Apple Inc.

Appe Inc.

Moustafa M Elsayed

Tarik Tabet

Syed Aon Mujtaba

Awais M Hussain

Lydi Smaini

Konstantinos Sarrigeorgidis

Christian W Mucke

Matthias Sauer

Ronald William Dimpflmaier

Bernd W Adler

Rafael L Rivera-Barreto

Samy Khay-Ibbat

Krisztian Kiss

Prashant H Vashi

Cesar Perez

David Boettger

A user equipment device (UE) may communicate according to a new device category satisfying specified QoS (quality of service) requirements while also satisfying specified link budget requirements, and additional optimization requirements. The UE may use physical channels and procedures (e.g. it may receive and decode control channels) in a manner compatible with and not infringing on the operation of other UEs operating in the same network, while allowing the network more flexibility to assign resources. Specifically, resources for EPDCCH on UE-specific SS and EPDCCH on common SS may be shared. That is, the resources for two search spaces may be overlaid partially or in full, giving the network more flexibility in allocating resources. Furthermore the DCI formats for MPDCCH may be extended to devices operating according to the new device category, which enables the coverage enhancement of MTC for these devices.

Control channel design for category-A devices

A user equipment (UE) device may communicate according to a new device category satisfying specified QoS (quality of service) requirements while also satisfying specified link budget requirements, and/or additional optimization requirements. The UE device may communicate with a cellular base station according to a first mode of operation associated with the new device category, and may switch to communicating with the cellular base station according to a second mode of operation associated with a second (pre-existing) device category in response to the link budget requirements exceeding a specified value and the quality of service requirements not being sensitive. The UE device may also switch to communicating with the cellular base station according to a third mode of operation associated with a third (pre-existing) device type in response to the link budget requirement not exceeding the specified value, or the QoS requirements being sensitive and a downlink throughput requirement exceeding a specified throughput value.

Device category in 3GPP communications

This disclosure relates to providing system information for cell access to link budget limited devices. According to some embodiments, a base station may transmit an announcement information block (MB) in a downlink shared data channel (e.g., PDSCH), wherein the AIB contains information useable by a UE in determining the location of system information in the downlink shared data channel. The UE can thus determine the location of and decode system information without having to decode a downlink control channel (e.g., PDCCH). This may be important for certain classes of devices, such as link budget limited devices, which have issues in decoding the downlink control channel. Improved paging scheduling techniques are also disclosed which more efficiently use PDCCH paging resources.

Non-PDCCH signaling of SIB resource assignment

A mobile device (UE) may decode the Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH) blindly, which may include obtaining resource elements (REs) that are reserved for the Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH), based on a largest value of a control format indicator (CFI), finding a total number of control channel elements (CCEs) according to the obtained REs, numbering the CCEs, and decoding the PDCCH for the largest value of the CFI over the numbered CCEs. Accordingly, the UE does not need to decode the PCFICH specifically. In some cases, the UE may indicate to the network that the UE is a constrained device, and the network may transmit control information according to a value intended for use by constrained devices. The UE may receive the transmitted value, and instead of decoding the PCFICH it may decode the control information based at least on the received value.

Decoding of PCFICH in LTE for power savings and range improvement

For paging user devices that are link budget limited (LBL), a base station transmits a special ID that is used by said devices to identify a paging frame and/or a paging occasion. When transmitting a paging message for an LBL device, the base station may use: (a) larger aggregation and larger CFI (than conventionally allowed) and (b) a larger number of resource blocks (than conventionally allowed) for paging payload. If paging messages for LBL devices saturate the paging frame capacity, the base station may allocate a plurality of special IDs. If paging messages for LBL devices and/or other data transfers saturate network capacity, at least a subset of the LBL devices may be directed to enter a connected-state discontinuous reception (DRX) mode, wherein those devices will remain in connected mode and periodically check for resource allocations. Paging payload information may be repeatedly transmitted in successive subframes, to support soft combining.

Enhanced paging schemes and connected-state DRX

A wireless communication device (UE) may include a paging subsystem that performs paging-monitoring as part of wireless communications of the wireless communication device. The UE may place wireless communication system resources not required during paging-monitoring into either a low-power state or a power-down state, and those system resources may remain in one of those respective states during paging-monitoring. The wireless communication system resources not required during the paging-monitoring may include at least a wireless communications protocol stack used during the wireless communications of the UE, and at least system resources used for performing uplink related tasks independently of wireless communication system resources used for performing downlink related tasks. The paging subsystem may include at least a control manager subsystem capable of decoding a physical downlink control channel, a downlink control subsystem capable of performing tasks related to a physical downlink data channel, and a message parser for parsing paging messages.

Low-power LTE (LP-LTE) paging-monitoring

A wireless communication device may operate in different power modes based at least on a decoding of a Physical Data Control Channel (PDCCH). The wireless communication device may operate its receiver front end circuitry (RX AFE) in any one of a number of different power modes, and may switch to operating the RX AFE in a different power mode based at least on decoding of the PDCCH. The transmit leakage does not need to be monitored, and the wireless communication device may adjust/adapt the sensitivity and linearity of its RX AFE based on PDCCH decoding and in some cases based additionally on one or more metrics, to reduce power consumption. The different power modes may correspond to different respective combinations of sensitivity level and linearity level at which the RX AFE is operating.

Receiver front-end power consumption reduction via linearity and sensitivity adaptation

A wireless user equipment (UE) device may include a receiver and transmitter. The UE device may dynamically vary the fidelity requirements imposed on the analog signal processing performed by the receiver and/or the transmitter in response factors such as: amount of signal interference (e.g., out-of-band signal power); modulation and coding scheme; number of spatial streams; extent of transmitter leakage; and size and/or frequency location of resources allocated to the UE device. Thus, the UE device may consume less power on average than a UE device that is designed to satisfy fixed fidelity requirements associated with a worst case reception scenario and/or a worst case transmission scenario.

DSP assisted and on demand RF and analog domain processing for low power wireless transceivers

Low power LTE (LP-LTE) paging monitoring

A user equipment (UE) device may communicate according to a new device category satisfying specified QoS (quality of service) requirements while also satisfying specified link budget requirements, and additional optimization requirements. The new device category may identify the UE device as a wearable device. According to some embodiments, LTE category M may be extended to support non-MTC operations performed by wearable devices. For example, the new device category may support UE mobility and may disallow access barring. Additional extensions may be implemented in response to an indication by the UE that the UE is implementing a specific application, such as VoLTE or a near real-time application, such as audio streaming. In some scenarios, the indication may include the UE indicating a specific QCI value. In some scenarios, the indication may include the UE attaching to a specific APN.

Adaptive throughput and bandwidth for enhanced category of mobile devices

This disclosure relates to providing negative stopping criteria for turbo decoding for a wireless device. A device may wirelessly receive turbo coded data. Turbo decoding may be performed on the turbo coded data. Performing turbo decoding may use one or more negative stopping criteria for early termination of the turbo decoding for each code block of the turbo coded data. The negative stopping criteria may be selected to terminate the turbo decoding of a code block early under poor wireless medium conditions. Turbo decoding of a code block may be terminated early if the one or more negative stopping criteria for the code block are met.

Stopping criteria for turbo decoder

This disclosure relates to providing system information for cell access to link budget limited devices. According to some embodiments, a base station may transmit an announcement information block (AIB) in a downlink shared data channel (e.g., PDSCH), wherein the AIB contains information useable by a UE in determining the location of system information in the downlink shared data channel. The UE can thus determine the location of and decode system information without having to decode a downlink control channel (e.g., PDCCH). This may be important for certain classes of devices, such as link budget limited devices, which have issues in decoding the downlink control channel. Improved paging scheduling techniques are also disclosed which more efficiently use PDCCH paging resources.

Growing community of inventors

Los Gatos, CA, United States of America

Moustafa M Elsayed