Timing Maintenance Under Coverage Enhancement
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Solution Overview
Problem
In M2M communication systems, especially in scenarios like basements or shopping malls, significant signal attenuation occurs due to radio signal shielding, leading to communication failures and increased network building costs, and existing timing maintenance methods fail to ensure normal operation under coverage enhancement mechanisms.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus for timing maintenance under a coverage enhancement mechanism, which determines the position in the time domain for the last repeated transmission over a physical channel and sets a start time point for timing, ensuring proper operation by configuring RAR windows, MAC-contention resolution timers, and other timing-related elements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If repeated transmission mechanism is introduced to improve coverage, then coverage area and signal reliability are improved, but timing maintenance accuracy deteriorates causing random access failures
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by determining the position for the last repeated transmission in advance and using it to set the start time point for timing maintenance. This ensures that timing windows (such as RAR window) are properly aligned with the actual reception timing of repeated transmissions, preventing timing mismatches that would cause random access failures while maintaining the coverage benefits of repeated transmissions.
2Device complexity
If existing timing maintenance method is used under coverage enhancement mechanism, then implementation simplicity is maintained, but system operation reliability deteriorates due to timing mismatches
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the timing parameter calculation method by introducing a new formula that incorporates the position of the last repeated transmission. Specifically, the start time point for timing maintenance is calculated as: start time point = position of last repeated transmission + offset, where the offset accounts for processing delays. This parameter change ensures timing accuracy without significantly increasing system complexity.
Data Source
Figure 1~3
AI summary
Disclosed in the present application are a method and an apparatus for timing maintenance under a coverage enhancement mechanism. The method includes steps of determining a position in a time domain for the last repeated transmission over a timing-related physical channel; and determining a start time point for the timing in accordance with the determined position in the time domain. According to the present disclosure, the start time point for the timing is determined in accordance with the position in the time domain for the last repeated transmission over the timing-related physical channel, so as to perform the timing maintenance in a way different from that specified in an existing standard, thereby to enable the timing maintenance related to a physical channel under the coverage enhancement mechanism.