Method and apparatus for adjusting guard band size between two carriers by quality of service data positioning in the spectrum band

• US 20080070586A1
• Filed: 09/18/2007
• Published: 03/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/18/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nokia Corporation
• Inventors: Kermoal, Jean-Philippe, Hooli, Kari
• Granted Patent: US 7,949,343 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/452.2
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/003 Arrangements for allocating sub-channels of the transmission path
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0037 Inter-user or inter-terminal allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/006 Quality of the received signal, e.g. BER, SNR, water filling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0064 Rate requirement of the data, e.g. scalable bandwidth, data priority
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0066 Requirements on out-of-channel emissions
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 16/04 Traffic adaptive resource partitioning

Abstract

The guard band between two carriers of the same or different operators is reduced or dynamically adjusted by initiating a dynamic change request of the guard band between the two carriers to allow for flexible spectrum use by adjusting the tolerable guard band overlap. The data is distributed or positioned in the carrier spectrum band as a function of the Quality of Service so that the lowest Quality of Service constrained data are positioned at the edges of the carrier spectrum band and the highest Quality of Service constrained data are positioned in the middle of the carrier spectrum band to minimize any impact from the increased adjacent channel interference due to the guard band overlap and narrower guard band.

Claims

1. Method, comprising:

dynamically varying the carrier separation or guard band between two carriers in a wireless communication system in response to a triggering of or a periodic dynamic change request of the guard band;

determining, in response to the triggering of or the periodic dynamic change request, the number of users and the respective Quality of Service associated with each user;

calculating the tolerable overlap of the guard bands between the carriers;

selecting in response to a tolerable overlap the lowest Quality of Service data or user requirement criteria;

allocating a user with the lowest Quality of Service data or information to the edge of the guard band;

determining the amount of frequency spectrum available for usage in the guard band;

expanding or reducing the bandwidth to increase or decrease the separation between the two carriers, and

calculating the Adjacent Channel Interference level between the two carriers.

2. The method according to claim 1 further comprising expanding or reducing the bandwidth to achieve a predetermined separation between the two carriers.

3. The method according to claim 1 further comprising the two carriers belonging to a single operator.

4. The method according to claim 1 further comprising each carrier of the two carries belonging to different operators.

5. The method according to claim 1 further comprising positioning the Quality of Service data in accordance with the available guard band spectrum.

6. The method according to claim 4 further comprising the different operators synchronizing and coordinating their respective chucks such that the data can be encoded with a lower coding rate to accommodate the higher adjacent channel interference level expected on the edge of the guard band for “

fine tuning”

the separation of the carriers.

7. The method according to claim 1 further comprising implementing flexible spectrum use in response to one carrier reducing its used bandwidth by releasing spectrum and the other carrier expanding its used bandwidth by using the released spectrum.

8. The method according to claim 1 wherein the wireless communication system is a frequency division duplex system.

9. The method according to claim 1 wherein the wireless communication system is a time division duplex system.

15. A method according to claim 1, wherein the method further comprises implementing the steps of the method via a computer program running in a processor, controller or other suitable module in one or more devices, terminals or nodes in the wireless communication network.

16. An application specific integrated circuit configured for operation according to the method of claim 1.

10. A device, terminal or node, comprising:

a triggering module configured for initiating a dynamic change request of the guard band between two carriers of different or the same operator;

a guard band overlap module configured for determining a tolerable overlap for adjacent channel interference between the carriers;

a bandwidth adjusting module configured for expanding or reducing the bandwidth to achieve a carrier separation as a function of the Quality of Service; and

a data positioning module configured for positioning data in accordance to its Quality of Service and in accordance with the available guard band frequency spectrum.

11. The device, terminal or node according to claim 10 wherein said data positioning module is further configured for allocating data with a lower Quality of Service data to the edge of the guard band.

12. The device, terminal or node according to claim 10 further comprising a frequency spectrum determining module configured for calculating the amount of frequency spectrum available for usage in the guard band.

13. Apparatus, comprising:

means for initiating a dynamic change request of the guard band between two carriers to allow for flexible spectrum use between carriers by adjusting the tolerable guard band overlap, and

means for distributing the data in the carrier spectrum band so that the lowest Quality of Service constrained data are positioned at the edges of the carrier spectrum band and the highest Quality of Service constrained data are positioned in the middle of the carrier spectrum band to minimize any impact from the increased adjacent channel interference due to the guard band overlap.

14. A computer program product comprising a computer readable structure embodying computer program code therein for execution by a computer processor, said computer program further comprising instructions for performing a method comprising dynamically varying the carrier separation or guard band between two carriers of the same operator or different operators by the triggering of or the periodic dynamic change of the guard band, responding to the triggering of or the periodic dynamic change request by determining the number of users and the respective Quality of Service associated with each user, calculating the tolerable overlap of the guard bands between the carriers, selecting in response to a tolerable guard band overlap the lowest Quality of Service data or user requirement criteria, allocating a user with the lowest Quality of Service to the edge of the guard band, determining the amount of spectrum available for usage in the guard band, expanding or reducing the bandwidth to achieve a predetermined separation, and calculating the actual channel interference level.