Methods and apparatuses for estimating propagation delay between a non-terrestrial node and a terrestrial node without GNSS

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12483322-B2
Application number	US-202118269591-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 24, 2021
Priority date	Dec 28, 2020
Publication date	Nov 25, 2025
Grant date	Nov 25, 2025

Abstract

A user equipment (UE) includes one or more non-transitory computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon, and at least one processor coupled to the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media, and configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to: estimate a first Doppler frequency shift in a signal received from a non-terrestrial network (NTN) node at a first time instance, estimate a second Doppler frequency shift in the signal at a second time instance, estimate a signal propagation delay between the NTN node and the UE based on the first Doppler frequency shift and the second Doppler frequency shift, and apply the signal propagation delay to compensate for an uplink transmission from the UE to the NTN node.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A user equipment (UE), comprising:
one or more non-transitory computer-readable media having storing computer-executable instructions embodied thereon; and at least one processor coupled to the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media, and configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to: estimate a first Doppler frequency shift in a signal received from a non-terrestrial network (NTN) node at a first-time instance; estimate a second Doppler frequency shift in the signal at a second time instance; estimate a signal propagation delay between the NTN node and the UE based on the first Doppler frequency shift and the second Doppler frequency shift; and apply the signal propagation delay to compensate for an uplink transmission from the UE to the NTN node; and transmit an indication of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) outage of the UE (GNSSOutageUE) to a ground-based base station communicatively coupled to the NTN node.

2 . The UE of claim 1 , wherein the first Doppler frequency shift is between a downlink carrier frequency of the signal transmitted by the NTN node and a measured, or estimated, downlink carrier frequency of the signal received at the UE at the first time instance.

3 . The UE of claim 1 , wherein the second Doppler frequency shift is between a downlink carrier frequency of the signal transmitted by the NTN node and a measured, or estimated, downlink carrier frequency of the signal received at the UE at the second time instance.

4 . The UE of claim 1 , wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to:
estimate a first distance between the NTN node and the UE at the first time instance based on at least one of the first Doppler frequency shift and the second Doppler frequency shift.

5 . The UE of claim 1 , wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to:
estimate a second distance between the NTN node and the UE at the second time instance based on at least one of the first Doppler frequency shift and the second Doppler frequency shift.

6 . The UE of claim 1 , wherein the UE is without Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) capabilities or the UE is with GNSS capabilities, but and said UE is suffering from the GNSS outage.

7 . A method performed by a user equipment (UE) for estimating a signal propagation delay between a non-terrestrial network (NTN) node and the UE, the method comprising:
estimating a first Doppler frequency shift in a signal received from the NTN node at a first-time instance; estimating a second Doppler frequency shift in the signal at a second time instance; estimating the signal propagation delay between the NTN node and the UE based on the first Doppler frequency shift and the second Doppler frequency shift; and applying the signal propagation delay to compensate for an uplink transmission from the UE to the NTN node; and transmitting an indication of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) outage of the UE (GNSSOutageUE) to a ground-based base station communicatively coupled to the NTN node.

8 . A non-terrestrial network (NTN) node, comprising:
one or more non-transitory computer-readable media having storing computer-executable instructions embodied thereon; and at least one processor coupled to the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media, and configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to: estimate a first Doppler frequency shift in a signal received from a user equipment (UE) at a first-time instance; estimate a second Doppler frequency shift in the signal at a second time instance; estimate a signal propagation delay between the UE and the NTN node based on the first Doppler frequency shift and the second Doppler frequency shift; and apply the signal propagation delay to compensate for a downlink transmission from the NTN node to the UE; and relay non-Global Navigation Satellite System (non-GNSS) Doppler tracking capability information of the UE to a ground-based base station communicatively coupled to the NTN node.

9 . The NTN node of claim 8 , wherein the first Doppler frequency shift is between an uplink carrier frequency of the signal transmitted by the UE and a measured, or estimated, uplink carrier frequency of the signal received at the NTN node at the first time instance.

10 . The NTN node of claim 8 , wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to:
estimate a first distance between the UE and the NTN node at the first time instance based on at least one of the first Doppler frequency shift and the second Doppler frequency shift.

11 . The NTN node of claim 8 , wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to:
estimate a second distance between the UE and the NTN node at the second time instance based on at least one of the first Doppler frequency shift and the second Doppler frequency shift.

12 . The NTN node of claim 8 , wherein applying the signal propagation delay to compensate for the downlink transmission from the NTN node to the UE includes advancing a timing of the downlink transmission to the UE by the signal propagation delay.

13 . The NTN node of claim 8 , wherein the UE is without Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) capabilities or the UE is with GNSS capabilities, but and said UE is suffering from a GNSS outage.

Assignees

• Sharp Kk

Inventors

• Mcgiffen Thomas Glenn
• Kowalski John Michael

Classifications

• H04W56/0045 Primary

  compensating for timing error by altering transmission time · CPC title

• H04W24/08

  Testing, {supervising or monitoring} using real traffic · CPC title

• H04W56/005

  compensating for timing error by adjustment in the receiver · CPC title

• H04B7/18504

  Aircraft used as relay or high altitude atmospheric platform · CPC title

• H04W56/0065

  using measurement of signal travel time · CPC title