System and method for sharing a control channel for carrier aggregation

• US 10,904,870 B2
• Filed: 08/11/2017
• Issued: 01/26/2021
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corporation Limited
• Original Assignee: Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corporation Limited
• Inventors: McBeath, Sean Michael, Earnshaw, Andrew Mark, Fong, Mo-Han, Heo, Youn Hyoung, Cai, Zhijun
• Primary Examiner(s): Oveissi, Mansour
• Application Number:
  US15/675,243
• Publication Number:
  US 20170339684A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,264 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/003 Arrangements for allocating sub-channels of the transmission path
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/23 in the downlink direction of a wireless link, i.e. towards a terminal

Abstract

A method for processing a control channel at a user agent (UA) to identify at least one of an uplink and a downlink resource allocated by a resource grant within a multi-carrier communication system wherein resource grants are specified by control channel element (CCE) subset candidates wherein the carriers used for data transmission and reception are configured carriers, the method comprising the steps of receiving activation signals specifying active and deactivated carriers from among the configured carriers, for active carriers (i) identifying a number of CCE subset candidates to decode and (ii) decoding up to the identified number of CCE subset candidates in an attempt to identify the resource grant; and for deactivated carriers, ignoring CCE subset candidates associated with the deactivated carriers.

Claims

1. A method for processing a control channel at user equipment (UE) in a multi-carrier communication system, the method comprising:

receiving an activation signal;

determining whether a first carrier and a second carrier are active or deactivated based on the activation signal, wherein;

the first carrier is an uplink carrier,

the second carrier is a downlink carrier, and

the first and second carriers are a pair of uplink and downlink carriers configured in the multi-carrier communication system; and

responsive to a determination that the first carrier is active and the second carrier is deactivated,

decoding first control channel element (CCE) subset candidates associated with the first carrier to identify a resource grant, and

determining not to decode second CCE subset candidates associated with the second carrier.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein decoding the first CCE subset candidates associated with the first carrier comprises:

decoding the first CCE subset candidates based on only one format of downlink control information.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the only one format of downlink control information (DCI) is a DCI format for granting unlink resources.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the activation signal comprises:

receiving the activation signal via medium access control layer signaling or physical layer signaling.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein a first number of carriers is configured in the multi-carrier communication system, the method further comprising:

determining a second number of the configured carriers as active based on the activation signal; and

detecting a third number of Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) candidates associated with the active carriers to receive one or more PDCCHs,

wherein the third number is a function of a maximum of the second number and a constant.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein:

each of the PDCCH candidates is associated with an aggregation level of 1, 2, 4, or 8 CCEs;

the constant includes a first constant for the aggregation levels 1 and 2, and a second constant for the aggregation levels 4 and 8; and

the first constant is different from the second constant.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the first constant is four and the second constant is two.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the resource grant indicates a grant of uplink resources on the first carrier and includes a transmit power control (TPC) field, a cyclic shift for demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) field, a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) and redundancy version field, a New Data Indicator (NDI) field, a resource block assignment field, and a hopping flag field.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein the one or more PDCCHs indicate a grant of downlink resources on at least one of the active carriers and include a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process number field, a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) field, a New Data Indicator (NDI) field, a resource block assignment field, and a redundancy version field.

10. User equipment (UE) for a wireless-communication system, the UE comprising:

a memory storing instructions; and

a processor configured to execute the instructions to cause the UE to;

receive an activation signal;

determine whether a first carrier and a second carrier are active or deactivated based on the activation signal, wherein;

the first carrier is an uplink carrier,

the second carrier is a downlink carrier, and

the first and second carriers are a pair of uplink and downlink carriers configured in the multi-carrier communication system; and

responsive to a determination that the first carrier is active and the second carrier is deactivated,

decode first control channel element (CCE) subset candidates associated with the first carrier to identify a resource grant, and

determine not to decode second CCE subset candidates associated with the second carrier.

11. The UE of claim 10, wherein the processor is configured to execute the instructions to cause the UE to decode the first CCE subset candidates associated with the first carrier by:

decoding the first CCE subset candidates based on only one format of downlink control information.

12. The UE of claim 11, wherein the only one format of downlink control information (DCI) is a DCI format for granting unlink resources.

13. The UE of claim 10, wherein the processor is configured to execute the instructions to cause the UE to receive the activation signal by:

receiving the activation signal via medium access control layer signaling or physical layer signaling.

14. The UE of claim 10, wherein a first number of carriers is configured in the wireless communication system, the processor is further configured to execute the instructions to cause the UE to:

determine a second number of the configured carriers as active based on the activation signal; and

detect a third number of Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) candidates associated with the active carriers to receive one or more PDCCHs,

wherein the third number is a function of a maximum of the second number and a constant.

15. The UE of claim 14, wherein the one or more PDCCHs indicate a grant of downlink resources on at least one of the active carriers and include a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process number field, a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) field, a New Data Indicator (NDI) field, a resource block assignment field, and a redundancy version field.

16. The UE of claim 10, wherein:

each of the PDCCH candidates is associated with an aggregation level of 1, 2, 4, or 8 CCEs;

the constant includes a first constant for the aggregation levels 1 and 2, and a second constant for the aggregation levels 4 and 8; and

the first constant is different from the second constant.

17. The UE of claim 16, wherein the first constant is four and the second constant is two.

18. The UE of claim 10, wherein the resource grant indicates a grant of uplink resources on the first carrier and includes a transmit power control (TPC) field, a cyclic shift for demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) field, a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) and redundancy version field, a New Data Indicator (NDI) field, a resource block assignment field, and a hopping flag field.