Flexible SRS sounding for NR systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12388600-B2
Application number	US-202218145865-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 23, 2022
Priority date	Jun 25, 2020
Publication date	Aug 12, 2025
Grant date	Aug 12, 2025

Abstract

A user device, UE, for a wireless communication network is configured or preconfigured with one or more Sounding Reference Signal, SRS, resources to be used for SRS transmissions. The one or more SRS resources include a plurality of frequency domain resources. Responsive to receiving an indication of a subset of SRS frequency domain resources for each resource, the UE performs an SRS transmission using the indicated subset of frequency domain resources.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A user equipment, UE, for a wireless communication network, wherein:
the UE is configured or preconfigured with one or more Sounding Reference Signal, SRS, resources to be used for a SRS transmission, the one or more SRS resources comprising a plurality of frequency domain resources, wherein a bandwidth region used for the SRS transmission is associated with a set of frequency domain resources and segmented into multiple subbands, the bandwidth region being of size m SRS,b Physical Resource Blocks, PRBs, where b=b hop or b=min (b hop , b SRS ), b SRS determines a hopping bandwidth and b hop determines a sounding bandwidth, and segmented into U overlapping or non-overlapping bandwidth segments, where U≤N, and N denotes the number of subbands, and each bandwidth segment being associated with one or more subbands,
responsive to receiving an indication of a subset of SRS frequency domain resources, the UE is to perform an SRS transmission using the indicated subset of frequency domain resources, the indication indicating a single bandwidth segment to be used for the SRS transmission, and
the segmentation of the bandwidth region into U segments or the grouping of N subbands into U segments is performed such that each segment is associated with f·m SRS,b PRBs, with b=b hop or b=min (b hop , b SRS ) and f∈[0, 1]⊂R.

2. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein the number of frequency domain resources in the subset of SRS frequency domain resources used for the SRS transmission is less than the number of frequency domain resources with which the UE is configured or preconfigured.

3. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein the UE is to perform the SRS transmission on the indicated subset of frequency domain resources over one or more symbol resources.

4. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein each SRS resource comprises one or more SRS ports, a set of frequency domain resources defining an SRS sounding bandwidth, and a number of SRS symbol resources.

5. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of SRS resources comprises N SRS subbands, with N>1, each SRS subband comprising a plurality of contiguous or non-contiguous Physical Resource Blocks, PRBs.

6. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein the UE is configured with one or more SRS parameters, like a number N or a size S of the SRS sounding subbands, via higher layer signaling, like RRC or MAC-CE signaling.

7. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein, for f=¼, the bandwidth region is segmented into four non-overlapping segments, the first segment being associated with a first set of N/4 contiguous subbands, the second segment being associated with a second set of N/4 contiguous subbands, the third segment being associated with a third set of N/4 contiguous subbands and the fourth segment being associated with a fourth set of N/4 contiguous subbands.

8. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein, for

f
=

1
2

,

the bandwidth is segmented into two non-overlapping segments, the first segment being associated with a first set of N/2 contiguous subbands and the second segment being associated with the remaining N/2 contiguous subbands.

9. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein a sounding subband size S is given by

S
=

⌈

m

SRS
,
b

N

⌉

⁢

or
⁢

⌊

m

SRS
,
b

N

⌋

,

with ┌·┐ and └·┘ representing the ceiling and floor functions, respectively or

S
=

m

SRS
,
b

N

,

if N is a multiple of m SRS,b .

10. The user equipment, UE, of claim 1 , wherein the UE is to perform an SRS transmission over one or more SRS symbol resources, each SRS symbol resource carrying an SRS transmit sequence in a specific set of SRS frequency-domain resources, and the set of SRS frequency-domain resources being associated either with the resources of one subband or with a part or a subset of the resources of one subband.

11. The user equipment, UE, of claim 10 , wherein the subband size is equal to a hopping bandwidth of m SRS,b PRBs, with b=b SRS , such that each SRS symbol resource is associated with all m SRS,b PRBs of one subband.

12. An entity for a wireless communication network, wherein:
the entity is to configure or preconfigure a user equipment, UE, with one or more Sounding Reference Signal, SRS, resources to be used for a Sounding Reference Signal, SRS, transmission, the one or more SRS resources comprising a plurality of SRS frequency domain resources,
the entity is to signal to the UE an indication of a subset of SRS frequency domain resources to be used by the UE for performing the SRS transmission,
a bandwidth region used for the SRS transmission is associated with a set of frequency domain resources and segmented into multiple subbands, the bandwidth region being of size m SRS,b Physical Resource Blocks PRBs, where b=b hop or b=min (b hop , b SRS ), b SRS determines a hopping bandwidth and b hop determines a sounding bandwidth, and segmented into U overlapping or non-overlapping bandwidth segments, where U≤N, and N denotes the number of subbands, and each bandwidth segment being associated with one or more subbands,
the indication indicates a single bandwidth segment to be used for the SRS transmission, and
the segmentation of the bandwidth region into U segments of the grouping of N subbands into U segments is performed such that each segment is associated with f·m SRS,b PRBs, with b=b hop or b=min (b hop , b SRS ) and f∈[0, 1]⊂R.

13. A method for operating a user equipment, UE, for a wireless communication network, the method comprising:
configuring or preconfiguring the UE with one or more Sounding Reference Signal, SRS, resources to be used for a SRS transmission, the one or more SRS resources comprising a plurality of frequency domain resources, wherein a bandwidth region used for the SRS transmission is associated with a set of frequency domain resources and segmented into multiple subbands, the bandwidth region being of size m SRS,b Physical Resource Blocks, PRBs, where b=b hop

Assignees

• Fraunhofer Ges Forschung

Inventors

• Grossmann Marcus
• Ramireddy Venkatesh

Classifications

• H04L5/0092

  Indication of how the channel is divided · CPC title

• H04L5/0012

  Hopping in multicarrier systems · CPC title

• H04W72/231

  the control data signalling from the layers above the physical layer, e.g. RRC or MAC-CE signalling · CPC title

• H04W72/0453

  Resources in frequency domain, e.g. a carrier in FDMA · CPC title

• H04L5/006

  Quality of the received signal, e.g. BER, SNR, water filling · CPC title