Granted Patent B2

US 9,173,109 · App. 13/842,612 · Granted Oct 27, 2015

Abstract

Claims (62)

1. A method of radio link monitoring (RLM) in a user equipment (UE), the method comprising:

selecting a control channel type to perform RLM on, wherein the control channel type includes one or more of:

a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH); or

an enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH);

receiving a transmission on a carrier, the transmission comprising one or more reference signals;

measuring a propagation channel condition using the one or more reference signals; and

determining a quality of the radio link based on the selected control channel type and the measurement of the propagation channel condition,

wherein determining the quality of the radio link further comprises: estimating a detection performance of the selected control channel for carrying a control information over the carrier.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising sending an out-of-sync indication to a higher layer if the quality of the radio link is lower than a threshold.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more of reference signals comprise one or more of:

a Cell-specific reference signal (CRS);

a Channel state Information reference signal (CSI-RS); or

a Demodulation reference signal (DMRS).

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein one or more subsets of CRS, CSI-RS, or DMRS is used for radio link condition measurement.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the one or more subsets is formed in one or more of:

a time domain;

a frequency domain; or

a spatial domain.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein, if the UE is configured to monitor a common search space (CSS) on the PDCCH, PDCCH is the selected control channel type.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein CRS is used for measuring the propagation channel condition.

8. The method of claim 6 , wherein the PDCCH is transmitted using a single antenna port.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein, if the UE is configured to monitor a CSS on the EPDCCH, EPDCCH is the selected control channel type.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein CSI-RS is used for measuring the propagation channel condition.

11. The method of claim 9 , wherein DMRS is used for measuring the propagation channel condition.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein the EPDCCH is transmitted using distributed EPDCCH mode.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the EPDCCH is transmitted using a transmit diversity technique.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the transmit diversity technique is random beam forming.

15. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining the quality of the radio link according to a configuration provided by a radio resource control (RRC) message.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the control information corresponds to one or more of:

downlink control information (DCI) format 1A; or

DCI format 1C.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein when only EPDCCH is configured on the carrier, EPDCCH is the selected control channel type, and one or more of CSI-RS and DMRS is used for propagation channel condition measurement.

18. A User Equipment (UE) configured to perform radio link monitoring (RLM), the UE comprising a processor, configured to:

select a control channel type to perform RLM on, wherein selecting the control channel type includes selecting one or more of:

a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH); or

an enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH);

receive a transmission on a carrier, the transmission comprising one or more reference signals;

measure a propagation channel condition using the one or more reference signals; and

determine a quality of the radio link based on the selected control channel type and the measurement of the propagation channel condition,

wherein the processor is further configured to determine the quality of the radio link by estimating a detection performance of the selected control channel for carrying a control information over the carrier.

19. The UE of claim 18 , further configured to send an out-of-sync indication to a higher layer if the quality of the radio link is lower than a threshold.

20. The UE of claim 18 , wherein the one or more of reference signals comprise one or more of:

a Cell-specific reference signal (CRS);

a Channel state Information reference signal (CSI-RS); or

a Demodulation reference signal (DMRS).

21. The UE of claim 20 , further configured to use one or more subsets of CRS, CSI-RS, or DMRS for radio link condition measurement.

22. The UE of claim 21 , wherein the one or more subsets is formed in one or more of:

a time domain;

a frequency domain; or

a spatial domain.

23. The UE of claim 18 , wherein, if the UE is configured to monitor a common search space (CSS) on the PDCCH, the UE selects PDCCH as the control channel type.

24. The UE of claim 23 , further configured to use CRS for measuring the propagation channel condition.

25. The UE of claim 18 , wherein, if the UE is configured to monitor a CSS on the EPDCCH, the UE selects EPDCCH as the control channel type.

26. The UE of claim 25 , further configured to use CSI-RS for measuring the propagation channel condition.

27. The UE of claim 25 , further configured to use DMRS for measuring the propagation channel condition.

28. The UE of claim 18 further configured to:

determine the quality of the radio link according to a configuration provided by a radio resource control (RRC) message.

29. The UE of claim 18 wherein the control information corresponds to one or more of:

downlink control information (DCI) format 1A; or

DCI format 1C.

30. The UE of claim 18 , wherein when only EPDCCH is configured on the carrier, the UE is configured to select EPDCCH as the control channel type, and is further configured to use one or more of CSI-RS and DMRS for propagation channel condition measurement.

Assignments (11)