METHODS, ARCHITECTURES, APPARATUSES AND SYSTEMS FOR OFFLOADING gNB FOR Uu SCHEDULING

Abstract

Procedures, methods, architectures, apparatuses, systems, devices, and computer program products for working in a group of wireless transfer / receive units, WTRUs, in a network with a base station. Upon reception of data to transmit, a WTRU selects, based on at least one configured condition, between a controller of the group of WTRUs or to the base station a target device for transmission of a resource request, transmits the resource request to the target device, receives from the target device a grant, prioritizes or only selects data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device, constructs at least one transport block by multiplexing the data blocks, and transmits the at least one transport block according to the grant.

Description

METHODS, ARCHITECTURES, APPARATUSES AND SYSTEMS FOR OFFLOADING gNB FOR Uu SCHEDULINGCROSS-REFERNCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 554,668 filed 16-Feb-2024, which is incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND

[0002] The present disclosure is generally directed to the fields of communications, software and encoding, including, for example, to methods, architectures, apparatuses, systems directed to offloading gNB for Uu scheduling in wireless communications systems.SUMMARY

[0003] In a first aspect, the present principles are directed to a method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, in a network comprising a further WTRU acting as a controller for a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and the further WTRU, and a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising transmitting a resource request to a target device, receiving from the target device a grant, prioritizing data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device, constructing at least one transport block by multiplexing prioritized data blocks, and transmitting the at least one transport block according to the grant.

[0004] In a second aspect, the present principles are directed to a method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, in a network comprising a further WTRU acting as a controller for a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and the further WTRU, and a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising transmitting a resource request to a target device, receiving from the target device a grant, constructing at least one transport block by multiplexing only data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device, and transmitting the at least one transport block according to the grant.

[0005] In a third aspect, the present principles are directed to a method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, acting as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising receiving, from at least one further WTRU, information indicative of a resource request, obtaining, from the base station, scheduled resources for each request, transmitting to further WTRUs from which information indicative of a resource request was received, the scheduled resources for each request, monitoring downlink control information indicating repeat requests for initial transmissions using the resources, and for monitored repeat requests, transmitting to corresponding further WTRUs, scheduled retransmission resources.

[0006] In a fourth aspect, the present principles are directed to a method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, acting as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising receiving, from WTRUs in the group, information indicative of traffic, determining, based on the information indicative of traffic, a relation between traffic patterns of at least two WTRUs in the group, transmitting to the base station at least one request for configured grants based on the information indicative of traffic and the determined relation between traffic patterns, receiving from the base station information indicative of the configured grants, receiving from at least one WTRU in the group information indicative of a traffic change, and transmitting to the base station at least one further request for configured grants based on the information indicative of traffic change and the determined relation between traffic patterns.

[0007] In a fifth aspect, the present principles are directed to a method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, acting as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising transmitting to the base station information indicative of a buffer status of the at least one further WTRU, receiving, from at least one further WTRUs in the group, a scheduling request, transmitting, to the base station, a request for a transmission resource corresponding to the at least one scheduling request, and upon reception of information indicative of at least one uplink resource, transmitting to the base station information indicative of a buffer status of the at least one further WTRU and information indicative of an association between a plurality of quality of service flows, channel groups or destination indices corresponding to the uplink resources for the at least one further WTRU.

[0008] In a sixth aspect, the present principles are directed to a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to operate in a network comprising a further WTRU acting as a controller for a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and the further WTRU, and a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to transmit a resource request to a target device, receive from the target device a grant, prioritize data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device, construct at least one transport block by multiplexing prioritized data blocks, and transmit the at least one transport block according to the grant.

[0009] In a seventh aspect, the present principles are directed to a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to operate in a network comprising a further WTRU acting as a controller for a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and the further WTRU, and a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to transmit a resource request to a target device, receive from the target device a grant, construct at least one transportblock by multiplexing only data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device, and transmit the at least one transport block according to the grant.

[0010] In an eighth aspect, the present principles are directed to a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to act as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to receive, from at least one further WTRU, information indicative of a resource request, obtain, from the base station, scheduled resources for each request, transmit to further WTRUs from which information indicative of a resource request was received, the scheduled resources for each request, monitor downlink control information indicating repeat requests for initial transmissions using the resources, and for monitored repeat requests, transmit to corresponding further WTRUs, scheduled retransmission resources.

[0011] In a ninth aspect, the present principles are directed to a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to act as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to receive, from WTRUs in the group, information indicative of traffic, determine, based on the information indicative of traffic, a relation between traffic patterns of at least two WTRUs in the group, transmit to the base station at least one request for configured grants based on the information indicative of traffic and the determined relation between traffic patterns, receive from the base station information indicative of the configured grants, receive from at least one WTRU in the group information indicative of a traffic change, and transmit to the base station at least one further request for configured grants based on the information indicative of traffic change and the determined relation between traffic patterns.

[0012] In a tenth aspect, the present principles are directed to a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to act as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to transmit to the base station information indicative of a buffer status of the at least one further WTRU, receive, from at least one further WTRUs in the group, a scheduling request, transmit, to the base station, a request for a transmission resource corresponding to the at least one scheduling request, and upon reception of information indicative of at least one uplink resource, transmit to the base station information indicative of a buffer status of the at least one further WTRU and information indicative of anassociation between a plurality of quality-of-service flows, channel groups or destination indices corresponding to the uplink resources for the at least one further WTRU.BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0013] A more detailed understanding may be had from the detailed description below, given by way of example in conjunction with drawings appended hereto. Figures in such drawings, like the detailed description, are examples. As such, the Figures (FIGs.) and the detailed description are not to be considered limiting, and other equally effective examples are possible and likely. Furthermore, like reference numerals ("ref.") in the FIGs. indicate like elements, and wherein:

[0014] FIG. 1A is a system diagram illustrating an example communications system;

[0015] FIG. IB is a system diagram illustrating an example wireless transmit / receive unit (WTRU) that may be used within the communications system illustrated in FIG. 1A;

[0016] FIG. 1C 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. 1A;

[0017] FIG. ID 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. 1 A;

[0018] FIG. 2 illustrates an example network in which a gNB controls a group of UEs;

[0019] FIG. 3 illustrates an example method of scheduler selection and LCP based on the scheduler;

[0020] FIG. 4 illustrates an example embodiment of a method of Uu HARQ retransmission;

[0021] FIG. 5 illustrates an example of configured grants for a member UE in a group;

[0022] FIG. 6 illustrates an example of two configured grants (CGI and CG2) requested by a group coordinator;

[0023] FIG. 7 illustrates an example embodiment of method of configured grant requesting for the group; and

[0024] FIG. 8 illustrates an example embodiment of method of requesting dynamic grant for a group.DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0025] In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are set forth to provide a thorough understanding of embodiments and / or examples disclosed herein. However, it will be understood that such embodiments and examples may be practiced without some or all of the specific details set forth herein. In other instances, well-known methods, procedures, components and circuits have not been described in detail, so as not to obscure the following description. Further, embodiments and examples not specifically described herein may be practiced in lieu of,or in combination with, the embodiments and other examples described, disclosed or otherwise provided explicitly, implicitly and / or inherently (collectively "provided") herein. Although various embodiments are described and / or claimed herein in which an apparatus, system, device, etc. and / or any element thereof carries out an operation, process, algorithm, function, etc. and / or any portion thereof, it is to be understood that any embodiments described and / or claimed herein assume that any apparatus, system, device, etc. and / or any element thereof is configured to carry out any operation, process, algorithm, function, etc. and / or any portion thereof.

[0026] Example Communications System

[0027] The methods, apparatuses and systems provided herein are well-suited for communications involving both wired and wireless networks. An overview of various types of wireless devices and infrastructure is provided with respect to FIGs. 1A-1D, where various elements of the network may utilize, perform, be arranged in accordance with and / or be adapted and / or configured for the methods, apparatuses and systems provided herein.

[0028] FIG. 1A is a system 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), singlecarrier FDMA (SC-FDMA), zero-tail (ZT) unique-word (UW) discreet Fourier transform (DFT) spread OFDM (ZT UW DTS-s OFDM), unique word OFDM (UW-OFDM), resource block- filtered OFDM, filter bank multicarrier (FBMC), and the like.

[0029] 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 / 113, a core network (CN) 106 / 115, 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" and / or a "STA", may be configured to transmit and / or receive wireless signals and may include (or be) 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.

[0030] 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 wirelessly interface with at least one of the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d, e.g., to facilitate access to one or more communication networks, such as the CN 106 / 115, the Internet 110, and / or the networks 112. By way of example, the base stations 114a, 114b may be any of a base transceiver station (BTS), a Node-B (NB), an eNode-B (eNB), a Home Node-B (HNB), a Home eNode-B (HeNB), a gNode-B (gNB), a NR Node-B (NR NB), 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.

[0031] The base station 114a may be part of the RAN 104 / 113, 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, etc. 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 an 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 or any sector of the cell. For example, beamforming may be used to transmit and / or receive signals in desired spatial directions.

[0032] 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).

[0033] 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 1 Main the RAN 104 / 113 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 116 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 Packet Access (HSDPA) and / or High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA).

[0034] 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).

[0035] 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 New Radio (NR).

[0036] 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).

[0037] In an embodiment, the base station 114a and the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may implement radio technologies such as IEEE 802.11 (i.e., Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), IEEE 802.16 (i.e., Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX)), CDMA2000, CDMA2000 IX, 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.

[0038] 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 an 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 IEEE802.15 to establish a wireless personal area network (WPAN). In an 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 any of a small cell, picocell or femtocell. As shown in FIG. 1 A, the base station 114b may have a direct connection to the Internet 110. Thus, the base station 114b may not be required to access the Internet 110 via the CN 106 / 115.

[0039] The RAN 104 / 113 may be in communication with the CN 106 / 115, 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 / 115 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. 1 A, it will be appreciated that the RAN 104 / 113 and / or the CN 106 / 115 may be in direct or indirect communication with other RANs that employ the same RAT as the RAN 104 / 113 or a different RAT. For example, in addition to being connected to the RAN 104 / 113, which may be utilizing an NR radio technology, the CN 106 / 115 may also be in communication with another RAN (not shown) employing any of a GSM, UMTS, CDMA 2000, WiMAX, E-UTRA, or Wi-Fi radio technology.

[0040] The CN 106 / 115 may also serve as a gateway for the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c, 102d to access the PSTN 108, the Internet 110, and / or 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 / 114 or a different RAT.

[0041] 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.

[0042] FIG. IB is a system diagram illustrating an example WTRU 102. As shown in FIG. IB, the WTRU 102 may include a processor 118, a transceiver 120, a transmit / receive element 122, a speaker / mi crophone 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 elements / peripherals 138, among others. It will be appreciated that the WTRU 102 may include any sub-combination of the foregoing elements while remaining consistent with an embodiment.

[0043] 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) circuits, 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 118 may be coupled to the transceiver 120, which may be coupled to the transmit / receive element 122. While FIG. IB 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, e.g., in an electronic package or chip.

[0044] 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 an 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 an 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.

[0045] Although the transmit / receive element 122 is depicted in FIG. IB as a single element, the WTRU 102 may include any number of transmit / receive elements 122. For example, the WTRU 102 may employ MIMO technology. Thus, in an 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.

[0046] 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.

[0047] 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), readonly 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).

[0048] 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.

[0049] 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.

[0050] The processor 118 may further be coupled to other elements / peripherals 138, which may include one or more software and / or hardware modules / units that provide additional features, functionality and / or wired or wireless connectivity. For example, the elements / peripherals 138 may include an accelerometer, an e-compass, a satellite transceiver, a digital camera (e.g., 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. Theelements / 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, and / or a humidity sensor.

[0051] 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 uplink (e.g., for transmission) and downlink (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 self-interference 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 half-duplex radio for which transmission and reception of some or all of the signals (e.g., associated with particular subframes for either the uplink (e g., for transmission) or the downlink (e g., for reception)).

[0052] FIG. 1C 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, and 102c over the air interface 116. The RAN 104 may also be in communication with the CN 106.

[0053] 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 an 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 receive wireless signals from, the WTRU 102a.

[0054] Each of the eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, and 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 uplink (UL) and / or downlink (DL), and the like. As shown in FIG. 1C, the eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c may communicate with one another over an X2 interface.

[0055] The CN 106 shown in FIG. 1C may include a mobility management entity (MME) 162, a serving gateway (SGW) 164, and a packet data network (PDN) gateway (PGW) 166. While each of the foregoing elements are depicted as part of the CN 106, it will be appreciated that any one of these elements may be owned and / or operated by an entity other than the CN operator.

[0056] The MME 162 may be connected to each of the eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, and 160c in the RAN 104 via an SI interface and may serve as a control node. For example, the MME 162 maybe 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.

[0057] The SGW 164 may be connected to each of the eNode-Bs 160a, 160b, 160c in the RAN 104 via the SI interface. The SGW 164 may generally route and forward user data packets to / from the 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.

[0058] 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.

[0059] 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 land-line 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.

[0060] Although the WTRU is described in FIGs. 1A-1D 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.

[0061] In representative embodiments, the other network 112 may be a WLAN.

[0062] 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 an access or an interface to a distribution system (DS) or another type of wired / wireless network that carries traffic into 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-peertraffic 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 802.1 le DLS or an 802.1 Iz 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.

[0063] When using the 802.1 lac 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 via signaling. 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 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.

[0064] 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 nonadj acent 20 MHz channel to form a 40 MHz wide channel.

[0065] Very high throughput (VHT) STAs may support 20 MHz, 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 a medium access control (MAC) layer, entity, etc.

[0066] Sub 1 GHz modes of operation are supported by 802.1 laf and 802.11 ah. The channel operating bandwidths, and carriers, are reduced in 802.1 laf and 802.1 lah relative to those used in 802.1 In, and 802.1 lac. 802.1 laf supports 5 MHz, 10 MHz and 20 MHz bandwidths in the TV white space (TVWS) spectrum, and 802.1 lah supports 1 MHz, 2 MHz, 4 MHz, 8 MHz, and 16 MHz bandwidths using non- TVWS spectrum. According to a representative embodiment,802.11 ah 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).

[0067] WLAN systems, which may support multiple channels, and channel bandwidths, such as 802. l ln, 802.11ac, 802.11af, and 802.11ah, include a channel which may be designated as the primary 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 802.11 ah, 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, the entire available frequency bands may be considered busy even though a majority of the frequency bands remains idle and may be available.

[0068] In the United States, the available frequency bands, which may be used by 802.1 lah, 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 802.1 lah is 6 MHz to 26 MHz depending on the country code.

[0069] FIG. ID is a system diagram illustrating the RAN 113 and the CN 115 according to an embodiment. As noted above, the RAN 113 may employ an NR radio technology to communicate with the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c over the air interface 116. The RAN 113 may also be in communication with the CN 115.

[0070] The RAN 113 may include gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c, though it will be appreciated that the RAN 113 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 an embodiment, the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may implement MIMO technology. For example, gNBs 180a, 180b may utilize beamforming to transmit signals to and / or receive signals from the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c. 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 multiplecomponent 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).

[0071] The WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may communicate with gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c using transmissions associated with a scalable numerology. For example, OFDM symbol spacing and / 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., including a varying number of OFDM symbols and / or lasting varying lengths of absolute time).

[0072] 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.

[0073] 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, dual connectivity, interworking between NR and E-UTRA, routing of user plane data towards user plane functions (UPFs) 184a, 184b, routing of control plane information towards access and mobility management functions (AMFs) 182a, 182b, and the like. As shown in FIG. ID, the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c may communicate with one another over an Xn interface.

[0074] The CN 115 shown in FIG. ID may include at least one AMF 182a, 182b, at least one UPF 184a, 184b, at least one session management function (SMF) 183a, 183b, and at least oneData Network (DN) 185a, 185b. While each of the foregoing elements are depicted as part of the CN 115, it will be appreciated that any of these elements may be owned and / or operated by an entity other than the CN operator.

[0075] The AMF 182a, 182b may be connected to one or more of the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c in the RAN 113 via an N2 interface and may serve as a control node. For example, the AMF 182a, 182b may 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 NAS signaling, mobility management, and the like. Network slicing may be used by the AMF 182a, 182b, e g., 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 / or the like. The AMF 162 may provide a control plane function for switching between the RAN 113 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.

[0076] The SMF 183a, 183b may be connected to an AMF 182a, 182b in the CN 115 via an N11 interface. The SMF 183a, 183b may also be connected to a UPF 184a, 184b in the CN 115 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 downlink data notifications, and the like. A PDU session type may be IP -based, non-IP based, Ethernet-based, and the like.

[0077] The UPF 184a, 184b may be connected to one or more of the gNBs 180a, 180b, 180c in the RAN 113 via an N3 interface, which may provide the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c with access to packet-switched networks, such as the Internet 110, e.g., 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 multihomed PDU sessions, handling user plane QoS, buffering downlink packets, providing mobility anchoring, and the like.

[0078] The CN 115 may facilitate communications with other networks. For example, the CN 115 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 115 and the PSTN 108. In addition, the CN 115 may provide the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c with access to the other networks 112, whichmay include other wired and / or wireless networks that are owned and / or operated by other service providers. In an embodiment, the WTRUs 102a, 102b, 102c may be connected to a local Data Network (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.

[0079] In view of FIGs. 1 A-1D, and the corresponding description of FIGs. 1 A-1D, one or more, or all, of the functions described herein with regard to any of: WTRUs 102a-d, base stations 114a- b, eNode-Bs 160a-c, MME 162, SGW 164, PGW 166, gNBs 180a-c, AMFs 182a-b, UPFs 184a- b, SMFs 183a-b, DNs 185a-b, and / or any other element(s) / device(s) described herein, may be performed by one or more emulation elements / 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.

[0080] 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 may performing testing using over-the-air wireless communications.

[0081] 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.

[0082] Introduction

[0083] The application of 5G (and beyond) cellular (also called mobile) telephony is expanding in many vertical directions such as, e g., Extended Reality (XR), industrial Internet of Things (loT), and intelligent transportation systems. Typically, new scenarios impose new service requirements with reasonable resource and power efficiency such as such as ultra-high UL data rate, ultra-low latency, and high reliability. Some services such as XR, VR / AR, metaverse mayeven require a tight synchronization among data flows from different devices (e.g., gloves, glasses, etc, .. .) running a single application layer. The conventional cellular network managing a service per UE basis may not be sufficient to guarantee the more stringent requirement of multiple devices simultaneously.

[0084] The cellular network may control a group of UEs running an application involving interaction among multiple UEs in the group. The group may have the group coordinator (GC) and member UE(s). In such a group, it is expected that the group may have more information of the group than the gNB does. Such information may include the channel condition among UEs in the group, QoE / QoS requirements, transmission alignment, and buffer status of each UE in the group.

[0085] FIG. 2 illustrates an example network in which a gNB 210 controls a group 220 of UEs 230, 240. In the group, one UE can be a group coordinator or a member UE, in which the group coordinator may coordinate part of the transmi ssion / recepti on activity of the UEs in the group. In the group, each UE is running the same group-based application that requires tight interaction among UEs. Specifically, the signal (e.g., PDU, reference-signal) transmission of one UE may be correlated / associated with the signal transmission of one or more other UEs.

[0086] When using group-based applications, which may require the UEs in the group to interact for signal transmission / reception, it is beneficial for the gNB to offload some functionality such as scheduling offloading to one of the UEs in the group, i.e. the group coordinator (GC). Moreover, to reduce signaling overhead between the gNB and the UEs in the group, the GC may solicit information of the other UEs in the group (e.g., traffic information and channel condition information). Afterward, the GC may provide such information to the gNB. This approach may help reduce Uu signaling overhead and coordinate signal transmissions of the UEs in the group.

[0087] It will therefore be appreciated that it is desired to have a solution for how to enable the gNB to offload scheduling to a GC to schedule transmission resources for member UEs in the group.

[0088] Very briefly, a UE (e.g., member UE) determines the scheduler (e.g., gNB or GC) for its Protocol Data Units (PDUs) for uplink transmission and sends the scheduling request to the determined scheduler based on the buffer status of the UE. Upon reception of a scheduled resource, the UE determines which PDU to prioritize to multiplex in a Medium Access Control (MAC) PDU to transmit in the scheduled resource based on the scheduler of the resource.

[0089] The determination can be performed by a UE (e.g., member UE) that is (pre-)configured to receive information indicative of a configuration for one GC and of associated group scheduling request configuration (e.g. could be over PC5) for the UE UL transmission.

[0090] The UE is further (pre-)configured to receive information indicative of a configuration / conditions to determine whether to request a transmission resource (e.g., uplink orsidelink) from the GC or the gNB. In a first example, the UE can be (pre-)configured with two set of Quality of Service (QoS) flows / Radio Bearers (RBs) / Logical Channels (LCHs), where the first set requires the UE to request transmission resource from GC and the second set requires the UE to request transmission resource from gNB. In a second example, the UE is (pre-)configured with a Packet Delay Budget (PDB) threshold to determine whether to request transmission resources from the gNB or the GC. In a third example, the UE is (pre-)configured with a data amount threshold, and the UE may request a transmission resource from the GC if the amount of data in the buffer is smaller than the (pre-)configured threshold.

[0091] The UE is further (pre-)configured to, upon arrival of Uplink (UL) data, send a UL resource request to the GC if the data in the buffer satisfies the (pre-)configured condition (e.g., the PDU belongs to first set of QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs).

[0092] The Logical Channel Prioritization is based on the GC. The UE receives the UL grant from the GC and prioritizes the PDU from the QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s) associated with the GC scheduler (e.g., the first set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s)). The UE can perform LCP restriction by allowing only the first set of QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs to multiplex in the MAC PDU or perform LCP prioritization by multiplexing the first set of QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs first. The UE can then generate the transport block and transmit it using the scheduled resource according to the received UL grant.

[0093] Common terminology

[0094] PDU: herein, a Protocol PDU Unit (PDU) may refer to a PDU at any protocol layer. For example, a PDU may refer to a Service Data Adaptation Protocol (SDAP) PDU, a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) PDU, a Radio Link Control (REC) PDU, a Medium Access Control (MAC) PDU, or a Physical layer (PHY) PDU, a Transport Block (TB), a Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) RV. For example, a PDU may refer to a PDU of a new adaptation layer introduced to support UE aggregation.

[0095] Reference-Signal: herein, reference-signal may be used to describe one more of the existing reference-signals such as Sounding Reference Signal (SRS), SRS for positioning, Sidelink Positioning Reference Signal (SL-PRS). Reference-signal may be used to describe new referencesignals designed for other purposes such as sensing. A reference-signal can be transmitted in a standalone manner or together with PDU.

[0096] QoS of a PDU: herein, Quality of Service (QoS) of a PDU (e.g., MAC PDU) may refer to one or any combination of one or more the 5G QoS Identifier (5QI) parameters associated with a RB / LCH and control information (e.g., MAC CE) included in the PDU such as priority, PDB, reliability (e.g., Packet Error Rate, PER), and Maximum Data Burst Volume (MDBV), and one or more configuration parameters associated with an RB / LCH included in the PDU (e.g., MACPDU), for example, whether the RB / LCH is (pre-)configured with UE aggregation enabled / disabled, the number of aggregated UEs associated with the RB / LCH, the HARQ retransmission mode associated with the RB / LCH, whether the RB / LCH is associated with HARQ enabled or HARQ disabled transmission.

[0097] QoS of a PDU consisting of multiple higher layer PDUs: herein, the QoS of a PDU consisting of multiple higher PDUs may refer to one or more of the following QoS.

[0098] The maximum / minimum of one 5QI parameter of all RB / LCH or control information (e g., MAC CE) included in the PDU such as the maximum of the priority, the minimum of PDB, the minimum PER, the maximum MDBV.

[0099] One or more QoS associated with the multiple PDUs (e.g., PDU set), in which the considered PDU may be one PDU in the PDU set. The QoS parameters for the PDU set may include one or more of PDU Set Delay Budget (PSDB), which may be used to indicate the maximum duration between the reception time of the first PDU and the time when all PDUs of a PDU Set have been successfully received, PDU Set Error Rate (PSER), which may be used to indicate the bound for the data lost rate of a PDU set and PDU Set Integrated Handling Information (PSIHI), which may be used to indicate whether all PDUs of a PDU Set are needed for the usage of the PDU Set.

[0100] One or more configuration parameter of an RB / LCH included in the PDU (e.g., MAC PDU), for example, whether the PDU include one RB / LCH is (pre-)configured with UE aggregation enabled / disabled, the maximum number of aggregated UEs associated with one RB / LCH included in the PDU and the HARQ retransmission mode associated with one RB / LCH included in the PDU.

[0101] QoS associated with the Reference-Signal: herein, QoS associated with the referencesignal may be used to refer to the priority, latency, reliability of the reference-signal. It also be used to refer to one or more transmission parameters of the reference- signal such as the bandwidth, comb size, comb pattern, etc.

[0102] Traffic: herein traffic may be used to describe the one or more of PDUs generated by the UE, PDUs received by the UE, and / or the PDUs transmitted by the UE, and reference-signals such as SL-PRS, SRS, SRS for positioning generated by the UE, received by the UE, and / or transmitted by the UE.

[0103] Herein, “traffic” may be used interchangeably with “PDU traffic”, “Reference-signal traffic”, and “PDU / Reference-signal traffic”.

[0104] Type ofUEs: herein, ‘Source UE’ may refer to an initiator ofa PDU to transmit to another node such as gNB or another UE, ‘Destination UE’ may refer to an end receiver of a PDU, which may be transmitted from gNB or another UE, ‘Assistant UE' may refer to a UE supporting anotherUE (e g., source UE or destination UE) in transmitting and receiving a PDU, ‘Group coordinator (GC)’ may refer to a UE supporting the gNB to perform one or more functions such as scheduling for one or more UEs, which may belong to a group (e.g., group of UEs), and ‘Member UE’ may refer to one UE in a group, which may interact with the group GC and / or other member UE to perform one or more procedures under the coordination of the group coordinator UE. A member UE may refer to one UE in a group, which coordinates with other UEs in the group to perform a group-related application.

[0105] (Pre-)configuration: herein, a UE being (pre-)configured with something may be used to describe one or more of the UE receiving information indicative of a configuration from the gNB or another node such as the group coordinator, and the UE being preconfigured with a certain configuration. The configuration from gNB may be received via one or any combination of Downlink Control Information (DCI), MAC CE, Radio Resource Control (RRC), System Information Block (SIB), and / or Non-Access Stratum (NAS) message. The configuration received from another node (e.g., group coordinator) may be via one or any combination of Sidelink Control Information (SCI), PC5 MAC CE, PC5 RRC, and / or NAS message. PC5 may be used to describe the sidelink interface. For simplicity, hereinafter the expression ‘configured’ may be used instead of ‘(pre-)configured’ .

[0106] Beam: A UE may transmit or receive a physical channel or reference signal according to at least one spatial domain filter. The term “beam” may be used to refer to a spatial domain filter used to transmit / receive signals.

[0107] The UE may transmit a physical channel or signal using the same spatial domain filter as the spatial domain filter used for receiving a Reference Signal (RS) (such as CSI-RS) or a Synchronization Signal (SS) block. The UE transmission may be referred to as “target”, and the received RS or SS block may be referred to as “reference” or “source”. In such case, the UE may be said to transmit the target physical channel or signal according to a spatial relation with a reference to such RS or SS block.

[0108] The UE may transmit a first physical channel or signal according to the same spatial domain filter as the spatial domain filter used for transmitting a second physical channel or signal. The first and second transmissions may be referred to as “target” and “reference” (or “source”), respectively. In such case, the UE may be said to transmit the first (target) physical channel or signal according to a spatial relation with a reference to the second (reference) physical channel or signal.

[0109] A spatial relation may be implicit, configured by RRC or signaled by MAC CE or DCI. For example, a UE may implicitly transmit PUSCH and DM-RS of PUSCH according to the same spatial domain filter as an SRS indicated by an SRS resource indicator (SRI) indicated in DCI orconfigured by RRC. In another example, a spatial relation may be configured by RRC for an SRI or signaled by MAC CE for a PUCCH. Such spatial relation may also be referred to as a “beam indication”.

[0110] The UE may receive a first (target) downlink channel or signal according to the same spatial domain filter or spatial reception parameter as a second (reference) downlink channel or signal. For example, such an association may exist between a physical channel such as PDCCH or PDSCH and its respective DM-RS. At least when the first and second signals are reference signals, such association may exist when the UE is configured with a quasi-colocation (QCL) assumption type D between corresponding antenna ports. Such association may be configured as a Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) state. A UE may be indicated an association between a CSI-RS or SS block and a Demodulation Reference Signal (DM-RS) by an index to a set of TCI states configured by RRC and / or signaled by MAC CE. Such an indication may also be referred to as a “beam indication”.

[0111] Configuration: herein, the UE being “configured with” may refer to that the UE receives information indicative of a configuration from the gNB or another node (e.g., group coordinator UE). For the case that the UE receives the information indicative of a configuration from the gNB, the UE may receive information indicative of a dedicated RRC configuration or SIB from the gNB. For the case that the UE receives the information indicative of a configuration from another node, the UE may receive the information indicative of a configuration via sidelink communication (e.g., PC5 RRC, SL MAC CE, SCI).

[0112] Link quality between two nodes: herein, the radio link quality between two nodes (e.g., between a source and assistant UEs, between two assistant UEs, between the group coordinator and member UEs, between two member UEs, or between a UE and gNB) may refer to one or any combination of the ones mentioned below.

[0113] Radio Link Failure (RLF) status between two nodes. For example, the link quality between two nodes may refer to whether RLF is detected / declared by the evaluating node (e.g., evaluating UE).

[0114] Synchronization status between two nodes. For example, the link quality between two nodes may refer to whether the evaluating node (e.g., evaluating UE) is synchronized with the peer node (e.g., gNB or the peer UE).

[0115] Beam management status between two nodes. For example, the link quality between two nodes may refer to whether beam failure is detected / declared by the evaluating node (e.g., evaluating UE).

[0116] Layer 1 or Layer 3 measurements of transmission(s) between two nodes, which may include but not limited to Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP), Received Signal Received 1Quality (RSRQ), Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR), Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), Pathloss, Block Error Rate (BLER), etc. In one approach, the LI or L3 measurement may be performed at the evaluating node (e.g., evaluating UE). In another approach, the LI or L3 measurement may be perform at the peer node (e.g., gNB) and sent to the evaluating node (e.g., evaluating UE). For example, the link quality between two nodes may refer to the L3 RSRP of transmission from the peer node.

[0117] Distance between two nodes. For example, the link quality between two nodes may refer to the distance between the two nodes; the UE may determine the link quality between two nodes as good if the distance between the nodes is smaller than a configured threshold and otherwise determine the link quality between two nodes as not good.

[0118] Channel busy ratio (CBR) of the resource pool used to exchange PDUs between two nodes. For example, the link quality between two nodes may refer to the CBR of the resource pool used to transmit data between the source and the assistant UEs.

[0119] The transmission latency of a PDU between the two nodes. For example, the link quality between two nodes may refer to the maximum / minimum latency requirement to transmit a PDU between the two nodes. The link quality between two nodes may be considered as good if the latency is smaller than a configured threshold and otherwise be considered not good.

[0120] Uplink channel to transmit a PDU: herein, either the Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) or Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) may be used for transmission of a PDU. A solution described for PUSCH transmission may be applicable for PUCCH transmission and vice versa.

[0121] Resource-request: herein, a resource-request message may be used to indicate one or more transmissions / messages from one node (e.g., member UE) to another node (e.g., group coordinator, gNB) to request for transmission resource. The transmission / messages may include one or more a Scheduling Request (SR), a Sidelink Scheduling Request (i.e., SL-SR) which may be a Scheduling Request sending from one UE to the group coordinator to request resource from the group coordinator, a MAC CE such as BSR, DRS or a new MAC CE, and a PC5 MAC CE, such as SL-BSR, SL-DSR, that may be used to indicate information regarding the requested resource or buffer status information at the UE conveyed to the group coordinator via sidelink.

[0122] SR vs. SL-SR: herein, Scheduling Request (SR) may be used instead of Sidelink Scheduling Request (SL-SR), in which the SR may be used to indicate the scheduling request transmitted in PC5 from one UE to another UE (e.g., group coordinator).

[0123] MAC CE vs. PCS MAC CE: herein, MAC CE (e g., Buffer Status Report (BSR), Delay Status Report, (DSR)) may be used instead of PC5 MAC CE (e.g., SL-BSR, SL-DSR), whereinthe MAC CE may be used to indicate information regarding the requested resource or buffer status of the UE conveyed to the group coordinator via sidelink.

[0124] Scheduler Selection

[0125] Assuming that a member UE is in one group under the control of a GC (group coordinator), that the GC is assumed to be configured with UL resources for the group and performs the scheduling on behalf of the gNB over these UL resources, a member UE may thus request resources (e.g., via SR / BSR) from either the GC (i.e., for using UL resources for the group) or the gNB (i.e., to use other resources). A mechanism is needed to control / configure the member UE to determine from which scheduler to request the resource for its own uplink data transmission dynamically.

[0126] A number of embodiments for scheduler selection will now be presented.

[0127] In a first embodiment, a UE determines the scheduler from which to request resource for its transmission.

[0128] A UE (e.g., member UE) may have PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) for transmission in sidelink and / or uplink. The UE may select one or any combination of the following schedulers for its transmission resources: the gNB, another UE (e.g., the group coordinator), and the UE itself.

[0129] For example, if the UE selects the gNB or another UE as the scheduler for its uplink and / or sidelink transmission, it may then transmit the resource request (e.g., the UE may transmit a SR / BSR) to the selected device to request its sidelink and / or uplink transmission resource.

[0130] For example, if the UE determines itself to be the scheduler for its transmission, the UE may then autonomously select the uplink and / or sidelink transmission resources for its transmission. The transmission resources may be selected from a pool of resources, which may be indicated / scheduled by another node (e.g., another UE such as the group coordinator or the gNB).

[0131] The UE may determine which scheduler (e.g., gNB, the group coordinator, another UE, or the UE itself) for its transmission resource based on one or any combination of a configured precedence / priority of the scheduler, the service associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s), the QoS associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s), the type of transmission resource, the buffer status of the UE, properties of the requested resources, the availability of uplink resource within a configured duration, and the availability of sidelink resource within a configured duration, as will now be described.

[0132] Configured precedence / priority of the scheduler. The UE may be configured to prioritize one scheduler (e.g., the gNB, another UE, and / or the UE itself) when requesting a transmission resource. The UE may then prioritize the configured scheduler to request transmission resource for its transmission. In one example, the UE may be configured to prioritize the gNB as the scheduler and may then request the gNB for its transmission resource. In another example, the UEmay be configured to prioritize the group coordinator as the scheduler and may then prioritize to request the group coordinator for its transmission resource. In another example, the UE may be configured to prioritize itself as the scheduler and the UE may then autonomously select the sidelink and / or uplink resource for its transmission.

[0133] The service associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). For example, the UE may be configured to request transmission resources from the group coordinator if the UE has data associated with a first configured service. Alternatively, if the UE has data from a second configured service, the UE may autonomously select resource for its transmission. Otherwise, the UE may request transmission resource from the gNB.

[0134] The QoS associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). A number of examples will be given to describe this.

[0135] In a first example, the UE may be configured with a set (e.g., the first set) of the QoS- flow(s), Radio Bearer(s) and / or Logical Channel(s) (QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s)) requiring the UE to request the resource from gNB. The UE may be further configured with another set (e.g., the second set) of the QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s) requiring the UE to request the resource from the group coordinator. The UE may then determine from which scheduler to request its transmission resource based on whether the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is from the first or second set of QoS- flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s). Specifically, if the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is from the first set of QoS- flow / RBs / LCHs, the UE may request the resource from the gNB. Otherwise, if the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is from the second set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s), the UE may request the resource from the group coordinator. If the UE has PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) from both set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s), in one approach, the UE may request the transmission resources from both schedulers. In another approach, the UE may request the transmission resource from one configured prioritized scheduler (e.g., either the gNB or group coordinator).

[0136] In a second example, the UE may determine the scheduler based on the packet delay budget (PDB) of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) in the buffer. Specifically, the UE may request the resource from one scheduler (e.g., the gNB) if the PDB of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) in the buffer is smaller than a configured threshold. Otherwise, if the PDB of the PDU(s) / Reference- Signal(s) in the buffer is larger than a configured threshold, the UE may request the transmission resource from another scheduler (e g., group coordinator). This approach may be motivated to balance between meeting QoS requirement (e.g., PDB) and the scheduling offloading. Specifically, if the UE has low PDB PDU(s) / Reference-Signal, the UE may be allowed to request transmission resource from the gNB. Alternatively, for high PDB PDUs, the UE may request transmission resource from the group coordinator, which may take more time for the UE to get the transmission resource.

[0137] In a third example, the UE may determine the scheduler based on the type of traffic (e.g., periodic vs aperiodic traffic). Specifically, if the traffic is periodic, the UE may request its transmission resource from the group coordinator. Otherwise, if the traffic is aperiodic, the UE may request the resource from the gNB.

[0138] In a fourth example, the UE may determine the scheduler based on whether the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is HARQ disabled or enabled. Specifically, the UE may request the transmission resource from the group coordinator for HARQ disabled PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) and from the gNB for HARQ enabled PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s).

[0139] The type of transmission resource can for example include whether the transmission resource is UE-dedicated, or shared among multiple UEs, whether the transmission resource is periodic or aperiodic, whether the transmission resource have associated Physical Sidelink Feedback Channel (PSFCH) feedback, whether the transmission resource is for the initial transmission or HARQ retransmission, whether the transmission resource is uplink and / or sidelink, and whether the transmission resource is configured grant, or dynamic grant. For example, the UE may be configured with two types of transmission resources, where the first type of transmission resources may be dedicated for the UE and the second type of transmission resources may be shared with other UEs. The first type of transmission resources (e.g., the resources dedicated to the UE) may be scheduled by the gNB and the second type of transmission resources (e.g., the resources sharing with other UEs) may be scheduled by the group coordinator.

[0140] Buffer status of the UE. In one example, the UE may determine which scheduler to select based on the amount of data in the buffer. For example, the UE may select the group coordinator as the scheduler if the amount of data in the buffer is smaller than a configured threshold. Otherwise, if the amount of data in the buffer is larger than the configured threshold, the UE may select the gNB or both the gNB and the group coordinator as the schedulers.

[0141] The properties of the requested resources, e.g., the number of requested resources, the bandwidth of requested resource, the latency of the requested resource, the carrier associated with the requested resource. In one example, the UE may request transmission resources from the group coordinator if the number of requested resources is smaller than a configured threshold. Otherwise, if the number of requested resources is larger than the configured threshold, the UE may request the transmission resource from the gNB. Alternatively, if the number of requested resources is larger than the configured threshold, the UE may request transmission resource from both the gNB and the group coordinator. In another example, if the bandwidth of the requested resource (e.g., for Reference-Signal(s) transmission such as SL-PRS or SRS for positioning) is larger than a configured threshold, the UE may request the transmission resource from the gNB. Otherwise, ifthe bandwidth of the requested resource is smaller than the configured threshold, the UE may request the transmission resource from the group coordinator.

[0142] The availability of uplink resource within a configured duration. In one example, the UE may select the gNB as the scheduler if it has an uplink resource within a configured duration. Specifically, the UE may be configured with a latency threshold, in which if the gap between data arrival time and the uplink grant time is larger than the latency threshold, the UE may request its transmission resource from the group coordinator. Otherwise, if the scheduled uplink grant is within the latency threshold, the UE may request its transmission resource from the gNB. The UE may use the scheduled uplink grant to transmit the scheduling request (SR). Alternatively, the UE may use the uplink grant to transmit BSR, which may be Uu BSR and / or SL BSR.

[0143] The availability of sidelink resource within a configured duration. For example, the UE may request the gNB for its transmission resource if it does not have a scheduled sidelink resource within a configured latency bound. Otherwise, if the UE has a scheduled sidelink resource within the configured latency bound, the UE may request the group coordinator for its transmission. The UE may use the scheduled sidelink grant to request its transmission resource for uplink and / or sidelink transmission.

[0144] In a second embodiment, the UE is configured with multiple types of transmission resources.

[0145] A UE (e.g., a member UE) may be configured with multiple types of transmission resources, where each type of the transmission resource may be associated with one or any combination of the following.

[0146] The scheduler of the transmission resource. The UE may be configured with multiple types of transmission resources, where each type of transmission resource may be associated with one scheduler. For example, the first type of transmission resource may be scheduled by the gNB, the second type of transmission resource may be scheduled by another node (e.g., a group coordinator), and the third type of transmission resource may be autonomously selected by the UE.

[0147] The set of UEs using the transmission resource. For example, the UE may be configured with two types of transmission resources in which the first type of transmission resource is dedicated for the UE and the second type of transmission resource may be shared with one or more other UEs.

[0148] Whether the transmission resource is periodic or aperiodic. For example, the UE may be configured / scheduled with two types of transmission resource, in which the first type of transmission resource may be periodic resources and the second type of transmission resource may be aperiodic resource.

[0149] Whether the transmission resource is for HARQ enabled and / or disabled PDU / Reference- Signals. For example, the UE may be configured / scheduled with two types of transmission resources, in which the first type of transmission resource allows the UE to transmit HARQ enabled PDUs / Reference-Signals and the second type of transmission resources allow the UE to transmit HARQ disabled PDUs / Reference-Signals only.

[0150] Whether the transmission resource is configured grant type one (e.g., the grant is configured by RRC), configured grant type two (e.g., the grant is configured by RRC and activated by DCI), or dynamic grant (e.g., the grant is dynamically scheduled by DCI)

[0151] Whether the transmission resource is for initial transmission of a PDUs / Reference- Signals and / or retransmission of the PDUs / Reference-Signals. For example, the UE may be (configured with multiple types of transmission resource, in which the first type of transmission resource may be used for initial transmission of a PDU / Reference- Signal only, the second type of transmission resource may be used for HARQ retransmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal only, and the third type of transmission resource may be used for either initial transmission or retransmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal.

[0152] Whether the transmission resource is for uplink or sidelink transmission. For example, the UE may be configured with two types of resources in which the first type of resources may be used for uplink transmission and the second type of resources may be used for sidelink transmission.

[0153] The frequency (e.g., carrier / BWP) associated with the resource. For example, the UE may be configured with two types of resource in which the first type of resource may be associated with the first set of frequencies (e.g., carriers / BWP) and the second type of resources may be associated with the second set of frequencies (e.g., carriers / BWP).

[0154] The UE may then determine which type of transmission resource to use for its sidelink and / or uplink transmission based on one or any combination of the following.

[0155] The service associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). In one example, the UE may be configured with two services in which the first service requires the UE to use the first type of resources (e.g., dedicated resources for the UE only) and the second type of service requires the UE to use the second type of resources (e.g., shared resources with other UEs). The UE may then determine which type of resources to use for a PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) based on the service associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). Specifically, if the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is (are) associated with the first service, the UE may use the first type of resources and if the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is associated with the second service, the UE may use the second type of resources.

[0156] QoS of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). In a first example, the UE may be configured with a set (e.g., the first set) of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s) requiring the UE to use the first type of resources (e.g., dedicated resources for the UE only) and the UE may be further configured with a second set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s) requiring the UE to use the second type of resources (e g., shared resources with other UEs). The UE may then determine which type of resources to use for its transmission based on whether the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is from the first or second set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s). Specifically, if the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is from the first set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s), the UE may use the first type of resources. Otherwise, if the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is from the second set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s), the UE may use the second type of resources. In a second example, the UE may be configured with two sets of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s), in which the first set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s) is HARQ enabled and the second set of RBs / LCHs is HARQ disabled. The UE may also be configured / scheduled with two types of transmission resources, in which the first type of transmission resource may be used to transmit HARQ enabled PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s), and the second type of transmission resource may be used to transmit HARQ disabled PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). The UE may then determine to use the first type of transmission resource (e.g., HARQ enabled resource) if it uses the resource to transmit HARQ enabled PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). Otherwise, the UE may use the second type of transmission resource (e g., HARQ disabled resource) if it uses the resource to transmit HARQ disabled PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s).

[0157] Buffer status of the UE. For example, the UE may determine which type of resources to use for its transmission based on the amount of data in the buffer. Specifically, the UE may use a first type of resources (e.g., the resource dedicated for the UE) for its transmission if the amount of data in the buffer is smaller than a configured threshold. Otherwise, if the amount of data in the buffer is lager than the configured threshold, the UE may use both the first type of resources (e.g., the resource dedicated for the UE) and a second type of resources (e.g., the resource shared with one or more other UEs).

[0158] The properties of the request resources (e.g., the number of requested resources, the bandwidth of requested resource, the latency of the requested resource, the carrier associated with the requested resource). For example, the UE may be configured with two types of transmission resources in which the first type of transmission resources is UE-dedicated, and the second type of transmission resource is shared among UEs. The UE may then determine which type of transmission resources to select based on the properties of the requested resources. Specifically, if the number of requested resources is greater than a configured threshold, the UE may select theUE-dedicated resources. Otherwise, if the number of requested resources is larger than the configured threshold, the UE may select the resources shared among UEs.

[0159] The availability of another type of resources. For example, the UE may be configured with a priority associated with each type of resource. The UE may then prioritize selecting the transmission resource with higher priority. For example, the UE may be configured / scheduled two types of transmission resources, in which the priority associated with the fist type of transmission resource (e.g., the resources dedicated for the UE) is higher than the priority associated with the second type of transmission resource (e g., the resources shared by one or more other UEs). The UE may then prioritize selecting the first type of transmission resources for its transmission. The UE may select the second type of transmission resources if the first type of transmission resource is not available, or the first type of transmission resource is not enough for its transmission. For example, the UE may always prioritize selecting the dedicated resource for its transmission. If the number of dedicated resources is not sufficient for its transmission, the UE may further select shared resource for its transmission.

[0160] In a third embodiment, the UE switches to another scheduler or adds a scheduler to list of schedulers for its transmission resources.

[0161] The UE may be configured with one scheduler (e.g., group coordinator) and determine that the current scheduler is not sufficient / adequate for its transmissions. The UE may then switch to another scheduler. Alternatively, the UE may add another scheduler to request resource for its transmission.

[0162] In an example, the UE may be configured with a first scheduler (e.g., the gNB) and may add a further scheduler (e.g., the group coordinator or UE autonomous resource allocation) as an additional scheduler. In another example, the UE may be configured with a first scheduler (e.g., the gNB or the GC) and switch to another scheduler (e.g., the GC or itself).

[0163] The UE may determine to switch to another scheduler or add a scheduler for its transmission based on one or any combination of the criteria.

[0164] Indication from the network, which may be received directly from the network or via another node (e.g., the group coordinator). In one example, the UE may receive an indication from the network to switch to another scheduler (e.g., group coordinator) and may then request the new scheduler (e.g., the group coordinator) for its transmission resource. In another example, the UE may receive an indication from the network to add the group coordinator as an additional scheduler and may then request either gNB or the group coordinator for its transmission resource, where the determination may be based on configured criteria such as QoS of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) in the buffer.

[0165] Indication from another node (e.g., group coordinator). In one example, the UE may receive an indication from the group coordinator to switch to another scheduler (e.g., gNB or UE itself). The UE may then switch to the gNB as a new scheduler or perform UE autonomous resource selection upon receiving the indication from the group coordinator. Such an indication may be received in a sidelink message such as NAS, PC5 RRC, MAC CE, or SCI. If the UE determines to switch to the gNB as the new scheduler, the UE may then perform random access to synchronize to the gNB. The UE may then send an indication to the gNB to indicate that it is switching to the gNB as the new scheduler. The UE may send such information using any of the Msgl, MsgA, Msg3, Msg5, of a subsequent RRC message. In the RRC message, the UE may indicate the re-establishment cause, which may be associated with scheduling changing. In another example, the UE may receive an indication from the group coordinator to add another scheduler (e.g., gNB or UE itself) for its transmission. For example, the UE may receive an indication from the group coordinator to perform UE autonomous selection for the first set of QoS- flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s) and request the transmission resource from the group coordinator for the second set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s). The UE may add another scheduler (e.g., UE itself) if it has PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) from the first set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s).

[0166] QoS associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) in the buffer. In one example, the UE may be configured to perform UE autonomous resource allocation for low priority PDUs (e.g., the priority of the PDU is smaller than a configured threshold). The UE may switch to another scheduler (e.g., network scheduling) if the UE establishes an RB / LCH having priority being greater than a configured threshold. In another example, the UE may be configured to request transmission resource from the group coordinator if the priority of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is smaller than a configured threshold. The UE may be configured to request the transmission resource from the gNB if the priority of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) is greater than the configured threshold. The UE may then add the gNB as an additional scheduler if it establishes a QoS-flow / RB / LCH having priority being greater than the configured threshold.

[0167] Buffer status of the UE. In one example, the UE may be configured with the group coordinator as the scheduler. The UE may then switch to another scheduler (e g., the UE itself) if the amount of data in the buffer is larger than a configured threshold. In another example, the UE may be configured with the group coordinator as the scheduler. The UE may be configured with the maximum amount of resource to be scheduled by the group coordinator within a configured period. The UE may then add another scheduler (e.g., UE itself) to the set of schedulers if the amount of data in the buffer is larger than a configured threshold.

[0168] The properties of the request resources, e.g., the number of requested resources, the bandwidth of requested resource, the latency of the requested resource, the carrier associated withthe requested resource. For example, the UE may be configured with the group coordinator as the scheduler. The UE may then switch to another scheduler (e.g., the UE itself) if the amount of requested resource is larger than a configured threshold.

[0169] The availability of the current scheduler. For example, the UE may be configured to prioritize the group coordinator as the scheduler. The UE may switch to another scheduler (e.g., switch to UE autonomous resource selection) if the group coordinator is not able to schedule a resource for its transmission. Specifically, the UE may switch to UE autonomous resource selection if the UE has not received a grant from the group coordinator for a configured period upon transmitting the scheduling request to the group coordinator.

[0170] The link quality between itself and the current scheduler. In one example, the UE may be configured with the group coordinator as the scheduler. The UE may switch to another scheduler (e g., itself or the gNB) if the SL-RSRP of the transmission between itself and the group coordinator is smaller than a configured threshold. In another example, the UE may be configured with the group coordinator as the scheduler. The UE may switch to another scheduler (e.g., itself or the gNB) if RLF is declared for the link between the UE and the group coordinator.

[0171] The resource usage associated with the current scheduler. In one example, the UE may be configured with a maximum resource usage (e.g., Channel Occupancy Ratio) for the resources scheduled by a scheduler. The UE may be configured with the first scheduler (e.g., the group coordinator) and may then determine to add another scheduler (e.g., UE itself) if the Channel Occupancy Ratio of the UE from the resource scheduled by the first scheduler is greater than a configured threshold. In another example, the UE may be configured to perform UE autonomous resource allocation. The UE may switch to group coordinator scheduling if the CBR of the resource pool associated with the UE autonomous resource allocation is greater than a configured threshold.

[0172] In a fourth embodiment, the UE determines the parameters for PDU(s) / Reference- Signal(s) from one QoS-flow / RB / LCH.

[0173] The UE may have in its buffer PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) associated with one QoS- flow / RB / LCH. The UE may determine one or any combination of the following transmission parameters for the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s): LI (e.g., PHY layer associated transmission) transmission parameters such as the transmission power, the MCS, L2 (e.g., MAC, RLC, PDCP, SDAP layers associated parameters) transmission parameters such as AM / UM mode, HARQ enabled / disabled transmission, and priority associated with the transmission of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s).

[0174] The UE may implicitly / explicitly indicate one or more transmission parameters in the transmission of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). The transmission parameters may be indicated in the SCI / SL MAC CE for sidelink transmission. Alternatively, for uplink transmission, thetransmission parameters may be indicated in Uplink Control Information (UCI) and / or MAC CE. The transmission parameters may be determined based on one or any combination of the following.

[0175] Configuration from the gNB and / or another node (e.g., group coordinator). For example, the UE may be configured with a mapping of a QoS-flow to a set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters and may then determine which L1 / L2 transmission parameters to use based on the QoS-flow associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s).

[0176] One or more parameters associated with the QoS-flow / RB / LCH of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). Specifically, the UE may be configured with one set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters as a function of one or more parameter associated with the QoS- flow / RB / LCH. The UE may then determine the set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters to use based on the value of the configured parameters. For example, the UE may be configured with one set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters as a function of the PSI of the PDU and may then determine the transmission parameters of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) based on the PSI of the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s).

[0177] The type of resource used to transmit the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). Specifically, the UE may be configured with a set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters as a function of the type of resources used to transmit the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) and may then determine the transmission parameters to use based on the type of resources used to transmit the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s). For example, the UE may be configured with two set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters in which the first set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters may be used for the resource dedicated for the UE and the second set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters may be used for the resources shared among UEs in a group. The UE may then determine which set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters to use based on whether the resource is dedicated for the UE or shared with the group of UEs. Specifically, if the resource is dedicated for the UE, the UE may use the first set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters; otherwise, if the resource is shared by the group of UEs, the UE may use the second set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters.

[0178] The scheduler to request the transmission resource to transmit the PDU(s) / Reference- Signal(s). For example, the UE may be configured with two set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters in which the first set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters may be used for the resource scheduled by the group coordinator, and the second set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters may be used for the resources scheduled by the gNB. The UE may then determine which set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters to use based on the scheduler associated with the resource. Specifically, if the resource is scheduled by the group coordinator, the UE may use the first set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters; otherwise, if the resource is scheduled by the group coordinator, the UE may use the second set of L1 / L2 transmission parameters.

[0179] In a fifth embodiment, the UE sends indication to the gNB regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler.

[0180] The UE (e.g., member UE) may be configured with one scheduler (e.g., group coordinator) for its transmission. A UE (e.g., a member UE or the group coordinator) may then send an indication to the network regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the group coordinator. Specifically, the UE (e.g., a member UE or the group coordinator) may send the indication to the network to inform the network of one or any combination of the link quality between the UE and the scheduler (for example, the UE may be configured to report the SL-RSRP between the UE and the scheduler if the channel between the two UEs is smaller than the configured threshold), the indication of whether the scheduler is providing the requested resources to the UE (for example, the UE may indicate to the network whether the scheduled resource is larger than the requested resources or the UE may indicate to the network whether the scheduled resource is larger than the required resources for its transmission), the buffer status of one or more UE(s) in the group, the QoS associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) in the buffer, the channel occupancy of one or more UEs in the group, the CBR associated with the resources scheduled of the sidelink resource pool.

[0181] A UE (e.g., member UE) may be configured with one or more triggering conditions to send the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the other scheduler to the gNB. Upon one or more triggering conditions being met, the UE may send the indication to the network. The UE may send the indication to the network by perform one or more of a random access procedure (for example, the UE may be configured with a scheduler as the scheduler, perform random access to send the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity, and may then send the availability / scheduling-activity indication to the gNB using any of the Msgl, MsgA, Msg3, Msg5, of a subsequent RRC message in which the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler may be implicitly / explicitly indicated by the cause associated with the re-establishment), transmission of the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler to the network using any of UCI, MAC CE, RRC, and / or NAS message to indicate the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler, and transmission of the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler to the network via another UE (e.g., group coordinator).

[0182] The UE may be configured to send the indication to the network based on one or any combination of the following criteria.

[0183] Changing of the current scheduler. For example, the UE may determine to change to another scheduler and may send indication to the network to report the intended scheduler. Alternatively, the UE may send the indication to the network to request for a different scheduler.

[0184] The link quality between itself and the current scheduler (e.g., the group scheduler). For example, the UE may send the indication (e.g., the indication regarding the availability / scheduling- activity of the current scheduler) if the SL-RSRP measured in the transmission between the UE itself and the current scheduler is smaller than a configured threshold.

[0185] The scheduling-activity of the current scheduler, for example, if the group coordinator is not able to schedule resource for its transmission. Specifically, the UE may switch to UE autonomous resource selection if the UE has not received a grant from the group coordinator for a configured period upon transmitting the scheduling request to the group coordinator.

[0186] Receiving an indication from the current scheduler. For example, the UE may receive an indication from the current scheduler (e g., the group coordinator) regarding its scheduling-activity (e.g., whether the scheduler can further schedule the UE). The UE may then indicate such indication to the gNB.

[0187] The buffer status of the UE. For example, the UE may send the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler to the network if the number of PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) in the buffer is larger than a configured threshold.

[0188] The properties of the requested resources. As a first example, the UE may send the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler if the number of requested resources is larger than a configured threshold. As a second example, the UE may send the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler if the bandwidth of the requested resources is larger than a configured threshold.

[0189] The QoS associated with the PDU(s) / Reference-Signal(s) in the buffer. For example, the UE may send the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler to the network if the PDB of the data in the buffer is smaller than a configured threshold.

[0190] The channel occupancy of one or more UEs in the group. For example, the UE may send the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler if the channel occupancy of the UE in the resources scheduled by the scheduler is larger than a configured threshold.

[0191] The CBR of the resource pool scheduled by the scheduler. For example, the UE may send the indication regarding the availability / scheduling-activity of the scheduler if the CBR of the resource pool scheduled by the scheduler is larger than a configured threshold.

[0192] In a sixth embodiment, the UE receives indication from the network to change the scheduler.

[0193] Upon reporting the information from the current scheduler (e.g., the availability and / or the scheduling-activity of the current scheduler), the UE may receive a message (e g., NAS, RRC, MAC CE, DCI) from the network to change to another scheduler, which may beimplicitly / explicitly indicated in the message. The UE may then change to the indicated scheduler by requesting the transmission resources from the indicated scheduler. Upon changing to another scheduler (e.g., gNB), the UE may perform a random access procedure (for example, the UE may determine to change the scheduler to the gNB and perform random access to align with the gNB), activate / deactivate transmission of SR / BSR (for example, upon changing the scheduler to gNB scheduling, the UE may activate sending SR / BSR to the gNB; for example, upon changing to group coordinator scheduling, the UE may deactivate sending SR / BSR to the network), and / or switch to another CORESET / search space (for example, the UE may switch to another CORESET / search space to monitor the scheduling from the gNB.)

[0194] In a seventh embodiment, the UE performs LCP procedure based on scheduler associated with the transmission.

[0195] The UE may be scheduled a resource for its transmission. The UE may then perform the Logical Channel Prioritization (LCP) procedure to multiplex one or more PDU(s) (e.g., RLC PDU) in a MAC PDU to transmit in the scheduled grant. In one approach, the UE may multiplex only the PDU(s) in a set of RBs / LCHs (e.g., a set of prioritized LCHs, a set of LCHs associated with the scheduler of the resource) to construct the MAC PDU and may perform LCH restriction and / or multiplexing restriction by not multiplexing the PDUs in other set of LCHs (e g., the set of nonprioritized RBs / LCHs, the set of LCHs not associated with the scheduler of the resource) to construct the MAC PDU. In another approach, the UE may multiplex both the prioritized and nonprioritized RBs / LCHs in the MAC PDU. Specifically, the UE may first select the PDU(s) from the set of prioritized RBs / LCHs to multiplex in the MAC PDU. The UE may then select the PDU(s) from the set of non-prioritized RBs / LCHs to multiplex in the MAC PDU. The UE may be configured with a condition / rule(s) for whether / when the PDU(s) from the set of non-prioritized RBs / LCHs can be multiplexed in the MAC PDU. Specifically, the UE may be configured to multiplex the non-prioritized RBs / LCHs in the MAC PDU if there is no remaining PDU from the set of prioritized RBs / LCHs. Alternatively, the UE may be configured to multiplex the nonprioritized RBs / LCHS in the MAC PDU if the number of PDU(s) from the prioritized RBs / LCHs is greater than a configured threshold.

[0196] In an eighth embodiment, the UE determines which PDU(s) to prioritize to multiplex in a MAC PDU for its transmission.

[0197] The UE (e.g., a member UE) may receive a grant for its transmission (e.g., uplink and / or sidelink transmission) and may then determine which PDU(s) to prioritize to multiplex in a MAC PDU to transmit in the scheduled grant. The determination may be based on one or more of the following.

[0198] The type of resources associated with the scheduled grant. For example, the UE may be configured with two types of resources, in which the first type of resource may be associated with the first set of RBs / LCHs, and the second type of resources may be associated with the second set of RBs / LCHs. The UE may then determine which PDU(s) to multiplex in a MAC PDU based on the scheduled type of resources. Specifically, if the UE is scheduled with the first type of resources, the UE may prioritize the PDU(s) in the first set of RBs / LCHs. Otherwise, if the UE is scheduled with the second type of resources, the UE may prioritize the PDU(s) in the second set of RBs / LCHs. For example, the UE may be configured with two types of resources, in which the first type of resources may be dedicated for the UE and the second type of resources may be shared with one or more other UEs. The UE may then determine which PDU(s) to multiplex in a MAC PDU based on the type of resources associated with the scheduled grant. Specifically, if the resource is dedicated for the UE, the UE may prioritize the RBs / LCHs having priority being greater than a configured threshold. Otherwise, if the resources are shared with one or more other UEs, the UE may prioritize the RBs / LCHs having priority being smaller than a configured threshold.

[0199] The scheduler associated with the grant. For example, the UE may be configured with two sets of RBs / LCHs, in which the first set of RBs / LCHs may be associated with the first scheduler and the second set of RBs / LCHs may be associated with the second scheduler. The UE may then determine which PDU(s) to multiplex in the MAC PDU based on the scheduler associated with the grant. Specifically, if the grant is scheduled by the first scheduler, the UE may prioritize the PDU(s) from the first set of RBs / LCHs. Otherwise, if the grant is scheduled by the second scheduler, the UE may then prioritize the PDU(s) from the second set of RBs / LCHs.

[0200] The indication from another node (e.g., gNB or group coordinator). In an example, the UE may receive an indication from the gNB of which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize. In another example, the UE may receive an indication from the group coordinator of which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize and may then determine which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize based on the indication from either the gNB or group coordinator.

[0201] In a ninth embodiment, the UE receive indication from the network of which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize.

[0202] The UE may receive an indication from another node (e.g., gNB or group coordinator) of which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize to be multiplexed in a PDU (e.g., MAC PDU) to transmit in a resource. The UE may receive one or more of the following indications from the network.

[0203] An indication in a DCI. In an example, the UE may be configured with two sets of RBs / LCHs and may receive an indication of which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize. In another example, the UE may be configured with two DCI formats in which the first DCI format may be used to schedule the transmission resource prioritizing the first set of RBs / LCHs and the secondDCI format may be used to schedule the transmission resources prioritizing the second setoff RBs / LCHs In another example, the UE may be configured with one bitfield in the DCI to indicate which set RBs / LCHs to prioritize, in which one codepoint may be used to prioritize the first set of RBs / LCHs and another codepoint may be used to prioritize the second set of RBs / LCHs and may then determine which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize to multiplex in the scheduled resource based on the codepoint indicated in the DCI scheduling the transmission resource. Specifically, the UE may prioritize the first set of RBs / LCHs if the first codepoint is indicated; the UE may prioritize the second set of RBs / LCHs if the second codepoint is indicated.

[0204] An RNTI. For example, the UE may be configured with two RNTIs (e.g., C-RNTIs), in which the first RNTI may be used to schedule transmission resources prioritizing the first set of RBs / LCHs and the second RNTI may be used to prioritize the second set of RBs / LCHs. The UE may then determine which set RBs / LCHs to prioritize based on the RNTI scrambling the DCI scheduling the transmission resource. Specifically, if the DCI is scrambled by the first RNTI, the UE may prioritize the first set of RBs / LCHs; if the DCI is scrambled by the second RNTI, the UE may prioritize the second set of RBs / LCHs.

[0205] A search space. For example, the UE may be configured with two search spaces, in which the first search space may be used to schedule transmission resources prioritizing the first set of RBs / LCHs and the second search space may be used to schedule transmission resources prioritizing the second set of RBs / LCHs. The UE may then determine which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize based on the search space associated with DCI scheduling the transmission resource. Specifically, if the DCI is associated with the first search space, the UE may prioritize the first set of RBs / LCHs; if the DCI is associated with the second search space, the UE may prioritize the second set of RBs / LCHs.

[0206] A CORESET. For example, the UE may be configured with two CORESETs, in which the first CORESET may be used to schedule transmission resources prioritizing the first set of RBs / LCHs and the second CORESET may be used to schedule transmission resources prioritizing the second set of RBs / LCHs. The UE may then determine which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize based on the CORESET associated with DCI scheduling the transmission resource. Specifically, if the DCI is associated with the first CORESET, the UE may prioritize the first set of RBs / LCHs; if the DCI is associated with the second CORESET, the UE may prioritize the second set of RBs / LCHs

[0207] A HARQ process ID. For example, the UE may be configured with two set of HARQ process IDs, in which the first set of HARQ process IDs may be used to schedule transmission resources prioritizing the first set of RBs / LCHs and the second set of HARQ process ID may be used to schedule transmission resources prioritizing the second set of RBs / LCHs. The UE maythen determine which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize based on the scheduled HARQ process ID associated with the transmission resource. Specifically, if the scheduled HARQ process ID belongs to the first set of HARQ process IDs, the UE may prioritize the first set of RBs / LCHS; if the scheduled HARQ process ID is associated with the second set of HARQ process IDs, the UE may prioritize the second set of RBs / LCHs.

[0208] An indication in a configured grant. For example, the UE may receive a configured grant. The UE may be configured with two set of RBs / LCHs. The UE may be indicated in the configuration (e.g., in RRC, MAC CE, or DCI) whether to prioritize the first or second set of RBs / LCHs. The UE may then prioritize either the first or the second set of RBs / LCHs based on the indication of which set of RBs / LCHs to prioritize associated with the configured grant.

[0209] The set of resources (e.g., a resource pool, a carrier, etc.) associated with the scheduled resources. For example, the UE may be configured with a set of resources (e.g., a resource pool, a carrier), in which the UE may prioritize one set of RBs / LCHs for each transmission resource within the configured set of resource. Upon receiving the scheduled resource from the set of resources, the UE may then prioritize the indicated set of RBs / LCHs to multiplex in a MAC PDU for its transmission.

[0210] In a tenth embodiment, the UE indicates the information regarding its uplink transmission to the gNB.

[0211] The UE (e.g., member UE) may perform uplink transmission in one or more uplink resources, which may be scheduled by either gNB or the group coordinator. The UE may then indicate the information associated with its transmission to help the network in decoding the message. The UE may indicate one or more parameters in the UCI, MAC header, MAC CE, and / or RRC. The UE may indicate (implicitly / explicitly) in the uplink transmission (e.g., in UCI, MAC CE, and / or RRC) one or more of HARQ ID (for example, the UE may indicate the HARQ ID in the UCI to support the gNB in HARQ combining of the PUSCH), MCS (for example, the UE may indicate the MCS used for PUSCH transmission in the UCI, which may help the gNB in decoding the PUSCH; for example, the UE may be scheduled with a configured grant for the group), and the ID associated with the UE (e.g., UE ID and / or member UE ID in the group, an RNTI associated with the UE such as C-RNTI).

[0212] FIG. 3 illustrates an example method of scheduler selection and LCP based on the scheduler. In the example method, a UE (e.g., member UE) determines the scheduler (e.g., gNB or group coordinator) for its PDUs for uplink transmission and sends the resource-request (e.g., SR / BSR in sidelink or Uu, MAC CE, PC5 MAC CE) to the determined scheduler based on the buffer status of the UE. Upon reception of a scheduled resource, the UE determines which PDUto prioritize to multiplex in a MAC PDU to transmit in the scheduled resource based on the scheduler of the resource.

[0213] In step S302, the UE receives information indicative of a configuration for a GC and of associated group scheduling request configuration (e.g. over PC5) for the UE UL transmission.

[0214] In step S304, the UE receives information indicative of configuration / conditions to determine whether to request the UL resource from the group coordinator (GC) or the gNB.

[0215] For example, the UE can be configured with two sets of QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs, where the first set requires the UE to request the transmission resource from GC and the second set requires the UE to request the transmission resource from gNB.

[0216] For example, the UE can be configured with a PDB threshold to determine whether to request transmission resources from gNB or GC.

[0217] For example, the UE can be configured with the amount of data threshold, and the UE may request a transmission resource from the GC if the amount of data in the buffer is smaller than the configured threshold.

[0218] In step S306, upon UL data arrival, the UE sends the UL resource request to the GC if the data in the buffer satisfies the configured condition (e.g., the PDU belongs to first set of QoS- fl ows / RB s / LCHs) .

[0219] In step S308, the UE receives the UL grant from the GC.

[0220] In step S310, the UE prioritizes the PDU from the QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s) configured associated with the GC scheduler (e.g., the first set of QoS-flow(s) / RB(s) / LCH(s)).

[0221] In step S312, the UE performs LCP restriction by allowing only the first set of QoS- fl ows / RB s / LCHs to multiplex in the MAC PDU, or performs LCP prioritization by multiplexing the first set of QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs first.

[0222] In step S314, the UE constructs the transport block and transmit using the scheduled resource according to the received UL grant.

[0223] Uu HARQ (re-)transmission scheduling

[0224] HARQ is supported in Uu, so the network may request the UE to retransmit a PDU if the gNB fails to decode the PDU. It will be appreciated that there is a desire in GC offloading for a solution that enables the GC to offload the scheduling of Uu HARQ retransmission resource.

[0225] In a first embodiment, the UE receives a set of resources for other UEs.

[0226] The UE (e.g., the group coordinator) may receive a set of resources, which may be used by the group (e.g., one or more member UEs and the group coordinator) or one or more member UEs for uplink and / or sidelink transmission. In one approach, such resources may be dynamically indicated (e.g., via DCI) by the gNB. In another approach, such resources may be semi-statically configured and indicated to the UE (e.g., group coordinator) via MAC CE, RRC, and / or SIB. TheUE, upon reception of such resources, may then schedule / indicate to the member UEs so that the member UE may use the resources for uplink and / or sidelink transmission. Specifically, the UE may be provided one or more of the following types of resources for the member UEs.

[0227] A dedicated resource pool. For example, the group coordinator may receive a dedicated resource pool for the group to use for transmissions. Such a resource pool may be used by one or more member UEs for sidelink and / or uplink transmission. Such a resource pool may also be used by the group coordinator for its transmission. Such a resource pool may also be used by the group coordinator to schedule for the member UEs.

[0228] A configured grant. For example, the UE may receive one or more configured grants (e.g., type-1, type-2 configured grant), which may implicitly / explicitly indicate that the configured grant may be used for one or more member UEs. The group coordinator, upon reception of a configured grant for a member UE, may then forward the configured grant to the member UE.

[0229] A dynamic grant. For example, the UE may receive a dynamic grant for one or more member UEs (e.g., via DCI). The dynamic grant may be conveyed to the UE via DCI. The UE may also receive implicit / explicit indication that the grant may be used by one or more member UEs. The UE, upon reception of the dynamic grant, may schedule / indicate such grant for one or more member UEs.

[0230] In a second embodiment, the UE schedules initial transmission for a UE.

[0231] The UE (e g., group coordinator) may receive resource-request (e.g., sidelink request (SL- SR, PC5 MAC CE, BSR / DSR) from another UE (e.g., one or more member UEs in the group), which may be used by the member UE to request for uplink and / or sidelink transmission resource. Upon reception of the resource-request from a member UE, the group coordinator UE may then schedule transmission resource for the member UE. The UE may implicitly / explicitly indicate that the scheduled resource may be used for initial transmission of a PDU / Reference- Signal.

[0232] In a third embodiment, the UE monitors DCI scheduling transmission resources for member UEs.

[0233] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may monitor a DCI from the gNB, which may be used to schedule transmission resource for uplink and / or sidelink transmission for one or more member UEs in the group. The UE may be configured with an indication from the gNB, which may be used to indicate whether the scheduled resource is for itself or member UE(s). Upon reception of the scheduling for one or more member UEs, the UE may then forward the scheduled resource for the member UEs. Specifically, the UE (e.g., group coordinator) may be configured with one or more of the following indications regarding DCI scheduling for one or more member UEs.

[0234] A DCI format. For example, the UE may be configured with a DCI format, which may be used to schedule transmission resources for the member UEs in the group. The UE (e g., groupcoordinator), upon reception of the configured DCI format, may then indicate the scheduled resource to one or more member UEs in the group.

[0235] An RNTI associated with DCI scheduling transmission resource for the group. In one example, the UE may be configured with an RNTI, which may be used to schedule transmission resources for the member UEs in the group. Specifically, the UE may be indicated that the resources indicated in the DCI may be scheduled to one or more member UEs in the group if the DCI is scrambled by the configured RNTI. The group coordinator may then indicate the scheduled resource to one or more member UEs in the group upon reception of the DCI scrambled with the configured RNTI. In another example, the UE may be configured with one RNTI for each member UE. The UE may then determine which UE to indicate the scheduled resource based on the RNTI scrambled in the DCI. The UE may then forward the scheduled resource for the indicated member UE in the DCI.

[0236] An indication of the scheduled member UEs in the DCI. For example, the UE may be configured with an DCI, which may have a bitfield to indicate the transmitter of the scheduled resource (e.g., which UE is using the scheduled resource). Upon reception of the DCI, the UE may then forward the scheduled resource to the indicated UE.

[0237] A CORESET / search-space associated with DCI scheduling for member UEs in the group. For example, the UE may be configured with a dedicated CORESET / search-space to monitor the DCI scheduling resources for one or more member UEs. The UE may then forward the scheduled resource for the member UEs if a DCI, which may be used to schedule transmission resource (e.g., sidelink and / or uplink) for one or more member UEs is detected in the dedicated CORESET / search-space.

[0238] In a fourth embodiment, the UE receives a configured grant for one or more member UEs.

[0239] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may receive one or more type-1 configured grants (e.g., sidelink and / or uplink) from the gNB (e.g., via an RRC message). In the configuration (e.g., RRC configuration), the UE may also receive an indication of which UE(s) (e.g., which member UE(s), and / or the group coordinator) may use the configured grant for transmission. Specifically, the UE may be indicated that the configured grant can be used for the UE itself, one or more member UEs, and / or for the whole group (e.g., both the UE and the member UEs).

[0240] The UE may also receive one or more type-2 configured grants (e.g., sidelink and / or uplink) in RRC. The UE may then receive an activation of the configured grant (e.g., via DCI). In one approach, the activation of the configured grant (e.g., indicated in the DCI) may indicate which UE(s) can use the configured grant (e.g., the group coordinator itself, or one or more member UEs). In another approach, the RRC message may indicate which UE(s) can use the configuredgrant. The group coordinator, upon receiving such information from the gNB, may forward the indication to the scheduled member UE.

[0241] For configured grant deactivation, in one approach, the group coordinator may receive a deactivation indication (e.g., in DCI) from the gNB. The UE may then forward the deactivation indication to the member UE indicating that the configured grant is deactivated. In another approach, each member UE may monitor the deactivation indication from the gNB (e g., in DCI) to determine whether its configured grant is deactivated or not.

[0242] In a fifth embodiment, the UE indicates the scheduling information to the member UE(s).

[0243] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may receive a scheduling decision from the gNB for one or more UEs (e.g., member UEs) to perform transmission (e.g., uplink and / or sidelink transmission). In one example, the UE may receive one or more configured grants (e.g., type-1 and type-2 configured grant) for the group (e.g., via RRC message), determine which member UE(s) to use the configured grant, and then indicate the configured grant to the determined member UE(s). In another example, the UE may receive a dynamic grant (e.g., via a DCI) from the gNB, determine which UE(s) to use the grant, indicate the scheduled grant to the determine UE(s), schedule / indicate transmission resources to the member UEs, and indicate additional information for the member UEs to perform transmission. The additional information may be indicated by the gNB or determined by the group coordinator itself. The member UE, upon reception of the indication from the group coordinator, may then determine which PDU / Reference- Signal can be used to transmit in the scheduled resource and one or more transmission parameters to use for its transmission. Specifically, in addition to the scheduled resource, the group coordinator may indicate one or any combination of the following to one or more member UEs.

[0244] Whether the scheduled resource is used for initial transmission and / or retransmission of a PDU / Reference- Signal. For example, the UE may indicate whether a scheduled resource can be used for initial transmission of a PDU / Reference- Signal and / or retransmission of another PDU / Reference- Signal. In one example, the UE may indicate that the resource may be used for initial transmission of a PDU / Reference- Signal only. In another example, the UE may indicate that the resource may be used for retransmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal only. In another example, the UE may indicate that the resource may be used for either initial transmission or retransmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal.

[0245] The type of transmission (e g., data transmission, control transmission, and / or Reference- Signal transmission) to be transmitted in a scheduled resource. For example, the UE may indicate to the member UE that the resource may be used for data transmission only. For example, the UE may indicate to the member UE that the scheduled resources may be used for Reference-Signaltransmission only. For example, UE may indicate to the member UE that the scheduled resource may be used for either data transmission and / or Reference-Signal transmission.

[0246] The property the PDU / Reference-Signal to be transmitted in a scheduled resource (e.g., the QoS requirement such as priority, latency, range requirements, etc ). For example, the group coordinator may indicate to the member UE that the scheduled resource may be used for a certain QoS of the PDU / Reference-Signal. For example, the UE may be indicated to use the resource for transmissions of a PDU / Reference-Signal with priority being greater than a threshold.

[0247] Which HARQ ID to (re-)transmit. For example, the UE may indicate to the member UE to use which HARQ ID for a scheduled resource. For example, the group coordinator may indicate to the member UE to retransmit a PDU / Reference-Signal having an associated HARQ ID. For example, the UE may indicate to the member UE to transmit a new PDU / Reference-Signal using a new HARQ ID.

[0248] One or more transmission parameters (e.g., transmission power, MCS, transmission beam, etc.) used for the transmission in a scheduled resource. For example, the group coordinator may indicate the maximum and / or minimum MCS the member UE can use to transmit in a scheduled resource. For example, the group coordinator may indicate the maximum and / or minimum transmission power the member UE can use for its transmission in a scheduled resource. For example, the group coordinator may indicate which beam the member UE can use for transmission in the scheduled resource.

[0249] One or more conditions to use a scheduled resource. For example, the group coordinator may allow the member UE to use a scheduled resource (e.g., sidelink resource) if the channel occupancy of the member UE is smaller than a threshold. For example, the group coordinator may allow the member UE to use a set of scheduled / indicated resource (e.g., resource pool) if the CBR measured in the set of indicated resources is smaller than a threshold.

[0250] In a sixth embodiment, the UE determines which HARQ ID to use for transmission in on scheduled resource.

[0251] The UE (e.g., member UE) may be scheduled with a transmission resource, which may be indicated by another UE such as the group coordinator. The UE may then determine which HARQ ID to use for a scheduled resource based on one or any combination of the following.

[0252] Indication from the network. For example, the UE may be configured by the gNB to use one or more HARQ IDs for a transmission scheduled / indicated by the group coordinator. The UE may then use one of the HARQ IDs configured by the gNB for the transmission in the resource scheduled by the group coordinator.

[0253] Indication from another node (e.g., group coordinator). In one example, the UE may be scheduled a grant from the group coordinator for its transmission (e.g., sidelink and / or uplinktransmission). In the scheduling indication, the UE may be indicated which HARQ ID to be used for its transmission. The UE may then use the indicated HARQ ID for its transmission. In another example, the UE may be configured by the group coordinator of which HARQ ID to use for a transmission scheduled by the group coordinator. The UE may then use the HARQ ID configured by the group coordinator to transmit in a resource scheduled / indicated by the group coordinator.

[0254] Configured formular, which may be a function of one or more of the time-frequency of the scheduled resource, the member UE ID, the number of UEs in the group. For example, each member UE may be configured with one HARQ ID to transmit using transmission resource scheduled / indicated by the group coordinator. Each member UE may be configured to use the HARQ ID as a function of the member UE ID for transmission. The UE may then use the HARQ ID to transmit in the resource scheduled by the group coordinator based on its member ID. For example, the UE with member UE ID #1 may use HARQ ID #1 and member UE ID #2 may use HARQ ID #2 to transmit in the resource scheduled by the group coordinator.

[0255] In a seventh embodiment, the UE monitors the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback from the gNB for transmissions of the member UE.

[0256] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may monitor the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback, which may be transmitted by the gNB, for one or more other UE (e.g., member UEs) in the group. The HARQ ACK / NACK feedback information for one or more member UEs may be transmitted via DCI, MAC CE, RRC, or NAS message. Specifically, the member UE(s) may be scheduled with resources for uplink transmission. The group coordinator may then monitor the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback for one or more HARQ IDs of one or more member UEs in the group to determine whether a member UE needs to retransmit a HARQ ID or not. The UE may then indicate such information (e.g., whether a member UE needs to retransmit a HARQ ID) to the member UE. In one approach, the group coordinator may indicate to the member UE(s) whether each PDU / Reference-Signal, which may be associated with the HARQ ID, is transmitted successfully or not. In another approach, the group coordinator may only indicate to the member UE(s) if a PDU / Reference-Signal is not transmitted successfully.

[0257] In an eighth embodiment, the UE monitors DCI indicating the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback from the gNB for member UEs.

[0258] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may be configured to monitor a DCI, which may be used to convey the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback for one or more UEs in the group. Specifically, the UE may be configured with one or more of the following indications to determine whether the DCI indicating HARQ ACK / NACK feedback for the member UEs in the group is detected.

[0259] A DCI format. For example, the UE may be configured with a DCI format, which may be used to indicate the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback for one or more member UEs in the group.The group coordinator, upon reception of this configured DCI format, may determine whether one or more member UEs need to perform retransmission of one or more PDU / Reference-Signal.

[0260] An RNTI associated with the DCI indicating HARQ ACK / NACK feedback of one or more member UEs. For example, the UE may be configured with a dedicated RNTI, which may be used to descramble the DCI indicating HARQ ACK / NACK feedback of the transmission of one or more member UEs. The group coordinator, upon detection of the RNTI being matched, may determine that the decoded DCI is for indicating the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback associated with the transmission of one or more member UEs in the group.

[0261] An indication in the DCI. For example, the UE may be configured with a bitfield to indicate whether the DCI is for indicating the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback of one or more member UEs. The group coordinator may then determine whether the DCI is for HARQ ACK / NACK feedback of one or more member US based on the indication in the configured bitfield of the DCI.

[0262] A CORESET / search-space associated with a DCI indicating HARQ ACK / NACK feedback for one or more member UEs. For example, the UE may be configured with a dedicated CORESET / search-space to receive a DCI indicating the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback of one or more UEs. Upon detection a DCI in the dedicated CORESET / search-space, the UE may then assume that the DCI may be used by the gNB to indicate the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback of one or more member UEs in the group.

[0263] In a ninth embodiment, the UE determines whether to request a member UE to retransmit a PDU / Reference-Signal.

[0264] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may monitor the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback status of uplink transmission for one or more member UE. The UE may request the member UE to perform retransmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal. In one approach, the UE may indicate which resource may be used for retransmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal. Such a resource indication may be transmitted in the same message with the retransmission request. In another approach, the UE may only request the UE to perform retransmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal. The resource used for retransmission may be determined by the member UE itself. The UE may then determine whether to reschedule a retransmission resource and / or request a member UE to perform retransmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal associated with one HARQ ID based on one or any combination of the following.

[0265] Reception status (HARQ NACK or DTX) of a HARQ ID of a member UE, which may be indicated by the gNB or the UE itself. For example, the UE may monitor DCI indicating HARQ ACK / NACK status associated of one or more HARQ IDs of one or more member UEs. The UEmay then request a member UE to retransmit a PDU / Reference-Signal associated with a HARQ ID if it receives an DCI indicating HARQ NACK of a HARQ ID transmitted by the member UE.

[0266] The expiry of a timer. For example, the UE may request a member UE to retransmit a PDU / Reference-Signal if it has not received HARQ ACK / NACK feedback associated with a transmission of a member UE (e.g., initial transmission) from the gNB for a period. Specifically, the UE may be configured with a timer (e.g., a HARQ retransmission scheduling timer) to determine whether to reschedule / indicate the member UE to retransmit a PDU / Reference-Signal or not. The UE may start a HARQ retransmission scheduling timer based on the timing of the first scheduling. Upon the expiry of the timer, if the UE has not received HARQ ACK / NACK feedback for the transmission of a member UE (e.g., initial transmission) from the gNB, the UE may then request the member UE to retransmit the PDU / Reference-Signal. The UE may also indicate / schedule a retransmission resource for the member UE to perform retransmission.

[0267] Reception of the retransmission request from the member UE. For example, upon reception of the retransmission request from a member UE, the UE may then schedule a retransmission resource for the member UE.

[0268] In one example, the group coordinator may first schedule / indicate multiple transmission resources for a member UE to perform initial transmission and potential retransmission(s) of one or more PDUs / Reference- Signals. The group coordinator may be configured to monitor a DCI indicating HARQ ACK / NACK feedback status of the initial transmission of the member UE. The group coordinator may then indicate to the member UE to perform retransmission in the previously indicated retransmission resource if it receives HARQ NACK feedback or has not received feedback for the initial transmission within a period. In another example, the UE may first indicate resource for a member UE to perform initial transmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal. Upon reception of a NACK feedback or expiry of a timer (e g., HARQ retransmission scheduling timer), the UE may then schedule a retransmission resource and indicate the member UE to perform retransmission of the PDU / Reference-Signal.

[0269] In a tenth embodiment, the UE determines whether to retransmit a PDU / Reference- Signal.

[0270] The UE (e.g., member UE) may perform initial transmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal in the uplink. The UE may be configured to receive the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback for its transmission from another UE (e.g., group coordinator) regarding its uplink transmission. In one approach, the UE may retransmit the PDU / Reference-Signal if it receives HARQ NACK indication from the group coordinator indicating that the PDU / Reference-Signal is not decoded properly from the gNB. In another approach, the UE may retransmit the PDU / Reference-Signal if it doesn’t receive an indication from the group coordinator. Specifically, after performing theinitial transmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal, the UE may retransmit the PDU / Reference-Signal if it doesn’t receive HARQ ACK / NACK feedback from the group coordinator within a period.

[0271] In an eleventh embodiment, the UE determines to disable HARQ retransmission for a MAC PDU transmission scheduled by GC.

[0272] The UE (e.g., member UE) may be configured with a group coordinator as a scheduler. In one approach, the UE may transmit both HARQ enabled and disabled MAC PDUs in the resource scheduled by the group coordinator. In another approach, the UE may transmit HARQ disabled MAC PDUs in the resource scheduled by the group coordinator. Specifically, for the HARQ disabled MAC PDUs, the UE may perform initial transmission and potentially blind retransmissions. The UE may then flush the HARQ buffer without waiting for the HARQ ACK / NACK feedback from the receiver. For HARQ-enabled MAC PDU, the UE may first perform initial transmission of the MAC PDU. Upon reception of NACK feedback for its transmission, the UE may then transmit HARQ retransmission of the MAC PDU.

[0273] FIG. 4 illustrates an example embodiment of a method of Uu HARQ retransmission. In the example embodiment for Uu HARQ retransmission, a UE (e.g., GC) may schedule the UL resource for the initial transmission of the member UEs. The UE then monitors DCI from the network indicating the Uu HARQ ACK / NACK of the initial transmission of the member UEs. The UE then schedules the retransmission resources for the member UEs based on the indication from the network.

[0274] In step S402, the UE is configured with a Uu grant (e.g., type 1 or type 2 CG) to schedule the resource for the member UEs, and a HARQ retransmission scheduling timer to schedule a HARQ retransmission resource for member UEs if no HARQ ACK / NACK feedback is received.

[0275] In step S404, the UE receives a resource request from the member UE.

[0276] In step S406, the UE schedules the UL resource for initial transmission for each requesting UE.

[0277] In step S408, the UE monitors DCI indicating the Uu HARQ ACK / NACK status of the initial transmission of the member UE.

[0278] In step S410, upon reception of the DCI or expiry of the HARQ retransmission scheduling timer, the UE schedules a retransmission resource for the member UEs if it receives NACK indication or no HARQ ACK / NACK from the network.

[0279] GC request for configured grant for the group

[0280] For a group running an application, it is possible that the QoS-flows from one or more UEs in the group are correlated, which can require these to be delivered at the destination (e.g., gNB) at a similar time. It will be appreciated that there is a desire for a solution forrequesting / scheduling resources for one or more UEs in the group considering the association / relation / correlation between multiple QoS-flows.

[0281] In a first embodiment, the UE determines the association / relation / correlation between two or more components.

[0282] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may determine the association / relation / correlation among two or more of QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs, PDUs / reference-signals, UEs in the group, and sidelink and uplink, which will be described in detail.

[0283] QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs, in which the QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs may belong to the same or different UEs in the group. For example, the association / relation / correlation between two QoS- flows / RBs / LCHs may be expressed as one or more of the following.

[0284] The transmission order of the two QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs. For example, the first QoS- flow / RB / LCH should be transmitted before the second QoS-flow / RB / LCH.

[0285] The maximum / minimum transmission gap between the two QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs. For example, the transmission of the second QoS-flow / RB / LCH should be within a configured duration to the transmission of the first QoS-flow / RB / LCH. This association / relation / correlation may be motivated for the relay case, in which the group coordinator may be an intermediate node to relay the traffic from a member UE to the gNB. For this case, the sidelink transmission from a member UE to the group coordinator should be transmitted before the uplink transmission from the group coordinator to the network.

[0286] The maximum transmission rate difference between two QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs. For example, the transmission rate of the first QoS-flow / RB / LCH should equal to the transmission rate of the second QoS-flow / RB / LCH should.

[0287] PDUs / Reference-Signals. For example, the association / relation / correlation between two PDU / Reference-Signal transmissions may be expressed as one or more of the following.

[0288] The transmission order between two PDU / Reference-Signal transmissions. For example, the first PDU / Reference-Signal should be transmitted before the second PDU / Reference-Signal.

[0289] The maximum / minimum gap between the two PDU / Reference-Signal transmissions, which may include the maximum / minimum gap between two set of PDU / Reference-Signal transmissions. This approach may be motivated for the case that the traffic generated by the second set of PDU / Reference-Signal may be correlated to the traffic generated by the second set of PDU / Reference-Signal. For example, the gap between the first and the last transmissions of the two PDUs / Reference- Signals should be smaller than a configured threshold. For example, all transmissions of the two PDUs / Reference-Signals should be within a configured window / duration. For example, the gap between the last transmission of the first PDU / Reference-Signal and the first transmission of the second PDU / Reference-Signal should be within a configured range. Forexample, the gap between the last transmission of the first PDU / Reference-Signal and the last transmission of the second PDU / Reference-Signal should be within a configured range.

[0290] The difference of one or more transmission parameters from the set of transmission parameters between two PDUs / Reference-Signals should be within a configured range. The transmission parameters may include the transmission power, MCS, number of repetitions / retransmissions. For example, the number of retransmission for both PDU / Reference- Signal should be the same, which may be motivated to have similar reliability for both PDU / Reference- Signal s .

[0291] UEs in the group. Specifically, the association / relation / correlation between transmissions of two UEs may be expressed as one or more of the transmission order of the two UEs (for example, for association / relation / correlation between transmission of a member UE and the group coordinator, the member UE should transmit first and then the coordinator may transmit its PDU / Reference- signal later; this approach may be motivated in the scenario that the traffic of the group coordinator may be generated based on the traffic of the member UE), the maximum / minimum transmission gap between the two UEs (for example, the gap between the two transmissions from the two UEs should be within a configured threshold; for example, all transmissions of the two UEs should be within a configured window / duration), the maximum transmission rate difference between two UEs (for example, the transmission rate of the first UE should be equal to the transmission rate of the second UE), and the difference of one or more transmission parameters (e.g., transmission power, MCS, number of repetitions / retransmissions) from the set of transmission parameters between two UEs should be within a configured range.

[0292] Sidelink and uplink. For example, the association / relation / correlation between transmissions in sidelink and uplink of the same or different UEs may be expressed as one or more of the following.

[0293] The transmission order between sidelink and uplink. For example, for the association / relation / correlation between sidelink transmission of the member UE and uplink transmission of the group coordinator, sidelink transmission of the member UE should be before the uplink transmission of the group coordinator.

[0294] The maximum / minimum transmission gap between sidelink and uplink of the same or different UEs. For example, the gap between sidelink transmission of a member UE and uplink transmission of the group coordinator, which may be the immediate node of the member UE, should be within a configured threshold. For example, sidelink transmission of the member UE and uplink transmission of the group coordinator should be within a configured window / duration. This approach may be motivated to support the case that the uplink data from the member UEtransmitting to the gNB via the group coordinator should be transmitted within a configured delay budget.

[0295] The maximum transmission rate difference between sidelink and uplink of the same or different UEs. For example, for the association / relation / correlation between sidelink transmission of the member UE and uplink transmission of the group coordinator, sidelink transmission rate of the member UE should be smaller than the uplink transmission rate of the group coordinator.

[0296] The difference of one or more transmission parameters (e.g., transmission power, MCS, number of repetitions / retransmissions) from the set of transmission parameters between sidelink and uplink should be within a configured range. For example, the number of repetitions for one PDU / Reference-Singal from the member UE in sidelink should be equal to the number of repetitions for one PDU / Reference- Signal from the group coordinator in uplink.

[0297] In a second embodiment, the UE receives PDU / Reference- Signal traffic information from each member UE.

[0298] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may receive PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information of one or more member UEs. The PDU / Reference-Singal traffic information may be transmitted from one member UE using SCI, SL MAC CE, and / or PC5 RRC message. Specifically, when the member UE and the group coordinator have established a PC 5 connection, the UE may use a PC5 RRC message to indicate its PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information. The PDU / Reference- Signal traffic information may include one or any combination of one or more QoS parameters associated with the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic of the member UE (e.g., the priority, latency, reliability of the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic), the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic arrival offset, the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic arrival periodicity, the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic size (e.g., the number of PDUs / Reference-Signals per period), and the association / relation / correlation between two or more entities.

[0299] The entities may be QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs, which may be from the member UE itself and / or from other UE (in one example, the member UE may indicate the association / relation / correlation between two of its QoS-flows, and in another example, the member UE may indicate the association / relation / correlation between one of its QoS-flows and another QoS-flow of another (e.g., another member UE)), PDU / Reference-Signal traffic of the member UE or between two UEs (e.g., two member UEs or the member UE and the group coordinator), two or more UEs in the group (for example, the member UE may indicate the association / relation / correlation between itself and another member UE or between itself and the group coordinator), and sidelink and uplink PDU / Reference-Signal traffic (for example, the member UE may indicate the association / relation / correlation between its sidelink PDU / Reference- Signal traffic and the group coordinator's uplink PDU / Reference-Signal traffic).

[0300] In a third embodiment, the UE requests one or more configured grants for the group.

[0301] The UE (e.g., group coordinator) may, upon reception of the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information from the member UEs, request one or more configured grants for one or more member UEs and / or itself The UE may use one or more of UCI, MAC CE, an / or RRC message to send the request to the gNB. For example, the UE may use a RRC message such as UEAssistantlnformation (UAI) message to request one or more configured grants for one or more UEs in the group. Specifically, the UE may indicate / request one or any combination of the following properties of one or more configured grants to be used by one or more UEs in the group (e g., the member UE and the group coordinator itself), which will be described in detail: whether the configured grant is in the Uu and / or sidelink interface, whether the configured grant is used for PDU and / or reference-signal transmission, its preferred configured grants, the transmitter(s) of the configured grant, and the association / relation / correlation between multiple configured grants.

[0302] Whether the configured grant is in Uu (e.g., for uplink transmission) and / or sidelink interface. In one example, the UE may request the network to configure a sidelink configured grant, which may be used by one or more of the UEs in the group to transmit in sidelink. In another example, the UE may request the network to configure an uplink configured grant, which may be used by one or more UEs in the group to perform uplink transmission.

[0303] Whether the configured grant is used for PDU and / or Reference-Singal transmission. For example, the UE may indicate that the configured grant may be used for PDU transmission only. For example, the UE may indicate that the configured grant may be used for Reference-Singal transmission only. For example, the UE may indicate that the configured grant may be used for either PDU and / or Reference-Signal transmission.

[0304] Its preferred configured grants, in which each configured grant may include one or more of the following parameters: the configured grant offset (for example, the UE may indicate the maximum / minimum or exact offset value for a requested configured grant), the periodicity of the configured grant (for example, the UE may indicate the maximum / minimum or exact periodicity value for a requested configured grant), the size of a transmission resource (for example, the UE may indicate the resource size (e.g., maximum / minimum or the exact size) associated with each configured grant, which may include the transmission duration (e.g., number of symbols for each transmission) and / or the number of PRBs per transmission), the number repetition resources per period for transmi ssion(s) of one PDU / Reference-Signal (e.g., initial transmission and zero or more repetitions of a PDU / Reference-Signal) (for example, the UE may request the gNB to provide a configured grant, in which the UE requests the gNB to provide multiple repetition resources for one PDU / Reference-Signal, and may then perform both initial and retransmissions of a PDU / Reference-Signal in one period; in another example, the UE may request to provide aconfigured grant without repetition for each PDU / Reference-Signal and may then only perform one transmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal in one period), the number of transmission resources per period, which may be used to transmit multiple PDUs / Reference- Signals (for example, the UE may request the gNB to provide a configured grant, which consist multiple transmission resources multiple PDUs / Reference-Signals, and may then transmit multiple PDUs / Reference-Signals per period of the configured grant, in which each resource may be used to transmit one PDU / Reference-Signal; in another example, the UE may request the gNB to provide a configured grant with one resource to transmit one PDU / Reference-Signal per configured grant period), the gap between two transmission resources in a configured grant period, which may include the gap between two repetitions of a PDU / Reference-Signal and the gap between two transmission resources of two PDUs / Reference-Signals (for example, the UE may request a configured grant, in which the UE may transmit contiguous repetitions of one PDU / Reference-Signal; moreover, the UE may also request to have multiple transmission resources for transmissions of multiple PDUs / Reference-Signals in one period, and the UE may indicate the preferred gap between two consecutive resources to transmit two PDUs / Reference-Signals), the transmitter(s) of the configured grant (e.g., one member UE or the group coordinator itself) (for example, for each preferred configured grant, group coordinator may also indicate to the gNB that which member UE may use the indicated configured grant), the association / relation / correlation among multiple configured grants, in which the multiple configured grants may be used by one UE or by multiple UEs, where one configured grant may be a sidelink configured grant and the other configured grant may be a Uu configured grant.

[0305] The association / relation / correlation between multiple (e.g., two) configured grants may include one of more of the offset difference (e.g., maximum / minimum and / or exact offset difference) between two configured grants (in one example, the UE may request the network to configure two configured grants to two member UEs in the group, in which the first member UE may use the first configured grant and the second member UE may use the second configured grant and the resource of the second configured grant should be after the resource of the first configured grant in each period and the gap between two configured grant should be within maximum gap wherein this approach may be motivated from sequence generation of data, in which the data from the first member UE should be generated and transmitted before the data from second member UE to be transmitted), the gap between two resources in two configured grants (for example, the UE may request the network to configure two configured grants having the same periodicity, in which gap between the last resource of the first grant and the first resource of the second configured grant in a period is within a maximum / minimum value or the UE may request the exact value between the last resource of the first grant and the first resource of the second grant in a period), the resourcesize difference (e.g., maximum / minimum and / or exact resource size difference) between two configured grants, the difference between the number of resources in each period between two configured grants, (for example, the UE may request two configured grants, in which the number of resources in the first configured grant is equal to the number of the resource in the second configured grant), the difference between the number of repetition resources between two configured grants (for example, the group coordinator may request the network to configure to two UEs with two configured grants, which have the same number of repetition per transmission of a PDU / Reference-Signal, wherein this approach may be motivated for the two UEs to transmit PDU / Reference- Signal with similar reliability requirements), the periodicity difference (e.g., maximum / minimum and / or exact periodicity difference) between two configured grants (for example, the UE may request two configured grant, in which the periodicity of the first configured grant is equal to the periodicity of the second configured grant), and the association between periodicity of two configured grants (for example, the UE may request two configured grants, in which the periodicity of the first configured grant is N times (e.g., N = 1, 2, ...) the periodicity of the second configured grant).

[0306] In a fourth embodiment, the UE requests the group coordinator for its preferred configured grant.

[0307] The UE (e g., member UE) may request its preferred configured grant(s). In one approach, the member UE may first request its preferred configured grant(s) directly from the network. In another approach, the member UE may request its preferred configured grant(s) from the group coordinator. To request its preferred configured grant(s) from the group coordinator, the UE may use SCI, MAC CE, and / or PC5 RRC message to transmit to the group coordinator. The UE may convey one or more of the following in the request message whether the configured grant is in Uu and / or sidelink, whether the configured grant is used for PDU and / or Reference-Singal transmission, one or more parameters of the configured grant such as the offset, periodicity, the size of a transmission resource, the number of transmission resources to transmit multiple PDUs / Reference- Signals, the number of repetitions resource, and the association / relation / correlation among multiple configured grants.

[0308] In a fifth embodiment, the UE receives one or more configured grant.

[0309] Upon sending its preferred configured grant(s) request to another node (e.g., gNB or group coordinator), the UE (e.g., a member UE or a group coordinator) may receive one or more configured grants from the requested node. Specifically, a member UE may receive one or more configured grants from the group coordinator or the gNB. The group coordinator may receive one or more configured grants from the gNB. Specifically, a UE (e.g., member UE or group coordinator) may receive one or more of the following scheduling indications: one or moreparameters of the configured grant such as whether the configured grant is in Uu and / or sidelink, the offset, periodicity, the size of a transmission resource, the number of transmission resources to transmit multiple PDUs / Reference-Signals, and / or the number of repetitions resource, whether the configured grant is used for PDU and / or Reference- Singal transmission and the UE, upon receiving such an indication, may determine whether to transmit PDU and / or Reference-Singal in a resource of the configured grant, which QoS-flow / RB / LCH and / or destination (e.g., L2 destination ID for sidelink transmission) can use the configured grant and the UE, upon receiving such an indication, may determine which QoS-flow / RB / LCH and / or destination to transmit in each resource of the configured grant, where the determination may be performed during the LCP procedure (in one example, for a configured sidelink grant, the UE may select one destination from the set of allowed destinations to perform transmission one of the resources of the configured grant; in another example, for uplink transmission, the UE may select one or more QoS- flows / RBs / LCHs from the set of allowed QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs to transmit in one resource of the configured grant), and the association / relation / correlation among multiple configured grants.

[0310] In a sixth embodiment, the group coordinator indicates the configured grant to member UEs.

[0311] The group coordinator may indicate one or more configured grants to the member UE(s) using one or any combination of SCI, MAC CE, and / or PC5 RRC, which may be transmitted in one or more messages. In one example, the UE may use a unicast PC5 RRC message to indicate one or more configured grants for each UE. In another example, the UE may first perform groupcast PC5 RRC connection among UEs in the group. The UE may then broadcast the set of configured grants to the group using the groupcast PC5 RRC message. In the message, the UE may indicate, for each configured grant, which member UE should use it.

[0312] FIG. 5 illustrates an example of configured grants for a member UE in a group. Specifically, the group coordinator has requested a configured grant with a SFN offset and a Periodicity P. In each period, there are two resources to transmit two PDUs / Reference-Signals. In each resource, there is one repetition, which is contiguous with the initial transmission resource. The Gap G between two resources may, as shown in the figure, be requested by the group coordinator.

[0313] FIG. 6 illustrates an example of two configured grants (CGI and CG2) requested by a group coordinator, in which each configured grant may be used by one UE. Specifically, CGI may be used by a first UE and CG2 may be used by a second UE. Each configured grant may be sidelink configured grant or uplink configured grant. The group coordinator may request the periodicity of the second configured grant (Periodicity2) to be twice the periodicity of the first configured grant (Periodicity 1). Moreover, the group coordinator may request the gap G between the last resourcein a period of the first configured grant and first resource of the second configured grant. This approach may be motivated to allow the second UE to transmit right after the first UE.

[0314] In a seventh embodiment, the group coordinator requests the member UE to report its traffic information.

[0315] The group coordinator may request / configure one or more member UEs to indicate its PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information and / or its preferred configured grant. Such information may be indicated to the group coordinator and / or the gNB. The group coordinator may use a PC5 RRC message, which may be transmitted via groupcast to multiple UEs, to request / configure the member UEs. The group coordinator may request the member UE to report / indicate the traffic information and / or preferred configured grant periodically and / or based on a certain condi tion / event being satisfied. Specifically, the condition / event for each member UE to report / indicate its PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information and / or preferred configured grant may be based on one or more of one or more PDU / Reference-Signal traffic arrival parameters (e.g., offset, traffic size, periodicity) has changed (for example, the UE may report the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information if the change in one PDU / Reference-Signal traffic arrival parameter offset satisfies a condition (e.g., the change in PDU / Reference-Signal traffic offset is greater than an indicated threshold)) and the association / relation / correlation between two PDU / Reference-Signal traffics has changed (for example, the UE may report its PDU / Reference- Signal traffic information to the group coordinator if the difference in PDU / Reference-Signal traffic arrival offset of the two QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs is greater than a configured threshold).

[0316] Each member UE, upon receiving the configuration / request to report the PDU / Reference- Signal traffic information from the group coordinator, may perform such a request / configuration accordingly. The report may be sent to the group coordinator via SCI, MAC CE, and / or PC5 RRC message.

[0317] In an eighth embodiment, the group coordinator reports the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information of the group to the gNB and / or request one or more configured grant for the group.

[0318] The group coordinator may report the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information of the group (e.g., the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information of one or more member UEs and the group coordinator itself) to the gNB and / or request from the gNB for one or more new preferred configured grants for the group (e.g., for one or more member UEs and / or for the group coordinator itself). The UE may use one or any combination of UCI, MAC CE, and / or RRC message to send the report of PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information of the group and / or to request one or more new preferred configured grants for the group. Such a request / report may be performed periodically and / or based on a configured condition / event. Specifically, the condition / event for the group coordinator to report traffic information and / or to request a new preferred configured grantmay be based on one or more of reception of the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information from one or more member UEs, which may indicate a change in its traffic arrival information (for example, the UE may first receive a PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information report from a member UE, may then determine whether there is a change in the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic arrival parameters, and may, if the change satisfies a configured condition (e.g., offset is greater than a configured threshold), report the traffic information of the group to the network or indicate a new preferred configured grant for one or more UEs in the group), reception of a resource (e.g., preferred configured grant) request from one or more member UEs, the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic parameters (e.g., traffic offset, traffic size, and traffic periodicity) associated with one or more UEs has changed, and the association / relation / correlation between two PDU / Reference- Signal traffics has changed.

[0319] FIG. 7 illustrates an example embodiment of method of configured grant requesting for the group.

[0320] In one example embodiment for the group coordinator (GC) to request configured grants for the group, the group coordinator may first receive the traffic information of the member UEs. The group coordinator may then determine the association between the traffic pattern of two or more UEs in the group. Afterward, the UE may request the configured grants for member UEs in the group and indicate the association between the preferred configured grants to the network.

[0321] In step S702, the UE is configured as the group coordinator (GC) and receives configured grants for the group (e.g., for member UEs in the group and itself).

[0322] In step S704, the GC receives the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information from the member UE(s).

[0323] In step S706, the GC determines the association / relation / correlation between traffic patterns of two or more UEs in the group including itself.

[0324] The association may be based on one or more of the maximum / minimum offset gap between two PDU / Reference-Signal traffic patterns from two UEs, the maximum / minimum data size difference between two PDU / Reference-Signal traffic patterns from two UEs, and the periodicity difference between two PDU / Reference-Signal traffic patterns from two UEs.

[0325] In step S708, the GC requests the configured grants for itself and other UEs and indicates the association / relation / correlation between two or more configured grants based on the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information of the member UEs and the association between traffic patterns.

[0326] In step S710, the GC receives the configured grant information (e.g., CG ID, member UE ID using the grant, time-frequency resource, offset, and periodicity) from the network for itself and one or more member UEs in the group.

[0327] In step S712, the GC receives information indicative of traffic information change from one or more UEs. The information may include the offset change (e.g., jitter, drift of traffic), change in traffic size per period, and change in traffic periodicity.

[0328] In step S714, the GC determines new preferred configured grants for itself and member UEs based on the receive PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information change and the association / relation / correlation between traffic patterns of UEs in the group.

[0329] In step S716, the GC sends (e g., in RRC message such as UAI) the request for the new preferred configured grants for itself and member UEs.

[0330] GC requests dynamic grant for the group

[0331] It will be appreciated that it is desired to have a solution enabling the group coordinator dynamically to request transmission resources for the group considering the association / relation / correlation among transmission of multiple UEs in the group?

[0332] In a first embodiment, the UE sends a UCI to request transmission resource to the member UEs.

[0333] The group coordinator sends a UCI (e.g., SR) to request transmission resource for the group (e.g., one or more member UE and / or the group coordinator itself). The UE may send to the network one or more of the set of UEs using the resource (e.g., the GC only, one or more member UEs only, and for any UE in the group (e.g., by either the GC and / or one or more member UEs) and whether the GC requests sidelink and / or uplink transmission resources (e.g., one or more of sidelink transmission resources, uplink transmission resources, both sidelink and uplink transmission resources, and either sidelink or uplink transmission resources).

[0334] The indications may be conveyed based on one or more of the resource used to transmit the SR, an indication in the SR, and an indication in a subsequent MAC CE (e.g., BSR), which will now be described.

[0335] The resource used to transmit the SR. In one example, the UE may be configured with multiple set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) requesting resource for transmission, in which each set of resources may be associated with one set of UEs using the requested resources. The UE may then determine which set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) based on which set of UEs using the resources. Specifically, the UE may use the first set of resources to transmit UCI (e g., SR) if the UE request the transmission resource for itself, the second set of resources to transmit UCI (E.g., SR) if the UE requests the transmission resource for one or more member UEs, and the third set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) if the UE request the transmission resource for any UE in the group. In another example, the UE may be configured with multiple set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) to request resources for transmission, in which each set of resources may be associated with one type of requested resource. The UE may then determinewhich set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) based on which type of resources it is requesting. Specifically, the UE may use the first set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) if it requests sidelink resources, the second set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) if it requests uplink resource, the third set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) if it requests both sidelink and uplink resource, and the fourth set of resources to transmit UCI (e.g., SR) if it requests either sidelink or uplink resource.

[0336] The indication in SR. For example, the UE may be configured with multiple bit UCI (e.g., SR), in which each sequence / codepoint may be used for one configured indication. The UE may then determine which sequence / codepoint to transmit based on which indication it wants to convey to the gNB. Specifically, the UE may determine which sequence / codepoint to transmit based on which set of UEs using the requested resource and / or which type of resource it is requesting (e.g., sidelink and / or uplink resource).

[0337] An indication in a subsequent MAC CE (e.g., BSR). In an example, the UE may not use UCI (e.g., SR) to convey one of the above indications to the network. The UE may use MAC CE (e g., BSR) to convey one of the above indications to the network. Specifically, the UE may implicitly / explicitly use MAC CE (e.g., BSR) to indicate which set of UEs using the requested resource and / or which type of resource it is requesting (e.g., sidelink and / or uplink resource).

[0338] In a second embodiment, the UE sends MAC CE (e.g., BSR) to request uplink and / or sidelink transmission resource for member UE.

[0339] The UE may send a MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR) to request a transmission resource for one or more member UEs in the group. In one approach, the UE may indicate the PDU / Reference- Signal traffic information of one or more member UEs in the group in the MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR) to allow the network to schedule sidelink and / or uplink transmission resource. In another approach, the UE may indicate the number of required resources (e.g., the bandwidth of each transmission and the number of (re-)transmission resources) for each UE (e.g., sidelink and / or uplink resource). The UE may use one or more MAC CEs (e.g., one or more BSR, one or more DSR) to indicate the traffic information and / or request transmission resource for member UEs. Specifically, the UE may indicate, in a MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR), one or more of the following to the network to request sidelink and / or uplink transmission resource for one or more member UEs in the group and / or the UE itself: the PDU / Reference- Signal traffic information and the transmission resource, which will be described in detail.

[0340] The PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information, which may include one or any combination of the following.

[0341] Whether the UE is indicating PDU and / or Reference- Signal traffic information. In one example, the UE may be configured with two MAC CE formats, in which the first format may beused to indicate PDU traffic information of one or more UEs in the group and the second format may be used to indicate the Reference- Signal traffic information of one or more UEs (e.g., one or more member UEs and / or the UE itself) in the group. In another example, the UE may be configured with one MAC CE format to indicate PDU and / or Reference-Signal traffic information. The UE may transmit two MAC CEs, in which one MAC CE may be used to indicate PDU traffic information and another MAC CE may be used to indicate Reference-Signal traffic information. Alternatively, the UE may transmit one MAC CE to indicate both PDU and Reference-Signal traffic information if the group needs to transmit both PDU and Reference- Signal.

[0342] The UE(s) associated with the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic. In one approach, for each set of UEs (e.g., the UE itself vs. the member UEs), the UE may send one MAC CE to indicate the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information. For example, the UE may transmit one MAC CE to indicate its own PDU / Reference-Signal traffic and another MAC CE to indicate PDU / Reference- Signal traffic of member UEs. In one example, to indicate uplink PDU / Reference-Signal traffic of the member UEs, the group coordinator may be configured with a dedicated LCG. The UE may then use the dedicated LCG to indicate the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information of the member UEs. In another example, to indicate sidelink PDU / Reference-Signal traffic of the member UE, the group coordinator may be configured with a dedicated destination index. The UE may then use the dedicated destination index to indicate the amount of sidelink PDU / Reference- Signal traffic of the member UEs. Alternatively, the UE may be configured with multiple destination index, in which each destination index may be associated with one member UE. The UE may then use dedicated destination index associated with each member UE to indicate the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic information of each member UE.

[0343] Whether the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic is sidelink and / or uplink traffic. In one example, the UE may be configured with two MAC CE formats, in which the first format may be used to indicate PDU traffic information of one or more UEs in the group and the second format may be used to indicate the Reference- Signal traffic information of one or more UEs (e.g., one or more member UEs and / or the UE itself) in the group. In another example, the UE may be configured with one MAC CE format to indicate PDU and / or Reference-Signal traffic information. The UE may transmit two MAC CEs, in which one MAC CE may be used to indicate PDU traffic information and another MAC CE may be used to indicate Reference-Signal traffic information. Alternatively, the UE may transmit one MAC CE to indicate both PDU and Reference-Signal traffic information if the group needs to transmit both PDU and Reference- Signal.

[0344] One or more QoS parameters associated with the traffic. For example, the UE may implicitly / explicitly indicate the priority, reliability, and / or latency associated with the PDU / Reference-Signal traffic of the member UEs and the group coordinator itself.

[0345] The association / relation / correlation between two QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs, two PDU / Reference-Signal traffics, and / or traffic of two UEs.

[0346] The transmission resource (indication or request), in which the UE may indicate / request one or more of the following.

[0347] The transmitter(s) of the requested resource, specifically, the UE may indicate whether the requested resource is used by one of the UE (e.g., group coordinator) itself only, one or more member UEs only, and any UE in the group (e.g., by either the UE and / or one or more member UEs).

[0348] Whether the UE is requesting sidelink and / or uplink resource (for example, the UE may indicate in the MAC CE (e.g., BSR) that it is requesting sidelink transmission resource and / or uplink transmission resource. In one approach, the UE may be configured with two MAC CE formats, in which the first format may be used to request sidelink transmission resource and the second format may be used to request uplink transmission resource. In another approach, the UE may be configured with one MAC CE format to request resource in either sidelink and / or uplink. The UE may explicitly / implicitly indicate in the MAC CE whether it is requesting resource in sidelink and / or uplink.

[0349] A request for the relationship / association / correlation between transmission resources of two or more QoS-flows / RBs / LCHs / LCGs, PDU / Reference-Signal traffics, UEs, destinations (e.g., L2 destination IDs). For example, the UE may request the transmission resources of the two member UEs to be within a maximum gap. For example, the UE may request the transmission resources of the two LCHs to be within a maximum gap. For example, the UE may request the transmission resources for two destinations from one member UE to be within a maximum gap. For example, the UE may request the transmission resources for two PDUs / Reference-Signal to be within a maximum gap. For example, the UE may request the transmission resource for sidelink of the first UE and uplink of the second UE to be within a maximum gap and to be in order (e.g., sidelink resource should occur before uplink resource).

[0350] In a third embodiment, the UE triggers sending MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR) to request resource for member UE and / or itself.

[0351] The UE may send the MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR) to request transmission resource for the member UE and / or itself. In one approach, the UE may send MAC CE (e g., BSR, DSR) to request transmission resource for the member UE and / or itself periodically. In another approach, the UE may trigger sending MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR) to request transmission resource for member UE and / or itself based on one or any combination of one or more of the QoS parameters associated with the PDU / Reference-Signal of the member UEs and / or the UE itself satisfies a condition (for example, the UE may trigger sending MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR) if the PDB of a PDU / Reference-Signal is smaller than a configured threshold; for example, the UE may trigger sending MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR) if the PSDB of a PDU set from the member UE is smaller than a configured threshold) and reception of the traffic information from one or more member UEs (for example, the UE may trigger sending MAC CE (e.g., BSR, DSR) to request transmission resource for the group if it receives traffic information and / or the request for transmission resource from one or more member UEs).

[0352] FIG. 8 illustrates an example embodiment of method of requesting dynamic grant for a group.

[0353] In one example solution for the group coordinator to request dynamic grant for the group, the group coordinator may send SR to request transmission resource for member UEs (e.g., in a dedicated SR or multiple bit SR) in the group. The GC may then send MAC CE (e.g., BSR / DSR) to indicate the information regarding the buffer status of one or more member UEs, and the association among QoS-flows from one or more UEs in the group.

[0354] In step S802, the GC is configured with multi-bit SR to indicate whether it request transmission resource for itself and / or member UEs.

[0355] The GC may be (pre-)configured with one or more Logical Channels (LCH) and / or Logical Channel Groups (LCG) to indicate the buffer status of more member UEs. Alternatively, the GC may be configured with one or more destination indexes to indicate the buffer status of one or more member UEs. In step S804, the GC sends one or more LCHs / LCGs or destination index to indicate the buffer status of one or more member UEs in a MAC CE (e.g., BSR / DSR).

[0356] In step S806, the GC receives traffic information / scheduling request from one or more member UEs in the group. The request may include one or more of the amount of data in the buffer and the associated QoS, and the association between two or more QoS- flows / LCHs / LCG / destination index.

[0357] In step S808, the GC sends a SR to request a transmission resource for at least for member UEs.

[0358] In step S810, upon reception of uplink resource, the GC sends a MAC CE to indicate the buffer status of one or more member UEs and the association between two or more QoS- flows / LCG / destination index.

[0359] Conclusion

[0360] Although features and elements are provided above in particular combinations, 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. The present disclosure is not to be limited in terms of the particular embodiments described in this application, which are intended as illustrations of various aspects. Many modifications and variations may be made without departingfrom its spirit and scope, as will be apparent to those skilled in the art. No element, act, or instruction used in the description of the present application should be construed as critical or essential to the invention unless explicitly provided as such. Functionally equivalent methods and apparatuses within the scope of the disclosure, in addition to those enumerated herein, will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the foregoing descriptions. Such modifications and variations are intended to fall within the scope of the appended claims. The present disclosure is to be limited only by the terms of the appended claims, along with the full scope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled. It is to be understood that this disclosure is not limited to particular methods or systems.

[0361] The foregoing embodiments are discussed, for simplicity, with regard to the terminology and structure of infrared capable devices, i.e., infrared emitters and receivers. However, the embodiments discussed are not limited to these systems but may be applied to other systems that use other forms of electromagnetic waves or non-electromagnetic waves such as acoustic waves.

[0362] It is also to be understood that the terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only, and is not intended to be limiting. As used herein, the term "video" or the term "imagery" may mean any of a snapshot, single image and / or multiple images displayed over a time basis. As another example, when referred to herein, the terms "user equipment" and its abbreviation "UE", the term "remote" and / or the terms "head mounted display" or its abbreviation "HMD" may mean or include (i) a wireless transmit and / or receive unit (WTRU); (ii) any of a number of embodiments of a WTRU; (iii) a wireless-capable and / or wired-capable (e.g., tetherable) device configured with, inter alia, some or all structures and functionality of a WTRU; (iii) a wireless-capable and / or wired-capable device configured with less than all structures and functionality of a WTRU; or (iv) the like. Details of an example WTRU, which may be representative of any WTRU recited herein, are provided herein with respect to FIGs. 1 A-1D. As another example, various disclosed embodiments herein supra and infra are described as utilizing a head mounted display. Those skilled in the art will recognize that a device other than the head mounted display may be utilized and some or all of the disclosure and various disclosed embodiments can be modified accordingly without undue experimentation. Examples of such other device may include a drone or other device configured to stream information for providing the adapted reality experience.

[0363] In addition, the methods provided 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 randomaccess 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.

[0364] Variations of the method, apparatus and system provided above are possible without departing from the scope of the invention. In view of the wide variety of embodiments that can be applied, it should be understood that the illustrated embodiments are examples only, and should not be taken as limiting the scope of the following claims. For instance, the embodiments provided herein include handheld devices, which may include or be utilized with any appropriate voltage source, such as a battery and the like, providing any appropriate voltage.

[0365] Moreover, in the embodiments provided above, processing platforms, computing systems, controllers, and other devices that include processors are noted. These devices may include at least one Central Processing Unit ("CPU") and memory. In accordance with the practices of persons skilled in the art of computer programming, reference to acts and symbolic representations of operations or instructions may be performed by the various CPUs and memories. Such acts and operations or instructions may be referred to as being "executed," "computer executed" or "CPU executed."

[0366] One of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the acts and symbolically represented operations or instructions include the manipulation of electrical signals by the CPU. An electrical system represents data bits that can cause a resulting transformation or reduction of the electrical signals and the maintenance of data bits at memory locations in a memory system to thereby reconfigure or otherwise alter the CPUs operation, as well as other processing of signals. The memory locations where data bits are maintained are physical locations that have particular electrical, magnetic, optical, or organic properties corresponding to or representative of the data bits. It should be understood that the embodiments are not limited to the above-mentioned platforms or CPUs and that other platforms and CPUs may support the provided methods.

[0367] The data bits may also be maintained on a computer readable medium including magnetic disks, optical disks, and any other volatile (e.g., Random Access Memory (RAM)) or non-volatile (e g., Read-Only Memory (ROM)) mass storage system readable by the CPU. The computer readable medium may include cooperating or interconnected computer readable medium, which exist exclusively on the processing system or are distributed among multiple interconnected processing systems that may be local or remote to the processing system. It should be understood that the embodiments are not limited to the above-mentioned memories and that other platforms and memories may support the provided methods.

[0368] In an illustrative embodiment, any of the operations, processes, etc. described herein may be implemented as computer-readable instructions stored on a computer-readable medium. The computer-readable instructions may be executed by a processor of a mobile unit, a network element, and / or any other computing device.

[0369] There is little distinction left between hardware and software implementations of aspects of systems. The use of hardware or software is generally (but not always, in that in certain contexts the choice between hardware and software may become significant) a design choice representing cost versus efficiency trade-offs. There may be various vehicles by which processes and / or systems and / or other technologies described herein may be effected (e.g., hardware, software, and / or firmware), and the preferred vehicle may vary with the context in which the processes and / or systems and / or other technologies are deployed. For example, if an implementer determines that speed and accuracy are paramount, the implementer may opt for a mainly hardware and / or firmware vehicle. If flexibility is paramount, the implementer may opt for a mainly software implementation. Alternatively, the implementer may opt for some combination of hardware, software, and / or firmware.

[0370] The foregoing detailed description has set forth various embodiments of the devices and / or processes via the use of block diagrams, flowcharts, and / or examples. Insofar as such block diagrams, flowcharts, and / or examples include one or more functions and / or operations, it will be understood by those within the art that each function and / or operation within such block diagrams, flowcharts, or examples may be implemented, individually and / or collectively, by a wide range of hardware, software, firmware, or virtually any combination thereof. In an embodiment, several portions of the subject matter described herein may be implemented via Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), digital signal processors (DSPs), and / or other integrated formats. However, those skilled in the art will recognize that some aspects of the embodiments disclosed herein, in whole or in part, may be equivalently implemented in integrated circuits, as one or more computer programs running on one or more computers (e.g., as one or more programs running on one or more computer systems), as one or more programs running on one or more processors (e.g., as one or more programs running on one or more microprocessors), as firmware, or as virtually any combination thereof, and that designing the circuitry and / or writing the code for the software and or firmware would be well within the skill of one of skill in the art in light of this disclosure. In addition, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the mechanisms of the subject matter described herein may be distributed as a program product in a variety of forms, and that an illustrative embodiment of the subject matter described herein applies regardless of the particular type of signal bearing medium used to actually carry out the distribution. Examples of a signal bearing medium include, but are not limited to, the following: arecordable type medium such as a floppy disk, a hard disk drive, a CD, a DVD, a digital tape, a computer memory, etc., and a transmission type medium such as a digital and / or an analog communication medium (e.g., a fiber optic cable, a waveguide, a wired communications link, a wireless communication link, etc.).

[0371] Those skilled in the art will recognize that it is common within the art to describe devices and / or processes in the fashion set forth herein, and thereafter use engineering practices to integrate such described devices and / or processes into data processing systems. That is, at least a portion of the devices and / or processes described herein may be integrated into a data processing system via a reasonable amount of experimentation. Those having skill in the art will recognize that a typical data processing system may generally include one or more of a system unit housing, a video display device, a memory such as volatile and non-volatile memory, processors such as microprocessors and digital signal processors, computational entities such as operating systems, drivers, graphical user interfaces, and applications programs, one or more interaction devices, such as a touch pad or screen, and / or control systems including feedback loops and control motors (e.g., feedback for sensing position and / or velocity, control motors for moving and / or adjusting components and / or quantities). A typical data processing system may be implemented utilizing any suitable commercially available components, such as those typically found in data computing / communication and / or network computing / communication systems.

[0372] The herein described subject matter sometimes illustrates different components included within, or connected with, different other components. It is to be understood that such depicted architectures are merely examples, and that in fact many other architectures may be implemented which achieve the same functionality. In a conceptual sense, any arrangement of components to achieve the same functionality is effectively "associated" such that the desired functionality may be achieved. Hence, any two components herein combined to achieve a particular functionality may be seen as "associated with" each other such that the desired functionality is achieved, irrespective of architectures or intermedial components. Likewise, any two components so associated may also be viewed as being "operably connected", or "operably coupled", to each other to achieve the desired functionality, and any two components capable of being so associated may also be viewed as being "operably couplable" to each other to achieve the desired functionality. Specific examples of operably couplable include but are not limited to physically mateable and / or physically interacting components and / or wirelessly interactable and / or wirelessly interacting components and / or logically interacting and / or logically interactable components.

[0373] With respect to the use of substantially any plural and / or singular terms herein, those having skill in the art can translate from the plural to the singular and / or from the singular to theplural as is appropriate to the context and / or application. The various singular / plural permutations may be expressly set forth herein for sake of clarity.

[0374] It will be understood by those within the art that, in general, terms used herein, and especially in the appended claims (e.g., bodies of the appended claims) are generally intended as "open" terms (e.g., the term "including" should be interpreted as "including but not limited to," the term "having" should be interpreted as "having at least," the term "includes" should be interpreted as "includes but is not limited to," etc.). It will be further understood by those within the art that if a specific number of an introduced claim recitation is intended, such an intent will be explicitly recited in the claim, and in the absence of such recitation no such intent is present. For example, where only one item is intended, the term "single" or similar language may be used. As an aid to understanding, the following appended claims and / or the descriptions herein may include usage of the introductory phrases "at least one" and "one or more" to introduce claim recitations. However, the use of such phrases should not be construed to imply that the introduction of a claim recitation by the indefinite articles "a" or "an" limits any particular claim including such introduced claim recitation to embodiments including only one such recitation, even when the same claim includes the introductory phrases "one or more" or "at least one" and indefinite articles such as "a" or "an" (e.g., "a" and / or "an" should be interpreted to mean "at least one" or "one or more"). The same holds true for the use of definite articles used to introduce claim recitations. In addition, even if a specific number of an introduced claim recitation is explicitly recited, those skilled in the art will recognize that such recitation should be interpreted to mean at least the recited number (e.g., the bare recitation of "two recitations," without other modifiers, means at least two recitations, or two or more recitations). Furthermore, in those instances where a convention analogous to "at least one of A, B, and C, etc." is used, in general such a construction is intended in the sense one having skill in the art would understand the convention (e g., "a system having at least one of A, B, and C" would include but not be limited to systems that have A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, and / or A, B, and C together, etc.). In those instances where a convention analogous to "at least one of A, B, or C, etc." is used, in general such a construction is intended in the sense one having skill in the art would understand the convention (e.g., "a system having at least one of A, B, or C" would include but not be limited to systems that have A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, and / or A, B, and C together, etc.). It will be further understood by those within the art that virtually any disjunctive word and / or phrase presenting two or more alternative terms, whether in the description, claims, or drawings, should be understood to contemplate the possibilities of including one of the terms, either of the terms, or both terms. For example, the phrase "A or B" will be understood to include the possibilities of "A" or "B" or "A and B." Further, the terms "any offollowed by a listing of a plurality of items and / or a plurality of categories of items, as used herein, are intended to include "any of," "any combination of," "any multiple of," and / or "any combination of multiples of the items and / or the categories of items, individually or in conjunction with other items and / or other categories of items. Moreover, as used herein, the term "set" is intended to include any number of items, including zero. Additionally, as used herein, the term "number" is intended to include any number, including zero. And the term "multiple", as used herein, is intended to be synonymous with "a plurality".

[0375] In addition, where features or aspects of the disclosure are described in terms of Markush groups, those skilled in the art will recognize that the disclosure is also thereby described in terms of any individual member or subgroup of members of the Markush group.

[0376] As will be understood by one skilled in the art, for any and all purposes, such as in terms of providing a written description, all ranges disclosed herein also encompass any and all possible subranges and combinations of subranges thereof. Any listed range can be easily recognized as sufficiently describing and enabling the same range being broken down into at least equal halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, tenths, etc. As a non-limiting example, each range discussed herein may be readily broken down into a lower third, middle third and upper third, etc. As will also be understood by one skilled in the art all language such as "up to," "at least," "greater than," "less than," and the like includes the number recited and refers to ranges which can be subsequently broken down into subranges as discussed above. Finally, as will be understood by one skilled in the art, a range includes each individual member. Thus, for example, a group having 1-3 cells refers to groups having 1, 2, or 3 cells. Similarly, a group having 1-5 cells refers to groups having 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 cells, and so forth.

[0377] Moreover, the claims should not be read as limited to the provided order or elements unless stated to that effect. In addition, use of the terms "means for" in any claim is intended to invoke 35 U.S.C. §112, T| 6 or means-plus-function claim format, and any claim without the terms "means for" is not so intended.

Claims

CLAIMSWhat is claimed is:

1. A method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, in a network comprising a further WTRU acting as a controller for a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and the further WTRU, and a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising: transmitting a resource request to a target device; receiving, from the target device, a grant; prioritizing data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device; constructing at least one transport block by multiplexing prioritized data blocks; and transmitting the at least one transport block according to the grant.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising: upon reception of data to transmit, selecting, based on at least one configured condition, between the controller and the base station the target device for transmission of the resource request.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the controller is selected in case an amount of data in a buffer of the WTRU is smaller than a given value.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the at least one configured condition is linked to a packet data budget threshold.

5. The method of claim 2, comprising: selecting the controller for transmissions linked to a first quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel; and selecting the base station for transmissions linked to a second quality of service flow, a second radio bearer or a second logical channel.

6. The method of claim 2, wherein the data to transmit is to be transmitted on an uplink.

7. The method of claim 2, wherein the data to transmit is to be transmitted on a sidelink.

8. A method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, in a network comprising a further WTRU acting as a controller for a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and the further WTRU, and a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising: transmitting a resource request to a target device; receiving, from the target device, a grant; constructing at least one transport block by multiplexing only data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device; and transmitting the at least one transport block according to the grant.

9. The method of claim 8, comprising: upon reception of data to transmit, selecting, based on at least one configured condition, between the controller and the base station the target device for transmission of the resource request.

10. A method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, acting as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising: receiving, from at least one further WTRU, information indicative of a resource request; obtaining, from the base station, scheduled resources for each request; transmitting to further WTRUs from which information indicative of a resource request was received, the scheduled resources for each request; monitoring downlink control information indicating repeat requests for initial transmissions using the resources; and for monitored repeat requests, transmitting to corresponding further WTRUs, scheduled retransmission resources.

11. A method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, acting as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising: receiving, from WTRUs in the group, information indicative of traffic; determining, based on the information indicative of traffic, a relation between traffic patterns of at least two WTRUs in the group; transmitting, to the base station, at least one request for configured grants based on the information indicative of traffic and the determined relation between traffic patterns;receiving, from the base station, information indicative of the configured grants; receiving, from at least one WTRU in the group, information indicative of a traffic change; and transmitting, to the base station, at least one further request for configured grants based on the information indicative of traffic change and the determined relation between traffic patterns.

12. A method at a wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, acting as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the method comprising: transmitting, to the base station, information indicative of a buffer status of the at least one further WTRU; receiving, from at least one further WTRUs in the group, a scheduling request; transmitting, to the base station, a request for a transmission resource corresponding to the at least one scheduling request; and upon reception of information indicative of at least one uplink resource, transmitting, to the base station, information indicative of a buffer status of the at least one further WTRU and information indicative of an association between a plurality of quality of service flows, channel groups or destination indices corresponding to the uplink resources for the at least one further WTRU.

13. A wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to operate in a network comprising a further WTRU acting as a controller for a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and the further WTRU, and a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to: transmit a resource request to a target device; receive, from the target device, a grant; prioritize data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device; construct at least one transport block by multiplexing prioritized data blocks; and transmit the at least one transport block according to the grant.

14. The WTRU of claim 13, wherein the at least one processor is configured to: upon reception of data to transmit, select, based on at least one configured condition, between the controller or to the base station the target device for transmission of the resource request;15. The WTRU of claim 14, wherein the at least one processor is configured to select the controller in case an amount of data in a buffer of the WTRU is smaller than a given value.

16. The WTRU of claim 14, wherein the at least one configured condition is linked to a packet data budget threshold.

17. The WTRU of claim 14, wherein the at least one processor is configured to: select the controller for transmissions linked to a first quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel; and select the base station for transmissions linked to a second quality of service flow, a second radio bearer or a second logical channel.

18. The WTRU of claim 14, wherein the data to transmit is to be transmitted on an uplink.

19. The WTRU of claim 14, wherein the data to transmit is to be transmitted on a sidelink.

20. A wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to operate in a network comprising a further WTRU acting as a controller for a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and the further WTRU, and a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to: transmit a resource request to a target device; receive, from the target device, a grant; construct at least one transport block by multiplexing only data blocks associated with a quality of service flow, a first radio bearer or a first logical channel associated with the target device; and transmit the at least one transport block according to the grant.'ll21. The WTRU of claim 20, wherein the at least one processor is configured to: upon reception of data to transmit, select, based on at least one configured condition, between the controller or to the base station the target device for transmission of the resource request;22. A wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to act as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to: receive, from at least one further WTRU, information indicative of a resource request; obtain, from the base station, scheduled resources for each request; transmit to further WTRUs from which information indicative of a resource request was received, the scheduled resources for each request; monitor downlink control information indicating repeat requests for initial transmissions using the resources; and for monitored repeat requests, transmit to corresponding further WTRUs, scheduled retransmission resources.

23. A wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to act as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to: receive, from WTRUs in the group, information indicative of traffic; determine, based on the information indicative of traffic, a relation between traffic patterns of at least two WTRUs in the group; transmit, to the base station, at least one request for configured grants based on the information indicative of traffic and the determined relation between traffic patterns; receive, from the base station, information indicative of the configured grants; receive, from at least one WTRU in the group, information indicative of a traffic change; and transmit, to the base station, at least one further request for configured grants based on the information indicative of traffic change and the determined relation between traffic patterns.

24. A wireless transfer / receive unit, WTRU, configured to act as a controller in a group of WTRUs including the WTRU and at least one further WTRU in a network further comprising a base station serving the group of WTRUs, the WTRU comprising at least one processor configured to:transmit to the base station information indicative of a buffer status of the at least one further WTRU; receive, from at least one further WTRUs in the group, a scheduling request; transmit, to the base station, a request for a transmission resource corresponding to the at least one scheduling request; and upon reception of information indicative of at least one uplink resource, transmit, to the base station, information indicative of a buffer status of the at least one further WTRU and information indicative of an association between a plurality of quality-of-service flows, channel groups or destination indices corresponding to the uplink resources for the at least one further WTRU.

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