APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR MODE SELECTION FOR DEVICE-TO-DEVICE COMMUNICATIONS

• US 20100261469A1
• Filed: 04/08/2009
• Published: 10/14/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/08/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nokia Corporation
• Inventors: Koskela, Timo Kalevi, Chen, Tao, Hakola, Sami-Jukka, Doppler, Klaus Franz, Ribeiro, Cassio Barboza
• Granted Patent: US 9,351,340 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/423
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/10 Scheduling measurement reports ; Arrangements for measurement reports
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/383 power control in peer-to-peer links
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 92/18 between terminal devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 99/00 Subject matter not provided for in other groups of this subclass

Abstract

In accordance with an example embodiment of the present invention, a method is disclosed that comprises measuring a first link quality of a first link based at least in part on a first power value; measuring a second link quality of a second link based at least in part on a second power value; and determining a suitable device-to-device (D2D) mode for a D2D connection based at least in part on the first link quality, the second link quality, and one or more D2D user equipment (UE) constraints.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

measuring a first link quality of a first link based at least in part on a first power value;

measuring a second link quality of a second link based at least in part on a second power value; and

determining a suitable device-to-device (D2D) mode for a D2D connection based at least in part on the first link quality, the second link quality, and at least one of D2D user equipment (UE) constraints.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining the first power value for the first link from one of a standard definition and a coupled based station;

obtaining the second power value for the second link from one of a second standard definition and the coupled based station;

measuring a cellular downlink quality, a dedicated uplink quality and a dedicated downlink quality; and

considering the cellular downlink quality, the dedicated uplink quality, and the dedicated downlink quality for determining the suitable D2D mode, wherein each of the dedicated uplink and the dedicated downlink is allocated in one of a dynamic allocation method, a semi-static allocation method, and a static allocation method.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein each of measuring the first link quality, measuring the second link quality, measuring the cellular downlink quality, measuring the dedicated uplink quality and measuring the dedicated downlink quality further comprises at least one of

receiving a probing signal,

measuring interferences from at least one of neighbor devices, and

determining a strength of the received probing signal after comparing the strength of the received signal against the measured interferences, wherein each of the first link quality, the second link quality, and the cellular downlink quality comprises one or more of a link throughput, an expected link throughput based on a signal to interference plus noise ration, and an available resource.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the first link is one of a shared downlink and a shared uplink, the second link is one of a second shared downlink and a second shared uplink, the first link is different from the second link, and the D2D connection is one of the first link, the second link, the dedicated uplink, and the dedicated downlink.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising determining a second suitable D2D mode for a second D2D connection to form a D2D communication cluster with the D2D connection wherein the second D2D connection is one of a shared uplink, a shared downlink, a dedicated uplink, and a dedicated downlink.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein determining the suitable D2D mode comprises

taking into account multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna capabilities of the coupled base station to reduce interferences towards the D2D UE in the shared downlink.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein determining the suitable D2D mode further comprises taking into account the MIMO processing available at the D2D UE to suppress interference towards the coupled BS in shared uplink wherein the reduced interference towards the coupled BS results in an adjustment of operational parameters including a backoff value.

8. The method of claim 2, further comprising at least one of

communicating to the coupled base station at least one of the measured first link quality,

the measured second link quality, and the measured cellular downlink quality;

and

receiving a D2D mode assignment from the coupled base station.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the suitable D2D mode based at least in part on the at least one of D2D UE constraints further comprises taking into account one or more of a neighbor uplink cellular UE interference level, a neighbor downlink cellular UE interference level, a neighbor uplink interference level, a neighbor downlink interference level, a base station interference level, a maximum allowed transmitting power, and one or more UE quality of service (QoS) targets.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the suitable D2D mode comprises selecting one of a reusing shared downlink mode, a reusing shared uplink mode, a dedicated downlink mode, a dedicated uplink mode, and a cellular mode.

11. A method, comprising:

collecting a plurality of link quality measures upon receiving one of a device-to-device (D2D) connection request and a D2D connection reevaluation request from a D2D user equipment (UE) and a pairing D2D UE;

removing an D2D mode from a D2D mode list if the D2D mode fails to meet a quality criterion based at least in part on the collected plurality of link quality measures;

sorting the D2D mode list based at least in part on the plurality of D2D link quality measures; and

determining a suitable D2D mode based at least in part on the sorted D2D mode list and a network state.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

creating the D2D mode list for the D2D UE and the paring D2D UE, based at least in part on available network resources and the network state;

scoring each D2D mode of the D2D mode list based at least in part on the collected plurality of link quality measures;

checking the network state based at least in part on a number of established D2D connections and a number of maximum allowed connections in the network; and

communicating the suitable D2D mode to the D2D UE and the pairing D2D UE.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising determining a second suitable D2D mode between the D2D UE and a third D2D UE to form a D2D communication cluster.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein determining the suitable D2D mode further comprises:

considering a D2D mode on the sorted D2D mode list with a highest score; and

checking whether the D2D mode with the highest score is consistent with the network state.

15. An apparatus, comprising:

a first module configured

to measure a first link quality of a first link based at least in part on a first power value; and

to measure a second link quality of a second link based at least in part on a second power value; and

a second module configured

to determine a suitable device-to-device (D2D) mode for a D2D user equipment (UE) to establish a D2D connection to a pairing D2D UE based at least in part on the first link quality, the second link quality, and at least one D2D UE constraints.

16. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the apparatus is coupled to a base station (BS) comprising a BS D2D module configured

to collect a plurality of link quality measures upon receiving a connection request from the D2D UE and the pairing D2D UE;

to remove an D2D mode from a D2D mode list if the D2D mode fails to meet a quality criterion based at least in part on the collected plurality of link quality measures;

to sort the D2D mode list based at least in part on the collected plurality of D2D link quality measures; and

to determine a suitable D2D mode based at least in part on the sorted D2D mode list, a network state, and at least one BS constraints.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the base station further comprises a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna module configured

to precode signals to reduce the interference towards the D2D UE;

and

to take into consideration MIMO capabilities of at least one of the D2D UE and the pairing D2D UE.

18. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the BS D2D module is further configured

to handover at least one of the D2D UE and the pairing D2D UE to a neighbor cell when it detects that at least one of the D2D UE and the pairing D2D UE has roamed into the neighbor cell;

19. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the BS D2D module is further configured to control interferences to the D2D UE and the pairing D2D UE after the D2D connection is established between the D2D UE and the pairing D2D UE.

20. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the BS constraints comprise at least one of a neighbor uplink cellular UE interference level, a neighbor downlink cellular UE interference level, a neighbor uplink interference level, and a neighbor downlink interference level, a base station interference level, a maximum allowed transmitting power, a number of parallel active cellular streams, an expected receiver gain on each of the parallel active cellular streams, at least one of quality of service (QoS) targets, a cell-wide load level, at least one of admission control policies, direction of a link, and a total number of D2D UEs sharing a resource.

21. The apparatus of claim 16, further comprising a UE MIMO module configured to adjust the measured interference levels based on a preceding of the coupled base station.

22. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the suitable D2D mode is one of a reusing downlink mode, a reusing uplink mode, a dedicated downlink mode, a dedicated uplink mode, and a cellular mode;

and the apparatus is one of a 3^rd generation partnership project (3GPP) long-term evolution-advanced (LTE-A) mobile station, and a 4^th generation (4G) mobile station.

23-33. -33. (canceled)