Uplink data importance reporting

Abstract

A communication device (12) detects (510) occurrence of an event. In some embodiments, the event comprises a change in an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12). In some embodiments, the event comprises a change in an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) with the same importance (18P). The communication device (12), based on detecting occurrence of the event, triggers (540) a report (24) that is to include information (24P) about an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) and information (24P) about an importance (18P) of that uplink data (18). The communication device (12) transmits (550) the triggered report (24).

Description

[0001] UPLINK DATA IMPORTANCE REPORTING

[0002] TECHNICAL FIELD

[0003] The present application relates generally to communication of uplink data from a communication device to a communication network, and relates more particularly to a communication device reporting the importance of uplink data to the communication network.

[0004] BACKGROUND

[0005] Some types of applications, such as extended Reality (XR) and cloud gaming, produce such large application layer protocol data units (PDUs) that each application layer PDU must be segmented at a lower layer. For example, each application layer PDU of an XR or cloud gaming application may correspond to a video frame and be segmented into multiple Internet Protocol (IP) PDUs. In some cases, each of the multiple lower layer PDUs carrying the payload of the same application layer PDU may be needed by the application layer in order for the application layer PDU to be usable, e.g., the application layer PDU may not be recoverable if any of the lower layer PDUs are missing. To capture which lower layer PDUs are related to the same application layer PDU (e.g., the same video frame), a so-called PDU set is defined as being composed of one or more PDUs carrying the payload of one unit of information generated at the application layer. By knowing which PDUs belong to the same PDU set, PDUs can be handled more efficiently, e.g., if one PDU in a set is lost, other PDU(s) in the same set can be efficiently discarded.

[0006] Known approaches to PDU set handling additionally define each PDU set as having a level of importance. A communication device determines how important each PDU set is to the application and sets a so-called PDU set importance (PSI) indicator to indicate to lower layer(s) what level of importance a particular PDU set has, e.g., reflecting how useful the PDU set is for the application. The communication device then applies differentiated behavior to PDU sets depending on the PSI indicators of those sets. For example, the communication device may down prioritize, or even discard, low importance PDU sets, in favor of more reliable delivery of higher importance PDU sets.

[0007] PDU set importance is heretofore used only by a communication device itself, not the network, as PDU set importance is not heretofore reported to the network. Reporting the PDU set importance to the network would however prove beneficial for the network’s use as well. Challenges exist, though, with reporting PDU set importance to the network, especially if PDU set importance is allowed to be reported in multiple types of reports.

[0008] SUMMARY

[0009] According to some embodiments herein, a communication device reports, to a communication network, information about an importance of uplink data at the communication device, e.g., information about an importance of PDU set(s) at the communication device. Some embodiments herein do so in a way that accommodates or accounts for the possibility of reporting such importance in any of multiple different types of reports, e.g., in a buffer status report (BSR) or in a delay status report (DSR). In these and other embodiments, importance information may be reported by a Medium Access Control (MAC) entity at the communication device.

[0010] More particularly, embodiments herein include a method performed by a communication device. The method comprises detecting occurrence of an event. In some embodiments, detecting occurrence of an event comprises a change in an importance of uplink data available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity of the communication device. In other embodiments, detecting occurrence of an event comprises a change in an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity with the same importance. The method also comprises, based on detecting occurrence of the event, triggering a report that is to include information about an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity and information about an importance of that uplink data. The method also comprises transmitting the triggered report.

[0011] Other embodiments herein include a method performed by a network node. The method comprises transmitting, to a communication device, configuration information that configures the communication device to trigger a report based on detecting the event as described above.

[0012] Still other embodiments herein include corresponding apparatus, computer programs, and carriers of those computer programs.

[0013] BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0014] Figure 1 is a block diagram of a communication network according to certain embodiments.

[0015] Figure 2 shows an example of frame latency measured over radio access network (RAN) according to some embodiments.

[0016] Figure 3 shows an example of the cumulative distribution functions of the number of transport blocks required to deliver a video frame according to some embodiments.

[0017] Figure 4 shows distinct characteristics of XR traffic arrival from typical web-browsing and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) traffic according to some embodiments.

[0018] Figure 5 depicts a method performed by a communication device in accordance with particular embodiments.

[0019] Figure 6 depicts a method performed by a communication device in accordance with other embodiments. Figure 7 depicts a method performed by a communication device in accordance with other embodiments.

[0020] Figure 8 depicts a method performed by a communication device in accordance with other embodiments.

[0021] Figure 9 depicts a method performed by a network node in accordance with particular embodiments.

[0022] Figure 10 is a block diagram of a communication device according to some embodiments.

[0023] Figure 11 is a block diagram of a network node according to some embodiments.

[0024] Figure 12 is a block diagram of a communication system according to some embodiments.

[0025] Figure 13 is a block diagram of a UE according to some embodiments.

[0026] Figure 14 is a block diagram of a network node according to other embodiments.

[0027] Figure 15 is a block diagram of a virtualization environment according to other embodiments.

[0028] DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0029] Figure 1 shows a communication network 10 according to some embodiments. The communication network 10 is configured to provide communication service to a communication device 12, e.g., a user equipment (UE). The communication network 10 as shown for example includes a network node 14, e.g., a radio network node, configured to serve the communication device 12. The communication network 10 may provide a downlink over which to perform downlink transmission(s) to the communication device 12 and / or may provide an uplink 13 over which to receive uplink transmission(s) from the communication device 12.

[0030] The communication device 12 in this regard has an uplink transmission protocol stack that includes one or more Medium Access Control (MAC) entities, one of which is shown as MAC entity 16M. The MAC entity 16M may be responsible for managing access to one or more lower layers 16L in the protocol stack, e.g., radio resources of a physical layer. As part of the MAC layer, the MAC entity 16M receives uplink data 18 for transmission from one or more higher layers 16H in the protocol stack. In one embodiment, for example, the MAC entity 16M receives uplink data 18 directly from a Radio Link Control (RLC) layer, e.g., by receiving uplink data 18 in the form of RLC Protocol Data Units (PDUs) or corresponding MAC Service Data Units (SDUs). In these and other embodiments, the MAC entity 16M may receive the uplink data 18 on one or more logical channels 17, e.g., established between the MAC layer and a higher layer 16H.

[0031] The MAC entity 16M performs MAC layer processing 22 of that uplink data 18. Such may involve scheduling the uplink data 18 for transmission, e.g., on one or more transport layers offered by the MAC entity 16M to a lower layer 16L. Scheduling may for instance involve selecting one or more logical channels 17 to which to allocate resources for a transmission, and then allocating resources to the selected logical channel(s) 17, e.g., according to a prioritization of the logical channel(s).

[0032] The MAC entity 16M as shown however may temporarily store at least some of the uplink data 18 in a buffer 20 before performing MAC layer processing 22 of that uplink data 18, e.g., for forming MAC PDUs from the uplink data 18. Storing uplink data 18 in the buffer 20 may allow the MAC entity 16M to hold onto the uplink data 18 until it is ready to be processed, so as to smooth out variations in processing times. Buffering the uplink data 18 may further enable aggregation of uplink data 18, scheduling and prioritization of uplink data 18, and / or flow control. In these and other embodiments, then, the MAC entity 16M at any given time may have some amount18A of uplink data 18 available it, including uplink data 18 that is received by the MAC entity 16M and / or that is stored in the buffer 20 of the MAC entity 16M.

[0033] According to embodiments herein, the communication device 12 may specify how important the uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M is. In some embodiments, for instance, an application or application layer specifies how important uplink data 18 is based on how important the uplink data is to the application or application layer. In one embodiment, uplink data 18 may be associated with any of multiple different possible levels of importance. Where the uplink data 18 constitutes PDUs, for instance, each PDU (or each set of PDU(s)) comprising some of the uplink data 18 may be assigned a level of importance and indicated by a corresponding importance indicator. When implemented on a PDU set by PDU set basis, each PDU set in some embodiments is composed of one or more PDUs carrying the payload of one unit of information (e.g., one video frame) generated at the application layer of the communication device 12. Such a PDU set may be referred to as a PDU Set, and the importance of a PDU Set comprises PDU Set Importance (PSI) as indicated by a PSI indicator indicating a level of importance of the PDU Set, e.g., where the level may indicate how useful the PDU Set is to the application layer. In these and other embodiments, the MAC entity 16M may apply differentiated treatment to the uplink data 18 depending on how important the uplink data 18 is, e.g., the MAC entity 16M may down prioritize, or even discard, low importance uplink data 18, in favor of more reliable delivery of higher importance uplink data 18.

[0034] In this context, some embodiments herein provide for the possibility for the communication device 12 to transmit a report 24 to the communication network 10 for reporting information about the uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M, e.g., about the uplink data 18 buffered by the MAC entity 16M in buffer 20. In one such embodiment, the report 24 is generated and / or transmitted at the MAC layer by the MAC entity 16M. As shown, the report 24 in some embodiments may include information 24A about the amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M. Such may be reported per logical channel 17 or per group of logical channel(s), i.e. , on a logical channel basis or a logical channel group basis. For example, the report 24 may indicate, for each of one or more groups of logical channel(s) 17, the amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for that logical channel group.

[0035] Alternatively or additionally, the report 24 in some embodiments may include information 24P about the importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M. Again, such may be reported per logical channel 17 or per group of logical channel(s), i.e., on a logical channel basis or a logical channel group basis. For example, the report 24 may indicate, for each of one or more groups of logical channel(s) 17, the importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for that logical channel group. Either way, the information 24P about the importance 18P of uplink data 18 may for instance indicate one or more levels of importance of the uplink data 18, e.g., one level of importance for each logical channel or logical channel group, when reported on a logical channel basis, the information 24P about the importance 18P of uplink data 18 for a logical channel may for instance indicate a maximum level of importance of uplink data 18 for the logical channel, across all uplink data received on that logical channel. Or, when reported on a logical channel group basis, the information 24P about the importance 18P of uplink data 18 for a logical channel group may for instance indicate a maximum level of importance of uplink data 18 for the logical channel group, across all logical channels included in the group.

[0036] In some embodiments, the report 24 is a Buffer Status Report (BSR), e.g., as otherwise specified by 3GPP TS 38.321 v18.0.0. In this case, the report 24 may include information 24P about the importance 18P of uplink data 18 as described in U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 623,370, filed January 22, 2024, the entire contents of which is incorporated herein by reference.

[0037] In other embodiments, the report 24 is a Delay Status Report (DSR), e.g., as otherwise specified by 3GPP TS 38.321 v18.0.0. In this case, the report 24 may include information 24P about the importance 18P of uplink data 18 as described in U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63 / 623,374, filed January 22, 2024, the entire contents of which is incorporated herein by reference.

[0038] Either way, some embodiments herein concern when and / or how to trigger the transmission of the report 24. In one embodiment, for example, the report 24 is triggerable based on the communication device 12 detecting the occurrence of a certain event. The triggering event may for example be a change in the importance 18P of the uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16P, e.g., for a certain logical channel or logical channel group. In one embodiment, for instance, the event may be uplink data 18 becoming available to the MAC entity 16M, with the uplink data 18 having an importance higher than an importance of any other uplink data 18 that is available to the MAC entity 16M (e.g., at least by a threshold level) and that belongs to the same logical channel 17 or the same logical channel group as the uplink data 18. In other embodiments, the triggering event comprises uplink data 18 becoming available to the MAC entity 16M, with the uplink data 18 having an importance higher than an importance last reported for the same logical channel or the same logical channel group as the uplink data 18. In some embodiments, then, the triggering event may reflect the need to report importance information 24P because the importance information 24P from a previous report has become stale or no longer accurately reflects the current importance information 24P.

[0039] In other embodiments, the report 24 is alternatively or additionally triggerable based on a triggering event that comprises a change in the amount 18A of uplink data 18 with the same importance 18P, e.g., for a certain logical channel or logical channel group. In one embodiment, for instance, the event may be uplink data 18 becoming available to the MAC entity 16M, with the uplink data 18 increasing the amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M with the same importance (e.g., for a certain logical channel or logical channel group) by at least a threshold amount. In some embodiments, then, the triggering event may reflect the need to report amount information 24A because the amount information 24A from a previous report has become stale or no longer accurately reflects the current amount information 24A.

[0040] Note, though, that in some embodiments the triggering of the report 24 is also based on expiry of a reporting timer that is started with a value representing a minimum duration between consecutive reports.

[0041] Note also that the report 24 may be just one of multiple types of reports, e.g., transmittable by the communication device 12 at the MAC layer by the MAC entity 16M. The multiple types of reports may for instance include a BSR as one type and a DSR as another type. And, in fact, the report 24 may be of a type in which importance information 24P is included or is configurable to be included, whereas importance information 24P may not be includable in one or more other types of reports. In one such embodiment, the report 24 may be triggered based on another type of report having been triggered but being incapable of reporting importance information 24P. For example, if a DSR is triggered but a DSR is incapable of reporting importance information 24P, the triggering of the DSR may in turn trigger transmission of a BSR which includes the importance information 24P. In one embodiment, then, both the BSR and DSR as triggered are transmitted. In another embodiment, by contrast, the triggering of the BSR prompts the MAC entity 16M to cancel the DSR. Other embodiments herein account for or accommodate multiple types of reports 24 being capable of reporting importance information 24P. In some embodiments, then, the communication device 12 selects, from among the multiple types of reports 24 capable of reporting importance information 24P, one or more types of reports 24 to trigger.

[0042] For example, the communication device 12 may select a proper subset of the multiple types of reports to trigger. This may involve for instance selecting to trigger only one of the types of reports capable of reporting importance information 24P, e.g., to avoid or minimize reporting of duplicate importance information 24P. For instance, the communication device 12 may select to trigger whichever type of report reports more types of information about the uplink data 18, e.g., by selecting to trigger a DSR in lieu of triggering a BSR for the same uplink data 18.

[0043] Alternatively, in other embodiments, different types of reports may report importance information 24P about different uplink data 18, in which case more than one type of report may be triggered. Generally, then, the communication device 12 may select multiple types of reports as needed to report importance information 24P about different uplink data 18. For example, the communication device 12 may select to trigger a DSR for reporting importance information 24P about delay-sensitive uplink data 18 (e.g., with a relatively short delay requirement) and select to also trigger a BSR for reporting importance information 24P about at least non-delay-sensitive uplink data 18. Note, though, that the selected type(s) of reports may still be a proper subset among the types of reports capable of reporting importance information 24P. In this case, the communication device 12 may select the proper subset of type(s) of reports to trigger by, for each of the multiple types of reports, including the type of report in the proper subset if the type of report is to report information about an importance of uplink data for which no other type of report already included in the proper subset is to report.

[0044] Note that in the above embodiments the communication device 12 selects one or more types of reports to trigger, with the implication that any report triggered will be transmitted. In other embodiments, though, the communication device 12 instead selects one or more types of reports to transmit. That is, from among multiple types of reports that have been triggered and that are capable of including importance information 24P, the communication device 12 selects one or more of those types of reports to actually transmit. The communication device 12 may select which type(s) of reports to transmit in a similar way as that described above for selecting which type(s) of reports to trigger. Any type(s) of reports that are not selected for transmission may be canceled.

[0045] In still other embodiments, the communication device 12 selects one or more types of reports in which to include importance information 24P. In this case, then, it may be configurable in which type(s) of reports importance information 24P is included. The communication device 12 may accordingly select which type(s) of reports in which to include importance information 24P in a similar way as that described above for selecting which type(s) of reports to trigger.

[0046] More broadly, even if there are not multiple types of reports in which importance information 24P can be included, at least one type of report may be configurable to include importance information 24P, e.g., importance information 24P may be an optional field in at least one type of report. In this case, the communication device 12 may make a decision of whether or not to include importance information 24P in a report, e.g., based on whether or not a condition is met for including the importance information 24P in the report. The communication device 12 may then generate the report to include or not include the importance information 24P in the report according to that decision.

[0047] Note that the communication network 10 (via network node 14) may configure the communication device 12 as needed to perform any of the above embodiments, e.g., via configuration of alternative behaviours, threshold(s), etc.

[0048] Consider now some example embodiments in a context where the communication network 10 is a 5G network, the communication device is a user equipment (UE), the uplink data 18 includes PDU Set(s), and the importance information 24P is conveyed by PSI indicators.

[0049] Some embodiments are applicable to 5G. 5G is the fifth generation of mobile communications, addressing a wide range of use cases from enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) to ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) to massive machine type communications (mMTC). 5G includes the New Radio (NR) access stratum interface and the 5G Core Network (5GC). The NR physical and higher layers are reusing parts of the LTE specification, and to that add needed components when motivated by new use cases.

[0050] Some embodiments are applicable for low-latency high-rate applications such as extended Reality (XR) and cloud gaming, which are important in 5G era. XR may refer to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables. It is an umbrella term for different types of realities including Virtual reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR), Mixed reality (MR), and the areas interpolated among them. The levels of virtuality range from partially sensory inputs to fully immersive VR.

[0051] 5G NR is designed to support applications demanding high-rate and low-latency in line with the requirements posed by the support of XR and cloud gaming applications in NR networks.

[0052] Low-latency high-rate XR applications

[0053] The low-latency applications like XR and cloud gaming require bounded latency, not necessarily ultra-low latency. The end-to-end latency budget may be in the range of 20-80 ms, which needs to be distributed over several components, including application processing latency, transport latency, radio link latency, etc. For these applications, short transmission time intervals (TTIs) or mini-slots targeting ultra-low latency may not be effective.

[0054] Figure 2 shows an example of frame latency measured over radio access network (RAN), excluding application & core network latencies. It can be seen that there exist frame latency spikes in RAN. The sources for the latency spikes may include queuing delay, timevarying radio environments, time-varying frame sizes, among others. Tools that can help to remove latency spikes are beneficial to enable better 5G support for this type of traffic.

[0055] In addition to bounded latency requirements, the applications like XR and cloud gaming also require high-rate transmission. This can be seen from the large frame sizes originated from this type of traffic. The typical frame sizes may range from tens of kilobytes to hundreds of kilobytes. The frame arrival rates may be 60 or 120 frames per second (fps). As a concrete example, a frame size of 100 kilobytes and a frame arrival rate of 120 fps can lead to a rate requirement of 95.8 Mbps.

[0056] A large video frame is usually fragmented into smaller IP packets and transmitted as several transport blocks (TBs) over several TTIs in RAN. Figure 3 shows an example of the cumulative distribution functions of the number of transport blocks required to deliver a video frame with size ranging from 20 KB to 300 KB. For example, Figure 3 shows that for delivering the frames with a size of 200 KB each, the median number of needed TBs is 5.

[0057] The characteristics of XR traffic arrival are quite distinct from typical web-browsing and VoIP traffic as shown in Figure 4. It is well expected that the arrival time is quasi- periodic and largely predictable as VoIP. However, its data size is order of magnitude larger than VoIP, as discussed above. In addition, similar to web-browsing, the data size is different at every application PDU arrival instance due to dynamics of contents and human motion.

[0058] As mentioned above, many XR applications will generate traffic periodically with a variable size. When the application packet enters the internet, the initial packet may be transmitted into a single PDU in the network or may be segmented into several PDUs. One application packet could, for instance, correspond to one or several IP packets.

[0059] IP packets will arrive to the PDCP layer, i.e. PDCP SDUs, and the PDCP layer will create PDCP PDUs and will deliver them to lower layers. When an IP packet arrives to PDCP, the PDCP layer starts a PDCP discard timer. When this timer expires, the PDCP discards the PDCP SDU as well as the corresponding PDCP Data PDU. If the PDCP PDU was delivered to lower layers, PDCP indicates the discard to lower layers. Lower layers, e.g. RLC, will discard the PDCP PDUs (RLC SDU) if these RLC SDU or any segment of the RLC SDU has not yet been transmitted to lower layers.

[0060] As discussed above, an application PDU, e.g. a video frame, is divided into multiple IP packets. All these IP packets which belong to one video frame can be defined as a PDU Set.

[0061] Some embodiments herein are applicable for PDU sets which may be assigned with a PDU Set Importance indicator, e.g., as described in SA2 in TS 23.700-60 V18.0.0. This parameter can be used to identify the importance of a PDU Set within a QoS flow. RAN may use it for PDU Set level packet discarding in presence of congestion.

[0062] *PDU Set as defined by TS 23.700-60 V18.0.0: PDU Set: A PDU Set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying the payload of one unit of information generated at the application level (e.g. a frame or video slice for XRM Services, as used in TR 26.926). In some implementations all PDUs in a PDU Set are needed by the application layer to use the corresponding unit of information. In other implementations, the application layer can still recover parts all or of the information unit, when some PDUs are missing.

[0063] Some embodiments herein report information about a “PDU Set Importance” (PSI) indicator which indicates a certain importance level for the said PDU Set. The importance level of the PDU Sets indicates how useful the PDU Set is for the application. The assumption is that low importance PDU Sets can down prioritized, or even discarded, in favor of more reliable delivery of higher importance PDU Sets.

[0064] Some embodiments are applicable for UL PSI based discarding. In some embodiments, the UE performs the identification of the PSI levels of the PDU Sets, and determines what is a low or high importance PDU Set, and then applies the behavior configured by the network on each of the PDU Set depending on their identified importance.

[0065] Some embodiments provide information about the PDU Sets to the network.

[0066] Furthermore, some embodiments herein are applicable for buffer reporting reports: Delay Status Reporting (DSR) and Refined Buffer Status Reporting (Refined BSR). The DSR is a MAC CE, with separate handling from the legacy BSR.

[0067] The Delay Status Reporting (DSR) procedure is used to provide the serving gNB with delay status of LCGs. This delay status for an LCG includes remaining time, which is the smallest remaining value of the PDCP discardTimers among SDUs buffered for the LCG, and the total amount of delay-critical UL data for the LCG according to the data volume calculation procedure specified in TS 38.322 V18.0.0 and in TS 38.323 TS 38.322 18.0.0 for the associated RLC and PDCP entities, respectively. Delay-critical PDCP SDU is, if pdu- SetDiscard is not configured, a PDCP SDU for which the remaining time until discardTimer expiry is less than the remainingTimeThreshold. If pdu-SetDiscard is configured, a PDCP SDU belonging to a PDU Set of which at least one PDCP SDU has the remaining time until discardTimer expiry is less than the remainingTimeThreshold.

[0068] Legacy BSR operation

[0069] There exist multiple different BSR formats and triggering options. The basic condition for triggering a Regular BSR is the arrival of UL data to a logical channel with higher priority (i.e., also including arrival of data to an empty buffer) than any logical channel containing available UL data, as is specified in following snippet from TS 38.321 V18.0.0:

[0070] A BSR shall be triggered if any of the following events occur for activated cell group:

[0071] - UL data, for a logical channel which belongs to an LCG, becomes available to the MAC entity; and either

[0072] - this UL data belongs to a logical channel with higher priority than the priority of any logical channel containing available UL data which belong to any LCG; or

[0073] - none of the logical channels which belong to an LCG contains any available UL data. in which case the BSR is referred below to as 'Regular BSR';

[0074] - UL resources are allocated and number of padding bits is equal to or larger than the size of the Buffer Status Report MAC CE plus its subheader, in which case the BSR is referred below to as 'Padding BSR';

[0075] - retxBSR- Timer expires, and at least one of the logical channels which belong to an LCG contains UL data, in which case the BSR is referred below to as 'Regular BSR';

[0076] - periodicBSR-Timer expires, in which case the BSR is referred below to as 'Periodic BSR'.

[0077] NOTE 1 : When Regular BSR triggering events occur for multiple logical channels simultaneously, each logical channel triggers one separate Regular BSR.

[0078] Some embodiments accommodate for and account for there being multiple solutions for how to report importance from UE to network, i.e. coupled with delay reporting or with buffer reporting. Some embodiments in this regard enable utilization of these different options together, e.g. specifying when and how to trigger what reports and / or specifying how to combine and configure different importance options.

[0079] In particular, some embodiments propose the 1) signaling to configure the UE with different importance reporting, and 2) new means for UE to utilize importance reports, including triggering, of separate or combined reports. Alternatively or additionally, some embodiments provide UE with configurations and rules on how to combine and trigger reporting of importance information.

[0080] Certain embodiments may provide one or more of the following technical advantage(s). Some embodiments provide the network with the wanted importance information tailored for the scenarios, capabilities, and features enabled to allow the network to utilize the importance information in the preferred way, e.g. configuring features and scheduling.

[0081] Configuration combinations of importance reporting

[0082] There may be multiple solutions for how to do importance reporting, e.g. importance included in DSR, BSR, or other signals such as control PDUs.

[0083] The network may configure the UE to utilize one or any combinations of the possible importance reporting methods.

[0084] When any number of importance reporting is configured, there may be rules to how these reports should be triggered, combined, and dependent on each other. These rules can consist of:

[0085] 1 . When to trigger certain importance reports

[0086] 2. When to prohibit sending certain importance reports

[0087] 3. When to exclude / limit certain information in the reports

[0088] Triggering

[0089] Despite which type of reports are configured to be used for importance reporting, both the triggering of importance reports and the inclusion of importance information in any report can depend on the change of the importance data in the UE buffer. One such simple condition could be the arrival of new importance data to the buffer, i.e. , as in the triggers for Regular BSR, where arrival of data into a logical channel with higher priority than the logical channels that currently contain data triggers a new Regular BSR, the arrival of data with higher PSI levels (higher importance data) arrive to the same logical channel may trigger a new importance report, or the inclusion of importance information in the next report that is sent and can contain such information.

[0090] It is also possible that the data arrival with higher PSI levels does not immediately trigger the reporting, but based on timers. For example, after the previous reporting with importance, a PSI reporting timer is initiated and runs. Once the timer expires, a UE is allowed to report the new importance information if present. Otherwise, it does not trigger any importance reporting to avoid unnecessary reporting overhead.

[0091] In another example, although the importance level in the reported data is not changed, if there is an increase of buffer size of the reported importance level, the importance reporting is triggered. It is possible to use any type of reporting or it is based on the previously used reporting. For example, 100KB of buffer size of high importance information is reported by regular BSR with the importance information at time t. Then, at time t+X, the same importance level of data increased with 150KB and the regular BSR is also triggered to update the buffer size with the corresponding importance level information. In this example, if configured, DSR can be also used to update the buffer size with the corresponding importance level.

[0092] It may also be so that any report that can provide importance information doesn’t always include the importance information, despite being configured with such possibility, but instead the inclusion of importance information is based on certain conditions. Another alternative is to always include the importance information in any report that is sent, but the selection of which type of report to use is dependent on what importance information is available, e.g. if the importance information in the buffer has changed according to some rule since the last report that contained importance information. Such condition could depend on a certain threshold, if more than a configured size of data with certain selected importance level enters the buffer then reporting of importance information may be triggered to be included in a following report, or certain formats for reporting the importance information may be selected to be used, e.g. when doing buffer or delay reporting.

[0093] Combined triggering

[0094] Multiple different options of combining the triggering of different types of importance reporting formats could exist as explained in the following.

[0095] The simplest type of combined reporting triggering is if only one type of report (e.g. BSR or DSR) is configured to include importance information, then there can be dependent triggers of the other reports. For example, if a certain report cannot include importance information but a change in importance level is detected in the UE buffer, then another report is triggered which instead includes the importance information. In one such example, the DSR is triggered but doesn’t include importance information (e.g. importance indication is not configured for DSR). This means that the DSR includes the delay-critical UL data regardless of its importance level. In this case, the BSR would be triggered and it would include the buffer status related to one or more of the configured importance information levels. Or vice versa could apply if instead only the DSR reports can include importance information and not the BSR.

[0096] Another option is if one report contains importance information for only part of the buffered data (e.g. the DSR report importance information for the most critical delay data), then another report can be triggered to include information for the other data in the buffer, if such exist. This additional trigger is then to give a complete picture of the importance levels of the buffered data in the UE buffer. This means that if the DSR includes the delay-critical UL data volume for one or more of the respective importance level information, the BSR would then be triggered including or aggregating the total data in the buffers for the said LCG, or the total data minus the data reported in the DSR for the said LCG.

[0097] Another option is to trigger a report when new Importance Data becomes available for transmission and that Importance data is of higher importance than previously available or reported Importance data.

[0098] Another option is to report when Importance Data becomes available after having no importance data available for transmission.

[0099] Prohibition reporting

[0100] If multiple reports are triggered with importance information, then one or all but one of the reports could be canceled. This could be conditioned on if the importance information is conveyed for the same buffered data, i.e. unnecessary overlap occurs. It could also be conditioned if the report includes other information (e.g. DSR informs about delay left and thus the BSR is canceled since it doesn’t provide any additional information).

[0101] Limiting information in reports

[0102] Importance information could be limited to only be included in one of the reports. If overlap of information exists in any reports that are triggered at the same time (or inside some configured time interval) then only some selected reports contain the importance information. It can also be selected so that a certain report contains part of the importance information. For example, a DSR contains the delay critical importance information while the BSR contains importance information for the non-delay critical buffered data if they are sent at similar times. If no new DSR is triggered, then BSR could still include importance information for all of the buffered data.

[0103] In view of the modifications and variations herein, Figure 5 depicts a method performed by a communication device 12 in accordance with particular embodiments. The method includes detecting occurrence of an event (Block 510). In some embodiments, detecting occurrence of an event comprises a change in an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity 16M of the communication device 12 (Block 520). In other embodiments, detecting occurrence of an event comprises a change in an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M with the same importance 18P (Block 530). The method also comprises, based on detecting occurrence of the event, triggering a report 24 that is to include information 24P about an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M and information 24P about an importance 18P of that uplink data 18 (Block 540). The method also comprises transmitting the triggered report 24 (Block 550).

[0104] In some embodiments, the event comprises a change in an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M. In some embodiments, the event comprises a change in an importance 18P of uplink data 18, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, available to the MAC entity 16M.

[0105] In some embodiments, the event comprises uplink data 18 becoming available to the MAC entity 16M, with the uplink data 18 having an importance 18P higher than an importance 18P of any other uplink data 18 that is available to the MAC entity 16M and that belongs to the same logical channel or the same logical channel group as the uplink data 18.

[0106] In some embodiments, the event comprises a change in an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M with the same importance 18P. In some embodiments, the event comprises a change in an amount 18A of uplink data 18, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, available to the MAC entity 16M with the same importance 18P. In some embodiments, the event comprises uplink data 18, for a logical channel which belongs to a logical channel group, becoming available to the MAC entity 16M, with the uplink data 18 increasing an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M with the same importance 18P, for the logical channel or the logical channel group, by at least a threshold amount.

[0107] In some embodiments, said triggering is based also on expiry of a reporting timer that is started with a value representing a minimum duration between consecutive reports.

[0108] In some embodiments, said importance 18P comprises importance 18P to an application layer of the communication device 12.

[0109] In some embodiments, the importance 18P comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.

[0110] In some embodiments, the uplink data 18 comprises one or more PDUs. In some embodiments, the importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity 16M, an importance 18P of the set. In some embodiments, each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information 24P generated at an application layer of the communication device 12. In some embodiments, the one or more PDUs comprises one or more Radio Link Layer, RLC, PDUs received by the MAC entity 16M on one or more logical channels. In some embodiments, an importance 18P of a set of one or more PDUs is indicated by a PDU set importance, PSI, indicator indicating a level of importance 18P of the set of one or more PDUs, wherein the level indicates how useful the set is to the application layer.

[0111] In some embodiments, the triggered report 24 is a Buffer Status Report, BSR, or a Delay Status Report, DSR.

[0112] In some embodiments, the report 24 includes, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information 24P about an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group and information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group. In some embodiments, the information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group comprises information 24P indicating one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18. In some embodiments, the one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18 comprises a maximum level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 for the logical channel group. In some embodiments, the one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18 comprises, for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 for the logical channel.

[0113] In some embodiments, the triggered report 24 is a first type of report 24, and said triggering is based also on a second type of report 24 having been triggered but being incapable of reporting information 24P about the importance 18P of the uplink data 18. In some embodiments, the method further comprises, based on or in association with triggering the report 24, cancelling the second type of report 24. In some embodiments, said transmitting comprises also transmitting the second type of report 24 (Block 560).

[0114] In some embodiments, the event comprises uplink data 18 becoming available to the MAC entity 16M, with the uplink data 18 having an importance 18P higher than an importance 18P last reported for the same logical channel or the same logical channel group as the uplink data 18.

[0115] In some embodiments, the method also comprises receiving, from a network node, configuration information 24P that configures the communication device 12 (Block 500).

[0116] Figure 6 depicts a method performed by a communication device 12 in accordance with particular embodiments. The method includes selecting, from among multiple types of reports capable of reporting information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity 16M of the communication device 12, one or more types of reports to trigger, transmit, and / or include information 24P about an importance 18P of the uplink data 18 (Block 610). The method also comprises triggering, transmitting, and / or including information 24P about an importance 18P of the uplink data 18 in the one or more selected types of reports 24 (Block 620).

[0117] In some embodiments, said selecting comprises selecting a proper subset of the multiple types of reports 24. In some embodiments, selecting the proper subset comprises, for each of the multiple types of reports 24, including the type of report 24 in the proper subset if the type of report 24 is to report information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 for which no other type of report 24 already included in the proper subset is to report. In some embodiments, selecting the proper subset comprises, for each of the multiple types of reports 24, including the type of report 24 in the proper subset if the type of report 24 is to report information 24P about uplink data 18 for which no other type of report 24 already included in the proper subset is to report. In some embodiments, selecting the proper subset comprises selecting, from among multiple types of reports 24 that report information 24P about the same uplink data 18, whichever type of report 24 reports more types of information 24P about the uplink data 18. In some embodiments, the multiple types of reports 24 that report information 24P about the same uplink data 18 include a BSR and a DSR, and said selecting comprises selecting the DSR as reporting more types of information 24P about the uplink data 18 than the BSR. In some embodiments, the proper subset is selected to avoid or minimize reporting of duplicate information 24P. In some embodiments, the proper subset contains only one of the multiple types of reports 24. In some embodiments, the proper subset contains two or more types of reports 24 that report information 24P about different uplink data 18 and / or report different types of information 24P about the same uplink data 18.

[0118] In some embodiments, said selecting comprises selecting one or more types of reports 24 to trigger, and wherein said triggering, transmitting, and / or including comprises triggering the one or more selected types of reports 24.

[0119] In some embodiments, the multiple types of reports 24 are triggered. In some embodiments, said selecting comprises selecting one or more types of reports 24 to transmit, and said triggering, transmitting, and / or including comprises transmitting the one or more selected types of reports 24. In some embodiments, the method further comprises cancelling any of the multiple types of reports 24 not selected (Block 630).

[0120] In some embodiments, the multiple types of reports 24 are triggered. In some embodiments, said selecting comprises selecting one or more types of reports 24 to include information 24P about an importance 18P of the uplink data 18, and said triggering, transmitting, and / or including comprises including information 24P about an importance 18P of the uplink data 18 in the one or more selected types of reports 24. In some embodiments, said selecting comprises selecting two or more types of reports 24 to include information 24P about an importance 18P of the uplink data 18, with different types of reports 24 including information 24P about the importance 18P of at least some different uplink data 18. In some embodiments, the two or more types of reports 24 include a DSR that is to include information 24P about the importance 18P of a first proper subset of the uplink data 18 which has a shorter delay requirement than a second proper subset of the uplink data 18. In some embodiments, the two or more types of reports 24 include a BSR that is to include information 24P about the importance 18P of at least the second proper subset of the uplink data 18.

[0121] In some embodiments, said importance 18P comprises importance 18P to an application layer of the communication device 12.

[0122] In some embodiments, the importance 18P comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.

[0123] In some embodiments, the uplink data 18 comprises one or more PDUs. In some embodiments, the importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity 16M, an importance 18P of the set. In some embodiments, each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information 24P generated at an application layer of the communication device 12. In some embodiments, the one or more PDUs comprises one or more Radio Link Layer, RLC, PDUs received by the MAC entity 16M on one or more logical channels. In some embodiments, an importance 18P of a set of one or more PDUs is indicated by a PDU set importance, PSI, indicator indicating a level of importance 18P of the set of one or more PDUs. In some embodiments, the level indicates how useful the set is to the application layer.

[0124] In some embodiments, the multiple types of reports 24 include at least a Buffer Status Report, BSR, and a Delay Status Report, DSR.

[0125] In some embodiments, one or more of the multiple types of reports 24 each include, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information 24P about an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group and information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group. In some embodiments, the information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group comprises information 24P indicating one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18. In some embodiments, the one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18 comprises a maximum level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 for the logical channel group. In some embodiments, the one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18 comprises, for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 for the logical channel.

[0126] In some embodiments, said selecting is performed according to a configuration received from a network node in a communication network.

[0127] In some embodiments, the method also comprises receiving, from a network node, configuration information 24P that configures the communication device 12 (Block 600).

[0128] Figure 7 depicts a method performed by a communication device 12 in accordance with particular embodiments. The method includes detecting occurrence of a condition under which the communication device 12 is to report information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity 16M of the communication device 12 (Block W3W310). The method also comprises, based on a first type of report 24 having been triggered to report information 24P about the importance 18P of a first subset of the uplink data 18, triggering a second type of report 24 to report information 24P about the importance 18P of a second subset of the uplink data 18 (Block 720).

[0129] In some embodiments, the first subset of the uplink data 18 has a shorter delay requirement than the second subset of the uplink data 18.

[0130] In some embodiments, the first type of report 24 is a DSR.

[0131] In some embodiments, the second type of report 24 is a BSR.

[0132] In some embodiments, the second type of report 24 reports information 24P about the importance 18P of only the second subset of the uplink data 18.

[0133] In some embodiments, said importance 18P comprises importance 18P to an application layer of the communication device 12.

[0134] In some embodiments, the importance 18P comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.

[0135] In some embodiments, the uplink data 18 comprises one or more PDUs. In some embodiments, the importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity 16M, an importance 18P of the set. In some embodiments, each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information 24P generated at an application layer of the communication device 12. In some embodiments, the one or more PDUs comprises one or more Radio Link Layer, RLC, PDUs received by the MAC entity 16M on one or more logical channels. In some embodiments, an importance 18P of a set of one or more PDUs is indicated by a PDU set importance, PSI, indicator indicating a level of importance 18P of the set of one or more PDUs, wherein the level indicates how useful the set is to the application layer.

[0136] In some embodiments, the multiple types of reports 24 include at least a Buffer Status Report, BSR, and a Delay Status Report, DSR.

[0137] In some embodiments, one or more of the multiple types of reports 24 each include, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information 24P about an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group and information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group. In some embodiments, the information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group comprises information 24P indicating one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18. In some embodiments, the one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18 comprises a maximum level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 for the logical channel group. In some embodiments, the one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18 comprises, for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 for the logical channel.

[0138] In some embodiments, the method also comprises receiving, from a network node, configuration information 24P that configures the communication device 12 (Block 700).

[0139] Figure 8 depicts a method performed by a communication device 12 in accordance with particular embodiments. The method includes making a decision of whether or not to include in a report information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity 16M of the communication device 12, based on whether or not a condition is met for including the information 24P in the report 24 (Block 810). The method also comprises generating the report 24 to include or not include the information 24P in the report 24 according to the decision (Block 820). The method also comprises transmitting the report 24 (Block 830).

[0140] In some embodiments, the condition is an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M with at least a certain level of importance 18P having changed by at least a threshold amount.

[0141] In some embodiments, the condition is an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, with at least a certain level of importance 18P having changed by at least a threshold amount since any last report for the certain logical channel or logical channel group.

[0142] In some embodiments, the condition is a level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M having changed by at least a threshold.

[0143] In some embodiments, the condition is a level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, having changed by at least a threshold since any last report for the certain logical channel or logical channel group.

[0144] In some embodiments, said importance 18P comprises importance 18P to an application layer of the communication device 12.

[0145] In some embodiments, the importance 18P comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.

[0146] In some embodiments, the uplink data 18 comprises one or more PDUs. In some embodiments, the importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity 16M, an importance 18P of the set. In some embodiments, each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information 24P generated at an application layer of the communication device 12. In some embodiments, the one or more PDUs comprises one or more Radio Link Layer, RLC, PDUs received by the MAC entity 16M on one or more logical channels. In some embodiments, an importance 18P of a set of one or more PDUs is indicated by a PDU set importance, PSI, indicator indicating a level of importance 18P of the set of one or more PDUs. In some embodiments, the level indicates how useful the set is to the application layer.

[0147] In some embodiments, the multiple types of reports 24 include at least a Buffer Status Report, BSR, and a Delay Status Report, DSR.

[0148] In some embodiments, one or more of the multiple types of reports 24 each include, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information 24P about an amount 18A of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group and information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group. In some embodiments, the information 24P about an importance 18P of uplink data 18 available to the MAC entity 16M for the logical channel group comprises information 24P indicating one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18. In some embodiments, the one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18 comprises a maximum level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 for the logical channel group. In some embodiments, the one or more levels of importance 18P of the uplink data 18 comprises, for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance 18P of uplink data 18 for the logical channel.

[0149] In some embodiments, the method further comprises receiving, from a network node, configuration information that configures the communication device 12.

[0150] In some embodiments, the method also comprises receiving, from a network node, configuration information that configures the communication device 12 (Block 800).

[0151] Figure 9 depicts a method performed by a network node in accordance with other particular embodiments. The method includes transmitting, to a communication device 12, configuration information that configures the communication device 12 (Block 900).

[0152] Embodiments herein also include corresponding apparatuses. Embodiments herein for instance include a communication device 12 configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the communication device 12.

[0153] Embodiments also include a communication device 12 comprising processing circuitry and power supply circuitry. The processing circuitry is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the communication device 12. The power supply circuitry is configured to supply power to the communication device 12.

[0154] Embodiments further include a communication device 12 comprising processing circuitry. The processing circuitry is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the communication device 12. In some embodiments, the communication device 12 further comprises communication circuitry.

[0155] Embodiments further include a communication device 12 comprising processing circuitry and memory. The memory contains instructions executable by the processing circuitry whereby the communication device 12 is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the communication device 12.

[0156] Embodiments moreover include a user equipment (UE). The UE comprises an antenna configured to send and receive wireless signals. The UE also comprises radio frontend circuitry connected to the antenna and to processing circuitry, and configured to condition signals communicated between the antenna and the processing circuitry. The processing circuitry is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the communication device 12. In some embodiments, the UE also comprises an input interface connected to the processing circuitry and configured to allow input of information into the UE to be processed by the processing circuitry. The UE may comprise an output interface connected to the processing circuitry and configured to output information from the UE that has been processed by the processing circuitry. The UE may also comprise a battery connected to the processing circuitry and configured to supply power to the UE.

[0157] Embodiments herein also include a network node 14 configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the network node 14.

[0158] Embodiments also include a network node 14 comprising processing circuitry and power supply circuitry. The processing circuitry is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the network node 14. The power supply circuitry is configured to supply power to the network node 14.

[0159] Embodiments further include a network node 14 comprising processing circuitry. The processing circuitry is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the network node 14. In some embodiments, the network node 14 further comprises communication circuitry.

[0160] Embodiments further include a network node 14 comprising processing circuitry and memory. The memory contains instructions executable by the processing circuitry whereby the network node 14 is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the embodiments described above for the network node 14.

[0161] More particularly, the apparatuses described above may perform the methods herein and any other processing by implementing any functional means, modules, units, or circuitry. In one embodiment, for example, the apparatuses comprise respective circuits or circuitry configured to perform the steps shown in the method figures. The circuits or circuitry in this regard may comprise circuits dedicated to performing certain functional processing and / or one or more microprocessors in conjunction with memory. For instance, the circuitry may include one or more microprocessor or microcontrollers, as well as other digital hardware, which may include digital signal processors (DSPs), special-purpose digital logic, and the like. The processing circuitry may be configured to execute program code stored in memory, which may include one or several types of memory such as read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory, cache memory, flash memory devices, optical storage devices, etc. Program code stored in memory may include program instructions for executing one or more telecommunications and / or data communications protocols as well as instructions for carrying out one or more of the techniques described herein, in several embodiments. In embodiments that employ memory, the memory stores program code that, when executed by the one or more processors, carries out the techniques described herein.

[0162] Figure 10 for example illustrates a communication device 12 as implemented in accordance with one or more embodiments. As shown, the communication device 12 includes processing circuitry 1010 and communication circuitry 1020. The communication circuitry 1020 (e.g., radio circuitry) is configured to transmit and / or receive information to and / or from one or more other nodes, e.g., via any communication technology. Such communication may occur via one or more antennas that are either internal or external to the communication device 12. The processing circuitry 1010 is configured to perform processing described above, e.g., in Figure 5, 6, 7, and / or 8, such as by executing instructions stored in memory 1030. The processing circuitry 1010 in this regard may implement certain functional means, units, or modules.

[0163] Figure 11 illustrates a network node 14 as implemented in accordance with one or more embodiments. As shown, the network node 14 includes processing circuitry 1110 and communication circuitry 1120. The communication circuitry 1120 is configured to transmit and / or receive information to and / or from one or more other nodes, e.g., via any communication technology. The processing circuitry 1110 is configured to perform processing described above, e.g., in Figure 9, such as by executing instructions stored in memory 1130. The processing circuitry 1110 in this regard may implement certain functional means, units, or modules.

[0164] Those skilled in the art will also appreciate that embodiments herein further include corresponding computer programs.

[0165] A computer program comprises instructions which, when executed on at least one processor of an apparatus, cause the apparatus to carry out any of the respective processing described above. A computer program in this regard may comprise one or more code modules corresponding to the means or units described above.

[0166] Embodiments further include a carrier containing such a computer program. This carrier may comprise one of an electronic signal, optical signal, radio signal, or computer readable storage medium.

[0167] In this regard, embodiments herein also include a computer program product stored on a non-transitory computer readable (storage or recording) medium and comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor of an apparatus, cause the apparatus to perform as described above.

[0168] Embodiments further include a computer program product comprising program code portions for performing the steps of any of the embodiments herein when the computer program product is executed by a computing device. This computer program product may be stored on a computer readable recording medium.

[0169] Figure 12 shows an example of a communication system 1200 in accordance with some embodiments.

[0170] In the example, the communication system 1200 includes a telecommunication network 1202 that includes an access network 1204, such as a radio access network (RAN), and a core network 1206, which includes one or more core network nodes 1208. The access network 1204 includes one or more access network nodes, such as network nodes 1210a and 1210b (one or more of which may be generally referred to as network nodes 1210), or any other similar 3rdGeneration Partnership Project (3GPP) access nodes or non-3GPP access points. Moreover, as will be appreciated by those of skill in the art, a network node is not necessarily limited to an implementation in which a radio portion and a baseband portion are supplied and integrated by a single vendor. Thus, it will be understood that network nodes include disaggregated implementations or portions thereof. For example, in some embodiments, the telecommunication network 1202 includes one or more Open-RAN (ORAN) network nodes. An ORAN network node is a node in the telecommunication network 1202 that supports an ORAN specification (e.g., a specification published by the O-RAN Alliance, or any similar organization) and may operate alone or together with other nodes to implement one or more functionalities of any node in the telecommunication network 1202, including one or more network nodes 1210 and / or core network nodes 1208.

[0171] Examples of an ORAN network node include an open radio unit (O-RU), an open distributed unit (O-DU), an open central unit (O-CU), including an O-CU control plane (O- CU-CP) or an O-CU user plane (O-CU-UP), a RAN intelligent controller (near-real time or non-real time) hosting software or software plug-ins, such as a near-real time control application (e.g., xApp) or a non-real time control application (e.g., rApp), or any combination thereof (the adjective “open” designating support of an ORAN specification). The network node may support a specification by, for example, supporting an interface defined by the ORAN specification, such as an A1 , F1 , W1 , E1 , E2, X2, Xn interface, an open fronthaul user plane interface, or an open fronthaul management plane interface. Moreover, an ORAN access node may be a logical node in a physical node. Furthermore, an ORAN network node may be implemented in a virtualization environment (described further below) in which one or more network functions are virtualized. For example, the virtualization environment may include an O-Cloud computing platform orchestrated by a Service Management and Orchestration Framework via an O-2 interface defined by the O-RAN Alliance or comparable technologies. The network nodes 1210 facilitate direct or indirect connection of user equipment (UE), such as by connecting UEs 1212a, 1212b, 1212c, and 1212d (one or more of which may be generally referred to as UEs 1212) to the core network 1206 over one or more wireless connections.

[0172] Example wireless communications over a wireless connection include transmitting and / or receiving wireless signals using electromagnetic waves, radio waves, infrared waves, and / or other types of signals suitable for conveying information without the use of wires, cables, or other material conductors. Moreover, in different embodiments, the communication system 1200 may include any number of wired or wireless networks, network nodes, UEs, and / or any other components or systems that may facilitate or participate in the communication of data and / or signals whether via wired or wireless connections. The communication system 1200 may include and / or interface with any type of communication, telecommunication, data, cellular, radio network, and / or other similar type of system.

[0173] The UEs 1212 may be any of a wide variety of communication devices, including wireless devices arranged, configured, and / or operable to communicate wirelessly with the network nodes 1210 and other communication devices. Similarly, the network nodes 1210 are arranged, capable, configured, and / or operable to communicate directly or indirectly with the UEs 1212 and / or with other network nodes or equipment in the telecommunication network 1202 to enable and / or provide network access, such as wireless network access, and / or to perform other functions, such as administration in the telecommunication network 1202.

[0174] In the depicted example, the core network 1206 connects the network nodes 1210 to one or more host computing systems, such as host 1216. These connections may be direct or indirect via one or more intermediary networks or devices. In other examples, network nodes may be directly coupled to hosts. The core network 1206 includes one more core network nodes (e.g., core network node 1208) that are structured with hardware and software components. Features of these components may be substantially similar to those described with respect to the UEs, network nodes, and / or hosts, such that the descriptions thereof are generally applicable to the corresponding components of the core network node 1208. Example core network nodes include functions of one or more of a Mobile Switching Center (MSC), Mobility Management Entity (MME), Home Subscriber Server (HSS), Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF), Session Management Function (SMF), Authentication Server Function (AUSF), Subscription Identifier De-concealing function (SIDF), Unified Data Management (UDM), Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP), Network Exposure Function (NEF), and / or a User Plane Function (UPF).

[0175] The host 1216 may be under the ownership or control of a service provider other than an operator or provider of the access network 1204 and / or the telecommunication network 1202. The host 1216 may host a variety of applications to provide one or more service. Examples of such applications include live and pre-recorded audio / video content, data collection services such as retrieving and compiling data on various ambient conditions detected by a plurality of UEs, analytics functionality, social media, functions for controlling or otherwise interacting with remote devices, functions for an alarm and surveillance center, or any other such function performed by a server.

[0176] As a whole, the communication system 1200 of Figure 12 enables connectivity between the UEs, network nodes, and hosts. In that sense, the communication system may be configured to operate according to predefined rules or procedures, such as specific standards that include, but are not limited to: Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM); Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); Long Term Evolution (LTE), and / or other suitable 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G standards, or any applicable future generation standard (e.g., 6G); wireless local area network (WLAN) standards, such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standards (WiFi); and / or any other appropriate wireless communication standard, such as the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax), Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Near Field Communication (NFC) ZigBee, LiFi, and / or any low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) standards such as LoRa and Sigfox.

[0177] In some examples, the telecommunication network 1202 is a cellular network that implements 3GPP standardized features. Accordingly, the telecommunications network 1202 may support network slicing to provide different logical networks to different devices that are connected to the telecommunication network 1202. For example, the telecommunications network 1202 may provide Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) services to some UEs, while providing Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services to other UEs, and / or Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC)ZMassive loT services to yet further UEs.

[0178] In some examples, the UEs 1212 are configured to transmit and / or receive information without direct human interaction. For instance, a UE may be designed to transmit information to the access network 1204 on a predetermined schedule, when triggered by an internal or external event, or in response to requests from the access network 1204. Additionally, a UE may be configured for operating in single- or multi-RAT or multi-standard mode. For example, a UE may operate with any one or combination of Wi-Fi, NR (New Radio) and LTE, i.e. being configured for multi-radio dual connectivity (MR-DC), such as E- UTRAN (Evolved-UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) New Radio - Dual Connectivity (EN-DC).

[0179] In the example, the hub 1214 communicates with the access network 1204 to facilitate indirect communication between one or more UEs (e.g., UE 1212c and / or 1212d) and network nodes (e.g., network node 1210b). In some examples, the hub 1214 may be a controller, router, content source and analytics, or any of the other communication devices described herein regarding UEs. For example, the hub 1214 may be a broadband router enabling access to the core network 1206 for the UEs. As another example, the hub 1214 may be a controller that sends commands or instructions to one or more actuators in the UEs. Commands or instructions may be received from the UEs, network nodes 1210, or by executable code, script, process, or other instructions in the hub 1214. As another example, the hub 1214 may be a data collector that acts as temporary storage for UE data and, in some embodiments, may perform analysis or other processing of the data. As another example, the hub 1214 may be a content source. For example, for a UE that is a VR device, display, loudspeaker, or other media delivery device, the hub 1214 may retrieve VR assets, video, audio, or other media or data related to sensory information via a network node, which the hub 1214 then provides to the UE either directly, after performing local processing, and / or after adding additional local content. In still another example, the hub 1214 acts as a proxy server or orchestrator for the UEs, in particular if one or more of the UEs are low energy loT devices.

[0180] The hub 1214 may have a constant / persistent or intermittent connection to the network node 1210b. The hub 1214 may also allow for a different communication scheme and / or schedule between the hub 1214 and UEs (e.g., UE 1212c and / or 1212d), and between the hub 1214 and the core network 1206. In other examples, the hub 1214 is connected to the core network 1206 and / or one or more UEs via a wired connection. Moreover, the hub 1214 may be configured to connect to an M2M service provider over the access network 1204 and / or to another UE over a direct connection. In some scenarios, UEs may establish a wireless connection with the network nodes 1210 while still connected via the hub 1214 via a wired or wireless connection. In some embodiments, the hub 1214 may be a dedicated hub - that is, a hub whose primary function is to route communications to / from the UEs from / to the network node 1210b. In other embodiments, the hub 1214 may be a non-dedicated hub - that is, a device which is capable of operating to route communications between the UEs and network node 1210b, but which is additionally capable of operating as a communication start and / or end point for certain data channels.

[0181] Figure 13 shows a UE 1300 in accordance with some embodiments. The UE 1300 presents additional details of some embodiments of the UE 1212 of Figure 1 . As used herein, a UE refers to a device capable, configured, arranged and / or operable to communicate wirelessly with network nodes and / or other UEs. Examples of a UE include, but are not limited to, a smart phone, mobile phone, cell phone, voice over IP (VoIP) phone, wireless local loop phone, desktop computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), wireless cameras, gaming console or device, music storage / playback device, wearable terminal device, wireless endpoint, mobile station, tablet, laptop, laptop-embedded equipment (LEE), laptop-mounted equipment (LME), an Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) device, wireless customer-premise equipment (CPE), vehicle, vehicle-mounted or vehicle embedded / integrated wireless device, etc. Other examples include any UE identified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), including a narrow band internet of things (NB- loT) UE, a machine type communication (MTC) UE, and / or an enhanced MTC (eMTC) UE.

[0182] A UE may support device-to-device (D2D) communication, for example by implementing a 3GPP standard for sidelink communication, Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC), vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), or vehicle- to-everything (V2X). In other examples, a UE may not necessarily have a user in the sense of a human user who owns and / or operates the relevant device. Instead, a UE may represent a device that is intended for sale to, or operation by, a human user but which may not, or which may not initially, be associated with a specific human user (e.g., a smart sprinkler controller). Alternatively, a UE may represent a device that is not intended for sale to, or operation by, an end user but which may be associated with or operated for the benefit of a user (e.g., a smart power meter).

[0183] The UE 1300 includes processing circuitry 1302 that is operatively coupled via a bus 1304 to an input / output interface 1306, a power source 1308, a memory 1310, a communication interface 1312, and / or any other component, or any combination thereof. Certain UEs may utilize all or a subset of the components shown in Figure 13. The level of integration between the components may vary from one UE to another UE. Further, certain UEs may contain multiple instances of a component, such as multiple processors, memories, transceivers, transmitters, receivers, etc.

[0184] The processing circuitry 1302 is configured to process instructions and data and may be configured to implement any sequential state machine operative to execute instructions stored as machine-readable computer programs in the memory 1310. The processing circuitry 1302 may be implemented as one or more hardware-implemented state machines (e.g., in discrete logic, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), etc.); programmable logic together with appropriate firmware; one or more stored computer programs, general-purpose processors, such as a microprocessor or digital signal processor (DSP), together with appropriate software; or any combination of the above. For example, the processing circuitry 1302 may include multiple central processing units (CPUs).

[0185] In the example, the input / output interface 1306 may be configured to provide an interface or interfaces to an input device, output device, or one or more input and / or output devices. Examples of an output device include a speaker, a sound card, a video card, a display, a monitor, a printer, an actuator, an emitter, a smartcard, another output device, or any combination thereof. An input device may allow a user to capture information into the UE 1300. Examples of an input device include a touch-sensitive or presence-sensitive display, a camera (e.g., a digital camera, a digital video camera, a web camera, etc.), a microphone, a sensor, a mouse, a trackball, a directional pad, a trackpad, a scroll wheel, a smartcard, and the like. The presence-sensitive display may include a capacitive or resistive touch sensor to sense input from a user. A sensor may be, for instance, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a tilt sensor, a force sensor, a magnetometer, an optical sensor, a proximity sensor, a biometric sensor, etc., or any combination thereof. An output device may use the same type of interface port as an input device. For example, a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port may be used to provide an input device and an output device.

[0186] In some embodiments, the power source 1308 is structured as a battery or battery pack. Other types of power sources, such as an external power source (e.g., an electricity outlet), photovoltaic device, or power cell, may be used. The power source 1308 may further include power circuitry for delivering power from the power source 1308 itself, and / or an external power source, to the various parts of the UE 1300 via input circuitry or an interface such as an electrical power cable. Delivering power may be, for example, for charging of the power source 1308. Power circuitry may perform any formatting, converting, or other modification to the power from the power source 1308 to make the power suitable for the respective com ponents of the U E 1300 to which power is supplied .

[0187] The memory 1310 may be or be configured to include memory such as random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), programmable read-only memory (PROM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), magnetic disks, optical disks, hard disks, removable cartridges, flash drives, and so forth. In one example, the memory 1310 includes one or more application programs 1314, such as an operating system, web browser application, a widget, gadget engine, or other application, and corresponding data 1316. The memory 1310 may store, for use by the UE 1300, any of a variety of various operating systems or combinations of operating systems.

[0188] The memory 1310 may be configured to include a number of physical drive units, such as redundant array of independent disks (RAID), flash memory, USB flash drive, external hard disk drive, thumb drive, pen drive, key drive, high-density digital versatile disc (HD-DVD) optical disc drive, internal hard disk drive, Blu-Ray optical disc drive, holographic digital data storage (HDDS) optical disc drive, external mini-dual in-line memory module (DIMM), synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), external micro-DIMM SDRAM, smartcard memory such as tamper resistant module in the form of a universal integrated circuit card (UICC) including one or more subscriber identity modules (SIMs), such as a USIM and / or I SI M, other memory, or any combination thereof. The UICC may for example be an embedded UICC (eUlCC), integrated UICC (iUICC) or a removable UICC commonly known as ‘SIM card.’ The memory 1310 may allow the UE 1300 to access instructions, application programs and the like, stored on transitory or non-transitory memory media, to off-load data, or to upload data. An article of manufacture, such as one utilizing a communication system may be tangibly embodied as or in the memory 1310, which may be or comprise a device-readable storage medium.

[0189] The processing circuitry 1302 may be configured to communicate with an access network or other network using the communication interface 1312. The communication interface 1312 may comprise one or more communication subsystems and may include or be communicatively coupled to an antenna 1322. The communication interface 1312 may include one or more transceivers used to communicate, such as by communicating with one or more remote transceivers of another device capable of wireless communication (e.g., another UE or a network node in an access network). Each transceiver may include a transmitter 1318 and / or a receiver 1320 appropriate to provide network communications (e.g., optical, electrical, frequency allocations, and so forth). Moreover, the transmitter 1318 and receiver 1320 may be coupled to one or more antennas (e.g., antenna 1322) and may share circuit components, software or firmware, or alternatively be implemented separately.

[0190] In the illustrated embodiment, communication functions of the communication interface 1312 may include cellular communication, Wi-Fi communication, LPWAN communication, data communication, voice communication, multimedia communication, short-range communications such as Bluetooth, near-field communication, location-based communication such as the use of the global positioning system (GPS) to determine a location, another like communication function, or any combination thereof. Communications may be implemented in according to one or more communication protocols and / or standards, such as IEEE 802.11 , Code Division Multiplexing Access (CDMA), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), GSM, LTE, New Radio (NR), UMTS, WiMax, Ethernet, transmission control protocol / internet protocol (TCP / IP), synchronous optical networking (SONET), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), QUIC, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and so forth.

[0191] Regardless of the type of sensor, a UE may provide an output of data captured by its sensors, through its communication interface 1312, via a wireless connection to a network node. Data captured by sensors of a UE can be communicated through a wireless connection to a network node via another UE. The output may be periodic (e.g., once every 15 minutes if it reports the sensed temperature), random (e.g., to even out the load from reporting from several sensors), in response to a triggering event (e.g., when moisture is detected an alert is sent), in response to a request (e.g., a user initiated request), or a continuous stream (e.g., a live video feed of a patient).

[0192] As another example, a UE comprises an actuator, a motor, or a switch, related to a communication interface configured to receive wireless input from a network node via a wireless connection. In response to the received wireless input the states of the actuator, the motor, or the switch may change. For example, the UE may comprise a motor that adjusts the control surfaces or rotors of a drone in flight according to the received input or to a robotic arm performing a medical procedure according to the received input.

[0193] A UE, when in the form of an Internet of Things (loT) device, may be a device for use in one or more application domains, these domains comprising, but not limited to, city wearable technology, extended industrial application and healthcare. Non-limiting examples of such an loT device are a device which is or which is embedded in: a connected refrigerator or freezer, a TV, a connected lighting device, an electricity meter, a robot vacuum cleaner, a voice controlled smart speaker, a home security camera, a motion detector, a thermostat, a smoke detector, a door / window sensor, a flood / moisture sensor, an electrical door lock, a connected doorbell, an air conditioning system like a heat pump, an autonomous vehicle, a surveillance system, a weather monitoring device, a vehicle parking monitoring device, an electric vehicle charging station, a smart watch, a fitness tracker, a wearable for tactile augmentation or sensory enhancement, a water sprinkler, an animal- or item-tracking device, a sensor for monitoring a plant or animal, an industrial robot, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), and any kind of medical device, like a heart rate monitor or a remote controlled surgical robot. A UE in the form of an loT device comprises circuitry and / or software in dependence of the intended application of the loT device in addition to other components as described in relation to the UE 1300 shown in Figure 13.

[0194] As yet another specific example, in an loT scenario, a UE may represent a machine or other device that performs monitoring and / or measurements, and transmits the results of such monitoring and / or measurements to another UE and / or a network node. The UE may in this case be an M2M device, which may in a 3GPP context be referred to as an MTC device. As one particular example, the UE may implement the 3GPP NB-loT standard. In other scenarios, a UE may represent a vehicle, such as a car, a bus, a truck, a ship and an airplane, or other equipment that is capable of monitoring and / or reporting on its operational status or other functions associated with its operation.

[0195] In practice, any number of UEs may be used together with respect to a single use case. For example, a first UE might be or be integrated in a drone and provide the drone’s speed information (obtained through a speed sensor) to a second UE that is a remote controller operating the drone. When the user makes changes from the remote controller, the first UE may adjust the throttle on the drone (e.g. by controlling an actuator) to increase or decrease the drone’s speed. The first and / or the second UE can also include more than one of the functionalities described above. For example, a UE might comprise the sensor and the actuator, and handle communication of data for both the speed sensor and the actuators.

[0196] Figure 14 shows a network node 1400 in accordance with some embodiments. As used herein, network node refers to equipment capable, configured, arranged and / or operable to communicate directly or indirectly with a UE and / or with other network nodes or equipment, in a telecommunication network. Examples of network nodes include, but are not limited to, access points (APs) (e.g., radio access points), base stations (BSs) (e.g., radio base stations, Node Bs, evolved Node Bs (eNBs) and NR NodeBs (gNBs)), O-RAN nodes or components of an O-RAN node (e.g., O-RU, O-DU, O-CU).

[0197] Base stations may be categorized based on the amount of coverage they provide (or, stated differently, their transmit power level) and so, depending on the provided amount of coverage, may be referred to as femto base stations, pico base stations, micro base stations, or macro base stations. A base station may be a relay node or a relay donor node controlling a relay. A network node may also include one or more (or all) parts of a distributed radio base station such as centralized digital units, distributed units (e.g., in an O- RAN access node) and / or remote radio units (RRUs), sometimes referred to as Remote Radio Heads (RRHs). Such remote radio units may or may not be integrated with an antenna as an antenna integrated radio. Parts of a distributed radio base station may also be referred to as nodes in a distributed antenna system (DAS).

[0198] Other examples of network nodes include multiple transmission point (multi-TRP) 5G access nodes, multi-standard radio (MSR) equipment such as MSR BSs, network controllers such as radio network controllers (RNCs) or base station controllers (BSCs), base transceiver stations (BTSs), transmission points, transmission nodes, multi-cell / multicast coordination entities (MCEs), Operation and Maintenance (O&M) nodes, Operations Support System (OSS) nodes, Self-Organizing Network (SON) nodes, positioning nodes (e.g., Evolved Serving Mobile Location Centers (E-SMLCs)), and / or Minimization of Drive Tests (MDTs).

[0199] The network node 1400 includes a processing circuitry 1402, a memory 1404, a communication interface 1406, and a power source 1408. The network node 1400 may be composed of multiple physically separate components (e.g., a NodeB component and a RNC component, or a BTS component and a BSC component, etc.), which may each have their own respective components. In certain scenarios in which the network node 1400 comprises multiple separate components (e.g., BTS and BSC components), one or more of the separate components may be shared among several network nodes. For example, a single RNC may control multiple NodeBs. In such a scenario, each unique NodeB and RNC pair, may in some instances be considered a single separate network node. In some embodiments, the network node 1400 may be configured to support multiple radio access technologies (RATs). In such embodiments, some components may be duplicated (e.g., separate memory 1404 for different RATs) and some components may be reused (e.g., a same antenna 1410 may be shared by different RATs). The network node 1400 may also include multiple sets of the various illustrated components for different wireless technologies integrated into network node 1400, for example GSM, WCDMA, LTE, NR, WiFi, Zigbee, Z- wave, LoRaWAN, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Bluetooth wireless technologies. These wireless technologies may be integrated into the same or different chip or set of chips and other components within network node 1400.

[0200] The processing circuitry 1402 may comprise a combination of one or more of a microprocessor, controller, microcontroller, central processing unit, digital signal processor, application-specific integrated circuit, field programmable gate array, or any other suitable computing device, resource, or combination of hardware, software and / or encoded logic operable to provide, either alone or in conjunction with other network node 1400 components, such as the memory 1404, to provide network node 1400 functionality.

[0201] In some embodiments, the processing circuitry 1402 includes a system on a chip (SOC). In some embodiments, the processing circuitry 1402 includes one or more of radio frequency (RF) transceiver circuitry 1412 and baseband processing circuitry 1414. In some embodiments, the radio frequency (RF) transceiver circuitry 1412 and the baseband processing circuitry 1414 may be on separate chips (or sets of chips), boards, or units, such as radio units and digital units. In alternative embodiments, part or all of RF transceiver circuitry 1412 and baseband processing circuitry 1414 may be on the same chip or set of chips, boards, or units.

[0202] The memory 1404 may comprise any form of volatile or non-volatile computer- readable memory including, without limitation, persistent storage, solid-state memory, remotely mounted memory, magnetic media, optical media, random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), mass storage media (for example, a hard disk), removable storage media (for example, a flash drive, a Compact Disk (CD) or a Digital Video Disk (DVD)), and / or any other volatile or non-volatile, non-transitory device-readable and / or computer-executable memory devices that store information, data, and / or instructions that may be used by the processing circuitry 1402. The memory 1404 may store any suitable instructions, data, or information, including a computer program, software, an application including one or more of logic, rules, code, tables, and / or other instructions capable of being executed by the processing circuitry 1402 and utilized by the network node 1400. The memory 1404 may be used to store any calculations made by the processing circuitry 1402 and / or any data received via the communication interface 1406. In some embodiments, the processing circuitry 1402 and memory 1404 is integrated.

[0203] The communication interface 1406 is used in wired or wireless communication of signaling and / or data between a network node, access network, and / or UE. As illustrated, the communication interface 1406 comprises port(s) / terminal(s) 1416 to send and receive data, for example to and from a network over a wired connection. The communication interface 1406 also includes radio front-end circuitry 1418 that may be coupled to, or in certain embodiments a part of, the antenna 1410. Radio front-end circuitry 1418 comprises filters 1420 and amplifiers 1422. The radio front-end circuitry 1418 may be connected to an antenna 1410 and processing circuitry 1402. The radio front-end circuitry may be configured to condition signals communicated between antenna 1410 and processing circuitry 1402. The radio front-end circuitry 1418 may receive digital data that is to be sent out to other network nodes or UEs via a wireless connection. The radio front-end circuitry 1418 may convert the digital data into a radio signal having the appropriate channel and bandwidth parameters using a combination of filters 1420 and / or amplifiers 1422. The radio signal may then be transmitted via the antenna 1410. Similarly, when receiving data, the antenna 1410 may collect radio signals which are then converted into digital data by the radio front-end circuitry 1418. The digital data may be passed to the processing circuitry 1402. In other embodiments, the communication interface may comprise different components and / or different combinations of components.

[0204] In certain alternative embodiments, the network node 1400 does not include separate radio front-end circuitry 1418, instead, the processing circuitry 1402 includes radio front-end circuitry and is connected to the antenna 1410. Similarly, in some embodiments, all or some of the RF transceiver circuitry 1412 is part of the communication interface 1406. In still other embodiments, the communication interface 1406 includes one or more ports or terminals 1416, the radio front-end circuitry 1418, and the RF transceiver circuitry 1412, as part of a radio unit (not shown), and the communication interface 1406 communicates with the baseband processing circuitry 1414, which is part of a digital unit (not shown).

[0205] The antenna 1410 may include one or more antennas, or antenna arrays, configured to send and / or receive wireless signals. The antenna 1410 may be coupled to the radio front-end circuitry 1418 and may be any type of antenna capable of transmitting and receiving data and / or signals wirelessly. In certain embodiments, the antenna 1410 is separate from the network node 1400 and connectable to the network node 1400 through an interface or port.

[0206] The antenna 1410, communication interface 1406, and / or the processing circuitry 1402 may be configured to perform any receiving operations and / or certain obtaining operations described herein as being performed by the network node. Any information, data and / or signals may be received from a UE, another network node and / or any other network equipment. Similarly, the antenna 1410, the communication interface 1406, and / or the processing circuitry 1402 may be configured to perform any transmitting operations described herein as being performed by the network node. Any information, data and / or signals may be transmitted to a UE, another network node and / or any other network equipment.

[0207] The power source 1408 provides power to the various components of network node 1400 in a form suitable for the respective components (e.g., at a voltage and current level needed for each respective component). The power source 1408 may further comprise, or be coupled to, power management circuitry to supply the components of the network node 1400 with power for performing the functionality described herein. For example, the network node 1400 may be connectable to an external power source (e.g., the power grid, an electricity outlet) via an input circuitry or interface such as an electrical cable, whereby the external power source supplies power to power circuitry of the power source 1408. As a further example, the power source 1408 may comprise a source of power in the form of a battery or battery pack which is connected to, or integrated in, power circuitry. The battery may provide backup power should the external power source fail.

[0208] Embodiments of the network node 1400 may include additional components beyond those shown in Figure 14 for providing certain aspects of the network node’s functionality, including any of the functionality described herein and / or any functionality necessary to support the subject matter described herein. For example, the network node 1400 may include user interface equipment to allow input of information into the network node 1400 and to allow output of information from the network node 1400. This may allow a user to perform diagnostic, maintenance, repair, and other administrative functions for the network node 1400. In some embodiments providing a core network node, such as core network node 108 of FIG. 12, some components, such as the radio front-end circuitry 1418 and the RF transceiver circuitry 1412 may be omitted.

[0209] Figure 15 is a block diagram illustrating a virtualization environment 1500 in which functions implemented by some embodiments may be virtualized. In the present context, virtualizing means creating virtual versions of apparatuses or devices which may include virtualizing hardware platforms, storage devices and networking resources. As used herein, virtualization can be applied to any device described herein, or components thereof, and relates to an implementation in which at least a portion of the functionality is implemented as one or more virtual components. Some or all of the functions described herein may be implemented as virtual components executed by one or more virtual machines (VMs) implemented in one or more virtual environments 1500 hosted by one or more of hardware nodes, such as a hardware computing device that operates as a network node, UE, core network node, or host. Further, in embodiments in which the virtual node does not require radio connectivity (e.g., a core network node or host), then the node may be entirely virtualized. In some embodiments, the virtualization environment 1500 includes components defined by the O-RAN Alliance, such as an O-Cloud environment orchestrated by a Service Management and Orchestration Framework via an O-2 interface. Virtualization may facilitate distributed implementations of a network node, UE, core network node, or host.

[0210] Applications 1502 (which may alternatively be called software instances, virtual appliances, network functions, virtual nodes, virtual network functions, etc.) are run in the virtualization environment Q400 to implement some of the features, functions, and / or benefits of some of the embodiments disclosed herein.

[0211] Hardware 1504 includes processing circuitry, memory that stores software and / or instructions executable by hardware processing circuitry, and / or other hardware devices as described herein, such as a network interface, input / output interface, and so forth. Software may be executed by the processing circuitry to instantiate one or more virtualization layers 1506 (also referred to as hypervisors or virtual machine monitors (VMMs)), provide VMs 1508a and 1508b (one or more of which may be generally referred to as VMs 1508), and / or perform any of the functions, features and / or benefits described in relation with some embodiments described herein. The virtualization layer 1506 may present a virtual operating platform that appears like networking hardware to the VMs 1508.

[0212] The VMs 1508 comprise virtual processing, virtual memory, virtual networking or interface and virtual storage, and may be run by a corresponding virtualization layer 1506. Different embodiments of the instance of a virtual appliance 1502 may be implemented on one or more of VMs 1508, and the implementations may be made in different ways. Virtualization of the hardware is in some contexts referred to as network function virtualization (NFV). NFV may be used to consolidate many network equipment types onto industry standard high volume server hardware, physical switches, and physical storage, which can be located in data centers, and customer premise equipment.

[0213] In the context of NFV, a VM 1508 may be a software implementation of a physical machine that runs programs as if they were executing on a physical, non-virtualized machine. Each of the VMs 1508, and that part of hardware 1504 that executes that VM, be it hardware dedicated to that VM and / or hardware shared by that VM with others of the VMs, forms separate virtual network elements. Still in the context of NFV, a virtual network function is responsible for handling specific network functions that run in one or more VMs 1508 on top of the hardware 1504 and corresponds to the application 1502.

[0214] Hardware 1504 may be implemented in a standalone network node with generic or specific components. Hardware 1504 may implement some functions via virtualization. Alternatively, hardware 1504 may be part of a larger cluster of hardware (e.g. such as in a data center or CPE) where many hardware nodes work together and are managed via management and orchestration 1510, which, among others, oversees lifecycle management of applications 1502. In some embodiments, hardware 1504 is coupled to one or more radio units that each include one or more transmitters and one or more receivers that may be coupled to one or more antennas. Radio units may communicate directly with other hardware nodes via one or more appropriate network interfaces and may be used in combination with the virtual components to provide a virtual node with radio capabilities, such as a radio access node or a base station. In some embodiments, some signaling can be provided with the use of a control system 1512 which may alternatively be used for communication between hardware nodes and radio units.

[0215] Although the computing devices described herein (e.g., UEs, network nodes) may include the illustrated combination of hardware components, other embodiments may comprise computing devices with different combinations of components. It is to be understood that these computing devices may comprise any suitable combination of hardware and / or software needed to perform the tasks, features, functions and methods disclosed herein. Determining, calculating, obtaining or similar operations described herein may be performed by processing circuitry, which may process information by, for example, converting the obtained information into other information, comparing the obtained information or converted information to information stored in the network node, and / or performing one or more operations based on the obtained information or converted information, and as a result of said processing making a determination. Moreover, while components are depicted as single boxes located within a larger box, or nested within multiple boxes, in practice, computing devices may comprise multiple different physical components that make up a single illustrated component, and functionality may be partitioned between separate components. For example, a communication interface may be configured to include any of the components described herein, and / or the functionality of the components may be partitioned between the processing circuitry and the communication interface. In another example, non-computationally intensive functions of any of such components may be implemented in software or firmware and computationally intensive functions may be implemented in hardware.

[0216] In certain embodiments, some or all of the functionality described herein may be provided by processing circuitry executing instructions stored on in memory, which in certain embodiments may be a computer program product in the form of a non-transitory computer- readable storage medium. In alternative embodiments, some or all of the functionality may be provided by the processing circuitry without executing instructions stored on a separate or discrete device-readable storage medium, such as in a hard-wired manner. In any of those particular embodiments, whether executing instructions stored on a non-transitory computer- readable storage medium or not, the processing circuitry can be configured to perform the described functionality. The benefits provided by such functionality are not limited to the processing circuitry alone or to other components of the computing device, but are enjoyed by the computing device as a whole, and / or by end users and a wireless network generally.

[0217] Embodiments herein may for example include those enumerated below:

[0218] Group A Embodiments

[0219] A1 . A method performed by a communication device (12), the method comprising: detecting occurrence of an event that comprises: a change in an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12); or a change in an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) with the same importance (18P); and based on detecting occurrence of the event, triggering a report (24) that is to include information (24P) about an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) and information (24P) about an importance (18P) of that uplink data (18); and transmitting the triggered report (24).

[0220] A2. The method of embodiment A1 , wherein the event comprises a change in an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity.

[0221] A3. The method of embodiment A2, wherein the event comprises a change in an importance of uplink data, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, available to the MAC entity.

[0222] A4. The method of any of embodiments A1 -A3, wherein the event comprises uplink data becoming available to the MAC entity, with the uplink data having an importance higher than an importance of any other uplink data that is available to the MAC entity and that belongs to the same logical channel or the same logical channel group as the uplink data.

[0223] A5. The method of embodiment A1 , wherein the event comprises a change in an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity with the same importance.

[0224] A6. The method of embodiment A5, wherein the event comprises a change in an amount of uplink data, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, available to the MAC entity with the same importance.

[0225] A7. The method of any of embodiments A1 and A5-A6, wherein the event comprises uplink data, for a logical channel which belongs to a logical channel group, becoming available to the MAC entity, with the uplink data increasing an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity with the same importance, for the logical channel or the logical channel group, by at least a threshold amount.

[0226] A8. The method of any of embodiments A1 -A7, wherein said triggering is based also on expiry of a reporting timer that is started with a value representing a minimum duration between consecutive reports.

[0227] A9. The method of any of embodiments A1 -A8, wherein said importance comprises importance to an application layer of the communication device.

[0228] A10. The method of any of embodiments A1-A9, wherein the importance comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.

[0229] A11 . The method of any of embodiments A1 -A10, wherein the uplink data comprises one or more PDUs, wherein the importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity, an importance of the set, wherein each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information generated at an application layer of the communication device.

[0230] A12. The method of embodiment A11 , wherein the one or more PDUs comprises one or more Radio Link Layer, RLC, PDUs received by the MAC entity on one or more logical channels.

[0231] A13. The method of any of embodiments A11 -A12, wherein an importance of a set of one or more PDUs is indicated by a PDU set importance, PSI, indicator indicating a level of importance of the set of one or more PDUs, wherein the level indicates how useful the set is to the application layer.

[0232] A14. The method of any of embodiments A1 -A13, wherein the triggered report is a Buffer Status Report, BSR, or a Delay Status Report, DSR.

[0233] A15. The method of any of embodiments A1-A14, wherein the report includes, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information about an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group and information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group.

[0234] A16. The method of embodiment A15, wherein the information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group comprises information indicating one or more levels of importance of the uplink data.

[0235] A17. The method of embodiment A16, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel group.

[0236] A18. The method of embodiment A16, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises, for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel. A19. The method of any of embodiments A1 -A18, wherein the triggered report is a first type of report, and wherein said triggering is based also on a second type of report having been triggered but being incapable of reporting information about the importance of the uplink data.

[0237] A20. The method of embodiment A19, further comprising, based on or in association with triggering the report, cancelling the second type of report.

[0238] A21 . The method of embodiment A19, wherein said transmitting comprises also transmitting the second type of report.

[0239] A22. The method of any of embodiments A1-A3, wherein the event comprises uplink data becoming available to the MAC entity, with the uplink data having an importance higher than: an importance last reported for the same logical channel or the same logical channel group as the uplink data.

[0240] AA1 . A method performed by a communication device (12), the method comprising: selecting, from among multiple types of reports (24) capable of reporting information (24P) about an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12), one or more types of reports (24) to trigger, transmit, and / or include information (24P) about an importance (18P) of the uplink data (18); and triggering, transmitting, and / or including information (24P) about an importance (18P) of the uplink data (18) in the one or more selected types of reports (24).

[0241] AA2. The method of embodiment AA1 , wherein said selecting comprises selecting a proper subset of the multiple types of reports.

[0242] AA3. The method of embodiment AA2, wherein selecting the proper subset comprises, for each of the multiple types of reports, including the type of report in the proper subset if the type of report is to report information about an importance of uplink data for which no other type of report already included in the proper subset is to report.

[0243] AA4. The method of any of embodiments AA2-AA3, wherein selecting the proper subset comprises, for each of the multiple types of reports, including the type of report in the proper subset if the type of report is to report information about uplink data for which no other type of report already included in the proper subset is to report.

[0244] AA5. The method of any of embodiments AA2-AA4, wherein selecting the proper subset comprises selecting, from among multiple types of reports that report information about the same uplink data, whichever type of report reports more types of information about the uplink data.

[0245] AA6. The method of embodiment AA5, wherein the multiple types of reports that report information about the same uplink data include a BSR and a DSR, and wherein said selecting comprises selecting the DSR as reporting more types of information about the uplink data than the BSR.

[0246] AA7. The method of any of embodiments AA2-AA6, wherein the proper subset is selected to avoid or minimize reporting of duplicate information.

[0247] AA8. The method of any of embodiments AA2-AA7, wherein the proper subset contains only one of the multiple types of reports.

[0248] AA9. The method of any of embodiments AA2-AA7, wherein the proper subset contains two or more types of reports that report information about different uplink data and / or report different types of information about the same uplink data.

[0249] AA10. The method of any of embodiments AA1 -AA9, wherein said selecting comprises selecting one or more types of reports to trigger, and wherein said triggering, transmitting, and / or including comprises triggering the one or more selected types of reports.

[0250] AA11 . The method of any of embodiments AA1-AA9, wherein the multiple types of reports are triggered, wherein said selecting comprises selecting one or more types of reports to transmit, and wherein said triggering, transmitting, and / or including comprises transmitting the one or more selected types of reports.

[0251] AA12. The method of embodiment AA112, further comprising cancelling any of the multiple types of reports not selected.

[0252] AA13. The method of any of embodiments AA1-AA9, wherein the multiple types of reports are triggered, wherein said selecting comprises selecting one or more types of reports to include information about an importance of the uplink data, and wherein said triggering, transmitting, and / or including comprises including information about an importance of the uplink data in the one or more selected types of reports.

[0253] AA14. The method of embodiment AA13, wherein said selecting comprises selecting two or more types of reports to include information about an importance of the uplink data, with different types of reports including information about the importance of at least some different uplink data.

[0254] AA15. The method of embodiment AA14, wherein the two or more types of reports include: a DSR that is to include information about the importance of a first proper subset of the uplink data which has a shorter delay requirement than a second proper subset of the uplink data; and a BSR that is to include information about the importance of at least the second proper subset of the uplink data.

[0255] AA16. The method of any of embodiments AA1-AA15, wherein said importance comprises importance to an application layer of the communication device.

[0256] AA17. The method of any of embodiments AA1-AA16, wherein the importance comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.

[0257] AA18. The method of any of embodiments AA1-AA17, wherein the uplink data comprises one or more PDUs, wherein the importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity, an importance of the set, wherein each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information generated at an application layer of the communication device.

[0258] AA19. The method of embodiment AA18, wherein the one or more PDUs comprises one or more Radio Link Layer, RLC, PDUs received by the MAC entity on one or more logical channels.

[0259] AA20. The method of any of embodiments AA18-AA19, wherein an importance of a set of one or more PDUs is indicated by a PDU set importance, PSI, indicator indicating a level of importance of the set of one or more PDUs, wherein the level indicates how useful the set is to the application layer. AA21. The method of any of embodiments AA1-AA20, wherein the multiple types of reports include at least a Buffer Status Report, BSR, and a Delay Status Report, DSR.

[0260] AA22. The method of any of embodiments AA1-AA21 , wherein one or more of the multiple types of reports each include, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information about an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group and information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group.

[0261] AA23. The method of embodiment AA22, wherein the information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group comprises information indicating one or more levels of importance of the uplink data.

[0262] AA24. The method of embodiment AA23, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel group.

[0263] M25. The method of embodiment AA23, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises, for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel.

[0264] AA26. The method of any of embodiments AA1-AA25, wherein said selecting is performed according to a configuration received from a network node in a communication network.

[0265] AAA1 . A method performed by a communication device (12), the method comprising: detecting occurrence of a condition under which the communication device (12) is to report information (24P) about an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12); and based on a first type of report (24) having been triggered to report information (24P) about the importance (18P) of a first subset of the uplink data (18), triggering a second type of report (24) to report information (24P) about the importance (18P) of a second subset of the uplink data (18).

[0266] AAA2. The method of embodiment AAA1 , wherein the first subset of the uplink data has a shorter delay requirement than the second subset of the uplink data. AAA3. The method of any of embodiments AAA1 -AAA2, wherein the first type of report is a DSR.

[0267] AAA4. The method of any of embodiments AAA1 -AAA3, wherein the second type of report is a BSR.

[0268] AAA5. The method of any of embodiments AAA1 -AAA4, wherein the second type of report reports information about the importance of only the second subset of the uplink data.

[0269] AAA6. The method of any of embodiments AAA1-AAA5, wherein said importance comprises importance to an application layer of the communication device.

[0270] AAA7. The method of any of embodiments AAA1-AAA6, wherein the importance comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.

[0271] AAA8. The method of any of embodiments AAA1 -AAA7, wherein the uplink data comprises one or more PDUs, wherein the importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity, an importance of the set, wherein each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information generated at an application layer of the communication device.

[0272] AAA9. The method of embodiment AAA8, wherein the one or more PDUs comprises one or more Radio Link Layer, RLC, PDUs received by the MAC entity on one or more logical channels.

[0273] AAA10. The method of any of embodiments AAA8-AAA9, wherein an importance of a set of one or more PDUs is indicated by a PDU set importance, PSI, indicator indicating a level of importance of the set of one or more PDUs, wherein the level indicates how useful the set is to the application layer.

[0274] AAA11 . The method of any of embodiments AAA1-AAA10, wherein the multiple types of reports include at least a Buffer Status Report, BSR, and a Delay Status Report, DSR.

[0275] AAA12. The method of any of embodiments AAA1-AAA11 , wherein one or more of the multiple types of reports each include, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information about an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group and information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group.

[0276] AAA13. The method of embodiment AAA12, wherein the information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group comprises information indicating one or more levels of importance of the uplink data.

[0277] AAA14. The method of embodiment AAA13, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel group.

[0278] AAA15. The method of embodiment AAA13, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises, for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel.

[0279] AAAA1 . A method performed by a communication device (12), the method comprising: making a decision of whether or not to include in a report (24) information (24P) about an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12), based on whether or not a condition is met for including the information (24P) in the report (24); generating the report (24) to include or not include the information (24P) in the report (24) according to the decision; and transmitting the report (24).

[0280] AAAA2. The method of embodiment AAAA1 , wherein the condition is an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity with at least a certain level of importance having changed by at least a threshold amount.

[0281] AAAA3. The method of embodiment AAAA1 , wherein the condition is an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, with at least a certain level of importance having changed by at least a threshold amount since any last report for the certain logical channel or logical channel group.

[0282] AAA4. The method of embodiment AAAA1 , wherein the condition is a level of importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity having changed by at least a threshold. / M5. The method of embodiment AAAA1 , wherein the condition is a level of importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, having changed by at least a threshold since any last report for the certain logical channel or logical channel group.

[0283] AAAA6. The method of any of embodiments AAAA1-AAAA5, wherein said importance comprises importance to an application layer of the communication device.

[0284] AAAA7. The method of any of embodiments AAAA1-AAAA6, wherein the importance comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.

[0285] AAAA8. The method of any of embodiments AAAA1-AAAA7, wherein the uplink data comprises one or more PDUs, wherein the importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity, an importance of the set, wherein each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information generated at an application layer of the communication device.

[0286] AAAA9. The method of embodiment AAAA8, wherein the one or more PDUs comprises one or more Radio Link Layer, RLC, PDUs received by the MAC entity on one or more logical channels.

[0287] AAAA10. The method of any of embodiments AAAA8-AAAA9, wherein an importance of a set of one or more PDUs is indicated by a PDU set importance, PSI, indicator indicating a level of importance of the set of one or more PDUs, wherein the level indicates how useful the set is to the application layer.

[0288] AAAA11 . The method of any of embodiments AAAA1 -AAAA10, wherein the multiple types of reports include at least a Buffer Status Report, BSR, and a Delay Status Report, DSR.

[0289] AAAA12. The method of any of embodiments AAAA1 -AAAA11 , wherein one or more of the multiple types of reports each include, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information about an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group and information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group.

[0290] AAAA13. The method of embodiment AAAA12, wherein the information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group comprises information indicating one or more levels of importance of the uplink data.

[0291] AAAA14. The method of embodiment AAAA13, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel group.

[0292] AAAA15. The method of embodiment AAAA13, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises, for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel.

[0293] A. The method of any of Group A embodiments, further comprising receiving, from a network node, configuration information that configures the communication device to perform any one or more steps of the method of any of Group A embodiments.

[0294] Group B Embodiments

[0295] B1 . A method performed by a network node, the method comprising: transmitting, to a communication device, configuration information that configures the communication device to perform any one or more steps of the method of any of Group A embodiments.

[0296] Group C Embodiments

[0297] C1 . A communication device configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group A embodiments.

[0298] C2. A communication device comprising processing circuitry configured to any of the steps of any of the Group A embodiments.

[0299] C3. A communication device comprising: communication circuitry; and processing circuitry configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group A embodiments.

[0300] C4. A communication device comprising: processing circuitry configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group A embodiments; and power supply circuitry configured to supply power to the communication device. C5. A communication device comprising: processing circuitry and memory, the memory containing instructions executable by the processing circuitry whereby the communication device is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group A embodiments.

[0301] C6. The communication device of any of embodiments C1-C5, wherein the communication device is a wireless communication device.

[0302] C7. A user equipment (UE) comprising: an antenna configured to send and receive wireless signals; radio front-end circuitry connected to the antenna and to processing circuitry, and configured to condition signals communicated between the antenna and the processing circuitry; the processing circuitry being configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group A embodiments; an input interface connected to the processing circuitry and configured to allow input of information into the UE to be processed by the processing circuitry; an output interface connected to the processing circuitry and configured to output information from the UE that has been processed by the processing circuitry; and a battery connected to the processing circuitry and configured to supply power to the UE.

[0303] C8. A computer program comprising instructions which, when executed by at least one processor of a communication device, causes the communication device to perform any of the steps of any of the Group A embodiments.

[0304] C9. A carrier containing the computer program of embodiment C7, wherein the carrier is one of an electronic signal, optical signal, radio signal, or computer readable storage medium.

[0305] C10. A network node configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group B embodiments.

[0306] C11 . A network node comprising processing circuitry configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group B embodiments. C12. A network node comprising: communication circuitry; and processing circuitry configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group B embodiments.

[0307] C13. A network node comprising: processing circuitry configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group B embodiments; power supply circuitry configured to supply power to the network node.

[0308] C14. A network node comprising: processing circuitry and memory, the memory containing instructions executable by the processing circuitry whereby the network node is configured to perform any of the steps of any of the Group B embodiments.

[0309] C15. The network node of any of embodiments C10-C14, wherein the network node is a base station.

[0310] C16. A computer program comprising instructions which, when executed by at least one processor of a network node, causes the network node to perform any of the steps of any of the Group B embodiments.

[0311] C17. The computer program of embodiment C16, wherein the network node is a base station.

[0312] C18. A carrier containing the computer program of any of embodiments C16-C17, wherein the carrier is one of an electronic signal, optical signal, radio signal, or computer readable storage medium.

[0313] CLAIMS

[0314] 1 . A method performed by a communication device (12), the method comprising: detecting (510) occurrence of an event that comprises: a change in an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12); or a change in an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) with the same importance (18P); and based on detecting occurrence of the event, triggering (540) a report (24) that is to include information (24P) about an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) and information (24P) about an importance (18P) of that uplink data (18); and transmitting (550) the triggered report (24).

[0315] 2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the event comprises a change in an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity.

[0316] 3. The method of any of claims 1-2, wherein the event comprises uplink data becoming available to the MAC entity, with the uplink data having an importance higher than: an importance of any other uplink data that is available to the MAC entity and that belongs to the same logical channel or the same logical channel group as the uplink data; or an importance last reported for the same logical channel or the same logical channel group as the uplink data.

[0317] 4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the event comprises a change in an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity with the same importance.

[0318] 5 The method of claims 1 -4, wherein the event comprises: a change in an importance of uplink data, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, available to the MAC entity; or a change in an amount of uplink data, for a certain logical channel or logical channel group, available to the MAC entity with the same importance.

[0319] 6. The method of any of claims 1 and 5, wherein the event comprises uplink data, for a

Claims

logical channel which belongs to a logical channel group, becoming available to the MAC entity, with the uplink data increasing an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity with the same importance, for the logical channel or the logical channel group, by at least a threshold amount.7 The method of any of claims 1-6, wherein the importance comprises Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Set Importance, PSI.8 The method of any of claims 1 -7, wherein the uplink data comprises one or more PDUs, wherein the importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity comprises, for each of one or more sets of one or more PDUs available to the MAC entity, an importance of the set wherein each set is composed of one or more PDUs carrying a payload of one unit of information generated at an application layer of the communication device.9 The method of any of claims 1 -8, wherein the report includes, for each of one or more logical channel groups, information about an amount of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group and information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group.10 The method of claim 9, wherein the information about an importance of uplink data available to the MAC entity for the logical channel group comprises information indicating one or more levels of importance of the uplink data, wherein the one or more levels of importance of the uplink data comprises: a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel group; or for each logical channel in the logical channel group, a maximum level of importance of uplink data for the logical channel.11 The method of any of claims 1 -10, wherein the triggered report is a first type of report, and wherein said triggering is based also on a second type of report having been triggered but being incapable of reporting information about the importance of the uplink data.12 The method of any of claims 1-11 , further comprising: selecting, from among multiple types of reports (24) capable of reporting information (24P) about an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12), one or more types of reports (24) to trigger, transmit, and / or include information (24P) about an importance (18P) of the uplink data (18); andtriggering, transmitting, and / or including information (24P) about an importance (18P) of the uplink data (18) in the one or more selected types of reports (24); wherein the triggered report (24) has one of the one or more types selected13. The method of claim 12, wherein the multiple types of reports that report information about the same uplink data include a buffer status report, BSR, and a delay status report, DSR, and wherein said selecting comprises selecting the DSR as reporting more types of information about the uplink data than the BSR.

14. The method of any of claims 1-13, further comprising receiving, from a network node, configuration information that configures the communication device to trigger the report (24) based on detecting occurrence of the event.

15. A method performed by a network node (14), the method comprising: transmitting (900), to a communication device (12), configuration information that configures the communication device (12) to trigger a report (24) based on detecting occurrence of an event; wherein the event comprises: a change in an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12); or a change in an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) with the same importance (18P); and wherein the report (24) is to include information (24P) about an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) and information (24P) about an importance (18P) of that uplink data (18).

16. A communication device (12) configured to: detect occurrence of an event that comprises: a change in an importance (18P) of uplink data (18) available to a Medium Access Control, MAC, entity (16M) of the communication device (12); or a change in an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) with the same importance (18P); and based on detecting occurrence of the event, trigger a report (24) that is to include information (24P) about an amount (18A) of uplink data (18) available to the MAC entity (16M) and information (24P) about an importance (18P) of thatuplink data (18); and transmit the triggered report (24).

16. The communication device (12) of claim 17, configured to perform the method of any of claims 2-14.

17. A computer program comprising instructions which, when executed by at least one processor of a communication device (12), causes the communication device (12) to perform the method of any of claims 1 -14.

18. A computer program comprising instructions which, when executed by at least one processor of a network node (14), causes the network node (14) to perform the method of claim 15.

19. A carrier containing the computer program of any of claims 17-18, wherein the carrier is one of an electronic signal, optical signal, radio signal, or computer readable storage medium.

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