Performing mission critical communications at a user equipment (UE)

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10721772-B2
Application number	US-201515748157-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 16, 2015
Priority date	Aug 6, 2015
Publication date	Jul 21, 2020
Grant date	Jul 21, 2020

Abstract

Technology for a user equipment (UE) operable to perform mission critical communications with an eNodeB is disclosed. The UE can transmit a physical random access channel (PRACH) signal to the eNodeB that indicates a mission critical communication to be performed between the UE and the eNodeB. The PRACH signal can be transmitted in accordance with a first transmission time interval (TTI). The UE can receive a random access response (RAR) message from the eNodeB that includes a timing advance (TA) and a resource allocation for the mission critical communication. The RAR message can be transmitted from the eNodeB using a second TTI. The UE can perform the mission critical communication with the eNodeB in an uplink using the TA and the resource allocation indicated in the RAR message. The mission critical communication can be performed using a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) and in accordance with the second TTI.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus of a user equipment (UE) operable to perform mission critical communications with an eNodeB, the apparatus comprising one or more processors and memory configured to:
transmit, from the UE to the eNodeB, a physical random access channel (PRACH) signal that indicates a mission critical communication to be performed between the UE and the eNodeB, wherein the PRACH signal is transmitted using dedicated PRACH resources and in accordance with a first transmission time interval (TTI), wherein the PRACH signal is communicated to the eNodeB with a scheduling request (SR) that includes an event ID indicating an access cause;
receive, from the eNodeB, a random access response (RAR) message that includes a timing advance (TA) and a resource allocation for the mission critical communication, wherein the RAR message is transmitted from the eNodeB using a second TTI, wherein the second TTI is associated with a time interval that is less than the first TTI;
decode, at the UE, the RAR message to determine the TA and the resource allocation for the mission critical communication; and
perform, at the UE, the mission critical communication with the eNodeB in an uplink using the TA and the resource allocation indicated in the RAR message, wherein the mission critical communication is performed using a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) and in accordance with the second TTI.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 , further configured to receive, from the eNodeB, an acknowledgement (ACK) or a negative acknowledgement (NACK) for the mission critical communication in a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) or a physical hybrid-ARQ indicator channel (PRICH) channel in accordance with the second TTI.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the first TTI is for a Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) Release 8 orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) frame structure and is approximately one millisecond (ms) and the second TTI is approximately 0.1 to 0.2 ms.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the first TTI is associated with a first partition of a low band and the second TTI is associated with a second partition of a low band, wherein the first partition is utilized for non-mission critical communications and the second partition is utilized for mission critical communications.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the UE is configured to: perform repeated transmissions of the PRACH signal to the eNodeB until the RAR message is received from the eNodeB; and
perform repeated mission critical communications with the eNodeB until an acknowledgement (ACK) or a negative acknowledgement (NACK) is received from the eNodeB,
wherein a maximum number of repetitions for each transmission from the UE is predefined or configured by higher layers via one of: a master information block (MIB), a system information block (SIB) or dedicated radio resource control (RRC) signaling,
wherein the UE performs a random back off and reinitiates a procedure for performing the mission critical communication when the maximum number of repetitions for a defined transmission is reached.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the UE is configured to:
repeatedly transmit the PRACH signal to the eNodeB in accordance with a fixed number of repetitions; and
repeatedly perform the mission critical communication with the eNodeB in accordance with a fixed number of repetitions,
wherein the fixed number of repetitions for each transmission from the UE is predefined or configured by higher layers via one of: a master information block (MIB), a system information block (SIB) or dedicated radio resource control (RRC) signaling.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the dedicated PRACH resources for mission critical communications are multiplexed with PRACH resources for non-mission critical application using at least one of: time division multiplexing (TDM), frequency division multiplexing (FDM) and code division multiplexing (CDM).

8. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein a plurality of signatures, time resources and frequency resources are reserved for transmitting the PRACH signal from the UE to trigger the mission critical communication.

9. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the SR further includes at least one of: a mission critical machine type communication (MTC) device identifier (ID), a mission critical MTC device capability, and a resource request and a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) for the mission critical communication in uplink from the UE.

10. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the PRACH signal is transmitted from the UE to the eNodeB in accordance with a maximum transmit power.

11. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the UE is configured to receive the RAR message from the eNodeB by monitoring a RAR message window, wherein a position of the RAR message window is configured by higher layers via one of: a master information block (MIB), a system information block (SIB) or dedicated radio resource control (RRC) signaling.

12. The apparatus of claim 1 , further configured to receive a preamble from the eNodeB prior to receiving the RAR message, wherein the preamble functions to improve a downlink synchronization accuracy.

13. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the RAR message received at the UE includes at least one of: the timing advance (TA), an uplink grant that contains the resource allocation for the mission critical communication, a mission critical machine type communication (MTC) device identifier (ID), an event ID, and a random access preamble ID.

14. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein:
the RAR message is received at the UE via a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), wherein the UE is configured to monitor the PDCCH using a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) scrambled by a random-access radio network temporary identifier (RA-RNTI); or
the RAR message is received at the UE via a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) that is scheduled by the PDCCH.

15. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein:
a gap between a last subframe for a RAR message transmission and a starting subframe of the mission critical communication in uplink is predefined or configured by higher layers via one of: a master information block (MIB), a system information block (SIB) or dedicated radio resource control (RRC) signaling; and
a gap between a last subframe of the mission critical communication in uplink and a starting subframe of an acknowledgement (ACK) or a negative acknowledgement (NACK) transmission is predefined or configured by higher layers via one of: the MIB, the SIB, or dedicated RRC signaling.

16. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the UE includes at least one of an antenna, a touch sensitive display screen, a speaker, a microphone, a graphics processor, an application processor, a baseband processor, an internal memory, a non volatile memory port, and combinations thereof.

17. An apparatus of a base station operable to receive mission critical communications from a user equipment (UE), the apparatus comprising one or more processors and memory configured to:
receive, from the UE, a physical random access channel (PRACH) signal that indicates a mission critical communication to be performed between the eNodeB and the UE, wherein the PRACH signal is received using dedicated PRACH resources and in accordance with a first transmission time interval (TTI);
transmit, to the UE, a random access response (RAR) message that includes a timing advance (TA) and a resource allocation for the mission critical communication, wherein the RAR message is transmitted from the eNod

Assignees

• Intel Ip Corp

Inventors

• Xiong Gang
• He Hong
• Chatterjee Debdeep
• Bendlin Ralf
• Kecicioglu Balkan

Classifications

• H04W4/70 Primary

  Services for machine-to-machine communication [M2M] or machine type communication [MTC] · CPC title

• H04W72/20 Primary

  Control channels or signalling for resource management · CPC title

• H04W74/0833 Primary

  Random access procedures, e.g. with 4-step access · CPC title

• H04W74/0838

  using contention-free random access [CFRA] · CPC title

• H04L5/0055

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