METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SYNCHRONIZING RESOURCES FOR COORDINATED NETWORK DEPLOYMENT

• US 20110103317A1
• Filed: 11/02/2009
• Published: 05/05/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/02/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nokia Corporation
• Inventors: Tirkkonen, Olav, Ribeiro, Cassio, Pajukoski, Kari, Tiirola, Esa
• Granted Patent: US 8,923,190 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/329
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/04 Error control
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/16 Central resource management; Negotiation of resources or communication parameters, e.g. negotiating bandwidth or QoS [Quality of Service]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/00 Local resource management
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/541 using the level of interference
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 92/02 Inter-networking arrangements

Abstract

In accordance with an example embodiment of the present invention, a method comprises mapping a first transmission channel to an existing channel of a network element; switching the network element to a secondary communication mode which is one of a secondary transmission mode and a secondary receiving mode; signaling at least one neighbor network element in the secondary communication mode to associate the network element with the at least one neighbor network element; and receiving a first signal on the mapped first transmission channel from the at least one associated network element.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

mapping a first transmission channel to an existing channel of a network element;

signaling at least one neighbor network element in a secondary communication mode to associate the network element with the at least one neighbor network element;

switching the network element to the secondary communication mode which is one of a secondary transmission mode and a secondary receiving mode; and

receiving a first signal on the mapped first transmission channel from the at least one associated network element.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising transmitting a second signal on the mapped first transmission channel to the at least one associated neighbor network element, wherein the first transmission channel is synchronized in at least one of a time domain and a frequency domain with the existing channel and has at least a partially overlapping frequency band with the existing channel.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein mapping the first transmission channel to the existing channel further comprises at least one of

mapping an uplink transmission channel to a downlink transmission channel;

and

mapping a second downlink transmission channel to a second uplink transmission channel, wherein the uplink transmission channel and the downlink transmission channel are one of reference signal channels control channels and data channels and;

the second downlink channel and the second uplink channel are one of reference signal channels, control channels and data channels.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising receiving an interfering signal on one of the first transmission channel and the existing channel wherein at least one of the first signal and the second signal is orthogonal or has a structure similar to the interfering signal.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein mapping the first transmission channel further comprises at least one of

a mapping between a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) signal and a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) signal;

a mapping between an uplink random access channel (RACH) preamble and a downlink RACH preamble;

a mapping between one of a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) format acknowledgement (ACK) signal, a PUCCH format negative acknowledgement (NAK) signal and a PUCCH format reference signal and one of a downlink physical hybrid ARQ indicator channel (PHICH) signal and a downlink physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) signal;

a mapping between an uplink demodulation reference signal to a downlink demodulation reference signal; and

a mapping between an uplink sounding reference signal and a downlink channel state information (CSI) reference signal.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein signaling the at least one neighbor network element further comprises using one of a broadcasted system signaling, a user equipment (UE) specific radio resource control signaling, and a UE specific dynamic signaling to send a signaling message to at least one of an associated base station and an associated UE in a device-to-device mode of operation.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein switching to the secondary communication mode further comprises switching to the secondary communication mode from a regular communication mode in which an uplink transmission and a downlink transmission are carried on an uplink channel and a downlink channel separately.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein switching to the secondary communication mode further comprises switching to the secondary communication mode based on criteria including detecting a presence of at least one of a local area network, a device-to-device communication mode, and an access point-to-access point communication mode.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving the first signal further comprises receiving a reference signal in a staggered reference signal structure.

10. An apparatus, comprising

a resource control module configured to

map a first transmission channel to an existing channel of a network element;

signal at least one neighbor network element in a secondary communication mode to associate the network element with the at least one neighbor network element;

switch the network element to the secondary communication mode which is one of a secondary transmission mode and a secondary receiving mode; and

a transceiver configured to

receive a first signal on the first transmission channel from the at least one associated network element.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the first transmission channel is one of a downlink transmission channel and an uplink transmission channel, and the existing channel is one of a second uplink transmission channel and a second downlink transmission channel.

12. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the resource control module is further configured to map the first transmission channel to a long-term-evolution-Advance (LTE-A) downlink physical channel structure that uses one of a single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) transmission and an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) transmission.

13. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the resource control module is configured to perform at least one of

a mapping between a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) signal and a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) signal;

a mapping between an uplink random access channel (RACH) preamble and a downlink RACH preamble;

a mapping between one of a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) format acknowledgement (ACK) signal, a PUCCH format negative acknowledgement (NAK) signal and a PUCCH format reference signal and one of a downlink physical hybrid ARQ indicator channel (PHICH) signal and a downlink physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) signal;

a mapping between an uplink demodulation reference signal to a downlink demodulation reference signal; and

a mapping between an uplink sounding reference signal and a downlink channel state information (CSI) reference signal.

14. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the transceiver is configured to bypass a discrete fourier transform (DFT) block or inverse DFF block when the SC-FDMA transmission is in use.

15. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the network element is one of a base station, an access point, and a peer mobile station and wherein the first signal is a sounding reference signal in a full or a partial bandwidth, using a same or different sequence as a downlink sounding reference signal.

16. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the apparatus is at least part of a mobile station, a base station, and an access point.

17. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the resource control module is configured to map a plurality of reference signal symbols to at least one prefixed position of a downlink channel quality indication (CQI) reference signal, in a part of bandwidth allocated to the network element.

18. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the first signal and the second signal are one of reference signals, control signals and data signals.

19. An apparatus, comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program code

the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to perform at least the following;

map a first transmission channel to an existing channel of a network element;

switch the network element to a secondary communication mode which is one of a secondary transmission mode and a secondary receiving mode;

signal at least one neighbor network element in the secondary communication mode to associate the network element with the at least one neighbor network element; and

receive a first signal on the first transmission channel from the at least one associated network element.

20. The apparatus of claim 19 wherein the first transmission channel is one of a downlink transmission channel and an uplink transmission channel, and the existing channel is one of a second uplink transmission channel and a second downlink transmission channel.