, comprise of regular and / or reduced activity. The signaling may indicate the activity level. For example, bit “1” may indicate regular activity and bit "0" may indicate reduced activity. For example, one piece of information that may be contained within the signaling may be one or more transmission and / or reception attributes (e.g., each activity level and / or availability state. For example, during reduced activity, the WTRU may not be expected to monitor certain PDCCH search spaces (including all SSs), and / or receive a certain type of PDSCH (including all PDSCH), and / or transmit PUCCH / PUSCH, and / or perform certain measurements. The WTRU may start or stop monitoring PDCCH and / or TCI states associated with determined NES state, including the PDCCH resources or the TCI states associated with activated and / or deactivated TRPs or spatial elements. For example, one piece of information that may be contained within the signaling may be a set of configurations, which may be associated with the activity level and may be used and / or applied when the aforesaid activity level is indicated (e.g., the NES parameter set). For example, the SS configurations, the CSI reporting configurations, one or more indices of the transmitted SSBs, or the like. Each set of configurations may have at least one attribute associated with a corresponding activity level. For example, a tag that may be set to “reduced activity”. For example, one piece of information that may be contained within the signaling may be the time interval over which the activity level that is assumed may be signaled in the PDCCH or a part of the activity indication. For instance, the time interval may be indicated using a bitmap where each bit in the bitmap may be associated with a specific duration, such as but not limited to a slot or a frame. For example, bit “1” may indicate regular activity, and bit “0” may indicate reduced activity on an associated frame. For instance, the time interval may be indicated with a start time and length of the interval. The start time may be defined, for example, the start time may be determined by adding a fixed offset to the time the indication is received. The length of the interval may be configured and / or signaled in the indication the PDCCH.

[0122] For example, one piece of information that may be contained within the signaling may be the time interval over which the activity level is assumed may be predetermined. The WTRU may assume an interruption delay, or more generally a time till the NES state changes, after receiving the NES state change command (e.g., after the last symbol or the slot on which the command was received). The interruption time may be in absolute time, a number of symbols, or a number of slots.

[0123] The WTRU may determine that the uplink resource and / or the downlink resource or the signal is available for transmission and / or reception for the determined network availability state if theuplink resource and / or the downlink resource is applicable in the active availability state. The WTRU may determine that a subset of measurement resources and / or signals (e.g . , the SSBs, the CSI-RS, the TRS, or the PRS etc.) are not applicable in certain availability states. The WTRU may determine that a subset of uplink or downlink resources (e.g., the PRACH, the PUSCH, or the PUCCH etc.) are not applicable in certain availability states. The WTRU may transmit some uplink signals only in a subset of network availability states (e.g., the SRS, the positioning SRS, the PRACH, or the UCI etc.).

[0124] The network node or the cell in the NES state and / or mode may be operating in the cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX modes or spatial and / or power domain adaptation modes, where the cell may not be able to transmit and / or receive at all times with full capacity or coverage. This may result in the inability to meet one or more QoS requirements for signals and / or channels transmitted in the UL and / or received in the DL. For aperiodic traffic, for example, the UL and the DL transmissions and / or retransmissions may be delayed due to the cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX mode. Similarly, for the periodic traffic, any stoppage and / or skipping in some periods may result in buffering of the data, resulting in a QoS failure if the data is buffered for too long.

[0125] When transmitting the PDU sets, including a group of inter-dependent PDUs, any increase in scheduling delays, and / or loss of a subset of PDUs, due to the NES may cause QoS failures, including for the PDUs and / or PDU sets transmitted previously. Other issues related to an intra-PDU set jitter and an inter-PDU set jitter (e.g., due to network congestion or processing delays) may cause misalignment between intended timing of data transmissions and the cell DTX patterns and / or the cell DRX patterns

[0126] When configured with a multi-PUSCH CG transmission, the WTRU performing autonomous retransmissions may incur considerable delays if the initial transmission was not received and / or detected by the network due to operating in the NES mode. This may cause the transmission interval to exceed the delay budget or the TTL of the associated DRB-QoS. Additionally, any SRB / RRC data, which is critical to system performance, and high-priority MAC CEs (e.g., PHR, BSR) may also be considerably delayed by the cell DRX period when they are to be transmitted on the CG. In this regard, several issues may arise. For example, one problem to be addressed is how to ensure the QoS of different traffic types (e.g., the PDU sets, the control information) while enabling the cell to operate in the NES mode as much as possible.

[0127] As discussed herein, the cell DTX active period may be the duration of time over which the configured cell DTX pattern is active (e.g., one or more periods of time during On Duration periods of the cell DTX pattern). The WTRU may be predefined and / or preconfigured to monitor the PDCCH and one or more DL signals and / or channels during such time. In some examples, this may be applicableonly after the cell DTX configuration has been indicated by the network (NW) to be activated. As discussed herein, the cell DTX non-active period may be the duration of time over which the configured cell DTX pattern is not active i.e. inactive (e.g., the periods of time outside periodic On Duration periods of the cell DTX pattern). In more examples, this may be applicable only after the cell DTX configuration has been indicated by the network to be activated. As discussed herein, the cell DRX active period may be the duration of time over which the configured cell DRX pattern is active (e.g., periods of time during On Duration periods of the cell DRX pattern). The WTRU may be predefined to be allowed to transmit the UL signals and on the UL channels during such time. This may be applicable only after the cell DRX configuration has been indicated by the network to be activated. As discussed herein, the cell DRX non-active period may be the duration of time over which the configured cell DRX pattern is not active i.e. inactive (e.g., the periods of time outside periodic On Duration periods of the cell DRX pattern). In some examples, this may be applicable only after the cell DRX configuration has been indicated by the network to be activated. As discussed herein, the activated cell DRX and / or the cell DTX may be the state of the configured cell DRX and / or the cell DTX pattern, where such state has been activated by L1 and / or L2 DL signaling, the RRC (re)- configuration, and / or cell common configurations, and has not been de-activated. As discussed herein, the de-activated cell DRX and / or the cell DTX may be the state of the configured cell DRX or the cell DTX pattern, where such state has been deactivated by L1 and / or L2 DL signaling (e.g., dedicated or group common signaling), the RRC (re)-configuration, and / or the cell common configurations. As discussed herein, there may be the link between the availability state and the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX, where both terms may be used interchangeably. The WTRU may determine the cell DTX state implicitly from the determined active availability state, and visa-versa. The WTRU may determine the cell DRX state implicitly from the determined active availability state, and visa- versa.

[0128] Generally, the cell DTX configuration may refer to the cell DTX active period as a set of cell DTX occasions. Such a set may be parameterized by at least one of a duration between the start of successive occasions (Cell-DTX-cycle), an offset (Cell-DTX-offset), and / or the duration (Cell-DTX- duration) for each cell DTX occasion. For example, such parameters may be expressed in units of subframes (or milliseconds) in the same way as the long WTRU DRX cycle. In such case, the cell DTX occasion may comprise the time period that starts in a subframe satisfying [SFN x 10 + subframe number] modulo (Cell-DTX-cycle) = (Cell-DTX-offset), where the SFN is a system frame number, and ends (Cell-DTX-duration) later.

[0129] The cell DTX configuration may also include a slot offset with respect to the start of the subframe in which the cell DTX occasion starts. At least one parameter of the cell DTX configurationmay be signaled by the RRC, the MAC CE and / or the DCI (WTRU-specific or WTRU-group common). The WTRU may be predefined and / or configured per cell DTX and / or the cell DRX configuration and / or sub-configuration with one or more parameters and behaviors as described herein. For example, a parameter and / or a behavior may be one or more applicable CGs or semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) configuration. For example, the WTRU may activate such CG configuration upon activation of the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX configuration. The WTRU may be configured per CG configuration or sub-configuration (e.g., a subset of CG resources or periods) with whether the CG has priority over the configured cell DTX pattern and / or the configured cell DRX pattern (e.g., whether the WTRU may transmit and / or receive on the UL CG or the DL SPS during the cell DRX or the cell DTX non-active period, respectively). For example, the parameter and / or the behavior may be whether the WTRU should monitor the PDCCH for dynamic grants, dynamic DL assignments or other DL signaling (e.g., the DCI with the CRC scrambled by PS-RNTI, PDCCH skipping indication) during the cell DTX inactive period. For example, the parameter and / or the behavior may be whether the WTRU is allowed to transmit on the dynamic grants or the CGs. For example, the parameter and / or the behavior may be one or more PRACH resources or a PRACH resource configuration that may be or may not be applicable during the cell DRX inactive period, or if the cell DRX configuration is activated. For example, the parameter and / or behavior may be the SR / PUCCH resources or the SR / PUCCH resource configuration that may be or may not be applicable during the cell DRX inactive period, or if the cell DRX configuration is activated. For example, the parameter and / or the behavior may be the CSI-reporting or the CSI-reporting resource configurations that may be or may not be applicable during the cell DRX inactive period, or if the cell DRX configuration is activated. For example, the parameter and / or behavior may be the SRS resources or the SRS resource configuration that may be or may not be applicable during the cell DRX inactive period, or if the cell DRX configuration is activated.

[0130] The WTRU may be configured with multiple cell DRX and / or cell DTX configurations simultaneously in a given serving cell. The WTRU may be configured with the primary or the default cell DTX and / or the cell DRX configuration, which the WTRU may apply by default. Upon reception of the signaling indicative of activating one cell DTX and / or cell DRX configuration, the WTRU may deactivate one or more other DTX and / or DRX configurations (e.g., or all other ones). Upon reception of the signaling indicative of deactivating one cell DTX and / or cell DRX configuration, the WTRU may activate another one or activate a default cell DTX / DRX configuration. Upon expiry of a timer, the WTRU may fall back to the default cell DRX and / or the default cell DTX configuration. The WTRU may reset the timer upon reception of the DL signaling or data or the indication from the network to remain in a given non-default cell DTX state or cell DRX state.

[0131] The WTRU may be configured to transmit an indication to the network (e.g., a wake-up request or a wake-up signal and / or a wake-up indication) to modify the availability state to the state for which the resources that would satisfy WTRU requirements are available. The wake-up signal and / or indication may be referred to as a cell wake-up signal (WUS) or a UL indication. The WTRU may be predefined and / or configured on basis of per availability and / or NES state, per cell DTX, cell DRX, per SSB and / or beam, per resource (e.g., CG, SPS) configuration or sub-configuration, wherein the predefinition and / or configuration includes one or more resources or behaviors associated with cell wake-up signal (WUS) indication.

[0132] For example, there may be one or more sequences, time, or frequency resources associated with the transmission of the cell WUS indication. The resources associated with the cell WUS may correspond to any of the PRACH resources or the PRACH resource configuration, and / or SR / PUCCH resources or SR / PUCCH resource configuration or a new set of sequences, time, or frequency resources. The resources for the cell WUS may be, or may not be, applicable during the WUS occasion (e.g., resource or configuration during which the WTRU may transmit the cell WUS indication and the base station may monitor for the UL transmission). The resources for the cell WUS may be, or may not be, applicable during the cell DTX active and / or inactive, and / or the cell DRX inactive period.

[0133] FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example multi-PUSCH CG configuration according to an embodiment. A WTRU (not shown in FIG.2) in a communication network 200 may receive a cell DRX activation indication 202 associated with at least one cell and / or at least one gNB associated with the cell. The cell DRX activation indication 202 may include a cell DRX configuration. The cell DRX configuration may be indicative of one or more cell DRX cycles. Each cell DRX cycle may include one or more active and / or non-active periods of the cell. For example, a cell DRX cycle 204 indicated by the cell DRX activation indication 202 may include a cell DRX active period 206 and a cell DRX nonactive period 208.

[0134] Further, the WTRU may receive a multi-PUSCH CG configuration. The multi-PUSCH CG configuration may refer to one or more configured resources or CG configurations, where each CG configuration may include a set of PUSCH occasions. The set of PUSCH occasions may include consecutive and / or non-consecutive PUSCH occasions per slot and / or per CG period. For example, in the multi-PUSCH CG configuration shown in FIG. 2, the PUSCH occasions indicated by the multi- PUSCH CG configuration may include one or more default CGs 210 occurring in the cell DRX active period 206 and one or more conditional CGs 212 occurring in the cell DRX non-active period 208. The default CGs 210 may include first and second PUSCH occasions and the conditional CGs 212 may include third and fourth PUSCH occasions, for example.

[0135] In an example, the multi-PUSCH CG configuration may comprise of one or more CG periods (e.g., each CG period may repeat periodically with a certain periodicity value). In an example, the CG period in the multi-PUSCH CG configuration may include one or more consecutive or non-consecutive slots. In an example, the slot in the CG period of the multi-PUSCH CG configuration may include one or more consecutive or non-consecutive PUSCH occasions. In an example, the PUSCH occasion in the slot / CG period of the multi-PUSCH CG configuration may include one or more consecutive or non- consecutive symbols with a certain symbol length (e.g., time domain resources). The PUSCH occasion may include one or more resource blocks or resource block groups in the frequency domain. As discussed herein, a PUSCH usage may refer to any of a number, a location, a position, or a timing of one or more PUSCH occasions in the one or more slots or periods, which may be associated with one or more multi-PUSCH CG configurations.

[0136] As discussed herein, unused transmission occasions (UTO) may refer to an indication (UTO indication) of any of the one or more PUSCH occasions in the one or more slots or periods, which may not be used by the WTRU for the uplink transmissions. For example, the UTO indication may be transmitted by the WTRU in a bitmap format, where each bit in the bitmap may correspond to one or more PUSCH transmission occasions that the WTRU may intend to use or not use during the uplink transmission. For example, a ‘T in a bitmap may indicate that the corresponding PUSCH occasion is not used and a ‘0’ may indicate that the corresponding PUSCH occasion may be used by the WTRU. The length of the bitmap format may comprise of N bits, where N may correspond to the number of PUSCH occasions configured in the one or more CG periods associated with the one or more multi- PUSCH CG configurations. The UTO indication may be transmitted in the UCI using the PUSCH (e.g., multiplexed with one or more PUSCH occasions) and / or the PUCCH resources.

[0137] As discussed herein, one or more low latency QoS conditions may include PDB related triggers, failure to transmit one or more PDUs from the PDU set, and / or an out of order SDU SN. As discussed herein, there may be one or more low latency QoS conditions. For example, the low latency condition may be the arrival of data of a certain priority i.e. arrival of the PDUs associated with the priority values above a threshold priority value. The WTRU may be configured with a priority index per LCH or DRB. Upon arrival of the data of high priority value or the data associated with a predetermined priority value, the WTRU may apply any of the methods associated with meeting the low QoS requirement. For example, the low latency condition may be the PDB remaining time, such as but not limited to, if the remaining time in the PDB associated with the data is less than a threshold delay, or is expired, or about to expire. For example, the low latency condition may be the time since the arrival of data. The WTRU may apply any of the methods associated with meeting the low QoS requirement if the time elapsed from the arrival of the data at a buffer in the WTRU is less than or above aconfig ured or predefined threshold time period. For example, the low latency condition may be missing one or more PDU from the PDU set. The WTRU may apply any of the methods associated with meeting the low QoS requirement state upon determining that one or more PDUs (e.g., an anchor PDU) from the PDU set was not transmitted successfully, was not acknowledged by a peer WTRU, or was not received from higher layers. The WTRU may be configured to determine and / or identify which PDU within the PDU set is the anchor PDU (e.g., the PDU associated with certain frames of the video stream). For example, the low latency condition may be receiving an acknowledgment for reception of an out-of-order PDCP SN from the peer WTRU. For example, if the WTRU receives successful acknowledgment of reception of the PDCP SN 1 , 2, then 4, the WTRU may apply any of the methods associated with meeting the low QoS requirement state because SN 3 was not acknowledged. Similarly, if or when the SN 3 is not received from higher layers within the WTRU, the WTRU may apply any of the methods associated with meeting the low QoS requirement state. For example, the low latency condition may be intra-WTRU prioritization between one or more PDUs of different priorities. The WTRU may apply any of the methods associated with meeting the low QoS requirement state upon dropping one or more PDUs due to intra-WTRU prioritization with a higher priority HARQ-ACK or a higher priority SL PDU. For example, the low latency condition may include triggering of a BSR or an SR caused by arrival of the data from DRBs configured with the low-latency QoS requirements. For example, the low latency condition may be the configuration of at least one SL DRB with survival time or the low-latency QoS parameter or priority. For example, the low latency condition may be the reception of DL data associated with a certain priority value or from a DL DRB associated with a SL DRB. As discussed herein, satisfying the low-latency QoS requirement may result in performing any method described herein for meeting the PSDB or the latency associated with the PDU set. Further, as discussed herein, the DRB, LCH, and LCG may be associated with each other or used interchangeably.

[0138] The data units including one or more PDUs, PDU sets or data bursts associated with a specialty type of traffic (e.g., XR traffic) may be marked or indicated by the WTRU (e.g., in UL at application, NAS, SDAP, PDCP, RLC, MAC layer) including but not limited to any of the following: Sequence Numbers (SNs), for example, where the SNs may be marked on a per PDU, per PDU set or per data burst basis, and the different types of SNs may include COUNTS, hyper-frame numbers (HFNs) and / or PDU SNs, QoS attributes, such as but not limited to QFI, PSER, PSDB, PSIHI, PDU set attributes, such as but not limited to type, importance and / or priority, a total payload size (e.g., bits / bytes, number of PDUs), the start PDU of the PDU set and / or the data burst, and / or the end / last PDU of the PDU set and / or the data burst (end marker); timing and / or count information, where a timestamp indicating the time when the PDU is generated or received in the buffer, a remaining delaywith respect to a delay budget (e.g., PSDB), a hop count (e.g., number of traversed or remaining hops), and / or a timing offset with respect to a reference time (e.g., SFN, arrival time of first PDU of PDU set); an association information, such as but not limited to identifiers (IDs) and / or indexes indicating an association of the PDU set with another one or more PDU sets in the same flow and / or a different flow.

[0139] One or more markings (e.g., in the PDU headers and / or sub-headers) may be used by the transmitting and / or receiving entities for performing certain actions associated with any of the following: determining whether the data units may be prioritized and / or multiplexed in one or more TBs, the number of TBs that may be used, number of HPI associated with the TBs that may be used, whether the data units may be delivered in one or more slots, occasions, or periods, whether the data units may be delayed to subsequent slots, occasions, or periods, and a number of repetitions that may be applied for the data units or a subset of the data units.

[0140] The data units including the PDUs, the PDU sets, or the data bursts associated with specialty traffic, with the same or different QoS requirements and / or characteristics, may be mapped to one or more forwarding configurations. Different forwarding configurations may be configured to achieve and / or enforce different QoS when transmitting the PDUs and / or the PDU sets with the DG resources and / or the CG resources. In an example, the PDU sets received from an application in one or more QoS flows may be mapped to one or more forwarding configurations (e.g., DRBs with common / different PDCP entities or LCHs with different configurations), where the forwarding configurations may be possibly associated and / or grouped for achieving and / or ensuring a PDU set level QoS. Upon mapping, a set of parameters (e.g., priority, PBR, BSD) and / or configurations (e.g., LCP restrictions) may be applied at the forwarding configurations for achieving and / or enforcing the PDU set-level QoS or a data burst-level QoS for the PDUs and / or the PDU sets in the buffers associated with the forwarding configurations.

[0141] In an example, the PDUs of the PDU set, may have different expected QoS (e.g., remaining delay) to be satisfied during transmission and / or during the NES mode (e.g., cell DRX or cell DTX). In this case, based on the determination of the expected QoS for the PDUs and / or the PDU sets, the WTRU may apply certain mapping, buffer and / or queue management, multiplexing and scheduling mechanisms at one or more layers of the AS layer protocol stack such that the expected QoS for the PDUs and / or the PDU sets may be satisfied during transmission. For ensuring the QoS of the data units, the different layers in the forwarding configuration may be configured with different configuration parameters. The configuration parameters may be configured per DRB, per LCH, and / or per data unit profile (e.g., PDU set profile, data burst profile, multi-modality profile) basis. The configuration parameters may include support for SN allocation and ordering and / or reordering of the PDUs and / orthe PDU sets at the PDCP, support for AM, UM, or TM at the RLC, the LCP rules and / or restrictions during the TB assembly based on the associated LCH parameters (e.g., PBR, BSD, priority) and the HARQ transmissions and / or retransmissions at MAC, and mapping the TBs to the DG resources and the CG resources at the PHY, for example.

[0142] The term expected QoS is, as used herein, used to denote an expected margin of a certain QoS metric (e.g., the latency, a data rate, or reliability) before the arrival of the data units including the PDUs, PDU sets, and / or the data bursts or when the data is received at one or more buffers and / or sublayers at the WTRU. In an example, the expected QoS corresponds to a time duration available at the WTRU from the reception (e.g., from higher layers and / or another WTRU or another device) to successful delivery of the data over the radio link (e.g., Uu link or sidelink). The expected QoS may also correspond to the remaining time or the TTL (e.g., maximum time available for buffering, processing and delivering) of individual data units, for example. The expected QoS may be determined based on the indications and / or the markers in the data units (e.g., the QFI, the timestamps, the start or end markers, the PDU set ID / index in the packet headers and / or the packet sub-headers), based on the indication from higher and / or the preceding layers (e.g., control PDU), based on the time spent by the data units in the buffers, based on usage of the timer which may be set when receiving the data units (e.g., arrival of the first PDU of PDU set) and reset / stopped at the expiry of the timer i.e. the configured time duration, for example.

[0143] In some examples, the expected QoS may be elastic (e.g., stricter or relaxed depending on the phase or state of transmission) than the default QoS metric associated with the data units. For example, if the PDU set arrives late at the WTRU, buffered in the LCHs due to the cell DRX or the importance value (or the priority value) for the PDU set is indicated to be high (e.g., above a threshold priority value), has experienced more delay and jitter at the application layer (e.g., due to encoder) or the WTRU buffers, the expected delay budget to be satisfied during the transmission over the Uu link for the PDU set will be lower than the default PSDB that is typically used for sending the PDUs of the PDU set. Alternatively, if the PDU set arrives early or the importance value (or the priority value) of the PDU set is low (e.g., below the threshold priority value), the expected delay budget during transmission over the Uu link may be considered to be more relaxed than the PSDB. In summary, the expected QoS of the PDU sets may be elastic and vary dynamically, where for a fixed QoS (e.g., PSDB, PSER) an increase and / or decrease in the expected QoS prior to the transmission may translate to a decrease and / or increase in the expected QoS during transmission and / or reception over the radio link respectively.

[0144] In one approach, the WTRU may receive configuration information, and / or subconfigurations (e.g . , subset of parameters associated with a configuration, update to the configuration)from the network associated with meeting the QoS during the NES. Such configuration information and / or the configuration parameters may be applicable for any of the techniques and / or approaches disclosed herein. The configurations and / or sub-configurations may be received in the broadcast transmission (e.g., the MIB, the SIB, or the like) or in the dedicated RRC signaling (e.g., in an RRC Reconfiguration message) during CONNECTED mode or in an INACTIVE / IDLE mode (e.g., RRCRelease message, when transitioning from the CONNECTED mode). Alternatively, the configuration and / or sub-configurations, may be received by the WTRU in one or more NESs or one or more cell activity indications, for example. Such NES and / or cell activity indication may be received in the RRC signaling, the MAC CE, the PDCCH (e.g., the WTRU-specific or the group common DCI) or the PDSCH, for example.

[0145] The configurations and / or sub-configurations received by the WTRU may include the variety of information, as disclosed herein. For example, the configurations and / or sub-configurations received by the WTRU may include one or more of the following: CG resource configuration parameters (e.g., type of the CG configuration, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations, etc.); cell DTX and / or cell DRX configuration; and / or, conditions and / or thresholds values for selecting or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX nonactive periods.

[0146] For the CG resource configurations and / or parameters, there may be a type of CG configuration, such as a single CG or the multi-PUSCH CG. The type may include any of Type 1 (e.g., the resource parameters and activation and / or deactivation indication is provided via the RRC signaling), Type 2 (e.g., the resource parameters is provided via RRC signaling, and other subset of the resource parameters and activation and / or deactivation indication is provided via the DCI or the MAC CE) and a new Type 3 (e.g., subset of the resource parameters may be provided via the RRC and / or the MAC CE and / or the DCI signaling and other subset of the parameters may be selected by the WTRU).

[0147] For the CG resource configurations and / or parameters, there may be one or more parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations. For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be the number of PUSCH occasions in the slot and / or the CG period. For example, the parameters associated with multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be the start offset of the PUSCH occasions and / or the CG period in the multi-PUSCH CG configuration. For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be periodicity (e.g., associated with the CG period of the multi-PUSCH CG). For example, the parameters associated with the multi- PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be the CG timer (e.g., the time duration for theWTRU to determine whether the transmissions in the one or more PUSCH occasions are successful and / or not successful. The WTRU may assume acknowledgement (ACK) if no indications are received upon the transmission and the CG timer expires. The WTRU may assume a negativeacknowledgement (NACK) if the dynamic grant for a retransmission is received along with the HARQ process ID in the DCI, for example). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be a CG retransmission timer (e.g., the time duration for the WTRU to perform an autonomous retransmission of the TB. For example, the WTRU may perform retransmission of the TB in the next PUSCH occasion after the CG retransmission timer expires if no indication corresponding to the HARQ process associated with the TB is received). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be one or more time domain resource allocation (TDRA) parameters associated with the PUSCH occasion (e.g., one or more SLIV values where each SLIV may indicate the start offset symbol of the PUSCH occasion and the length and / or number of symbols per PUSCH occasion, index to a row of a preconfigured mapping relation and / or table associated with the TDRA where the row may indicate one or more SLIV values corresponding to different PUSCH occasions in the CG period). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be one or more time domain resource allocation (FDRA) parameters associated with the PUSCH occasions (e.g., one or more resource indicator values (RIVs) corresponding to a number of consecutive resource blocks (RBs) or resource block groups, index to a row of a preconfigured mapping relation and / or table associated with the FDRA where the row may indicate one or more RIV values corresponding to the one or more PUSCH occasions in the CG period). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be the DMRS configuration (e.g., the symbols and / or resources used for the DMRS for the one or more PUSCH occasions or slots). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be an MCS table (e.g., whether the same or different set of MCS is to be applied to the one or more PUSCH occasions in the CG period. For example, the WTRU may be configured to use a high MCS index for the initial subset of the one or more PUSCH occasions and a low MCS index for a later subset of the one or more PUSCH occasions in the slot and / or period). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be the resources for the indication on the PUSCH usage (e.g., whether the resource for sending the UCI on the UTO in the multi-PUSCH CG is the PUSCH or the PUCCH). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be the bandwidth part and the numerology (e.g., SCS values, etc.). For example, the parameter associated with the multi- PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be the number of HARQ processes andcorresponding HARQ process IDs (e.g., whether the HARQ process is configured per-PUSCH occasion or configured for multiple PUSCH occasions). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be the repetition K (e.g., a number of repetitions allowed for the TB to be repeated and transmitted over multiple PUSCH occasions). For example, the parameters associated with the multi-PUSCH CG resources and / or configurations may be muting patterns associated with the multi-PUSCH CG (e.g., the WTRU may be configured with a set of muting patterns indicating the PUSCH occasions in the CG period that are muted or not available for the WTRU to use. Such muting patterns may be associated with different cell DRX configurations and may be applied when the corresponding cell DRX config is activated, for example).

[0148] For the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX configuration, the parameters associated with the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX configuration may include start offset (e.g., the slot and / or symbol offset with respect to SFN or the reference slot and / or symbol), duration of active and / or non-active periods, the periodicity, the index and / or ID. For example, the WTRU may be configured with the one or more cell DTX patterns and / or the cell DRX patterns. Each pattern and / or configuration may be associated with a different set of parameters. Another parameter may be the indication of activation and / or deactivation of the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX (e.g., received by the WTRU in the RRC signaling, the MAC CE, the WTRU-specific, group common, or cell common DCI).

[0149] There may be one or more conditions and / or threshold values for selecting or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods. For example, one condition and / or threshold values for selecting and / or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods may be the type of data units. For example, the data units with specific marking or indication (e.g., a PSIHI indication), and / or data units associated with certain types of media and / or video frames (e.g., the l-frames, the base or reference frames). For example, one condition and / or threshold value for selecting and / or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods may be the importance or the priority values associated with the data units, including any of the subset of PDUs in the PDU set, is greater than the threshold priority value. For example, the one condition and / or the threshold values for selecting or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non- active periods may be the payload sizes of the one or more data units are greater than the threshold payload size value. For example, the data units may include the PDUs, the subset of PDUs of the PDU set, or the one or more PDU sets, received and / or expected to be received by the WTRU in the LCHs from higher layers and / or application. For example, one condition and / or threshold value for selecting or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods may be the priority value of the one or more LCHs configured to receive the data units is greater than the threshold priority value. For example, one condition and / or threshold value for selecting and / or using any of theresources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods may be the payload sizes of one or more remaining data units are greater than the threshold payload size value. For example, the remaining data units correspond to a second subset of data units that may arrive late in the LCHs and / or remain in the LCHs after the PUSCHs in the cell DRX active period are used for a first subset of data units. For example, one condition and / or threshold value for selecting and / or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods may be a percentage of the remaining PDUs of the PDU set remaining to be transmitted is less than or greater than a threshold percentage value. For example, one condition and / or threshold value for selecting and / or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods may be the QoS associated with the PDU set is greater and / or less than a threshold value. For instance, the PSDB of the PDU set is less than the threshold value, and / or the PSER of the PDU set is less than the threshold value. For example, one condition and / or threshold value for selecting and / or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods may be the remaining time of the data units (e.g., with respect to the PSDB) is less than a threshold remaining time value. For example, one condition and / or threshold value for selecting or using any of the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods may be the remaining time of the remaining data units, if delayed to the next cell DRX active period, is less than the threshold remaining time value. For example, such a condition may apply if the remaining PDUs of the PDU set are unable to be delayed to the next cell DRX active period due to a low remaining time associated with the PSDB.

[0150] In one series of approaches, the WTRU may determine the PUSCH occasions associated with the one or more CG configurations (e.g., the multi-PUSCH CG configuration) that may be unavailable for performing the UL data transmission due to the activation of the cell DRX mode. In this case, the WTRU may perform one or more actions (or functions) including, for example, prioritizing only one or more subsets of the CG PUSCHs from the CG configuration, transmitting an indication to request for new resources, or making adaptations to the CG PUSCHs to be aligned with the cell DRX. This / these approaches may be applied for meeting certain conditions associated with the QoS of the data units (e.g., the PDUs or the PDU sets), for example.

[0151] In the examples described herein, the WTRU may receive the PDUs associated with the one or more PDU sets from higher layers and / or application. Such PDUs may be received simultaneously in a single burst or over multiple bursts, where each burst may include one or more subsets of PDUs of the PDU set, for example. When configured with the multi-PUSCH CG for transmitting the data units, the WTRU may determine the PUSCH usage based on the number of PDUs and the arrival of the PDUs of the PDU set. Such PUSCH usage may refer to determining the number of expected PUSCHs and / or the locations of the PUSCHs within the CG period and / or configuration that are expected to be used or not used by the WTRU during the UL transmission. Forexample, after receiving the first subset of PDUs of the PDU set in the WTRU buffer, the second subset of PDUs expected by the WTRU may not be received immediately due to jitter or delays at the application. In this case, the WTRU may use a first subset of PUSCH occasions in the CG period of the multi-PUSCH CG configuration for transmitting the first subset of PDUs of the PDU set. The WTRU may determine not to use or skip a certain number of PUSCHs after the first subset of PUSCHs to account for the jitter. The WTRU may determine to use the second subset of PUSCHs for transmitting the second subset of the PDUs, after a certain amount of gap or may skip one or more PUSCHs, for example. The WTRU may also determine not to use one or more excess PUSCHs in the CG period and / or configuration for which there may not be any PDUs in the buffer for the UL transmission. Such information on the PUSCH usage, associated with the number and locations of the PUSCH occasions the WTRU intends to use or not use, may be transmitted to the network in one or more indications (e.g . , the UTO-UCI or the UCI), before or during the UL data transmission.

[0152] In one case, the WTRU may selectively prioritize one or more CG PUSCH occasions occurring in the cell DRX active periods and / or the cell DRX non-active periods. In one example, upon receiving the PDUs of the PDU set from higher layers and mapping such PDUs to the one or more LCHs, the WTRU may determine the first set of PUSCH occasions in a time window (e.g., the CG period) based on the payload sizes of the PDUs in the LCH buffers. Such a determination may be made upon receiving the indication from the network on the activation of the cell DRX mode. In this case, the first set of PUSCHs may be those occurring in the cell DRX active period, for example. The WTRU may be configured with a set of conditions for using the CG PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX active and / or the cell DRX non-active periods. Such conditions may be intended for the WTRU to prioritize the selection of the PUSCHs that occur in the cell DRX active period for data transmission, before selecting any PUSCHs in the non-active period, for example. In this case, there may not be any configured conditions or only legacy conditions (e.g., based on the payload size of the data in the WTRU buffer) that may apply for the WTRU to select the PUSCHs in the cell DRX active periods, whereas new conditions may apply for selecting the PUSCHs in the cell DRX non-active periods to enable the network and / or cell to operate in the NES or the cell DRX non-active mode. The conditions and / or threshold values for selecting and / or using the CG PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX non- active periods may include any of the conditions described herein.

[0153] If the first set of PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX active period are adequate for transmitting the PDUs of the PDU set, and / or any of the conditions above are not met, the WTRU may transmit the indication to the network on the selected PUSCH occasions (e.g., in the UCI or the UTO- UCI). The WTRU may then transmit the PDUs using the selected first set of PUSCHs.

[0154] If any of the conditions listed above are met, the WTRU may determine the second set of CG PUSCHs in the CG period for transmitting the remaining data units. Such the second set of CG PUSCHs may correspond to any of the following: the PUSCH occasions within the CG period in the multi-PUSCH CG config that may occur in the cell DRX non-active period, and / or the PUSCHs associated with another CG configuration or the PUSCHs associated with another cell. To enable the network to operate in the non-active and / or sleep mode as much as possible, the WTRU may be further configured with certain rules and / or restrictions when determining the second set of CG PUSCHs. For example, such rules and / or restrictions for determining the CG PUSCHs in the second set may include any of the following: select only consecutive PUSCH occasions (e.g., without any gaps or unused PUSCHs); select only the PUSCH occasions after the offset value of K occasions / slots / symbols from the start of the non-active period (e.g., to allow the network process any indication received from the WTRU); select only the PUSCHs occasions within the configured window (e.g., the start offset or the duration) in the non-active period; and / or, select only the PUSCH occasions associated with a certain set of configured parameters (e.g., SCS / numerology, BWP, MCS, SLIV, RBs / RBGs, or TCI state etc.). The WTRU may use these rules and / or restrictions when selecting the PUSCH occasions in the non-active period for transmitting any of the remaining data units in the LCH buffers.

[0155] In one case, the WTRU may transmit the indication on the PUSCH usage in the cell DRX active periods and / or the cell DRX non-active periods. In an example, the WTRU may transmit the indication to the network comprising of information on the PUSCH usage associated with the PUSCH occasions occurring in the cell DRX active period and / or the cell DRX non-active period that the WTRU intends to use or not use. Such information on the PUSCH usage may correspond to different subsets of the CG PUSCH occasions in the CG period or the CG configuration. Such information and / or the indication may be sent by the WTRU in the UCI (e.g., using the PUCCH or the PUSCH resources), the UL WUS, the MAC CE or the RRC signaling, for example. For example, if the WTRU is unable to transmit the indication, possibly due to the unavailability of the PUCCH or the PUSCH resources or occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods, the WTRU may transmit the indication in the UL WUS (e.g., in preconfigured RACH resources and / or occasions).

[0156] The indication and / or information on the PUSCH usage may be transmitted in a single indication or in multiple indications. For example, the single indication may include information on the PUSCH usage (e.g., the PUSCHs the WTRU intends to use or not use) spanning the one or more cell DRX active and the cell DRX non-active periods. When the information on the PUSCH usage is sent in multiple indications, at least one indication may correspond to the PUSCH occasions (e.g., first set of PUSCHs) occurring in the cell DRX active period and another indication for the PUSCH occasions(e.g., the second set of PUSCHs) occurring in the in the cell DRX non-active period. Such one or more indications may indicate the PUSCH usage in the cell DRX active period and / or the cell DRX nonactive period in a single CG period or multiple CG periods or CG configurations. The information and / or the indication on the PUSCH usage may be sent in the bitmap format, where each bit in the bitmap may correspond to the one or more PUSCH occasions spanning across the cell DRX active period and / or the cell DRX non-active periods. Alternatively, the indication on the PUSCH usage may be sent in multiple bitmaps, where each bitmap may be associated with the PUSCH occasions in the active and / or non-active periods, for example.

[0157] In an example, the WTRU may be configured with any of the resource, occasions, slots, symbols, or time window or range (e.g., N occasions, slots, symbols) for transmitting the indication on the PUSCH usage corresponding to the first subset of PUSCHs in the cell DRX active period and / or the second subset of CG PUSCHs in the non-active period. For example, the WTRU may be configured to transmit the indication at least N occasions, slots, symbols before a first PUSCH occasion and / or a reference PUSCH occasion associated with the first and / or second subset of PUSCHs, or before the start of the cell DRX non-active period. Alternatively, the WTRU may be configured to transmit the PUSCH usage indication corresponding to the PUSCHs in the non-active period (e.g., the second set of PUSCH) during the cell DRX active period, possibly in the PUCCH or in the one or more of the PUSCH occasions in the active period. Alternatively, the WTRU may be configured to transmit the indication in each of the PUSCH occasions the WTRU intends to use for data transmission, in both: the cell DRX active periods and the cell DRX non-active periods, for example.

[0158] In another example, the WTRU may transmit a second indication upon transmitting a first indication on the PUSCH usage associated with the CG PUSCH occasions the WTRU intends to use or not use in the cell DRX active periods and / or the cell DRX non-active periods. For example, the second indication may be transmitted to override the first indication (e.g., due to updated information on the payload or arrival of new data units), where the WTRU may update a subset of the PUSCH occasions that may have been previously indicated as ‘used’ to ‘not used’, or vice-versa. The WTRU may be configured to transmit the second indication no later than J1 configured occasions, slots, or symbols after transmitting the first indication and / or at least J2 configured occasions, slots, or symbols before the first PUSCH occasion or the reference PUSCH occasion in the cell DRX active period and / or the cell DRX non-active period, or before the start of the cell DRX non-active period.

[0159] In one case, the WTRU may receive confirmation indication(s) regarding usage of the PUSCH occasions in the non-active period. In an example, the WTRU may monitor the PDCCH for receiving a confirmation indication for using the CG PUSCH occasions occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods, possibly upon transmitting the indication on the PUSCH usage. The confirmation indication may be received in the DCI (e.g., new DCI format or the paging DC I) , the MAC CE or the RRC signaling, for example. The confirmation indication may indicate the PUSCH occasions in the cell DRX active periods and / or the cell DRX non-active periods allowed to be used by the WTRU, for example. Alternatively, the confirmation indication may indicate new resources (e.g., the DG resources) for the WTRU to use, or activation of another CG configuration.

[0160] In an example, the WTRU may switch to a preconfigured search space (SS) or coreset when monitoring for the PDCCH upon activation of the NES mode (e.g., the activation of the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX), or upon transmitting the indication on the PUSCH usage, possibly for receiving the confirmation indication. The SS may be associated with the cell DTX active more and / or the cell DRX active mode, which may be different than the SS used prior to the activation of the NES mode (e.g., activation of cell DRX / DTX). The SS may be applied only during the cell DTX active periods, which may or may not be aligned with the cell DRX active periods. Alternatively, the WTRU may switch between different PDCCH monitoring patterns in the SS based on the NES mode and / or upon transmission of the indication on the PUSCH usage. For example, the WTRU may use a low density and / or a low periodicity monitoring pattern before transmitting the indication and switch to a high density and / or high periodicity pattern after transmitting the indication. In another alternative, the WTRU may monitor the PDCCH in an additional preconfigured SS, in addition to the regular SS, upon activation of NES mode or upon transmission of the indication on the PUSCH usage. The monitoring of the additional SS may be conditioned on any of the following: DRB / LCH used for data transmission and / or reception, type of data units pending in the buffer or expected to be received (e.g., PDU sets of high importance or PDU sets with PSIHI), the QoS of the data units in the UL and / or the DL (e.g., priority, remaining time), the type of resources used for data transmission and / or reception (e.g., the CG config associated with single and / or multi-PUSCH or the SPS configuration associated with the single and / or multi-PDSCH), and the type of indication transmitted (e.g., the UCI on PUSCH usage, the UTO-UCI).

[0161] The WTRU may receive the confirmation indication in the bitmap format or the window format, where the window format may indicate the start offset and number of contiguous and / or valid PUSCHs allowed to be used by the WTRU. In an example, the WTRU may monitor for the PDCCH for information on the confirmation indication K occasions, symbols, or slots after transmitting the indication on the PUSCH usage, possibly to account for processing time in the network. In this case, the WTRU may be configured with one or more K parameter values, where a first K value may be used and / or assumed by the WTRU if the PUSCH usage indication is transmitted during the cell DRXactive period and a second K value may be used if the indication is transmitted during the cell DRX non-active period.

[0162] If the confirmation indication is received by the WTRU, indicating the CG PUSCHs occurring in the non-active period allowed to be used, the WTRU may transmit the PDUs of the PDU set using the first set of CG PUSCHs in the active period and the second set of CG PUSCHs in the non-active period. If the confirmation indication is not received, the WTRU may only transmit the PDUs using the first set of CG PUSCHs in the active period, and possibly delay the transmission of any remaining PDUs to the next cell DRX active period. Alternatively, the WTRU may retransmit the indication on the PUSCH usage, possibly after a certain duration associated with a prohibit timer.

[0163] In one case, the WTRU may perform actions for using the PUSCH occasions occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods. In another example, the WTRU may determine the number of unavailable PUSCH occasions in the one or more CG periods and / or configurations based on the overlap of the PUSCHs with the non-active period of the cell DRX. The WTRU may compare the unavailable PUSCHs with those of the expected PUSCHs that the WTRU may use for the UL transmission of the PDUs and / or PDU sets. Based on the comparison, the WTRU may determine whether any configured conditions and / or thresholds associated with triggering one or more actions are met. For example, if the number of unavailable PUSCHs or the difference between the number of unavailable and number of expected PUSCHs is greater than the threshold value, the WTRU may perform one or more actions for enabling the QoS of the data to be met during the cell DRX. The threshold value, for example, may be associated with an exemption on the PUSCH occasions allowed to be used by the WTRU during the cell DRX non-active period. Other conditions and / or the threshold values are described further herein.

[0164] In an example, the WTRU may be configured with the one or more threshold values associated with the properties and / or attributes of the data units (e.g., the PDUs or the PDU sets) and / or QoS expected to be met for the data units during the UL transmission. For example, the WTRU may use and / or assume a high threshold value when transmitting the PDU and / or the PDU sets of high importance (e.g., above an importance and / or priority threshold), high payload sizes or stringent QoS (e.g., the remaining time is below the threshold remaining time, PSER is above the threshold). Alternatively, the WTRU may use and / or assume a low threshold or zero threshold value (e.g., no exception is allowed on the PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX non-active period), when transmitting the PDUs and / or the PDU sets of low importance, low payload sizes, or data with flexible QoS (e.g., remaining time is above a threshold).

[0165] If any of the conditions and / or thresholds are met, associated with performing the UL transmission during the cell DRX non-active periods and / or unavailability of sufficient resources or the PUSCH occasions during the cell DRX active periods, the WTRU may perform one of more of the following: trigger and / or transmit the indication to the NW; switch to an NES-aligned resource and / or the CG configuration and perform adaptations for the CG PUSCH occasions; and / or, apply a pattern for the CG PUSCH occasions.

[0166] For the trigger and / or transmission of the indication to the network, for example, the WTRU may send the indication on the PUSCH usage with information on the number, locations or pattern of the PUSCH occasions occurring in the one or more cell DRX non-active periods the WTRU intends to use or not use. For the trigger and / or transmission of the indication to the network, for example, when transmitting the indication on the PUSCH usage (e.g., N occasions, slots, symbols before the start of the cell DRX non-active period) and / or upon receiving the confirmation or exemption indication from network, the WTRU may assume the PUSCH occasions in the cell DRX non-active period are valid for usage, for example. Regarding the trigger and / or transmission of the indication to the network, for example, when delaying the one or more PDUs or the subset of PDUs of the PDU set to the next cell DRX active period, the WTRU may send the indication to the network with information on the delayed PDUs (e.g., the payload sizes, the remaining time of the PDUs, etc.). For the trigger and / or transmission of the indication to the network, for example, for transmitting the one or more PDUs or the subset of PDUs of the PDU set that are unable to be delayed to the next cell DRX active period (e.g., due to low remaining delay below the threshold), the WTRU may transmit the indication (e.g., SR, BSR, UCI) to request for new resources (e.g., DG or new CG resources) or the request to deactivate a cell DRX mode, at least, temporarily for one or more periods. Regarding the trigger and / or transmission of the indication to the network, for example, when transmitting the indication on the PUSCH usage, the WTRU may additionally transmit the priority values associated with the selected PUSCHs in the cell DRX active periods and / or the cell DRX non-active periods. The priority values may correspond to the priority and / or importance of the data expected to be transmitted in the corresponding selected PUSCH occasions, for example. Alternatively, the priority values (e.g., binary value) may correspond to a preference indication of the WTRU associated with the PUSCH occasions. The WTRU may receive the confirmation indication from the network, indicating the threshold priority value. In this case, the WTRU may assume any of the PUSCH occasions with an associated priority value below the threshold priority value is to be skipped. Whereas any of any of the PUSCH occasions with the corresponding priority value above the threshold priority value may be used for data transmission, for example.

[0167] Regarding the switch to an NES-aligned resource and / or CG configuration, for example, when the NES mode is activated (e.g., cell DRX / DTX mode), the WTRU may switch to the NES- aligned CG configuration, comprising of any of the following: the CG PUSCH occasions are time aligned with the cell DRX active periods; the CG PUSCH occasions before and / or after the cell DRX non-active periods may be configured with different set of parameters (e.g., high MCS indices, higher number and / or density of the RBs or RBGs, the SLIV with higher symbol length, different TCI state) to compensate for no transmissions during the non-active periods; and / or, a sub-configuration of the NES CG configuration (e.g., comprising of the subset of the CG PUSCH occasions) may be common to a group of WTRUs and another sub-configuration (e.g., comprising of another subset of the PUSCHs) may be WTRU-specific. The different sub-configurations of the CG may be associated with different priorities, set of parameters (e.g., the FDRA or the TDRA), and / or restrictions on whether the sub-configurations may be applicable to the cell DRX active periods, the non-active periods, or both. The WTRU may switch to a suitable sub-configuration based on the activated NES mode, for example. For example, the WTRU may start the timer when switching to the NES aligned CG configuration. The WTRU may use the resources associated with the NES CG configuration as along as the timer is running, and switch back to the default CG configuration or the non-NES aligned CG configuration upon the expiry of the timer. For performing adaptations to the CG PUSCH occasions, for example, for the one or more PUSCH occasions skipped due to occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods, the WTRU may assume the addition of extra PUSCH occasions before and / or after the non-active periods. For example, time shifting to the PUSCHs in the non-active periods may be performed by applying a pre-configured offset value to the initial slot or symbol offset such that the PUSCHs are adjusted (e.g., advanced or delayed) to occurring in the cell DRX active periods. A subset of the timeshifted PUSCHs may be configured with different parameters (e.g., higher number of the RBs or RBGs, higher MCS). For applying one or more patterns for the CG PUSCH occasions, for example, the WTRU may apply a preconfigured pattern corresponding to the subset of the CG PUSCH occasions occurring in the cell DRX non-active period, that the WTRU may be allowed to the WTRU for data transmissions. The WTRU may indicate the selected pattern (e.g., index or ID) to network or autonomously activate the pattern based on certain conditions associated with the data units and / or QoS of the data units (e.g., remaining time of PDU set, importance of PDU set, etc.).

[0168] In one series of approaches related to one or more UL HARQ retransmissions when the cell DRX mode is activated, the WTRU may determine whether and how to perform transmission and / or retransmission of at least the subset of PDUs of the PDU set based on the allocated DG resources for the transmissions and / or transmissions and the remaining time for meeting the PSDB requirements of the PDU set. Since the network may not be fully aware of the UL PDU set properties such as theremaining time with regard to the PSDB, survival time, and / or other QoS requirements, the resources allocated for transmissions or retransmissions, according to the cell DRX active periods for the one or more TBs containing the PDUs of the PDU set, may not be suitable for meeting the QoS of the PDU set. In this case, the WTRU may perform certain actions during retransmissions, as described herein, to ensure QoS is met while enabling the network to operate in the NES mode as much as possible. In one example, the QoS requirement may not be met if the new PDU (e.g., associated with the DRB or the LCH) is not transmitted within a certain time since the last transmission (e.g., a survival time), and the WTRU may apply similar logic to transmitting retransmissions to meet the PDB by transmitting another TB of the same DRB or LCH instead. Methods described herein may thus apply for a new transmission and / or retransmission.

[0169] In the examples described herein, the WTRU may receive the PDUs associated with the one or more PDU sets from the higher layers and / or applications. The WTRU may also receive implicit or explicit information on the QoS associated with the DRB or PDU sets (e.g., QFI, PSDB, PSER, PSIHI) based on the higher layer markings and / or the indications in the PDUs (e.g., PDU header and / or sub-header, control PDU) or the DRB. The WTRU may map the PDUs of the PDU set to the one or more LCHs based on the importance and / or priority of the PDUs and / or the PDU set and the priority of the LCHs, for example. At the MAC sublayer of the WTRU, the PDUs of the PDU set may be multiplexed into the one or more TBs based on the LCP procedure.

[0170] In one case, the WTRU may multiplex the PDUs of the PDU set into multiple TBs and HARQ processes. In an example, for the PDU set comprising of N PDUs mapped to M LCHs, a subset of the N PDUs may be multiplexed into one TB, as per the LCP procedure, according to the size of the resource grant associated with the TB and the priority of the LCHs. The remaining subset of the PDUs may be multiplexed into other one or more TBs. Since the M LCHs may also contain other PDUs which may not be associated with the PDU set, it is possible for the one or more TBs to contain a combination of N PDUs from the PDU set and non-PDU set. In an example, the WTRU may be configured with some restrictions such that the N PDUs of the PDU set are prioritized over other non- PDU set related PDUs when multiplexing the PDUs into the one or more LCHs to the one or more TBs. The different TBs comprising of the different subsets of the PDUs of a PDU set may be associated with the one or more HARQ processes, where each HARQ process may be associated with a HARQ process ID. The one or more TBs may be transmitted by the WTRU in UL in the different PUSCH occasions, where the PUSCH occasions may be associated with the CG resources (e.g., the multi-PUSCH CG configuration) or the DG resources (e.g., single DCI scheduling multiple-PUSCHs). If the NES and / or the cell DRX mode is activated, such transmission of the TBs containing PDUs of the PDU set, may be done using the PUSCH occasions available during the cell DRX active period,for example, and in some exceptional case, the PDUs may be transmitted during the non-active period if the PDB associated with the PDU set would expire if the PDU is not transmitted and / or retransmitted before the next cell DRX active period.

[0171] The WTRU (e.g., at the MAC sublayer) may be aware of which PDUs of the PDU set in the one or more LCHs that are mapped to the one or more TBs and HARQ processes based on the association and / or restriction information between the PDU set, the LCHs and the HARQ processes, for example. The WTRU may transmit the indication to the network with the information on which of the TBs contain the PDUs associated with the PDU set. Such indication may be transmitted along with the TBs (e.g., in the UCI or the MAC CE multiplexed with the one or more PUSCHs) or in the separate indication (e.g., the UCI in the PUCCH). For example, a set of one or more TBs containing PDUs of a PDU set may include a flag or an ID (e.g., ID or index of the PDU set) indicating that the TBs contain inter-dependent data. In another example, the WTRU may select a subset of HARQ process IDs from a configured set of IDs and indicate the selected IDs in the TBs for implicitly indicating to the network that the TBs include inter-dependent data.

[0172] In one case, the WTRU may receive one or more indications from the network on the PDUs and / or the TBs transmitted during the cell DRX active mode. In an example, the WTRU may receive the indication from the network upon performing transmissions of the one or more TBs comprising of the PDUs of the PDU set. Such indication may provide the feedback information associated with the transmission of the one or more TBs, for example. Such indication may be received by the WTRU in the DCI, the DL MAC CE, the RRC signaling, for example. Such indication may be received in the single indication (e.g., in the single DCI) with the information associated with the multiple TB transmissions or in multiple indications where each indication may be associated with the transmission of one TB. Such indication may be received during the cell DTX active period, which may or may not be aligned with the cell DRX active period. The WTRU may use the same, different, or additional SS when monitoring for the PDCCH containing the one or more indications (e.g., single DCI or multiple DCIs) for example.

[0173] The indication received by the WTRU may include any of the following information: the HARQ process IDs, the NDO information on the associated HARQ process IDs, the resources for retransmission, timing information of the resources of retransmission, conditions associated with using the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods, and / or the resource grant information for transmitting early or preference indications. Regarding the indication including the HARQ process IDs, for example, the information on the one or more HARQ processes (e.g., IDs) may be provided the single indication or multiple indications, where each indication may be associated with the HARQ process ID. When providing information on multiple HARQ processes associated with multiple TBtransmission, the bitmap format may be used. For example, each bit in the bitmap may be associated with the HARQ process ID and may indicate the ACK and / or NACK status of the associated TB transmission. The bitmap format may be related to a downlink feedback indication (DFI), for example. For the indication including NDI information on the associated HARQ process IDs, for example, if the NDI flag for the HARQ process ID is flipped or reset, the WTRU may assume the transmission of the TB associated with the HARQ process ID was successful. The WTRU may release the data in the buffer associated with the HARQ process.

[0174] For the indication including resources for retransmission, for example, the resources for retransmissions may be associated with the one or more HARQ process IDs, where the WTRU may use the resources for retransmitting the TBs associated with the HARQ processes. Such resources for retransmissions may be DG, CG, or a combination of DG and CG, for example. In the case when the resources are DG, the resource information may include any of the TDRAs (e.g ., the PUSCH occasions or the SLIV), the FDRAs (e.g., the number of RBs or RBGs) and the transmission parameters (e.g., the MCS or the RV, etc.). In the case when the resources are CG, the information may include the activation indication of the one or more CG configurations (e.g., the IDs or indexes of CG configs), in addition to the TDRA and / or FDRA. A subset of such resources for retransmission may be within the one or more cell DRX active periods and another subset may be within the one or more cell DRX non-active periods.

[0175] For the indication including timing information of the resources for retransmission, for example, the one or more PUSCH occasions may be associated with at least one K2 value, where the K2 may indicate the occasion, slot, or symbol for performing retransmission of the TB. Such timing information may be indicated with regard to the reference occasion, slot, or symbol (e.g., SFN, or start of the cell DRX active period or the cell DRX non-active period), for example. In an example, the WTRU may receive multiple K2 values associated with the PUSCH occasions, where a subset of the K2 values may correspond to the PUSCH occasions that overlap in the cell DRX active period (e.g., first subset of PUSCHs) and another subset of K2 values may correspond to the PUSCH occasions that overlap in the cell DRX non-active period (e.g., second subset of PUSCHs). For the PUSCHs that overlap in the cell DRX non-active period, the usability of the PUSCHs and the associated K2 may be conditional upon meeting certain preconfigured and / or indicated conditions. The CG may be determined by the WTRU implicitly from the signaled K2 value (e.g., if the K2 value overlaps with the non-active period of the cell DRX). Alternatively, the CG may be explicitly signaled by the network with a specific condition.

[0176] For the indication including the conditions associated with using the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods, for example, the conditions may include any of the conditionsdescribed in herein, including, for example, importance and / or priority of the data units (e.g . , whether multiplexed data is of a minimum high priority level and / or if all multiplexed data is from a certain minimum priority level), whether data is from an associated DRB (e.g., one configured with the low latency requirement), the payload sizes of data units, the priority of LCHs, remaining time with respect to the PSDB, whether high priority SRB data (e.g., the RRC message) is multiplexed, whether a high priority MAC CE is multiplexed, and the like. Such conditions may also indicate to only use resources in the cell DRX non-active periods if the allocated resources in cell DRX active periods are insufficient or not time aligned for meeting the QoS of the data units. Such conditions may be semi-statically preconfigured in the WTRU (e.g., via the RRC signaling), and may apply when the WTRU receives certain indications or resources with a K2 value overlapping in the cell DRX non-active periods. Alternatively, such conditions or the threshold values for some conditions may be dynamically received by the WTRU in the indication.

[0177] For the indication including the resource grant for transmitting early and / or preference indication, for example, the WTRU may receive one or more resource grants for transmitting the early or preference indication for using the PUSCH occasions occurring in the cell DRX non-active period for the TB transmission. Alternatively, the WTRU may use the resource grant for sending the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode or deactivate the one or more cell DRX non-active periods. The WTRU may multiplex the indication on an available grant (e.g., part of the UCI on the PUSCH). Such resource may include any of the UL WUS resource (e.g., the RACH), the PUCCH resource (e.g., the SR, the UCI with short K2 value), and / or the PUSCH resource (e.g., with short K2 value). The WTRU may trigger a new SR, possibly on the SR configuration associated with scheduling the grant or the CG during the cell DRX, to provide such the indication. The WTRU may be configured with a separate SR configuration or the PUCCH resource for the purpose of providing the indication. The WTRU may monitor the PDCCH, possibly for the duration of time, following the SR transmission even if the cell DTX is in the non-active period. Alternative the WTRU may just use one CG to indicate that the remaining CGs are not to be used (e.g., part of the UCI). The WTRU may use such resource for transmitting an early and / or preference indication if any of the conditions above are met, in which case the WTRU may send the indication before using the PUSCHs in the cell DRX non-active period for retransmission of TBs.

[0178] The WTRU may start the timer (e.g., a cell DRX deactivation activity timer) following the transmission of the early and / or preference indication. While the timer is running, the WTRU may assume that the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX is suspended or deactivated. The WTRU may restart the timer upon reception of scheduling or the indication (e.g., by the DCI) from the network (e.g.,possiblyfor scheduling the one or more PDU associated with the low latency requirement) or receiving the PDSCH for the DL DRB associated with the UL DRB associated with the low latency requirement.

[0179] In one example, the WTRU may use one CG to indicate the remaining CGs that are not going to be used (e.g., part of the UCI or the MAC CE - e.g., BSR-). In such a case, the WTRU may not provide early and / or preference indication. This may be applicable if a set of CGs are scheduled during the non-active period, whereby the first grant in the set of CGs may be used to indicate whether others will be used or not. For example, the WTRU may construct the TB with a padding BSR or a regular BSR if it does not have further data to transmit, or if it does not have further data of the low latency requirement to transmit.

[0180] In one case, the WTRU may perform retransmissions using resources in the cell DRX active and / or non-active periods. In an example, the WTRU may determine whether and how to use the resources allocated by the network for performing retransmission of the one or more TBs, based on whether the allocated resources (e.g., the PUSCH occasions) are in the cell DTX active period or non- active period, and whether any of the conditions for using resources in non-active period are met. For example, when allocated with the resources for retransmission, including a first subset of PUSCH occasions that overlap in the cell DTX active period and a second subset of PUSCH occasions in the cell DTX non-active period, the WTRU may determine whether the first subset of PUSCHs is sufficient for meeting the QoS of the data units during retransmissions, before considering using the second subset of PUSCHs.

[0181] For determining which of the subsets of the PUSCH occasions may be used for retransmission, the WTRU may determine the remaining time of the PDU set with respect to different points. Such remaining time of the PDU set may be determined based on any of the following reference points: T 1 , which is the Time of arrival of the Nth PDU of the PDU set at PDCP and / or at the LCH buffer, where N may be the first or the last PDU; T2, which the Time of initial transmission of the first TB containing the one or more PDUs associated with the PDU set (e.g., the time of transmission may be determined based on the timing of the PUSCH occasion (e.g., occasion, slot, or symbol) in which the first TB is transmitted); T3, which is the time of reception of the indication from network, indicating the information on the NDI flag and / or the resources for retransmission of the one or more TBs associated with the PDU set (e.g., for example, such indication may correspond to the feedback indication of the one or more HARQ processes associated with the TBs; and / or, T4, which is the time of the Mth retransmission of any TB containing PDUs associated with the PDU set (e.g., the time of Mth retransmission may be determined based on the timing of the PUSCH occasion in which the any of the TB is retransmitted; such timing of the PUSCH occasion for retransmission maycorrespond to the PUSCH occasion occurring in the cell DRX active period (K2_active) or the PUSCH occasion occurring in the cell DRX non-active period (K2_non-active)).

[0182] In a first example, the remaining time of the PDU set upon reception of the feedback indication from the network may be determined as (PSDB - T2) - (T3 - T2) = PSDB - T3. In a second example, the remaining time values of the PDU set when performing retransmission using the PUSCH occasion in the cell DRX active period and non-active period are PSDB - T4(K2_active) and PSDB - T4(K2_non-active), respectively.

[0183] In an example, the WTRU may determine to use the PUSCH occasion in the cell DRX active duration if the associated remaining time is greater than the threshold value (e.g., PSDB - T3 > threshold or PSDB - T4(K2_active) > threshold). Otherwise, if the associated remaining time is less than the threshold, the WTRU may select the PUSCH occasion in the cell DRX non-active period. In another example, the WTRU may determine to use the PUSCH occasion in the cell DRX active duration if the difference between the remaining time values is less than the threshold remaining time value (e.g., PSDB - T4(K2_active) - PSDB - T4(K2_non-active) < threshold value). Otherwise, if the difference between the remaining time values is greater than the threshold remaining time value, the WTRU may select the PUSCH occasion in the non-active period.

[0184] If any of the conditions (e.g., remaining time of PDU set < threshold) associated with using the resources in the cell DRX non-active period are met, the WTRU may transmit the early and / or preference indication to the network, possibly to request to use the resources (e.g., PUSCH occasions) in the cell DRX non-active period or a request to temporarily deactivate the cell DRX mode. Such indication may be transmitted using the resource grant allocated by the network. Such indication may contain, for example, any of the indication and / or the flag for using the resources in the non- active period, the information on the selected PUSCH occasions in the cell DRX non-active period (e.g., K2 values of the PUSCH occasions), the remaining time of PDU set, and / or the time duration for deactivating the cell DRX (e.g., one or more periods).

[0185] Upon transmitting the indication, the WTRU may monitor the PDCCH for reception of the confirmation indication from the network, possibly confirming the use of the resources in the cell DRX non-active period or another set of resources. Alternatively, the WTRU may assume the resources in the cell DRX non-active period are valid, upon transmitting the indication with the allocated resource grant. The WTRU may subsequently perform retransmission of the one or more TBs using resources in the cell DRX non-active period.

[0186] In another example, if any of the conditions are met, the WTRU may trigger repetition of the TBs, possibly using the available and / or unused CG and / or allocated DG resources. Such repetitionof the TBs (e.g., each repetition using a different RV) may be performed before the start or after the end of the cell DRX non-active period, for example. Such repetition may be done to improve the probability of decoding the TBs correctly at the network and / or to reduce the probability of retransmissions.

[0187] If any of the conditions for using the resources in the cell DRX non-active period are not met, the WTRU may perform retransmission of the TBs using the resources in the subsequent cell DRX active period. If the cell DRX active period corresponds to a duration that may start after the end of the current cell DRX non-active period, the WTRU may suspend one or more retransmission timers associated with the C-DRX, if configured in the WTRU, during the cell DRX non-active period. The WTRU may then restart the retransmission timers in the next cell DRX active period, for example, when performing the retransmission. In an example, the subsequent cell DRX active period may be the next cell DRX active period, a future cell DRX active period, or any other cell DRX active period occurring after the current cell DRX non-active period.

[0188] In another example, when the resources from the multi-PUSCH CG configuration are used for performing the transmission of the one or more TBs of a PDU set, the WTRU may perform one or more of the following actions associated with retransmission during the cell DRX mode: monitor the PDCCH for the indication of earlier feedback on the subset of previously transmitted TBs, even in the cell DTX non-active periods, possibly when any conditions are met (e.g., remaining delay of the PDU set is below a threshold remaining delay), adjust the start time and / or duration of the CG timers associated with the one or more CG PUSCH occasions, based on the cell DTX and / or the cell DRX patterns (e.g., the duration of non-active periods) to avoid false assumption at the WTRU of any transmission failures, perform autonomous retransmission of any unacknowledged TBs using one or more DG resources, if the timing of the DG resource (e.g., K2) for at least retransmission of one TB is within the current cell DRX active period; and / or, perform the autonomous retransmission only after the CG retransmission timer expires and / or the CG timer is running, if the feedback indication (e.g., in the DCI) for any of the TBs is not received even during the cell DTX active time. In this last action, the WTRU may perform autonomous retransmission of the TBs using CG-PUSCH resources, only if in the cell DRX active period, or if in the cell DRX non-active period and any of the one or more associated conditions are met (e.g., the remaining time of PDU set is less than the threshold reaming time).

[0189] In some cases, the WTRU determines to transmit the data in the UL or the indication to request the network to deactivate cell DRX mode when certain conditions associated with the transmissions are met. Such data or indication may be transmitted using conditional CG resources, which may be associated with one or more preconfigured conditions. Such an approach may allowthe WTRU to incur low or lower latency when transmitting the data or the indication to implicitly or explicitly deactivate the cell DRX mode.

[0190] In one case, the WTRU may be configured with forwarding configurations to apply during the cell DRX mode. In the examples described herein, the WTRU may be configured with one or more forwarding configurations, which the WTRU may use for transmitting the PDUs of the PDU sets in the UL. In some instances, any of the different the DRBs, the PDCP entities, legs, RLC entities, and the LCHs may be associated with the different forwarding configurations, as described herein.

[0191] In one example, the SDAP sublayer and / or entity of the WTRU may be configured to map the different PDU sets received from the higher layers to different DRBs based on the QoS attributes of the PDU set (e.g., the QFI) and preconfigured mapping rule at the SDAP. The PDCP sublayer and / or the entity associated with the DRB, may map all or different subsets of the PDUs of the PDU set to one or more RLC entities or LCHs. Such a mapping to a single or multiple RLCs and / or LCHs may apply when the WTRU is configured with a regular DRB (e.g., non-split bearer) or when configured with a split bearer for DC or CA operation. In this case, the different LCHs which may carry the PDUs mapped from a single or multiple DRBs may be associated with a common or different MAC entities or cells, depending on whether the WTRU is configured for CA or DC, for example.

[0192] When configured with multiple legs and / or LCHs in either non-split bearer and split bearer cases, the WTRU may forward the first subset of the PDUs of the PDU set to a first and / or primary leg, corresponding to a first LCH, and the second subset of the PDUs of the PDU set to a secondary leg, corresponding to a second LCH. A decision for forwarding and / or mapping the PDUs of the PDU set to the one or more legs (e.g., the RLC entities or the LCHs) or using any configurations and / or resources associated with the different legs may be made based on one or more factors, such as but not limited to the QoS of the PDUs, loading conditions of the one or more primary and / or secondary legs; the radio link conditions associated with the one or more primary and / or secondary legs, the configurations and resources associated with the one or more primary and / or secondary legs; the cell DRX modes associated with the one or more primary and / or secondary legs.

[0193] For the QoS of the PDUs, the WTRU may forward all the PDUs of the PDU set to a single leg and / or LCH based on the QoS property of the PDU set (e.g., the importance or priority and / or the PSDB) and the LCH configuration. For example, the PDUs of the PDU set with high importance may be forwarded to the LCH configured with high priority value. Alternatively, if a different subset of the PDUs of the PDU set has different QoS properties (e.g., different priority and / or importance values), the WTRU may forward the subsets of the PDUs to different legs and / or LCHs based on the associated priority values of the legs and / or LCHs.

[0194] For loading conditions of the one or more primary and / or secondary legs, for example, the WTRU (e.g . , the PDCP entity) may forward the first subset of PDUs of the PDU set to the primary leg up to the threshold value. Any remaining PDUs, including the second subset of PDUs, may be forwarded to the secondary leg. Alternatively, if the buffer in the primary leg contains certain PDUs up to a first threshold value, the WTRU may forward the first subset of PDUs of the PDU set to the primary leg up to a second threshold value. Any remaining PDUs (e.g., the second subset of PDUs) are forwarded to the secondary leg.

[0195] For the radio link conditions associated with the one or more primary and / or secondary legs, for example, the WTRU may perform measurements on the links or channels associated with the different legs (e.g., the RSRP measurements of the CSI-RS or the SSBs). The WTRU may determine whether and how to forward the subset of the PDUs of the PDU set to the one or more legs based on the measurements. In an example, if the RSRP measurements of the primary leg is less than the threshold value and / or the RSRP measurements of the secondary leg is greater than the threshold value, the WTRU may forward the PDUs to the secondary leg. Otherwise, the WTRU may forward the PDUs to the primary leg.

[0196] For the configurations and resources associated with the one or more primary and / or secondary legs, if the different legs and / or LCHs may be configured with different sets of configurations or resources. The association between the configurations and / or the resources and the legs and / or the LCHs may be supported based on the LCP restrictions, for example. Alternatively, any of the single leg and / or LCH may be associated with the first and the second set of configurations and / or resources. For example, the usage of the first set of configurations and / or resources for the LCH may be conditional on meeting one or more pre-configured conditions. Similarly, the second set of configurations and / or resources may be used when another set of conditions are met. Such conditions may include any of those related to the importance of the PDU sets, remaining time of the PDU set, and others as listed herein. The different sets of configurations and / or resources may include different BWPs and different CG configurations. For example, when configured with multiple LCHs or the single LCH with multiple sets of conditional configurations and / or resources, such LCHs may be associated with the first CG configuration and the second CG configuration, respectively. The first and second CG configurations may include a first and a second set of parameters (e.g., N 1 and N2 number of the PUSCH occasions per CG period in a CG configuration, where N1 and N2 may be greater than or equal to 1), for example. The second CG configuration may correspond to the conditional CG configuration, whose resources may be used only when meeting one or more configured conditions, for example. In an example, the LCH may be configured with the resources associated with the first and second CG configurations, where the first CG configuration may be used only during the cell DRXactive periods, and the second CG config may be conditional and may be used during cell the DRX non-active periods upon meeting some conditions. The first and / or second CG configurations may be restricted and / or associated with the single LCH or may be common across a set of LCHs, for example.

[0197] In another example, when the LCH is configured with the resources associated with the conditional CG configuration, the different subsets of the resources (e.g . , the PUSCH occasions) may be used during the cell DRX non-active period when meeting one or more conditions. For example, when the remaining delay of the PDU set is less than a first threshold (thresholdl ) and above a second threshold (threshold2), the WTRU may use the first set of PUSCH occasions within the conditional multi-PUSCH CG configuration, where the first set of PUSCH occasions may be located within the time window between the first and second thresholds i.e. between thresholdl and threshold2. Similarly, when the remaining delay of the PDU set is less than the second threshold (threshold2) , the WTRU may use the second set of PUSCH occasions within the conditional multi-PUSCH CG configuration, where the second set of PUSCHs may be located within the time window that may be less than the second threshold (th reshold2), for example.

[0198] In another example, when the conditions associated with using the conditional resources are met for performing transmission during the cell DRX non-active period, the WTRU may switch to an alternative BWP. Such alternative BWP may be associated with the conditional CG resources and / or may be different than the BWP used when the conditions for switching are not met, for example.

[0199] For the cell DRX modes associated with the one or more primary and / or secondary legs, the different legs and / or LCHs may be associated with different cell DRX modes. For example, the primary leg may be associated with the cell DRX activated mode and the secondary leg may be associated with the cell DRX deactivated mode. Alternatively, any of the legs and / or LCHs may be associated with different cell DRX modes, including the activated mode and the deactivated mode. For example, the LCH may be semi-statically configured or dynamically activated and / or deactivated to operate in the cell DRX activated mode or the cell DRX deactivated mode. When the LCH is associated with the cell DRX activated mode, any of the associated configurations, parameters, and / or resources, including the restrictions on whether data in the LCH buffer may be transmitted during the cell DRX active periods and / or the cell DRX non-active periods, may apply. The different cell DRX modes associated with the single or multiple legs and / or LCHs may be conditional on meeting the one or more pre-configured conditions. The conditions may include any of those listed herein.

[0200] In an example, if upon receiving the indication activating the NES mode (e.g., the cell DRX mode) there may still be the one or more PDUs pending in the one or more LCHs, the WTRU maycontinue using the existing configurations, restrictions or resources (e.g. , the LCP procedure, the LCP restrictions, or the default CG configuration etc.) up to a certain configured validity duration, possibly to clear or flush the data in the LCH buffers. Such validity duration may be applied when the conditions associated with the data or the LCHs are met, for example. Upon performing the transmissions using existing configurations and / or resources, the WTRU may use the new configurations and / or resources associated with the NES mode. In an example, if the indication activating the NES mode (e.g., the cell DRX mode) is received and there may still be the one or more PDUs pending in the one or more LCHs, the WTRU may dynamically change the priority values associated with the LCHs (e.g., L2 priority) and / or any associated timers (e.g., the inactivity timers or the retransmission timers etc.). Such changes may allow any of the pending PDUs in the LCHs to be prioritized and transmitted during the ongoing cell DRX active period or in the upcoming cell DRX non-active period. In an example, if the indication activating NES mode (e.g., cell DRX mode) is received and the WTRU may be aware of upcoming data arrival in the LCHs (e.g., the subset of PDUs of the PDU set are expected), then the SR or a pre-emptive BSR may be triggered, for providing information on the payload and / or the timing information of the upcoming data. Such SR / BSR may allow the WTRU to flush the data before the NES mode is activated, if the network allocates the DG resources, for example. In an example, if upon receiving the indication activating the NES mode (e.g., cell DRX mode) the WTRU determines the QoS of the data units (e.g., the PDU sets) is unable to be met, possibly due to the inability to perform any transmissions during the cell DRX non-active periods, the WTRU may discard the associated pending PDUs in the LCHs. Upon discarding the PDUs, the WTRU may indicate to the PDCP / RLC entities (e.g., transmitting and / or receiving entities), to the network and / or to the higher layers on the discarding.

[0201] FIG. 3A is a diagram illustrating one or more data units (i.e. one or more PDUs) and one or more CG resources according to an embodiment. FIG. 3B is a diagram illustrating transmission of the one or more data units using the one or more CG resources illustrated in FIG. 3A according to an embodiment. A WTRU (not shown in FIG.3) in a communication network 300 may receive a cell DRX activation indication 302 associated with at least one cell and / or at least one gNB associated with the cell. The WTRU may also receive a cell DRX deactivation indication 318. The cell DRX activation indication 302 and the cell DRX deactivation indication 318 may be indicative of activation and deactivation of a cell DRX mode of the cell respectively. The WTRU may be configured with a multi- PUSCH configuration indicative one or more defaults CGs including first and second default CGs 304 and 306 and one or more conditional CGs including first and second conditional CGs 308 and 310. The WTRU may receive a plurality of PDUs and / or one or more sets of PDUs including first through third PDUs 312-316 from one or more higher layers and / or one or more applications implemented bythe WTRU. The first and second default CGs 304 and 306 and the first and second conditional CGs 308 and 310 may be indicative of one or more PUSCH occasions on which the WTRU may transmit one or more PDUs of the plurality of PDUs. The WTRU may also be configured with one or more logical channels including first and second logical channels LCH1 and LCH2. The first and second logical channels LCH1 and LCH2 may be associated with one or more default CGs and / or one or more conditional CGs. For example, the first logical channel LCH1 may be associated with the first default CG 304 and / or the first conditional CG 308, whereas the second logical channel LCH2 may be associated with the second default CG 306 and / or the second conditional CG 310. The WTRU may map the first through third PDUs 312-316 to the first logical channel LCH1 and / or the second logical channel LCH2 based on one or more PDU attributes associated with the first through third PDUs 312-316. The WTRU may determine whether to use the first and second default CGs 304 and 306 and / or the first and second conditional CGs 308 and 310 based on the mapping of the logical channels and / or based on whether the first through third PDUs 312-316 meet one or more QoS conditions. In one example, the WTRU may determine that the first PDU 312 is mapped to the first logical channel LCH1 which is associated with the first default CG 304, whereas the second and third PDUs 314 and 316 are mapped to the second logical channel LCH2. In another example, the WTRU may determine that the second PDU 314 does not meet any QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions, whereas the third PDU 316 may meet at least one QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions. Hence, the WTRU may determine that the second PDU 314 be transmitted using the second default CG 306 whereas the third PDU 316 be transmitted using the second conditional CG 310.

[0202] The WTRU may identify a cell DRX cycle 320 based on the cell DRX activation indication 302. The cell DRX cycle 320 may include a cell DRX active period 322 and a cell DRX non-active period 324. The WTRU may transmit the second PDU 314 using the second default CG 306 associated with the second logical channel LCH2 during the cell DRX active period 322. The WTRU may transmit the third PDU 316 using the second conditional CG 310 associated with the second logical channel LCH2 during the cell DRX non-active period 324.

[0203] In one case, the WTRU may determine whether to use the conditional CGs resources to transmit the data and / or the indication during the cell DRX mode. In an example, the WTRU may be configured with the set of LCHs, where at least one subset of the LCHs may be associated with the first CG configuration and / or the default CG configuration and a second and / or conditional CG configuration. Such conditional CG config may be associated with the resources to implicitly deactivate the cell DRX mode, for example. In this case, when sending any transmission using theconditional CG resource, the WTRU may implicitly request to the network to deactivate the cell DRX mode.

[0204] The WTRU may also be configured with the set of conditions and / or threshold values associated with the transmission of the data when cell the DRX mode is activated (e.g during the cell DRX non-active periods) using the conditional CG resources. Such conditions or thresholds may include any of those listed herein, for example, the remaining time of PDU set is less than the first threshold indicative of the threshold remaining time (i.e. the remaining time < thresholdl), and / or the importance and / or priority values of the PDU set are greater than the second threshold indicative of the threshold priority value (i.e. the priority value > threshold2).

[0205] When receiving the PDUs associated with the PDU sets from the higher layers and / or the application, the WTRU may also receive an implicit information or an explicit information associated with the PDU set properties and / or the QoS (e.g., the PSIHI or the PSDB) based on the higher layer markings and / or indications in the PDUs (e.g., the PDU header and / or sub-header, or the control PDU etc.). The WTRU may forward and / or map the PDUs of the PDU set to the one or more LCHs based on certain conditions and / or thresholds associated with the PDU set properties and the configured LCHs.

[0206] Upon mapping the PDUs of PDU set to the associated LCHs, the WTRU may determine whether any of the conditions associated with using the resources of conditional CG configuration are met for transmitting the PDUs during the cell DRX non-active periods. If any of the conditions are not met, the WTRU may transmit the PDUs using resources in the default CG configuration according to the activated cell DRX mode. In this case, for example, the WTRU may transmit the PDUs only during the cell DRX active period (e.g. the subsequent cell DRX active period, the future cell DRX active period, and / or any other cell DRX active period occurring after the cell DRX non-active period). In an example, the WTRU may buffer and / or store the PDUs until the subsequent cell DRX active period starts. In an example, the WTRU may store and / or buffer the PDUs in an output queue until the subsequent cell DRX active period starts.

[0207] If any of the conditions are met, the WTRU may select the one or more resources of the conditional CG configuration for transmitting the indication (e.g., the request for cell DRX mode deactivation) and / or at least the subset of the PDUs in the associated LCHs. In this case, using any of the resources in the conditional CG may enable the WTRU to implicitly or explicitly request the network to allow transmission of the data during the cell DRX non-active period and / or deactivate the cell DRX mode.

[0208] In an example, the WTRU may be configured with a first multi-PUSCH CG configuration and a second multi-PUSCH CG configuration, where the first CG configuration is unconditional and may be used during the cell DRX active period, and the second CG configuration is conditional and used during the cell DRX non-active period. If any of the conditions for using the second CG configuration are met (e.g., the data transmission is expected to be performed during the cell DRX non-active period), for the PDU set including multiple PDUs, the WTRU may use the subset of PUSCH occasions associated with the second CG configuration to transmit the one or more PDUs. The remaining PDUs of the PDU set may be transmitted using the subset of the PUSCH occasions in the first CG configuration. The WTRU may also transmit the indication on the number and / or locations of the CG PUSCH occasions expected to be used and / or not used in the first and second CG configurations, possibly using the resources in the second CG configuration (e.g., the conditional CG).

[0209] In an example, where the WTRU may transmit the indication or the subset of data and / or the PDUs using the resources in the conditional CG configuration, the WTRU may monitor for the PDCCH in the conditional SS or coreset for receiving the indication from the network. The indication may correspond to the confirmation indication (e.g., in the DCI), the feedback information (e.g., the NDI flag status, the additional DG resources for retransmission) associated with the transmission of the PDUs or additional and / or new resources (e.g., the DG resources or activation of the new CG configuration) for the data transmission. The conditional SS may be associated with the conditional CG configuration, the LCH, or with the reception of any indication, signaling, or data during the cell DTX non-active period and / or the cell DRX non-active period. The conditional SS may be the same or different than the SS used for receiving any signaling or data during the cell DTX active period and / or the cell DRX active period or when the cell DTX mode and / or the cell DRX mode is not activated, for example.

[0210] In some cases, when the DRX non-active period is long enough, there may be competing transmissions, retransmission and control information for transmission during the active period. In one scenario, the network may prioritize network energy saving over the WTRU throughput or the QoS attainment for all bearers. In such a case, the WTRU may need to prioritize between competing data and / or control information pending transmissions. The data may include the data from different priorities, PDU sets, or importance. The control information may include the MAC CEs, SRB data, or the UCI (e.g. the HARQ ACK, the CQI, or the CSI reports etc.) of various priorities. In some cases, if the data is not transmitted before a certain delay budget such as but not limited to the PSDB associated with the PDU set, the whole PDU set may fail i.e. be unusable, especially in case of the inter-dependent PDUs and / or the inter-dependent PDU sets.

[0211] In one case, a buffered time-based TB prioritization during the cell DRX active period may be used. The WTRU may prioritize between the competing data (e.g the data with different priorities or the PDU sets etc.) and control information pending transmission immediately after the end of the cell DRX non-active period.

[0212] When the cell DRX mode is activated, the WTRU may prioritize pending data (e.g., deprioritized due to the cell DRX) and control information that is ready to be sent (e.g., based on buffering time) by prioritizing them before other new and / or high-priority data in the LCHs. In one example, if the data that arrives has a priority of 4 and the buffering delay (e.g., determined based on the arrival time) is high, then the priority of the data is increased to 2 based on the buffering delay and the association between buffering delay and a priority change. If there is new data that arrives after the first set of data and the priority of the earlier data is updated based on the buffering delay, then it is possible after a long cell DRX non-active, that the amount of high priority data may be high. To control the priority change, the update is relative and is done proportionally based on the initial priority.

[0213] The WTRU may change the TB priority only for data that arrives within a time window before the cell DRX non-active period starts, and / or the data that is buffered within a threshold time after the cell DRX mode starts. The WTRU may not prioritize the data that arrives after the threshold time after the cell DRX starts. The window allows to control only the subset of the data that is to be prioritized rather than all of the data. Within the window, the buffering time may still be used to determine the priority update.

[0214] In one method, the WTRU may receive configuration information including but not limited to: the LCH configuration, the LCH or DRB priority (e.g., the LCP priority), the cell DRX configuration (e.g., the start offset, or the duration of the active and / or non-active periods etc.), association information between the PDU buffering time and the priority offset (e.g., a delta priority), and / or a buffering window configuration (e.g., the start offset with respect to the start of cell DRX non-active period or the window duration).

[0215] The WTRU may receive, from the higher layers, the set of PDUs, and map the PDUs to the one or more LCHs based on an initial priority of the PDUs. The WTRU may receive the activation indication of cell the DRX config (e.g., the DCI indication or the cell DRX activation indication). The WTRU may buffer the PDUs in the LCHs during the cell DRX non-active period. The WTRU may determine the buffering time of the PDUs in the LCHs based on the PDU arrival time within the buffering window and the cell DRX non-active period duration. For example, the WTRU may compute the buffering time as the time difference between the next cell DRX active period in which the PDU may be transmitted and the PDU arrival time at the WTRU buffer. The WTRU may determine the newpriority of the PDUs based on the initial priority (e.g., based on the highest priority LCH in the PDU or the PDU set priority), the buffering time and the association information (e.g., the priority offset).

[0216] The WTRU may prioritize the set of PDUs in the LCHs within the buffering window over the other PDUs that arrive outside of the buffering window based on the new priority of the PDUs. The WTRU may: prioritize a lower priority PDU that was buffered during the cell DRX non-active period over a higher priority PDU arriving after the cell DRX or within the buffering window, prioritize the PDU that may exceed the delay budget if the PDU is not transmitted, causing the associated PDU set to fail the corresponding QoS requirement, over the other PDUs, prioritize the transmission of the new data over the retransmissions if the new data incudes high priority control information (e.g., the UCI, the CQI, the SRB data, or the high priority MAC CE) and / or if the PDU buffering time is larger than the configured threshold(for e.g. a threshold buffering time), prioritize transmission of certain UCI (e.g., sent in the PUCCH or the PUSCH) over the new data, if the associated delay budget is about to expire and / or if both cannot be sent during the active period; and / or prioritize the retransmission of the pending PDUs in the buffering window over the new data, such as but not limited to if the CG retransmission timer is configured and / or has expired. The WTRU may prioritize the retransmission of the pending PDU over the new data if the delay budget (e.g., associated with the PDU set or the QoS requirement) is about to expire or if the PDU is part of the PDU set for which the delay budget is about to expire.

[0217] Once the prioritized PDU is determined during the active period, the WTRU may transmit the PDUs during the next and / or applicable cell DRX active period. Based on the above rules, the WTRU may determine to transmit the PDU in a future cell DRX active period, which may not be the next available one (e.g., after 3 cell DRX cycles have elapsed, the WTRU may determine to transmit PDU x)

[0218] The WTRU may run the CG retransmission timer and / or the autonomous CG retransmission timer only during the cell DRX active periods. The WTRU may pause the timers during non-active periods. The WTRU may start and / or restart such timers if the cell DRX activation command is received. The WTRU may stop such timers if the cell DRX deactivation command is received.

[0219] For example, there may be N PDUs in the PDU set, where the N PDUs are transmitted in N TBs and N HARQ Processes (HPs) with N PUSCHs (e.g., consecutive PUSCHs with potential gaps in between). Transmission of the first TB (t1) marks the start of the remaining time for the PSDB and the successful reception of the N TBs (t2 = max(t_i)) marks the total transmission time (T). If each TB has a transmission time of t_i, i...N. Then t2 = max(t_i) is the longest time taken by any of the N TBs, including ReTx times, to be received successfully. The PSDB is met if T(t2-t1) <= PSDB. As long asany of the N TBs are not ACKed (e.g . , at least one of the N TBs are NACKed), the PSDB is not met. In one instance, the WTRU may track the remaining time of any of the TB that is not ACKed by starting the timer after the transmission of the first TB in the series. The WTRU may perform a certain action, if the remaining time of the K TBs yet to be ACKed is above the threshold remaining time and / or if the percentage of remaining NACKs are above the threshold. Such action may include sending the indication (e.g., in the UCI) when the threshold is crossed and / or when the timer ends and the ACK is not received. The base station may then provide in the DCI, the resources (e.g., the MCS or the RBs) to get the TBs to be ACKed. The WTRU may determine certain information (e.g., the remaining time, a number of the NACKs) and indicate that in the indication to the base station, to allow higher probability to the ACK.

[0220] Such action may include determining the transmission (Tx) parameters (e.g., the MCS, the RVs for repetitions) and using the Tx parameters with the CG, in combination with the DG resources provided by the base station. However, if the base station does not know on the start of transmission time of the PDU set (e.g., the first TB transmission) or the remaining time of the PDU set, the provided DG resources may not be suitable for retransmission (ReTx).

[0221] In one case, there may be an exceptional DRB, SRB, or LCH that may be transmitted during the cell DRX non-active period. The WTRU may be configured with a dedicated DRB or SRB on which data may be mapped and / or remapped and transmitted during the cell DRX non-active period and / or the data may be absolutely prioritized for transmission over the other data during the cell DRX active period. The WTRU may support NES-aware DRB and / or SRB such that the UL high-priority information that is supposed and / or ready to be sent may be associated with the special SRB and / or DRB and any UL grant provided to the WTRU upon the transition of the cell to the cell DRX non-active period may be used to transmit the data from the DRB and / or SRB with the highest LCP priority. For example, the WTRU may use to "drain" whatever is logged on this SRB first (e.g., then DRB by order of priority). The WTRU may be configured per LCH with the flag indicating whether the LCH may contend in the LCP on grants scheduled during the cell DRX non-active period. The DCI may indicate that the grant scheduling during the cell DRX non-active period may only be for the data from the DRBs and / or the LCHs configured with such flag. In one case, there may be a rule-based TB prioritization during the cell DRX active period. For example, there may be one or more methods for prioritization between competing transmissions.

[0222] In some methods, the WTRU may attempt to transmit the TB on the CG resource during the cell DRX active period. The WTRU may receive scheduling DCI indicating that the DG transmission is expected at the same time as the CG resource, such as overlapping in the time domain. In another example, the WTRU may transmit the first TB on the first CG resource. While the CGRT is still running,the WTRU may attempt to transmit the second TB on the second CG resource and / or occasion of the same CG resource. The WTRU may be required to retransmit both TBs in a subsequent CG resource and / or occasion in the same cell DRX active period. The next CG resource may be applicable to either TB. In both cases, the WTRU may multiplex the transmissions into the single CG resource if possible. The WTRU may include the indication to state that multiplexing of two CG TBs has occurred in the CG resource, possibly the sub-PDUs are of the same size, and / or the TBs of the CG occasion may accommodate them. For example, the WTRU may include the sub-header in the combined PDU to indicate where the first TB and / or the sub-PDU multiplexed ends and the next TB starts, and / or the number of multiplexed TBs and / or previously generated sub-PDUs. The sub-header may include the TBS of each sub-PDU. In one instance, the WTRU may transmit the single TB in the CG resource in the active period, such as when both TBs cannot be transmitted during the current cell DRX active period. The selection of the TB to transmit may depend on a prioritization rule. It may be unfair to always transmit the TB with the highest priority (e.g . , as determined by the LCHs), given that the lower priority TB may suffer undue latency.

[0223] To determine the TB to transmit at a given PUSCH occasion in the cell DRX active period, the WTRU may prioritize pending TBs. The prioritization rule may depend on one or more factors, such as but not limited to: a buffer time; whether the TB is part of the PDU set and / or the TB set for which its PDF is not met if the TB is not transmitted in the next cell DRX active period, whether survival time is not met if the TB is not transmitted in the next cell DRX active period, the priority index, the DCI indicated priority; the LCH priority; whether the transmission is the first transmission or the retransmission, RV of the transmission, reason for the transmission, the number of times the TB has not been transmitted, the CG timer value, the content of the TB, and / or, whether the TB is part of a repetition bundle. For the factor of the buffered time, this may be as explained herein (e.g., the time elapsed between the data arrival at the buffer and the possible PUSCH transmission occasion). One factor may be whether the TB is part of the set for which the PSDB is not met if the TB is not transmitted in the next cell DRX active period. One factor may be whether survival time is not met if the TB is not transmitted in the next cell DRX active period. For the factor of the priority index, for example, the WTRU may maintain the priority index for each TB. The initial value of the priority index may be determined from the data (e.g., the priority thereof) to be transmitted. The initial value of the priority index may be applicable for a new HARQ Process. The priority index may then be incremented and / or decremented as a function of whether the TB is transmitted when the TB is originally intended to be transmitted. For example, the TB may have the priority index x, if the TB cannot be transmitted at its intended time (e.g., in CG resource 1) due to a competition with a higher priority TB during the cell DRX active period, the WTRU may increment the priority index to x+1 at the next cell DRX activeperiod. The priority index of the TB may be decremented when transmission and / or retransmission is successful. For example, if the initial priority index is x and the WTRU successfully transmits the TB, then the WTRU may decrement the priority index to x-1 (e.g., to be used if the retransmission is required). It may be understood that the reverse may be used (e.g., the priority index decrements when the transmission fails and increments when the transmission succeeds).

[0224] For the factor of the DCI indicated priority, for example, the WTRU may select the TB to transmit based on the highest or lowest DCI indicated priority. The DCI may indicate an applicable priority, HARQ PID, DRB, or the PDU set from which the data is prioritized for transmission in the next cell DRX active period. For the factor of the LCH priority, for example, the WTRU may select the TB to transmit based on the priority of at least one LCH multiplexed into the TB. The WTRU may prioritize pending TBs and / or transmissions and rank them by order of their highest priority LCH multiplexed, or may be multiplexed,. For the factor of whether the transmission is the first transmission or the retransmission, for example, the WTRU may prioritize the TB based on if the previous transmission has occurred for the TB, or if no previous transmissions have occurred for the TB (e.g., due to dropping or UL LBT failure) or if it is the first attempt to transmit the TB. One factor may be the RV of the transmission. For the factor of the reason for the transmission, for example, the prioritization may depend on whether it is the first attempt at the transmission, the retransmission due to the NACK (e.g., the NACK received on DFI), the retransmission due to dropping (e.g., due to intra-WTRU collision), the retransmission due to dropping (e.g. due to inter-WTRU collision), and / or the retransmission due to expired CGRT, etc. For the factor of the number of times the TB has not been transmitted, for example, the WTRU may maintain a counter of the number of times the TB has been dropped due to the competition with the higher priority TB transmission when the cell DRX is activated. The WTRU may use the counter to determine the priority associated with the TB. The counter may be reset when the TB is transmitted and / or retransmitted at least once. In another instance, the counter may be reset when the HARQ process is flushed. For the factor of the CG timer value, for example, the priority of the TB may be determined based on the remaining time left in the CG timer associated with the TB. This may ensure that the TB is transmitted and / or retransmitted before the expiration of the CG timer. For the factor of the content of the TB, for example, the prioritization may depend on whether the TB includes the MAC CE and / or the type of the MAC CE (e.g., CG confirmation MAC CE, BFR MAC CE, UL LBT failure MAC CE, C-RNTI MAC CE, PHR, and / or BSR MAC CE etc.). The WTRU may be configured with the priority per MAC CE, or per subset of MAC CE, which the WTRU may use to compare and prioritize overlapping transmissions. For the factor of whether the TB is part of a repetition bundle, for example, the priority may be determined based on whether the TB is part of therepetition bundle, the number of repetitions in the bundle, or the number of repetitions successfully transmitted and / or unsuccessfully transmitted in the bundle.

[0225] The WTRU may use a combination of the one or more factors to determine the prioritization of multiple TBs and thus to determine what TBs to transmit and / or drop. The combination may weigh the different factors differently. The weighing of the factors may be configurable or may be determined as a function of the PUSCH resource or the timing of the transmission relative to the cell DRX active period. Some prioritization factors presented herein may never be over-ridden by other factors. For example, the WTRU may maintain the priority index that may increment or decrement based on whether the TB was previously transmitted or not. However, the priority index value of the first TB may be moot if the second TB with a specific LCH and / or MAC CE needs to be transmitted. The second TB may have a higher priority with the first TB regardless of the value of the priority index of the first TB. In one example, there may be the UL QoS during NES with the multi-PUSCH CG. When configured with the multi-PUSCH CG, the subset of the PUSCHs may become invalid if the PUSCHs overlap with the cell DRX non-active periods. This may result in excess buffering and QoS failures, especially when transmitting the PDU sets. In order to address this issue, the WTRU may determine the number of unavailable PUSCHs based on the required number of PUSCHs the WTRU wants to use but overlap with the cell DRX non-active period. If the unavailable PUSCHs is greater than the threshold, the WTRU may trigger the indication and / or assume the network provides the exception during the cell DRX non-active period for some of the overlapping PUSCHs to allow flushing the data in the buffer and meet the QoS. In order to achieve this, the WTRU may perform one or more actions. The WTRU may receive configuration information, including but not limited to the multi-PUSCH CG configuration (e.g., N PUSCH occasions per CG period, periodicity), and / or the cell DRX configuration (e.g., the start offset, the duration of active and / or non-active periods, the periodicity) and the activation indication of the cell DRX (i.e. the cell DRX activation indication). The WTRU may receive, from the higher layers and / or the applications, for example, the one or more PDUs of the PDU set and map the PDUs to the LCHs. The WTRU may determine the first set of CG PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX active period based on the payload sizes of the PDUs of the PDU set in the LCH buffers. For example, the WTRU may prioritize the selection of the PUSCHs in the cell DRX active period for transmission of the data and the UTO-UCI indication.

[0226] If any conditions for using the CG PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX non-active period are met (e.g., such conditions may include, but are not limited to, one or more of: the payload sizes of the remaining PDUs of the PDU set are greater than the threshold, and / or the remaining PDUs of the PDU set are unable to be delayed to the next cell DRX active period due to low TTL and / or PSDB), the WTRU may determine the second set of CG PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX non-active periodbased on the payload sizes of the remaining PDUs of the PDU set in the LCH buffers. The WTRU may transmit the indication (e.g., in the UCI) indicating information on the required PUSCHs in the first set of CG PUSCHs (occurring in the cell DRX active period) and the second set of CG PUSCHs (occurring in the cell DRX non-active period) (e.g., the WTRU may monitor the PDCCH N slots and / or symbols after transmitting the indication). If the confirmation indication (e.g., in the DCI) using the second set of CGs PUSCHs is received, the WTRU may transmit the PDUs of the PDU set using the first set of CG PUSCH and the second set of CG PUSCHs, including in the indicated PUSCH occasions occurring in the cell DRX non-active period.

[0227] If any conditions for using the CG PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX non-active period are NOT met, the WTRU may transmit the indication (e.g., the UTO-UCI) indicating the first set of CG PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX active period (e.g., the number of consecutive PUSCHs), and / or the WTRU may transmit the PDUs of the PDU set using the first set of CG PUSCHs. In one example, there may be the UL HARQ transmissions and / or retransmissions during the NES. The network may not be fully aware of the UL PDU set properties (e.g., the number of associated PDUs, remaining time with regard to the PSDB). During the HARQ retransmissions of multiple TBs associated with the PDU set, the allocated bundle of the DG PUSCH resources for the ReTx, which may be aligned with the cell DRX mode, may not be suitable for meeting the QoS of the PDU set. In order to address this issue, the WTRU may determine the remaining time of the PDU set based on the timing of the allocated DG resources for the ReTx (e.g., aligned with the next cell DRX active period) and the PSDB. If the remaining time due to delaying the ReTx to the next cell DRX active period is low (e.g., less than the threshold), the WTRU may send the indication to request to use the resources occurring in the cell DRX non-active period or to temporarily deactivate the cell DRX for retransmissions.

[0228] In order to achieve this, the WTRU may perform one or more actions or functions. The WTRU may receive the configuration information, including the cell DRX configuration (e.g., the start offset, duration of the active and / or non-active periods) and the activation indication of the cell DRX configuration, and / or the threshold value associated with an expected change in the remaining time of the PDU set. The WTRU may receive, from higher layers for example, the one or more PDUs of the PDU set and information on the PSDB. The WTRU may perform initial transmissions of the PDUs in the one or more TBs during the cell DRX active period (e.g., the WTRU (MAC) may be aware of which PDUs of the PDU set in the LCH that are mapped to the one or more TBs and the HARQ processes based on some association and / or restrictions between the PDU set and the HARQ Process IDs). The WTRU may receive, from the network, the indication (e.g., in the DCI), including the DG PUSCHs for retransmission of the TBs and a timing information of the DG PUSCHs, with one or more DG PUSCHs associated with multiple K2 values (e.g., the regular K2 aligned with the nextcell DRX active period and the conditional K2 aligned with the cell DRX non-active period), and / or the resource grant (e.g . , the SR or the PUCCH resource with short K2), such as for the WTRU to indicate the preference for using the DG PUSCHs with the conditional K2. The WTRU may determine the remaining time of the PDU set based on the timing of the DG PUSCHs for the ReTx (e.g., the regular K2 aligned with the next cell DRX active period) and the PSDB (e.g., the remaining time of PDU set = PSDB - K2 of DG PUSCH in the next cell DRX active period).

[0229] If the cell DRX non-active period is activated and the remaining time of PDU set is less than the threshold remaining time, then the WTRU may transmit the indication (e.g., in the UCI), using the resource grant, to request to use the DG PUSCHs with the conditional K2, overlapping in the cell DRX non-active periods, and / or perform the retransmissions of the TBs using the requested DG PUSCHs. If the cell DRX non-active period is activated and the remaining time of PDU set greater than or equal to the threshold remaining time, the WTRU may perform the retransmissions of the TBs using the DG PUSCHs with the regular K2 overlapping with the next cell DRX active period (e.g., the WTRU may suspend the ReTx timer if performing the ReTx in the next cell DRX active period). In one example, there may be the activation of the conditional CG resources during the NES. There is a need for an approach regarding how to indicate to the network with low latency, the request to temporarily deactivate the cell DRX mode when transmitting the data with tight QoS. In order to address this, the WTRU may implicitly deactivate the cell DRX upon transmitting one or more urgent PDUs of the PDU set using the conditional CG resources (e.g., one restricted for transmitting the urgent PDUs) when meeting the one or more QoS conditions.

[0230] In order to achieve this, the WTRU may receive the configuration information, including the set of LCH configurations associated with at least the default CG configuration and a conditional CG configuration associated with the implicit deactivation of the cell DRX , the set of QoS conditions associated with the transmission during the cell DRX with the conditional CG (e.g., the remaining time of PDU set is less than the first threshold, or the importance or priority of the PDU set is greater than the second threshold), and / or the cell DRX configuration and the activation indication of the cell DRX. The WTRU may receive, from the higher layers for example, the PDUs of the PDU sets and map the PDU sets to the one or more LCHs. The WTRU may determine whether any of the QoS conditions associated with the conditional CG config are met for transmitting the PDUs during the cell DRX non- active periods based on the received PDU sets and the cell DRX configuration.

[0231] If any of the QoS conditions associated with the transmission of the PDUs during the cell DRX are met, the WTRU may select the conditional CG configuration associated with the LCHs with the PDUs (e.g., the WTRU may switch to a different BWP associated conditional CG), transmit at least the subset of the PDUs using the selected conditional CG to request to implicitly deactivate thecell DRX mode, monitor the additional conditional SS and / or coreset upon transmission of the PDUs from the LCHs configured with the conditional CG, and / or receive the indication (e.g., the DCI) in the conditional SS and / or coreset (e.g., the received indication may include the confirmation indication for the cell DRX deactivation, or the DG resources for the retransmission of the PDUs).

[0232] If the QoS conditions are not met, the WTRU may transmit the PDUs using the default CG configuration according to the cell DRX configuration (e.g., transmit only during the cell DRX active period). In one example, there may be the selective prioritization of buffered data during the NES. The WTRU may need to prioritize between the competing data (e.g., the data with the different priorities or the PDU sets) and control information pending transmission immediately after the end of the cell DRX non-active period. In order to address this issue, when the cell DRX mode is activated, the WTRU may prioritize pending data (e.g., deprioritized due to the cell DRX) and the control information that is ready to be sent (e.g., based on the buffering time) by prioritizing them before other new and / or high priority data in the LCHs.

[0233] In operation, the WTRU may the receive configuration information, including the LCH configuration (e.g., the priority value per LCH), the cell DRX configuration (e.g., the start offset, the duration of the active and / or non-active periods), the association information between the PDU buffering time and the priority offset (e.g., the delta priority), and / or the buffering window configuration (e.g., the start offset with respect to the start of the cell DRX non-active period or the window duration). The WTRU may receive, from the higher layers for example, the set of PDUs, and map the PDUs to the one or more LCHs based on the initial priority of the PDUs. The WTRU may receive, from the network, the activation indication of the cell DRX configuration (e.g., the WTRU buffers the PDUs in the LCHs during the cell DRX non-active period). The WTRU may determine the buffering time of the PDUs in the LCHs based on the PDU arrival time within the buffering window and the cell DRX non- active period duration. The WTRU may determine the new priority of the PDUs based on the initial priority, the buffering time and the association information (e.g., including the priority offset). The WTRU may prioritize the set of PDUs in the LCHs within the buffering window over the other PDUs that arrive outside of the buffering window based on the new priority of the PDUs. For example, the prioritization may be done via the LCP, where the lower priority PDU that was buffered during the cell DRX may be prioritized over the higher priority PDU arriving after the cell DRX. For example, the WTRU may prioritize transmission of the new data over retransmissions if the new data contains high- priority control information (e.g., the UCI, the CQI, the SRB data, or the high-priority MAC CE) and / or if the buffering time is larger than the threshold. For example, the WTRU may prioritize transmission of certain UCI (e.g., sent in the PUCCH or the PUSCH) over the new data, if the associated delay budget is about to expire. If the CG retransmission timer is configured, the WTRU may prioritize theReTx of the pending PDUs in the buffering window over the new data. The WTRU may transmit the PDUs during the next cell DRX active period.

[0234] FIG. 4 illustrates an example of process 400 according to one or more embodiments disclosed herein. The process 400 may be implemented by a WTRU (not shown in FIG. 4). At 402, the WTRU receives the configuration information, including the LCH configuration (e.g., the priority value per LCH), the cell DRX configuration (e.g., the start offset, the duration of the active and / or nonactive periods etc.), the association information between the PDU buffering time and the priority offset (e.g., the delta priority), and / or the buffering window configuration (e.g., the start offset with respect to the start of the cell DRX non-active period or the window duration etc.), or the multi-PUSCH configuration (e.g. CG and / or DG resources including the set of DGs and / or CGs, the CG period, the PUSCH occasions etc.).

[0235] At 404, the WTRU receives, from the higher layers for example, the PDUs and / or the PDU sets, and maps the PDUs and / or the PDU sets to the one or more LCHs based on the initial priority of the PDUs. The WTRU also maps the PDUs and / or the PDU sets with the same or different QoS requirements and / or characteristics to one or more forwarding configurations. The different forwarding configurations may be configured to achieve and / or enforce different QoS when transmitting the PDUs and / or the PDU sets with the DG resources and / or the CG resources.

[0236] At 406, the WTRU determines the first set of PUSCH occasions in the time window (e.g., the CG period) based on the payload sizes of the PDUs in the LCH buffers. The first set of PUSCHs may be those occurring in the cell DRX active period, for example. That is, the WTRU prioritizes the selection of the PUSCHs that occur in the cell DRX active period for data transmission, before selecting the PUSCHs in the non-active period, for example.

[0237] At 408, the WTRU checks whether any QoS conditions for using the CG PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX inactive period are met. The QoS conditions may include one or more of the conditions, such as but not limited to, the remaining time of PDU set is less than the first threshold indicative of the threshold remaining time (i.e. the remaining time < threshold!), and / or the importance and / or priority values of the PDU set are greater than the second threshold indicative of the threshold priority value (i.e. the priority value > threshold2).

[0238] At 410, the WTRU determines the second set of PUSCH occasions in the time window (e.g., the CG period) based on the payload sizes of the PDUs in the LCH buffers. The second set of PUSCHs may be those occurring in the cell DRX non-active period, for example.

[0239] At 412, the WTRU transmits the indication (e.g., in the UCI) indicating information on the required PUSCHs in the first set of CG PUSCHs (occurring in the cell DRX active period) and thesecond set of CG PUSCHs (occurring in the cell DRX non-active period). In that, for example, the WTRU monitors the PDCCH N slots and / or symbols after transmitting the indication.

[0240] At 414, the WTRU receives the confirmation indication associated with the usage of the PUSCH occasions in the non-active period. In an example, the WTRU may monitor the PDCCH for receiving the confirmation indication for using the CG PUSCH occasions occurring in the cell DRX non-active periods, upon transmitting the indication on the PUSCH usage. The confirmation indication may be received in the DCI (e.g., new DCI format or the paging DCI), the MAC CE or the RRC signaling, for example. The confirmation indication may indicate the PUSCH occasions in the cell DRX active periods and / or the cell DRX non-active periods allowed to be used by the WTRU, for example. Alternatively, the confirmation indication may indicate the new resources (e.g., the DG resources) for the WTRU to use, or activation of another CG configuration.

[0241] At 416, if the confirmation indication is received by the WTRU, indicating the CG PUSCHs occurring in the non-active period allowed to be used, the WTRU transmits the PDUs of the PDU set using the first set of CG PUSCHs in the active period and the second set of CG PUSCHs in the non- active period. If the confirmation indication is not received, the WTRU may only transmit the PDUs using the first set of CG PUSCHs in the active period, and delay the transmission of any remaining PDUs to the next cell DRX active period. Alternatively, the WTRU may retransmit the indication on the PUSCH usage, possibly after the duration associated with the prohibit timer.

[0242] At 418, if the first set of PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX active period are adequate for transmitting the PDUs of the PDU set, and / or any of the QoS conditions are not met, the WTRU transmits the indication to the network on the selected PUSCH occasions (e.g., in the UCI or the UTO- UCI).

[0243] At 420, if the first set of PUSCHs occurring in the cell DRX active period are adequate for transmitting the PDUs of the PDU set, and / or any of the QoS conditions are not met, the WTRU transmits the PDUs using the selected first set of PUSCHs.

[0244] As shown in the example, there may be one or more methods, systems, and / or devices, that address activation of the conditional CG resources during the NES state. The WTRU may be configured with the forwarding configurations to apply during the cell DRX active mode. The WTRU may determine whether to use the conditional CG resources to transmit the data and / or the indication during the cell DRX mode.

[0245] Network, as referenced herein, may refer to any node or function in a network. For example, a WTRU may send and / or receive a transmission / message / information to / from the network, wherenetwork could mean any network node or function as disclosed herein (e.g., see devices discussed with regard to of FIG. 1 , base station, etc.)

[0246] As described herein, a higher layer may refer to one or more layers in a protocol stack, or a specific sublayer within the protocol stack. The protocol stack may comprise of one or more layers in a WTRU or a network node (e.g., eNB, gNB, other functional entity, etc.), where each layer may have one or more sublayers. Each layer / sublayer may be responsible for one or more functions. Each layer / sublayer may communicate with one or more of the other layers / sublayers, directly or indirectly. In some cases, these layers may be numbered, such as Layer 1 , Layer 2, and Layer 3. For example, Layer 3 may comprise of one or more of the following: Non-Access Stratum (NAS), Internet Protocol (IP), and / or Radio Resource Control (RRC). For example, Layer 2 may comprise of one or more of the following: Packet Data Convergence Control (PDCP), Radio Link Control (RLC), and / or Medium Access Control (MAC). For example, Layer 3 may comprise of physical (PHY) layer type operations. The greater the number of the layer, the higher it is relative to other layers (e.g., Layer 3 is higher than Layer 1). In some cases, the aforementioned examples may be called layers / sublayers themselves irrespective of layer number, and may be referred to as a higher layer as described herein. For example, from highest to lowest, a higher layer may refer to one or more of the following layers / sublayers: a NAS layer, an RRC layer, a PDCP layer, a RLC layer, a MAC layer, and / or a PHY layer. Any reference herein to a higher layer in conjunction with a process, device, or system will refer to a layer that is higher than the layer of the process, device, or system. In some cases, reference to a higher layer herein may refer to a function or operation performed by one or more layers described herein. In some cases, reference to a high layer herein may refer to information that is sent or received by one or more layers described herein. In some cases, reference to a higher layer herein may refer to a configuration that is sent and / or received by one or more layers described herein.

[0247] FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an example process 500 of transmitting one or more data units according to one or more embodiments discussed herein. The process 500 may be implemented by a WTRU (not shown in FIG. 5). At 510, the WTRU receives the configuration information. The configuration information includes the one or more logical channels, the one or more conditional CGs, the one or more default CGs, and an association between the one or more logical channels and the one or more conditional CGs and / or default CGs, and the one or more QoS conditions. The one or more QoS conditions are associated with transmitting a data unit of the one or more data units during the cell DRX inactive period using a conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs.

[0248] At 520, the WTRU checks if the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period. On a condition that the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period, the WTRU checks if any QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions is met for the data unit.

[0249] At 530, if at least one QoS condition is met for the data unit when the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period, the WTRU selects a conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs for transmitting the data unit.

[0250] At 540, the WTRU transmits the data unit using the one or more resources in the selected conditional CG. In that, transmitting the data unit using the one or more resources in the selected conditional CG indicates a request to deactivate the cell DRX mode.

[0251] At 550, if no QoS condition is met for the data unit when the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period, the WTRU transmits the data unit using the default CG in the subsequent cell DRX active period.

[0252] FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating an example process 600 of transmitting one or more data units according to one or more embodiments discussed herein. The process 600 may be implemented by a WTRU (not shown in FIG. 6). At 610, the WTRU receives the configuration information. The configuration information includes the one or more conditional CGs, the one or more default CGs, and the one or more QoS conditions. The configuration information further includes the cell DRX activation indication.

[0253] At 620, the WTRU selects the conditional CG for the transmission of a data unit of the one or more data units when the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and when the at least one QoS condition is met for the data unit.

[0254] At 630, the WTRU transmits, using the selected conditional CG during the cell DRX inactive period, the data unit and a request to deactivate the cell DRX mode. In an example, the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is implicit in transmission of the data unit. In another example, the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is multiplexed with the data unit.

[0255] Although features and elements are described above in particular combinations (e.g., embodiments, methods, examples, etc.), one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that each feature or element can be used alone or in any combination with the other features and elements. For example, as disclosed herein there may be a method described in association with a figure for illustrative purposes, and one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that one or more features or elements from this method may be used alone or in combination with one or more features from another method described elsewhere. A symbol 7’ (e.g., forward slash) may be used herein to represent ‘and / or’, where for example, A / B’ may imply ‘A and / or B’. As used herein, ‘a’ and ‘an’ and similar phrases are to be interpreted as ‘one or more’ and ‘at least one’. Similarly, any term which ends with the suffix ‘(s)’ is to be interpreted as ‘one or more’ and ‘at least one’. The term ‘may’ is to be interpreted as ‘may, for example’ or indicate that something "does happen" or "can happen". Inaddition, the methods described herein may be implemented in a computer program, software, or firmware incorporated in a computer-readable medium for execution by a computer or processor. Examples of computer-readable media include electronic signals (transmitted over wired or wireless connections) and computer-readable storage media. Examples of computer-readable storage media include, but are not limited to, a read only memory (ROM), a random-access memory (RAM), a register, cache memory, semiconductor memory devices, magnetic media such as internal hard disks and removable disks, magneto-optical media, and optical media such as CD-ROM disks, and digital versatile disks (DVDs). A processor in association with software may be used to implement a radio frequency transceiver for use in a WTRU, UE, terminal, base station, RNC, or any host computer..

Claims

CLAIMSWhat is Claimed:1 . A method implemented by a wireless transmit / receive unit (WTRU), the method comprising: receiving configuration information regarding one or more logical channels, one or more conditional configured grants (CGs), one or more default CGs, an association between the one or more logical channels and at least one of: the one or more conditional CGs, the one or more default CGs, or one or more quality of service (QoS) conditions, wherein the one or more QoS conditions are associated with one or more data unit transmissions during a cell discontinuous reception (DRX) inactive period using a conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs; and on a condition that a cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and a QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions is met for a data unit, selecting the conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs, and transmitting the data unit using one or more resources of the selected conditional CG, wherein the data unit transmission comprises a request to deactivate a cell DRX mode, and on a condition that the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and none of the one or more QoS conditions are met, transmitting the data unit using one or more resources of a default CG of the one or more default CGs in a subsequent cell DRX active period.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: receiving an indication that the cell DRX mode is activated.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is implicit in transmission of the data unit using the one or more resources of the selected conditional CG.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is explicit and multiplexed with the data unit.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the one or more QoS conditions include a remaining time of the data unit.

6. The method of claim 2, wherein the one or more QoS conditions include an importance of the data unit.

7. A wireless transmit / receive unit (WTRU) comprising: a memory configured to store a data unit; a receiver configured to receive configuration information regarding one or more logical channels, one or more conditional configured grants (CGs), one or more default CGs, an association between the one or more logical channels and at least one of: the one or more conditional CGs, the one or more default CGs, or one or more quality of service (QoS) conditions, wherein the one or more QoS conditions are associated with one or more data unit transmissions during a cell discontinuous reception (DRX) inactive period using a conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs; a transmitter; and a processor, wherein the transmitter and the processor are configured to: on a condition that a cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and a QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions is met for the data unit, select the conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs, and transmit the data unit using one or more resources of the selected conditional CG, wherein the data unit transmission comprises a request to deactivate a cell DRX mode, and on a condition that the cell is in the cell DRX inactive period and none of the one or more QoS conditions are met, transmit the data unit using one or more resources of a default CG of the one or more default CGs in a subsequent cell DRX active period.

8. The WTRU of claim 7, wherein the receiver is further configured to receive an indication that the cell DRX mode is activated.

9. The WTRU of claim 8, wherein the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is implicit in transmission of the data unit using the one or more resources of the selected conditional CG.

10. The WTRU of claim 8, wherein the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is explicit and multiplexed with the data unit.11 . The WTRU of claim 8, wherein the one or more QoS conditions include a remaining time of the data unit.

12. The WTRU of claim 8, wherein the one or more QoS conditions include an importance of the data unit.

13. A method implemented by a wireless transmit / receive unit (WTRU), the method comprising: receiving configuration information regarding one or more conditional configured grants(CGs), one or more default CGs, and one or more Quality of Service (QoS) conditions; and transmitting, using a conditional CG from the one or more conditional CGs during a cell discontinuous reception (DRX) inactive period, a data unit and a request to deactivate a cell DRX mode when a QoS condition of the one or more QoS conditions is met for the data unit.

14. The method of claim 13, the method further comprising: transmitting the data unit using a default CG of the one or more default CGs during a cell DRX active period when the one or more QoS conditions are not met for the data unit.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising: selecting the conditional CG for transmission of the data unit based on a logical channel mapped to the data unit.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the configuration information further includes a cell DRX activation indication.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the QoS condition is met when a remaining time associated with the data unit is less than a threshold time indicated by the QoS condition.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the QoS condition is met when a priority value associated with the data unit exceeds a threshold priority value indicated by the QoS condition.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is implicit in transmission of the data unit.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the request to deactivate the cell DRX mode is multiplexed with the data unit.

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