Method and system for HARQ operation and scheduling in joint TDD and FDD carrier aggregation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10033512-B2
Application number	US-201615198137-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 30, 2016
Priority date	Sep 20, 2013
Publication date	Jul 24, 2018
Grant date	Jul 24, 2018

Abstract

A method at a user equipment for hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) operation, the user equipment operating on a primary carrier having a first duplex mode and on at least one secondary carrier having a second duplex mode, the method using HARQ timing of the first duplex mode if the timing of the first duplex mode promotes acknowledgement opportunities over using HARQ timing of the second duplex mode; and using HARQ timing of the second duplex mode if the timing of the second duplex mode promotes acknowledgement opportunities over using HARQ timing of the first duplex mode.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method, at a user equipment for subframe scheduling operation, the user equipment operating on a primary carrier having a time division duplex (TDD) mode and at least one secondary carrier having a frequency division duplex (FDD) mode, the method comprising:
receiving on the primary carrier a Downlink Control Information (DCI) on a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH), the DCI comprising an assignment bitmap for the secondary carrier, wherein each bit in the assignment bitmap corresponds to a subframe, and wherein a value of each bit indicates whether the corresponding subframe is scheduled;
determining a plurality of subframes from the assignment bitmap;
scheduling on the secondary carrier the subframes determined from the assignment bitmap;
wherein the assignment bitmap comprises a number of bits equal to a number of consecutive uplink subframes of a TDD configuration of the primary carrier following a current subframe plus one.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein only a subset of bits of the assignment bitmap are used, the subset being selected based on a TDD configuration of the primary carrier and a current subframe.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the subset comprises a number of bits equal to a number of consecutive uplink subframes of the TDD configuration following the current subframe plus one.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein bits of the assignment bitmap which are not in the subset include scheduling information for a next available downlink subframe.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the assignment bitmap comprises a first field indicating a number of subframes and a second field indicating a subframe offset, and wherein the scheduling comprises scheduling the number of consecutive subframes starting from the indicated subframe offset.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of resource allocations, each resource allocation comprising an offset field indicating a subframe based on a current subframe.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the scheduled subframes are uplink subframes.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein a Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARD) process identifier for each scheduled subframe is determined from a subframe number.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the assignment bitmap comprises an index which maps to a subframe position relative to a current subframe.

10. A user equipment operating on a primary carrier having a time division duplex (TDD) mode and at least one secondary carrier having a frequency division duplex (FDD) mode, the user equipment comprising:
a processor; and
a communications subsystem;
wherein the processor and communication subsystem cooperate to:
receive on the primary carrier a Downlink Control Information (DCI) on a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH), the DCI comprising an assignment bitmap for the secondary carrier, wherein each bit in the assignment bitmap corresponds to a subframe, and wherein a value of each bit indicates whether the corresponding subframe is scheduled;
determine a plurality of subframes from the assignment bitmap;
schedule on the secondary carrier the subframes determined from the assignment bitmap;
wherein the assignment bitmap comprises a number of bits equal to a number of consecutive uplink subframes of a TDD configuration of the primary carrier following a current subframe plus one.

11. The user equipment of claim 10 , wherein only a subset of bits of the assignment bitmap are used, the subset comprising a number of bits equal to a number of consecutive uplink subframes of the TDD configuration following the current subframe plus one.

12. The user equipment of claim 11 , wherein bits of the assignment bitmap which are not in the subset include scheduling information for a next available downlink subframe.

13. The user equipment of claim 10 , wherein the assignment bitmap comprises a first field indicating a number of subframes and a second field indicating a subframe offset, and wherein the scheduling comprises scheduling the number of consecutive subframes starting from the indicated subframe offset.

14. The user equipment of claim 10 , wherein the assignment bitmap comprises a plurality of resource allocations, each resource allocation comprising an offset field indicating a subframe based on a current subframe.

15. The user equipment of claim 10 , wherein the scheduled subframes are uplink subframes.

16. The user equipment of claim 10 , wherein a Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) process identifier for each scheduled subframe is determined from a subframe number.

Assignees

• Blackberry Ltd

Inventors

• Wang Yiping
• Cai Zhijun
• Freeman David Nigel

Classifications

• H04L5/14 Primary

  Two-way operation using the same type of signal, i.e. duplex · CPC title

• H04L1/1864

  ARQ related signaling (H04L1/1607 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H04W74/02

  Hybrid access · CPC title

• H04L1/1854 Primary

  Scheduling and prioritising arrangements · CPC title

• H04L5/0055

  Physical resource allocation for ACK/NACK (for physical mapping arrangements in ARQ protocols H04L1/1861) · CPC title