Communication Method, User Equipment, and Base Station

• US 20160205692A1
• Filed: 03/24/2016
• Published: 07/14/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/27/2013
• Status: Active Application

• Current Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Zhang, Yingyu
• Granted Patent: US 10,264,579 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/001 the frequencies being arranged in component carriers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0037 Inter-user or inter-terminal allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0044 allocation of payload
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0053 Allocation of signaling, i.e. of overhead other than pilot signals
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 48/12 using downlink control channel
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 56/00 Synchronisation arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 56/001 Synchronization between nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/0453 Resources in frequency domain, e.g. a carrier in FDMA

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention disclose a communication method, a UE, and a base station. The method includes: acquiring, by the user equipment UE, on an anchor carrier, synchronization information to synchronize with the base station, where a frequency resource between the UE and the base station includes N subcarriers, where the N subcarriers include the anchor carrier and at least one supplementary carrier, and N is an integer greater than or equal to 2; acquiring, by the UE, on the anchor carrier, system information, where the system information includes information about identities and frequency locations of the subcarriers; selecting, by the UE, the anchor carrier or a supplementary carrier according to the system information; and accessing, by the UE, the base station on a selected subcarrier, and communicating with the base station.

Claims

1. A communication method, comprising:

acquiring, by a user equipment (UE), on an anchor carrier, synchronization information to synchronize with a base station, wherein a frequency resource between the UE and the base station comprises N subcarriers, wherein the N subcarriers comprise the anchor carrier and at least one supplementary carrier, and N is an integer greater than or equal to 2;

acquiring, by the UE, on the anchor carrier, system information, wherein the system information comprises information about identities and frequency locations of the subcarriers;

selecting, by the UE, one of the anchor carrier or a supplementary carrier according to the system information; and

accessing, by the UE, on a selected subcarrier, the base station, and communicating with the base station.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein a spacing between a downlink center frequency of the supplementary carrier and a downlink center frequency of the anchor carrier is an integral multiple of a frequency domain width of a resource block (RB);

and

wherein a spacing between an uplink center frequency of the supplementary carrier and an uplink center frequency of the anchor carrier is an integral multiple of the frequency domain width of the RB.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein a downlink center frequency of the anchor carrier coincides with a downlink center frequency of a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, and wherein a downlink center frequency of the supplementary carrier coincides with an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarrier of the LTE system.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the N subcarriers have a same bandwidth and are evenly distributed on a frequency, and wherein an offset of an uplink frequency relative to a downlink frequency of a subcarrier, among the N subcarriers, that deviates from the anchor carrier by i subcarriers is W_UL-DL+i(Δ

_UL−

Δ

_DL), wherein W_UL-DL is an offset of an uplink frequency relative to a downlink frequency of the anchor carrier, Δ

_UL is an uplink frequency spacing between the N subcarriers, and Δ

_DL is a downlink frequency spacing between the N subcarriers.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the selecting, by the UE, one of the anchor carrier or a supplementary carrier according to the system information comprises randomly selecting, by the UE, one of the subcarriers according to an identity of the UE and identities of the subcarriers.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the system information further comprises information about a frequency hopping indication, a frequency hopping period, and a frequency hopping mode;

and

wherein the communicating, by the UE, with the base station comprises;

determining, by the UE according to the frequency hopping mode and the frequency hopping period, a subcarrier used to communicate with the base station at a next time period; and

communicating, by the UE at the next time period, with the base station by using the determined subcarrier.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the communicating, by the UE, with the base station comprises receiving, by the UE on a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH), a packet sent by the base station, and selecting, by using a logical identity of the UE, data that is sent to the UE.

8. A user equipment (UE) comprising a computer including a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing program modules executable by the computer, the modules including:

a synchronization module, configured to acquire, on an anchor carrier, synchronization information to synchronize with a base station, wherein a frequency resource between the UE and the base station comprises N subcarriers, wherein the N subcarriers comprise the anchor carrier and at least one supplementary carrier, and N is an integer greater than or equal to 2;

a receiving module, configured to acquire, on the anchor carrier, system information, wherein the system information comprises information about identities and frequency locations of the subcarriers;

a determining module, configured to select the anchor carrier or one of the supplementary carriers according to the system information; and

an access module, configured to access, on a selected subcarrier, the base station, and communicate with the base station.

9. The UE according to claim 8, wherein the determining module is configured to randomly select one of the subcarriers according to an identity of the UE and identities of the subcarriers.

10. The UE according to claim 8, wherein the system information further comprises information about a frequency hopping indication, a frequency hopping period, and a frequency hopping mode;

and

wherein the access module is further configured to determine, according to the frequency hopping mode and the frequency hopping period, a subcarrier used to communicate with the base station at a next time period, and further configured to communicate, at the next time period, with the base station by using the determined subcarrier.

11. The UE according to claim 8, wherein the access module comprises:

a sending unit, configured to send an access request to the base station by using a physical random access channel (PRACH) on the selected subcarrier; and

a receiving unit, configured to receive, on the selected subcarrier, an access response sent by the base station.

12. The UE according to claim 8, wherein the receiving module is further configured to receive, on the selected subcarrier, notification information that is sent by the base station when the system information changes, and receive, according to the notification information and on the anchor carrier, the changed system information.

13. The UE according to claim 8, wherein the receiving module is further configured to receive a handover command sent by the base station, wherein the handover command carries system information of a target cell;

and

wherein the modules further include a first handover module, wherein the first handover module is configured to synchronize with a target base station according to the system information of the target cell and on an anchor carrier of the target cell, and is further configured to access, on the anchor carrier of the target cell, the target base station.

14. A base station comprising a computer including a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing program modules executable by the computer, the modules including:

a sending module, configured to send, on an anchor carrier, synchronization information to a user equipment (UE), so that the UE synchronizes with the base station, wherein a frequency resource between the UE and the base station comprises N subcarriers, wherein the N subcarriers comprise the anchor carrier and at least one supplementary carrier, and N is an integer greater than or equal to 2, wherein the sending module is further configured to send, on the anchor carrier, system information to the UE, wherein the system information comprises information about identities and frequency locations of the N subcarriers, so that the UE selects the anchor carrier or one of the supplementary carriers according to the system information; and

a communications module, configured to enable, on a subcarrier selected by the UE, the UE to access the base station; and

communicate with the UE.

15. The base station according to claim 14, wherein the system information further comprises information about a frequency hopping indication, a frequency hopping period, and a frequency hopping mode;

and

wherein the communications module is further configured to communicate with the UE according to the frequency hopping mode and the frequency hopping period.

16. The base station according to claim 14, wherein the sending module is further configured to send, on the N subcarriers, notification information when the system information changes, so that the UE receives, on the anchor carrier, the changed system information.

17. The base station according to claim 14, wherein the sending module is further configured to send a handover command to the UE, wherein the handover command carries system information of a target cell so that the UE synchronizes, on an anchor carrier of the target cell, with a target base station, and accesses, on the anchor carrier of the target cell, the target base station.

18. The base station according to claim 14, wherein the system information further comprises bandwidth of a cell-specific reference signal (CRS).

19. The base station according to claim 14, wherein the communications module is further configured to map data of multiple UEs into a single physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) packet and send the packet to the UE.

20. The base station according to claim 14, wherein the system information further comprises configuration information of a channel state information-reference signal (CSI-RS) that is used for a normal user equipment NUE communication mode, wherein the normal user equipment is a user equipment that supports human to human communication;

and

wherein the communications module is further configured to communicate with the UE on a subcarrier selected by the UE, wherein a resource occupied by the CSI-RS is removed from the subcarrier.