METHODS, APPARATUSES, AND SYSTEMS FOR ENHANCEMENT OF EVOLVED PHYSICAL DOWNLINK CONTROL CHANNEL FOR MACHINE TYPE COMMUNICATIONS

• US 20160302174A1
• Filed: 08/17/2015
• Published: 10/13/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 04/09/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Intel IP Corporation (Intel Corporation)
• Inventors: Chatterjee, Debdeep, Xiong, Gang, Choi, Gi Wan, Han, Seunghee
• Granted Patent: US 10,292,143 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0486 taking channel rank into account
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 25/0202 Channel estimation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0007 the frequencies being orthogonal, e.g. OFDM(A), DMT
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/003 Arrangements for allocating sub-channels of the transmission path
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/005 of common pilots, i.e. pilots destined for multiple users or terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0053 Allocation of signaling, i.e. of overhead other than pilot signals
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/0446 Resources in time domain, e.g. slots or frames
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/23 in the downlink direction of a wireless link, i.e. towards a terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/563 of the wireless resources

Abstract

Methods, systems, and storage media for monitoring enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH)-physical resource block (PRB) sets are described. In embodiments, an apparatus may determine a control channel configuration that indicates one or more EPDCCH-PRB sets to be monitored in a desired subframe. The apparatus may determine a control channel configuration that indicates an EPDCCH to be monitored for one or more EPDCCH transmissions in a non-UE-specific search space (SS) in one or more subframes. The apparatus may determine a control channel configuration that indicates a non-UE-specific search space (SS) to monitor for EPDCCH transmissions using one or more aggregation levels. The apparatus may monitor the EPDCCH according to one or more of the control channel configurations. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.

Claims

1. An apparatus to be employed by a user equipment (UE), the apparatus comprising:

one or more computer-readable storage media having instructions; and

one or more processors coupled with the one or more computer-readable storage media to execute the instructions to;

determine, based on a communication from an evolved Node B (eNB), a control channel configuration that indicates one or more enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH)-physical resource block (PRB) sets to be monitored in a desired subframe; and

monitor at least one EPDCCH-PRB set of the one of the one or more EPDDCH-PRB sets for an EPDCCH transmission in the desired subframe to detect one or more EPDCCH candidates used to transmit EPDCCH transmissions to the UE in the desired subframe.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to monitor the at least one EPDCCH-PRB set of the one or more EPDCCH-PRB sets in the desired subframe whether the UE is in a normal coverage mode or an enhanced coverage mode.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to monitor the at least one EPDCCH-PRB set of the one or more EPDCCH-PRB sets in the desired subframe only when the UE is in an enhanced coverage mode.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the control channel configuration indicates the at least one EPDCCH-PRB set to be monitored for EPDCCH transmissions across a plurality of subframes, and the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to monitor the at least one EPDCCH-PRB set in each of the plurality of subframes defined by the control channel configuration.

5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein an association of EPDCCH-PRB sets to subframes is defined based on a granularity of X subframes, wherein X is greater than or equal to 1 and X includes a retuning time, wherein the retuning time is a time required for the UE to switch from a first narrowband to a second narrowband.

6. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the control channel configuration further indicates that the one or more EPDCCH-PRB sets are to be monitored in a UE-specific search space (SS), and wherein an association between individual ones of the one or more EPDCCH-PRB sets to individual subframes of one or more non-overlapping subframes is based on a hashing function, wherein the hashing function is based in part on a cellular radio network temporary identifier (C-RNTI) of the UE.

7. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the one or more EPDCCH-PRB sets include at least one first EPDCCH-PRB set that corresponds to a UE-specific SS to be used to monitor for EPDCCH transmissions and at least one second EPDCCH-PRB set that corresponds to a non-UE-specific SS to be used to monitor for EPDCCH transmissions.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to determine the non-UE-specific SS to monitor for the second EPDCCH-PRB set using an equation that is for determining the UE-specific SS with a non-UE-specific SS enhanced control channel element (ECCE) starting index.

9. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to determine, based on another control channel configuration obtained during radio resource control (RRC) signaling, the non-UE-specific SS that is to be used to monitor for EPDCCH transmissions.

10. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to monitor and receive the EPDCCH transmissions such that a precoding granularity in a frequency dimension or a physical resource block (PRB) bundling size is N PRBs in length irrespective of whether or not the UE is configured with a precoding matrix indicator (PMI) or a rank indicator (RI), wherein 2≦

N≦

8, and wherein 2≦

N≦

6 when the UE is a MTC UE.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to use a same precoder for antenna port (AP) 107 and AP 109 that are used for all PRBs within each PRB bundle for distributed EPDCCH transmissions.

12. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to receive the EPDCCH transmissions with repeated or bundled transmissions such that precoding is not changed within M subframes in order to provide for cross-subframe channel estimation, wherein the value of M is a predefined value or the value of M is a function of a repetition level used for the EPDCCH transmissions or the PDSCH transmissions.

13. At least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium including instructions to cause a user equipment (UE), in response to execution of the instructions by the UE, to:

determine, based on a communication from an evolved Node B (eNB), a control channel configuration that indicates an enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH) to be monitored for one or more EPDCCH transmissions in a non-UE-specific search space (SS) in one or more subframes, wherein the control channel configuration for the non-UE-specific SS is to be indicated at least in part via a machine type communications (MTC) system information block (SIB) or via one or more spare bits of a master information block (MIB), and wherein the communication with the eNB is at a transmission bandwidth of 1.4 MHz; and

monitor the non-UE-specific SS for the one or more EPDCCH transmissions in the one or more subframes for a duration of a contention resolution timer (CRTimer), wherein the CRTimer is to elapse upon transmission of a radio resource control (RRC) connection request message on a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) by the UE and the CRTimer is to terminate upon reception of a contention resolution message from the eNB.

14. The at least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium of claim 13 wherein one or more EPDCCH transmissions intended for the UE includes a downlink control information (DCI) message with a 16-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC) that is scrambled with a temporary cellular radio network temporary identifier (C-RNTI), wherein the temporary C-RNTI is provided to the UE in a random access response message.

15. The at least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein the DCI message is a format 1A DCI message for the one or more EPDCCH transmissions intended for the UE or the DCI message is a compact version of the format 1A DCI message for one or more MTC EPDCCH transmissions intended for the UE, and wherein the control circuitry is to monitor the non-UE-specific SS for only the format 1A DCI message or the compact version of the format 1A DCI message.

16. The at least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein a value of the CRTimer is greater than 64, and the value of the CRTimer is indicative of a number of subframes to be monitored.

17. The at least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein a value of the CRTimer is specific to the UE, and the value of the CRTimer is a function of an amount of coverage enhancement required by the UE when the UE is to operate in an enhanced coverage mode.

18. The at least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the instructions further cause the UE, in response to execution of the instructions by the UE, to:

monitor the EPDCCH transmissions in the non-UE-specific SS for the contention resolution message without any channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS) transmissions in one or more subframes carrying the EPDCCCH transmissions, and

wherein the EPDCCH transmissions are to be scheduled for transmission by the eNB by puncturing EPDCCH transmissions corresponding to one or more resource elements (REs) used for transmission of the CSI-RS transmissions or the EPDCCH transmissions are to be scheduled for transmission by the eNB by rate-matching of one or more REs used for transmission of the CSI-RS transmissions from the eNB.

19. The at least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the instructions further cause the UE, in response to execution of the instructions by the UE, to:

receive the EPDCCH transmissions in the non-UE-specific SS as distributed EPDCCH transmissions wherein the distributed EPDCCH transmissions are to be transmitted employing implementation-based pseudo-random beamforming with RE-based precoder cycling or employing diversity-based space frequency block coding (SFBC).

20. The at least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the instructions cause the UE, in response to execution of the instructions by the UE, to:

monitor for the EPDCCH transmissions in the non-UE-specific SS such that one or more enhanced control channel elements (ECCEs) corresponding to an EPDCCH candidate within the non-UE-specific SS is derived using a search space equation specified for a UE-specific SS.

21. The at least one non-transitory, computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the instructions cause the UE, in response to execution of the instructions by the UE, to not monitor for the EPDCCH transmissions in the non-UE-specific SS when one or more ECCEs corresponding to the EPDCCH candidate is mapped to a physical resource block (PRB) pair that overlaps in frequency with a physical broadcast channel (PBCH) transmission or PBCH repetition blocks.

22. An apparatus to be employed by a user equipment (UE), the apparatus comprising:

one or more computer-readable storage media having instructions; and

one or more processors coupled with the one or more computer-readable storage media to execute the instructions to;

determine, based on a communication from an evolved Node B (eNB), a control channel configuration that indicates one or more enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH)-physical resource block (PRB) sets to be monitored; and

monitor at least one EPDCCH PRB-set of the one or more EPDCCH PRB-sets for localized EPDCCH transmissions, wherein the at least one EPDCCH-PRB set is six PRBs in length, and wherein the localized EPDCCH transmissions are to be transmitted with an aggregation level (AL) from the set {1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, 32}.

23. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the communication with the eNB is at a transmission bandwidth of 1.4 MHz when the UE is in a normal coverage mode or an enhanced coverage mode, and wherein the AL is from the set {1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24};

or the communication with the eNB is at a transmission bandwidth of an entire system bandwidth when the UE is in the enhanced coverage mode, and wherein the AL is from the set {1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, 32}.

24. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein a modified mapping equation for mapping Enhanced Control Channel Elements (ECCEs) to Enhanced Resource Element Group (EREGs) for distributed EPDCCH transmissions is modified to include a floor function in an equation used to derive PRB indices.

25. An apparatus to be employed by a user equipment (UE), the apparatus comprising:

one or more computer-readable storage media having instructions; and

one or more processors coupled with the one or more computer-readable storage media to execute the instructions to;

determine, based on a communication from an evolved Node B (eNB), a control channel configuration that indicates a non-UE-specific search space (SS) to monitor for enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH) transmissions; and

monitor for the EPDCCH transmissions in the non-UE-specific SS using only first aggregation levels (ALs) of 16 or 24 or second ALs of 8 or 16 based on the control channel configuration.

26. The apparatus of claim 25, wherein the one or more processors are to execute the instructions to indicate a selection of the first AL or the second AL via a machine type communications (MTC) system information block (SIB), or indicate a function of whether a serving cell supports an enhanced coverage operation wherein the indication of the function is made using a spare bit of a MTC master information block (MIB).