Carrier aggregation for narrowband internet of things user equipment

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11425724-B2
Application number	US-202016909412-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 23, 2020
Priority date	Jul 12, 2019
Publication date	Aug 23, 2022
Grant date	Aug 23, 2022

Abstract

Various aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communication. In some aspects, a user equipment (UE) may signal, to a base station, a capability of the UE relating to carrier aggregation for a particular category or class of the UE, such as for narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) UEs. The UE may receive, from the base station, a configuration for carrier aggregation for the particular category or class of the UE based at least in part on the capability of the UE relating to carrier aggregation for the particular category or class of the UE. The UE may communicate with the base station using carrier aggregation based at least in part on the configuration for carrier aggregation for the particular category or class of the UE. Numerous other aspects are provided.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE), comprising:
signaling, to a network node, a capability of the UE relating to carrier aggregation for a particular category or a particular class of the UE;
receiving, from the network node, a configuration indicating a plurality of component carriers, including a first non-anchor carrier and a second non-anchor carrier, to be aggregated for carrier aggregation for the particular category or class of the UE based at least in part on the capability of the UE relating to carrier aggregation for the particular category or class of the UE, wherein the configuration indicates the first non-anchor carrier as a primary cell and the second non-anchor carrier as a secondary cell; and
communicating with the base station network node using carrier aggregation based at least in part on the configuration.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the capability is a capability of the UE to aggregate at least one of inband carriers, guardband carriers, standalone carriers, or a combination thereof.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the capability indicates a number of component carriers that the UE is capable of aggregating.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the configuration indicates at least one of:
a valid subframe bitmap for at least one of the primary cell or the secondary cell,
a power boosting in a configured or predefined limitation of at least one of the primary cell or the secondary cell, or
a combination thereof.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the configuration indicates a valid subframe bitmap for at least one of the primary cell or the secondary cell.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first non-anchor carrier and the second non-anchor carrier are associated with a same valid subframe bitmap and a same power boost.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein communicating with the network node comprises monitoring the plurality of component carriers for a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH).

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the NPDCCH is monitored using frequency hopping or repetition on the plurality of component carriers.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the NPDCCH is mapped across the plurality of component carriers, and wherein the plurality of component carriers are contiguous and are associated with a same primary cell identifier.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the configuration indicates to use the plurality of component carriers for a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH).

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein each component carrier, of the plurality of component carriers, carries downlink control information (DCI) for that component carrier.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein a single component carrier, of the plurality of component carriers, carries downlink control information (DCI) for each of the plurality of component carriers.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the DCI is joint DCI that includes a field or a bit that indicates whether a corresponding configuration, associated with a particular component carrier of the plurality of component carriers, is for the primary cell or the secondary cell.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein the DCI includes different DCI for each component carrier of the plurality of component carriers, and wherein each different DCI indicates whether a corresponding component carrier carries data.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the configuration indicates whether each component carrier, of the plurality of component carriers, carries downlink control information (DCI) for that component carrier or whether a single component carrier, of the plurality of component carriers, carries DCI for all component carriers used for carrier aggregation for the UE.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein different component carriers, of the plurality of component carriers, carry independently encoded transport blocks.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein a hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) information for each independently encoded transport block is transmitted on a different narrowband physical uplink shared channel.

18. The method of claim 16 , wherein hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) information for each independently encoded transport block is transmitted on a joint narrowband physical uplink shared channel.

19. The method of claim 16 , wherein a set of scheduled narrowband physical downlink shared channels on the different component carriers are scheduled to end at a same time.

20. The method of claim 16 , wherein an offset between different scheduled narrowband physical downlink shared channels on the different component carriers is indicated to the UE.

21. The method of claim 1 , wherein different component carriers, of the plurality of component carriers, carry a jointly encoded transport block for a narrowband physical downlink shared channel.

22. The method of claim 21 , wherein a single hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) information for the jointly encoded transport block is transmitted on a narrowband physical uplink shared channel.

23. The method of claim 1 , wherein the configuration indicates whether different component carriers, of the plurality of component carriers, carry independently encoded transport blocks or a jointly encoded transport block for a narrowband physical downlink shared channel.

24. The method of claim 1 , wherein the capability indicates a peak data rate per band combination or a peak data rate per bandwidth class.

25. The method of claim 1 , wherein the configuration indicates at least one of a hopping pattern for transmissions on different component carriers of the plurality of component carriers, a bundle size of resource units per hop for the hopping pattern, a hopping distance between different hops, or a combination thereof.

26. The method of claim 1 , wherein the UE is configured to monitor for narrowband reference signals on a component carrier, of the plurality of component carriers, based at least in part on whether the component carrier is the primary cell or the secondary cell.

27. The method of claim 1 , wherein communicating with the network node comprises receiving a plurality of code block segments for a transport block.

28. The method of claim 1 , wherein the configuration or system information indicates one or more component carriers, of the plurality of component carriers, to be used for paging, single cell point-to-multipoint communications, or a combination thereof.

29. The method of claim 1 , wherein the particular category or class of the UE is a narrowband Internet of Things category or a narrowband Internet of Things class.

30. A user equipment (UE) for wireless communication, comprising:
a memory; and
one or more processors coupled to the memory, the one or more processors configured to cause the UE to:
signal, to a network node, a capability of the UE relating to carrier aggregation for a particular category or a particular class of the UE;
receive, from the network node, a configuration indicating a plurality of component carriers, including a first non-anchor carrier and a second non-anchor carrier, to be aggregated for carrier aggregation for the particular category or class of the UE based at least in part on the capabili

Assignees

• Qualcomm Inc

Inventors

• Liu Le
• Rico Alvarino Alberto
• Ananda Raghavendra Shyam
• Menon Srikanth
• Menon Murali

Classifications

• H04W72/51 Primary

  based on terminal or device properties · CPC title

• H04W72/23

  in the downlink direction of a wireless link, i.e. towards a terminal · CPC title

• H04L5/0053

  Allocation of signalling, i.e. of overhead other than pilot signals · CPC title

• H04L5/0055

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

• H04L1/1861 Primary

  Physical mapping arrangements (for ACK signaling see also H04L5/0053) · CPC title