User equipment (UE), evolved node-b (ENB) and methods for a packet convergence and link control (PCLC) layer

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11129233-B2
Application number	US-201616088634-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 16, 2016
Priority date	Apr 1, 2016
Publication date	Sep 21, 2021
Grant date	Sep 21, 2021

Abstract

Embodiments of a User Equipment (UE), Evolved Node-B (eNB) and methods for communication in accordance with a packet convergence and link control (PCLC) layer are generally described herein. The UE may receive, from a Fifth Generation (5G) eNB, a first group of medium access control (MAC) protocol data units (PDUs) that include PCLC PDUs. In accordance with PCLC sequence numbers (SNs), the UE may reorder the PCLC PDUs and may decipher the PCLC PDUs. The UE may receive, from a legacy eNB, a second group of MAC PDUs that include packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) PDUs encapsulated in radio link control (RLC) PDUs. The UE may reorder the RLC PDUs based on RLC SNs and may decipher the RLC PDUs based on PDCP SNs that are exclusive to the RLC SNs.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus of a User Equipment (UE), the apparatus comprising: memory; and processing circuitry, configured to:
for a first group of medium access control (MAC) protocol data units (PDUs) that include packet convergence and link control (PCLC) PDUs received from a Fifth Generation (5G) Node-B (gNB) in accordance with a 5G network protocol:
reorder the PCLC PDUs based on PCLC sequence numbers (SNs); and
decipher, in accordance with decipher keys that are based at least partly on the PCLC SNs, the reordered PCLC PDUs to generate one or more PCLC service data units (SDUs); and
encode, for transmission to the gNB, a retransmission request that indicates the PCLC SNs of the PCLC PDUs for which the reception failures have occurred; and

for a second group of MAC PDUs that include packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) PDUs encapsulated in radio link control (RLC) PDUs received from a legacy Evolved Node-B (eNB) in accordance with a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network protocol:
reorder the RLC PDUs based on RLC SNs; and
decipher, in accordance with decipher keys that are based at least partly on PDCP SNs that are exclusive to the RLC SNs, the reordered RLC PDUs to generate one or more PDCP SDUs,

wherein the PCLC PDUs, for which the reception failures have occurred, are received as encapsulated as PDCP SDUs from the legacy eNB with the second group.

2. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein:
the UE is arranged to communicate with the gNB and the legacy eNB in accordance with an inter radio access technology (inter-RAT) arrangement in which the legacy eNB serves as a primary eNB.

3. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein:
the RLC SNs are part of an RLC layer of the LTE network protocol of the legacy eNB,
the PDCP SNs are part of a PDCP layer of the LTE network protocol, and
the PCLC SNs are part of a PCLC layer of the 5G network protocol of the gNB.

4. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the second group of MAC PDUs is received after a handover of the UE from the gNB to the legacy eNB.

5. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein:
the first group of MAC PDUs is received after a handover of the UE from an LTE network to a 5G network,
the legacy eNB operates in the LTE network and the 5G eNB operates in the 5G network,
the processing circuitry is further configured to determine, based at least partly on an unavailability of the 5G network, that the UE is to fall back from the 5G network to the LTE network, and
the second group of MAC PDUs is received after a fall back of the UE to the legacy eNB.

6. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the first group of MAC PDUs is received after a handover of the UE from the legacy eNB to the gNB.

7. The apparatus according to claim 1 , the processing circuitry further configured to:
determine, based at least partly on the PCLC SNs, whether the reception failures of PCLC PDUs from the gNB have occurred; and
encode, for transmission to the gNB, the retransmission request that indicates the PCLC SNs of the PCLC PDUs for which the reception failures have occurred.

8. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the PCLC decipher keys are further based at least partly on a hyper-frame number (HFN) of the gNB for the first group of MAC PDUs.

9. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein:
the deciphered, reordered PCLC PDUs include PCLC header portions and PCLC payload portions,
the processing circuitry is further configured to, for the deciphered, reordered PCLC PDUs for which the PCLC payload portions include compressed internet protocol (IP) headers, decompress the IP headers,
the header decompression is based at least partly on the PCLC SNs of the deciphered, reordered PCLC PDUs.

10. The apparatus according to claim 1 , the processing circuitry further configured to:
determine, based at least partly on concatenation/segmentation indicators of the PCLC PDUs, whether the PCLC PDUs have been concatenated or segmented; and
reassemble one or more PCLC PDUs determined to have been concatenated or segmented.

11. The apparatus according to claim 1 , the processing circuitry further configured to:
for the first group of MAC PDUs, forward the PCLC SDUs to an application layer of the UE as internet protocol (IP) packets; and
for the second group of MAC PDUs, forward the PDCP SDUs to the application layer of the UE as IP packets.

12. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the apparatus further includes a transceiver to receive the first and second groups of MAC PDUs.

13. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the processing circuitry includes a baseband processor to reorder the PCLC PDUs, to decipher the reordered PCLC PDUs, to reorder the RLC PDUs, and to decipher the reordered RLC PDUs.

Assignees

• Intel Corp

Inventors

• Zhang Yujian
• Fong Mo-Han
• Heo Youn Hyoung
• Burbidge Richard C
• Phuyal Umesh
• Yiu Candy
• He Hong
• Palat Sudeep K

Classifications

• H04W36/00222

  between different packet switched [PS] network technologies, e.g. transferring data sessions between LTE and WLAN or LTE and 5G · CPC title

• H04W36/0011

  for data sessions of end-to-end connection · CPC title

• H04W12/0431

  Key distribution or pre-distribution; Key agreement · CPC title

• H04L69/04

  Protocols for data compression, e.g. ROHC · CPC title

• H04L67/10

  in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network (software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46) · CPC title