Method and apparatus for controlling soft buffer for TDD-FDD carrier aggregation

1. A method of performing a Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) operation by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising:

establishing a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection with a base station through a first serving cell, the first serving cell supporting a Time Division Duplex (TDD) mode;

receiving an RRC message from the base station through the first serving cell, the RRC message comprising carrier aggregation (CA) configuration information, the CA configuration information comprising information of a second serving cell supporting a Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode, and the first serving cell and the second serving cell being aggregated by a TDD-FDD CA scheme; and

when the second serving cell is a secondary serving cell (SCell) associated with the first serving cell through the TDD-FDD CA scheme, executing, by the UE, a process comprising:

determining a maximum number of DL HARQ processes for the second serving cell based on an uplink(UL)/downlink(DL) configuration of the first serving cell, wherein the UL/DL configuration is a DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell; and

storing soft channel bits for received transport blocks (TBs) based on the maximum number of DL HARQ processes,

wherein the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is one of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and

wherein the maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 16 when the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 5, and the maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 12 when the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 6.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the soft channel bits are calculated by the following equation:

n

SB

=

min

⁡

(

N

cb

,

⌊

N

soft

′

C

·

N

cells

DL

·

K

MIMO

·

min

⁡

(

M

DL_HARQ

,

M

limit

)

⌋

)

where N′ soft denotes a total number of soft channel bits of the UE, C denotes the number of code blocks forming a single TB, N cb denotes a soft buffer size of a code block, K MIMO is 2 when the UE corresponds to a MIMO Transport Mode™, K MIMO is 1 when the UE does not correspond to a MIMO TM, M limit is 8, N DL cells denotes the number of serving cells configured for the UE, and M DL _ HARQ denotes the maximum number of DL HARQ processes.

3. The method of claim 1 ,

wherein the maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 10 when the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 0,

wherein the maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 11 when the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 1,

wherein the maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 12 when the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 2, and

wherein the maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 15 when the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 3, and wherein the maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 16 when DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 4.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein a number of the TBs is determined based on a minimum value between the maximum number of DL HARQ processes and a reference value.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the reference value is more than 8.

6. A method of performing a Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) operation by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising:

establishing a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection with a base station through a first serving cell or a second serving cell, the second serving cell supporting a Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode, the first serving cell supporting a Time Division Duplex (TDD) mode;

receiving an RRC message from the base station through the first serving cell or the second serving cell, the RRC message comprising carrier aggregation (CA) configuration information, the CA configuration information comprising information of the first serving cell and the second serving cell being aggregated by a TDD-FDD CA scheme; and

when the first serving cell is a secondary serving cell (SCell) associated with the second serving cell through the TDD-FDD CA scheme, executing, by the UE, a process comprising:

setting, based on the determined FDD-TDD CA scheme, a first maximum number of DL HARQ processes for the first serving cell as 8; and

storing soft channel bits for received transport blocks (TBs) based on the first maximum number of DL HARQ processes for the first serving cell set as 8; and

when the second serving cell is a secondary serving cell (SCell) associated with the first serving cell through the TDD-FDD CA scheme, executing, by the UE, a process comprising:

determining a second maximum number of DL HARQ processes for the second serving cell based on an uplink(UL)/downlink(DL) configuration of the first serving cell, wherein the UL/DL configuration is a DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell; and

storing soft channel bits for received transport blocks (TBs) based on the second maximum number of DL HARQ processes,

wherein the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is one of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and

wherein the second maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 16 when the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 5, and the second maximum number of DL HARQ processes is 12 when the DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell is 6.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the TDD-FDD CA scheme configures the first serving cell as a Primary serving cell (PCell), configures the second serving cell as the secondary serving cell (SCell), and configures a self-scheduling for the UE.

8. A method of performing a Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) operation by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising:

establishing a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection with a base station through a first serving cell or a second serving cell, the second serving cell supporting a Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode, the first serving cell supporting a Time Division Duplex (TDD) mode;

receiving an RRC message from the base station through the first serving cell or the second serving cell, the RRC message comprising carrier aggregation (CA) configuration information, the CA configuration information comprising information of the first serving cell and the second serving cell being aggregated by a TDD-FDD CA scheme; and

when the second serving cell is a secondary serving cell (SCell) associated with the first serving cell through the TDD-FDD CA scheme, executing, by the UE, a process comprising:

determining a maximum number of DL HARQ processes for the second serving cell based on an uplink(UL)/downlink(DL) configuration of the first serving cell, wherein the UL/DL configuration is a DL reference UL/DL configuration for the second serving cell,

wherein the maximum number of DL HARQ processes is determined based on the following Table

TABLE

DL-reference

Maximum number

UL/DL Configuration

of HARQ processes

0

10 

1

11 

2

12 

3

15 

4

16 

5

16 

6

12.

9. The method of claim 8 , the process further comprising:

storing soft channel bits for received transport blocks (TBs) based on the maximum number of DL HARQ processes.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein a number of the TBs is determined based on a minimum value between the maximum number of DL HARQ processes and a reference value, wherein the reference value is more than 8.