Physical layer protocol and subframe structure for wearable user equipment devices

1. An apparatus of a wearable user equipment (wUE), the apparatus comprising circuitry to:

process a discovery channel to obtain, from a network user equipment (nUE) during a first subframe, a discovery identifier (ID) message including a discovery ID associated with the nUE;

detect the discovery ID in a scheduling assignment (SA) channel during one or more second subframes following the first subframe, the discovery ID indicating the nUE is scheduling resources for exchanging discovery content messages by which to transition the wUE from a power-saving mode (PSM) to a discovery state; and

process a downlink (DL) data channel to obtain the discovery content messages and thereby cause the wUE to transition from the discovery state to a communication state for exchange of data with the nUE through an Xu-a air interface in a personal area network (PAN) with the nUE.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 in which the circuitry is further configured to detect a period of inactive communication with the nUE and indicate the wUE transition to an idle state.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 , in which the circuitry is further configured to transition to the PSM after being in an idle state.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 , in which the circuitry is further configured to:

process DL data received from the nUE through the Xu-a air interface in a data channel of a scheduled subframe following the one of more second subframes; and

in response to processing the DL data, generate an acknowledgement (ACK) for an ACK channel of the scheduled subframe.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 , in which each subframe includes a subchannel comprising scheduling assignment, data, and random access channels spaced apart by associated guard periods.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 , in which the first subframe includes a subchannel comprising synchronization signal (SS), broadcast, paging and the discovery channels.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 , in which the discovery channel is temporally adjacent to a paging channel so as to define a paging and discovery channel having corresponding paging and discovery regions.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 , in which the first and the one or more second subframes include multiple subchannels, each of the subchannels having a bandwidth equal to that of six physical resource blocks (PRB).

9. The apparatus of claim 1 , in which the discovery ID identifies a channel of the one or more second subframes that includes a discovery content message.

10. The apparatus of claim 9 , in which the circuitry is further configured to determine the channel based on a mapping defining a location of the channel based on the discovery ID.

11. An apparatus of a network user equipment (nUE) comprising circuitry configured to:

generate a discovery message in a discovery channel during a first subframe, the discovery message including a discovery identifier (ID) for a wearable user equipment (wUE);

generate a scheduling assignment in a scheduling assignment channel during a second subframe, the scheduling assignment addressed to the discovery ID of the discovery message;

generate discovery message content in a data channel of the second subframe; and

in response to the wUE receiving the discovery message content and transmitting a random access (RA), process the RA obtained from the wUE in an RA channel of the second subframe.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 , in which the circuitry is configured to generate a paging message in a paging channel during the first subframe.

13. The apparatus of claim 11 , in which the circuitry is configured select the discovery ID from a pool of predetermined discovery IDs.

14. The apparatus of claim 11 , in which the circuitry is configured to provide a synchronization signal (SS) in an SS channel of the first subframe.

15. The apparatus of claim 11 , in which the RA includes an RA identifier (RA-ID).

16. The apparatus of claim 11 , in which the circuitry is further configured to process a synchronization signal from an evolved Node B (eNB) to maintain synchronization in a personal area network (PAN) formed between the nUE and the wUE.