Research in Motion Corporation

Blackberry Corporation

Phat Hong Tran

Xing Qian

Sean Bartholomew Simmons

Jonathan Otto Swoboda

Robert James Lowles

Zahir Raza

Marek Reksnis

Xin Jin

Mark Earnshaw

Oleksiy Kravets

Jianfeng Weng

Conrad Aleksander Kreek

Yangwen Liang

Jacob Burkholder

Andrew Mark Earnshaw

A method for reducing energy consumption of mobile devices using a phase-continuous early paging indicator (EPI) is provided. For each of at least one paging occasion either A) an EPI indicative that a page is present in the paging occasion is transmitted during an EPI occasion in advance of the paging occasion, the EPI comprising at least one phase-continuous tone for the EPI occasion, and a page is transmitted during the paging occasion, or B) an EPI indicative that a page is not present in the paging occasion is transmitted during an EPI occasion in advance of the paging occasion, the EPI comprising at least one phase-continuous tone for the EPI occasion. A mobile device is configured to monitor for an EPI that comprises at least one phase-continuous tone for an EPI occasion in advance of its paging occasion in order to determine if a page is potentially present.

System and method for reducing energy consumption of mobile devices using early paging indicator

A control channel may be used to transmit control information, such as Downlink Control Information (DCI), to a mobile device from a network component, such as a base station or a base node. The mobile device may use a blind decoding scheme to detect DCIs. A DCI may be falsely detected by the mobile device. According to some embodiments, data that has been decoded by a blind decoder, from buffer data for a candidate control channel, is re-encoded. The re-encoded data is compared to buffer data for the control channel. The decoded data is treated as control information dependent on the comparison of the re-encoded data with the buffer data. In some embodiments, comparing the re-encoded data to the buffer data includes generating a metric as a function of a degree of similarity between the re-encoded data and the buffer data. The metric may be compared to a threshold.

Method and apparatus for reducing false detection of control information

Different transmissions based on different content blocks which were segmented from the same digital content according to different segmentation schemes, where each of the content blocks has any substring in common with at least one of the other content blocks, are received by a receiving radio communication station, for example a mobile telephone or a mobile network base station. Certain encoded received bits derived from different ones of the transmissions are combined into combined bits. Other encoded received bits derived from one or more of the different transmissions are provided together with the combined bits to a decoder.

Incremental redundancy with resegmentation

A method and apparatus for automatic frequency control in a receiver of a wireless device, the method determining a channel estimation for a received signal; calculating a signal to noise ratio for the channel estimation; applying a weighting factor determined based on the calculated signal to noise ratio for the channel estimation to the channel estimation to create a weighted channel estimation; and supplying the weighted channel estimation to a voltage controlled oscillator.

Method and system for automatic frequency control optimization

A mobile communication device measures a received signal strength indicator, RSSI, from a base station. An adjusted signal strength indicator, RSSI-ADJ, is calculated for the base station as a function of both the RSSI and a traffic indicator received from the base station. A determination is made, based on the calculated RSSI-ADJ, whether the mobile communication device should roam.

System and method for balancing communication traffic loading between adjacent base stations in a mobile communications network

A method and system of decoding a convolutionally encoded data block having known padding bits. A Viterbi decoder is constrained to a state corresponding to k&#x2212;1 padding bits immediately adjacent to data bits of the data block, where k is a constraint length of a convolution encoder used to encode the data block. Symbols of the encoded data block that have influence only from the padding bits are discarded.

Exploiting known padding data to improve block decode success rate

A wireless communications device having a fast-receive mode for measuring received signal strength indication (RSSI) enables the device to handle higher time division multiple access (TDMA) multislot classes without requiring that the device include either a second receiver or a receiver with a more advanced and expensive phase-locked loop (PLL) design. The time to complete an RSSI measurement is reduced by initiating the sampling of signal strength before the radio transceiver is fully stabilized in the downlink mode. By initiating sampling before PLL stabilization is complete, the overall time to complete an RSSI measurement is reduced sufficiently to enable scheduling of an RSSI measurement in each GSM frame.

Wireless device having fast-receive mode for measuring received signal strength (RSSI) for higher time division multiple access (TDMA) multislot classes

A handheld computing device comprises a data processor configured to allocate a set of measurements of a wireless signal amongst partitions of a hierarchical multi-level partition space. Each level has a plurality of the partitions. Each partition has a respective numerical range, and the value of each allocated measurement is within one of the ranges. One of the measurements allocated to one of the partitions has a desired rank. This partition encompasses the range of all the partitions in the immediately lower level. Each partition in the immediately lower level has a desired resolution for the allocated measurements. The data processor sums the number of measurements allocated to each respective partition in the immediately lower level until the desired rank is obtained. The numerical range of the partition in this lower level that is associated with the desired rank comprises an estimate of a characteristic of the wireless signal.

Root median square power measurement

An accelerated roller apparatus on a handheld electronic communications device that handles urgency conditions. The device includes a manipulable mechanism that is capable of generating a manipulation-related signal. Changes in the signal occur whenever motion is imparted upon the manipulable mechanism. An urgency activity detector module generates an urgency message when the changes in the signal indicate an urgency condition. The urgency activity detector module uses the signal changes to determine the urgency condition based upon timing of successive manipulations of the manipulable mechanism satisfying a preselected timing threshold. The urgency message is then used by an application operating on the device.

Apparatus and method for an accelerated thumbwheel on a communications device

Apparatus, and an associated method, for determining whether to accept as valid a data segment, such as a radio block communicated pursuant to an EDGE communication session. A bit error rate measurer measures the bit error rate of a header part of a received radio block. The measured bit error rate is compared against a selected threshold. Results of the comparison are determinative of whether the radio block is accepted as valid or rejected as corrupted.

Apparatus, and associated method, for selecting whether to reject as invalid a data segment received at a communication station

A method is for calibrating a contrast offset value for an LCD contrast control system in a mobile device. The method includes the steps of adjusting a user contrast setting on the mobile device to a desired optimal value, initializing the contrast offset value, determining a contrast ratio of the LCD, and incrementing the contrast offset value until the contrast ratio reaches a peak value.

System and method for achieving optimal display contrast in a mobile communication device

Apparatus, and an associated method, for facilitating synchronization of a mobile station with a radio network in a GSM/EDGE-compatible, cellular communication system. The FCCH is monitored to obtain positional and frequency offset information. Once obtained, the information is used to obtain SCH burst information broadcast upon an SCH. Monitoring of the FCCH continues while the SCH burst information is detected and decoded. If additional FCCH control information is detected that has an associated quality metric value that is better than the quality metric value associated with earlier FCCH, control information, the newly-received information is used to detect the SCH burst information, absent successful decoding of the SCH burst information.

Apparatus, and associated method, for synchronizing a mobile station with a radio network

A wireless communication device stores a traffic indicator received from an adjacent base station. The device measures a received signal strength indicator, RSSI, from the adjacent base station. An adjusted signal strength indicator, RSSI-ADJ, for the adjacent base station is calculated as a function of the adjacent base station's RSSI and the stored traffic indicator. A traffic indicator is received from a current base station. A received signal strength indicator, RSSI, is measured for the current base station. An adjusted signal strength indicator, RSSI-ADJ, for the current base station is calculated from the current base station's RSSI and the received traffic indicator. The communication device roams from the current base station to the adjacent base station based on a comparison of the adjacent base station's RSSI-ADJ to the current base station's RSSI-ADJ.

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Waterloo, Canada

Phat Hong Tran