System and method for sharing a control channel for carrier aggregation

• US 11,044,710 B2
• Filed: 08/11/2017
• Issued: 06/22/2021
• 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:
  US15/675,178
• Publication Number:
  US 20180027529A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,411 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, on a first carrier, an activation signal specifying a second carrier among a plurality of carriers;

activating the second carrier based on the activation signal;

identifying a plurality of control channel element (CCE) subset candidates corresponding to the first carrier and the second carrier, wherein;

the first carrier includes the plurality of CCE subset candidates,

each of the plurality of CCE subset candidates is associated with one of aggregation levels of 1, 2, 4, and 8 CCEs, and

locations of CCEs in the plurality of CCE subset candidates corresponding to the first and second carriers at the aggregation levels are each determined by a pseudorandom number;

determining whether at least one of the CCE subset candidates at any of the aggregation levels corresponds to only one of the first and second carriers; and

responsive to a determination that at least one of the CCE subset candidates at any of the aggregation levels corresponds to only one of the first and second carriers;

decoding downlink control information (DCI) in one of the at least one of the CCE subset candidates at any of the aggregation levels in an attempt to identify a resource grant for the first carrier.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the activation signal is included in a medium access control (MAC) signaling.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising decoding the activation signal.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the DCI is a first DCI, the method further comprising:

responsive to a determination that none of the CCE subset candidates at any of the aggregation levels corresponds to only one of the first and second carriers;

decoding a second DCI in one of the CCE subset candidates, the second DCI including a carrier indicator field (CIF) indicating the first or second carrier; and

determining the second DCI is a resource grant for the first or second carrier based on the CIF.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the second DCI is received in a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH).

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the second DCI indicates a grant of uplink resources 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.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the second DCI indicates a grant of downlink resources and includes 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.

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

a receiver configured to receive, on a first carrier, an activation signal specifying a second carrier among a plurality of carriers;

a memory storing instructions; and

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

activate the second carrier based on the activation signal;

identify a plurality of control channel element (CCE) subset candidates corresponding to the first carrier and the second carrier, wherein;

the first carrier includes the plurality of CCE subset candidates,

each of the plurality of CCE subset candidates is associated with one of aggregation levels of 1, 2, 4, and 8 CCEs, and

locations of CCEs in the plurality of CCE subset candidates corresponding to the first and second carriers at the aggregation levels are each determined by a pseudorandom number;

determine whether at least one of the CCE subset candidates at any of the aggregation levels corresponds to only one of the first and second carriers; and

responsive to a determination that at least one of the CCE subset candidates at any of the aggregation levels corresponds to only one of the first and second carriers;

decode downlink control information (DCI) in one of the at least one of the CCE subset candidates at any of the aggregation levels in an attempt to identify a resource grant for the first carrier.

9. The UE of claim 8, wherein the activation signal is included in a medium access control (MAC) signaling.

10. The UE of claim 9, wherein the processor is further configured to execute the instructions to cause the UE to decode the activation signal.

11. The UE of claim 8, wherein the DCI is a first DCI, and the processor is further configured to execute the instructions to cause the UE to:

responsive to a determination that none of the CCE subset candidates at any of the aggregation levels corresponds to only one of the first and second carriers;

decoding a second DCI in one of the CCE subset candidates, the second DCI including a carrier indicator field (CIF) indicating the first or second carrier; and

determining the second DCI is a resource grant for the first or second carrier based on the CIF.

12. The UE of claim 11, wherein the second DCI is received in a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH).

13. The UE of claim 11, wherein the second DCI indicates a grant of uplink resources 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.

14. The UE of claim 11, wherein the second DCI indicates a grant of downlink resources and includes 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.