System Information Signaling for Link Budget Limited Wireless Devices

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016205671-A1
Application number	US-201514980710-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Dec 28, 2015
Priority date	Jan 9, 2015
Publication date	Jul 14, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

This disclosure relates to providing system information for cell access to link budget limited devices. According to some embodiments, a base station may transmit a master information block (MIB), a first system information block (SIB), and second SIBs. The first SIB and the second SIBs may be configured for different device categories, and may accordingly have different characteristics. For example, the first SIB may be configured for link budget limited devices, and may include information specific to such devices and/or may exclude information not relevant to such devices or not critical to accessing the cell. In some instances, the first SIB may also include information from the MIB, such that at least some devices may be able to decode the first SIB and gain cell access without decoding the MIB.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . An apparatus, comprising:
a processing element configured cause a base station that serves a cell to:
transmit a master information block (MIB) comprising first information for accessing the cell;
transmit a first system information block (SIB); and
transmit second SIBs;
wherein the first SIB comprises a subset of information comprised in the second SIBs, wherein the first SIB is configured for a lower complexity device category than the second SIBs.

2 . The apparatus of claim 1 ,
wherein the first SIB further comprises at least a subset of information comprised in the MIB.

3 . The apparatus of claim 1 ,
wherein the first SIB comprises information that is not included in the second SIBs or the MIB.

4 . The apparatus of claim 1 ,
wherein the first SIB is transmitted at a fixed location within each radio frame transmitted by the base station, wherein at least a subset of the second SIBs are transmitted at variable locations.

5 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the processing element is further configured to:
encode the first SIB using a first type of encoding; and encode the second SIBs using a second type of encoding.

6 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the processing element is further configured to:
transmit the first SIB using a fixed modulation and coding scheme.

7 . The apparatus of claim 1 ,
wherein one or more of the first SIB or the MIB is repeated multiple times within at least one subframe of each radio frame and/or is repeated in multiple subframes of each radio frame.

8 . A base station configured to serve a cell, comprising:
an antenna; a radio operably coupled to the antenna; a processing element; wherein the antenna, radio, and processing element are configured to:
transmit a master information block (MIB) comprising first information for accessing the cell;
transmit a first system information block (SIB), wherein the first SIB is configured for at least a first device category; and
transmit second SIBS, wherein the second SIBs are configured for at least a second device category.

9 . The base station of claim 8 ,
wherein the first SIB is transmitted at a fixed location within each radio frame transmitted by the base station, wherein the fixed location is within the central six resource blocks (RBs) of the cell.

10 . The base station of claim 8 ,
wherein the cell is provided according to LTE, wherein the first device category is LTE category 0.

11 . The base station of claim 8 , wherein the first SIB comprises information specific to the first device category, wherein the information specific to the first device category comprises one or more of:
a paging repetition factor for the first device category; a physical random access channel (PRACH) repetition factor for the first device category; a random access request (RAR) repetition factor for the first device category; EPDCCH configuration information for common search space; one or more locations of bands configured for use by the first device category within cell bandwidth; or a number of bands configured for use by the first device category supported by the cell.

12 . The base station of claim 8 ,
wherein the first SIB comprises a subset of information comprised in the second SIBs, wherein the first SIB comprises information also comprised in the MIB, wherein the first SIB is configured for a lower complexity device category than the second SIBs.

13 . The base station of claim 8 , wherein transmitting the MIB comprises one or more of:
repeating transmission of the MIB in multiple subframes of each frame transmitted by the base station; or repeating transmission of the MIB multiple times within a subframe of each frame transmitted by the base station.

14 . The base station of claim 8 ,
wherein the first SIB is encoded using convolutional encoding, wherein the second SIBs are encoded using turbo encoding.

15 . A wireless user equipment (UE) device, comprising:
an antenna; a radio operably coupled to the antenna; a processing element; wherein the antenna, radio, and processing element are configured to:
perform a cell search;
acquire a cell associated with a base station based on the cell search;
receive a first system information block (SIB) from the base station, wherein the first SIB is configured for link budget limited devices, wherein the base station also provides second SIBs configured for devices which are not link budget limited.

16 . The UE device of claim 15 ,
wherein the first SIB has a fixed resource allocation within the central six resource blocks of the cell, wherein at least a subset of the second SIBs have variable resource allocation.

17 . The UE device of claim 15 ,
wherein the first SIB comprises a subset of information comprised in the second SIBs.

18 . The UE device of claim 15 , wherein the antenna, radio, and processing element are further configured to:
access the cell based at least in part on information comprised in the first SIB.

19 . The UE device of claim 15 ,
wherein the base station also transmits a master information block (MIB) comprising first information for accessing the cell, wherein the first SIB also comprises the first information, wherein the wireless device does not attempt to decode the MIB based on receiving the first SIB.

20 . The UE device of claim 15 , wherein the antenna, radio, and processing element are further configured to:
receive a master information block (MIB) from the base station, wherein the MIB is repeated by the base station in multiple subframes and/or multiple times within a subframe of each radio frame transmitted by the base station.

Assignees

• Apple Inc

Inventors

• Tabet Tarik
• Belghoul Farouk
• Hussain Awais M

Classifications

• H04W72/23 Primary

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

• H04W48/16

  Discovering, processing access restriction or access information · CPC title

• H04W72/042 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04W48/12 Primary

  using downlink control channel · CPC title