Sounding mechanism under carrier aggregation

1. A method comprising:

receiving, by a user equipment (UE), an uplink or downlink grant transmitted from a base station over a primary carrier in a multi-carrier wireless communication system;

determining an indicated carrier from a carrier indication field (CIF) in the grant and detecting a triggering condition for aperiodic sounding transmission in the grant;

selecting UE-specific sounding reference signal (SRS) parameters, wherein the grant contains an SRS request that specifies the UE-specific SRS parameters; and

transmitting an aperiodic SRS (ap-SRS) over the indicated carrier using the UE-specific SRS parameters.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the grant is transmitted in a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), and wherein the PDCCH supports multiple downlink control information (DCI) formats.

3. The method of claim 2 , where each DCI format contains the CIF, and wherein each DCI format contains a triggering bit for ap-SRS transmission.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein each DCI format corresponds to one or more predefined UE-specific SRS parameter sets configured via a radio resource configuration (RRC) message.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein DCI Format-4 corresponds to multiple predefined UE-specific SRS parameter sets, and wherein DCI Format-4 contains the SRS request having a value that corresponds to one of the multiple predefined UE-specific SRS parameter sets.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the UE-specific SRS parameters are configured via a latest UE-specific radio resource configuration (RRC) message, and wherein the UE-specific SRS parameters comprises SRS bandwidth, frequency domain position, transmission comb, cyclic shift, and a number of antenna ports.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the indicated carrier is also used for uplink data transmission via a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) or downlink data reception via a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH).

8. A user equipment (UE), comprising:

an information decoding module that determines an indicated carrier from a carrier indication field (CIF) in an uplink or downlink grant and detects a triggering condition for aperiodic sounding transmission in the grant, wherein the grant is received by the UE from a base station over a primary carrier in a multi-carrier wireless communication system;

a sounding channel allocation module that selects UE-specific sounding reference signal (SRS) parameters, wherein the grant contains an SRS request that specifies the UE-specific SRS parameters; and

a transceiver that transmits an aperiodic SRS (ap-SRS) over the indicated carrier using the UE-specific SRS parameters.

9. The user equipment of claim 8 , wherein the uplink or downlink grant is transmitted in a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), and wherein the PDCCH supports multiple downlink control information (DCI) formats.

10. The user equipment of claim 9 , where each DCI format contains the CIF, and wherein each DCI format contains a triggering field for ap-SRS transmission.

11. The user equipment of claim 9 , wherein each DCI format corresponds to one or more predefined UE-specific SRS parameter sets configured via a radio resource configuration (RRC) message for each component carrier.

12. The user equipment of claim 11 , wherein DCI Format-4 corresponds to multiple predefined UE-specific SRS parameter sets, and wherein DCI Format-4 contains the SRS request having a value that corresponds to one of the multiple predefined UE-specific SRS parameter sets.

13. The user equipment of claim 8 , wherein the UE-specific SRS parameters are configured via a latest UE-specific radio resource configuration (RRC) message, and wherein the UE-specific SRS parameters comprises SRS bandwidth, frequency domain position, transmission comb, cyclic shift, and a number of antenna ports.

14. The user equipment of claim 8 , wherein the indicated carrier is also used for uplink data transmission via a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) or downlink data reception via a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH).

15. A user equipment (UE), comprising:

a receiver that receives a DCI format from a base station over a primary carrier in a multi-carrier wireless communication system;

an information decoding module that detects aperiodic sounding transmission triggering information contained in a plurality of information fields in the DCI format, wherein a location of each field corresponds to an indicated carrier, and wherein a value of each field corresponds to a triggering condition;

a sounding channel allocation module that selects UE-specific sounding reference signal (SRS) parameters; and

a transmitter that transmits an aperiodic sounding reference signal (ap-SRS) over one or more indicated carriers using the UE-specific SRS parameters.

16. The UE of claim 15 , wherein the DCI format is transmitted in a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), and wherein the PDCCH supports downlink control information (DCI) Format 3/3A.

17. The UE of claim 15 , wherein the UE transmits the ap-SRS over a first indicated carrier triggered by a first information field, and wherein the UE transmits the ap-SRS over a second indicated carrier triggered by a second information field.

18. The UE of claim 15 , wherein the DCI format is transmitted to a group of UEs, and wherein each UE is associated with a number of information fields of the uplink grant.

19. The UE of claim 18 , wherein the number and location of the plurality of information fields associated with each UE is configured via a radio resource configuration (RRC) message.

20. The UE of claim 15 , wherein the UE-specific SRS parameters are configured via a latest UE-specific radio resource configuration (RRC) message, and wherein the UE-specific SRS parameters comprises SRS bandwidth, frequency domain position, transmission comb, cyclic shift, and a number of antenna port.