Repeater and method of operation thereof

1. A method of operating a repeater comprising:

detecting a synchronization signal from a received communication signal;

identifying a time division duplex (TDD) switching pattern based on a power change of the communication signal over time; and

switching an uplink operation and a downlink operation of the repeater based on the detected synchronization signal and the TDD switching pattern,

wherein the identifying the TDD switching pattern includes:

detecting an uplink-downlink transition gap in the communication signal based on the power change of the communication signal over time; and

identifying a period of the TDD switching pattern based on the detected uplink-downlink transition gap.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

detecting a frame boundary in the communication signal based on the detected synchronization signal.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the identifying of the TDD switching pattern comprises:

identifying the TDD switching pattern on the basis of the power change of the communication signal over time, based on the detected frame boundary.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the synchronization signal is a primary synchronization signal (PSS), a secondary synchronization signal (SSS), a synchronization signal (SS)/physical broadcast channel (PBCH), or a demodulation reference signal (DMRS).

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifying of the TDD switching pattern comprises:

identifying the TDD switching pattern when the sum of the uplink-downlink transition gap and a downlink-uplink transition candidate section corresponds to a length of a symbol corresponding to a size of a guard period or an integer multiple of the length of the symbol.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifying of the TDD switching pattern comprises:

identifying the TDD switching pattern using a preset uplink-downlink ratio.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identifying of the TDD switching pattern comprises:

identifying one or more candidate TDD switching patterns corresponding to the communication signal based on a period of the TDD switching pattern.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:

deciding one candidate TDD switching pattern among the one or more candidate TDD switching patterns as a TDD switching pattern to be used for TDD switching.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the deciding of the TDD switching pattern to be used for the TDD switching comprises:

deciding the longest downlink communication section, among a plurality of downlink communication sections of the one or more identified candidate TDD switching patterns, as a downlink communication section of the TDD switching pattern.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the deciding of the TDD switching pattern to be used for the TDD switching further comprises:

verifying the decided TDD switching pattern according to whether a signal exists in a certain section outside the boundary of a section determined as a downlink communication section in the communication signal, based on the decided TDD switching pattern.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the deciding of the TDD switching pattern to be used for the TDD switching further comprises:

when determining that there is an error in the TDD switching pattern according to a result of the verification, verifying the TDD switching pattern by enhancing verification conditions including at least one of a period of a TDD switching pattern to be verified, a length of a downlink communication section to be verified, whether data is loaded, and a rate at which the decided TDD switching pattern matches a pattern of the communication signal.

12. The method of claim 11 , further comprising:

relaxing the verification conditions when the verification conditions are satisfied for a reference time, as a result of verifying the TDD switching pattern by enhancing the one or more verification conditions.

13. A repeater comprising:

a sync detector configured to detect a sync signal from a received communication signal;

a TDD pattern identifier configured to identify a time division duplex (TDD) switching pattern based on a power change of the communication signal over time; and

a switching signal generator configured to generate a switching signal for switching an uplink operation and a downlink operation of the repeater based on the detected synchronization signal and the TDD switching pattern,

wherein the TDD pattern identifier is configured to identify a period of the TDD switching pattern using an uplink-downlink transition gap which is detected based on the power change of the communication signal over time.