IP Library › Granted Patent US 12,408,171
Granted Patent B2
US 12,408,171 · App. 17/817,294 · Granted Sep 2, 2025

Method, apparatus, computer program product and computer program

Inventors: Chunli Wu (Beijing, CN); Benoist Pierre Sébire (Tokyo, JP); Samuli Heikki Turtinen (Ii, FI)
Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy
H04W72/21H04W28/0252H04W28/0278H04W28/06H04W72/0473H04W72/52H04W72/56H04W80/08
View Patent ↗
Loading inventors, assignments & file history…
Monitor This Case
Get email alerts when status or documents change.
Order Certified Copies
Most orders are placed with the USPTO same day — all within 24 business hours.
Order via The Patent Place →
Pre-filled with this patent's details
Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,408,171
App. No.
17/817,294
Granted
Sep 2, 2025
Kind
B2
Abstract

The disclosure relates a method comprising: determining that buffered data is available for transmission and cannot be transmitted over allocated resources; and causing information indicating that buffered data is available for transmission and cannot be transmitted over allocated resources to be transmitted over the allocated resources.

Claims (27)

1. A method comprising:

determining, by a user equipment, whether or not buffered data is available for transmission;

causing, when determining that the buffered data is available for transmission and cannot be transmitted over allocated resources of an uplink grant, transmission of a buffer status report over the allocated resources to indicate that the buffered data is available for transmission; and

enforcing uplink grant skipping only when a medium access control (MAC) protocol data unit (PDU) includes only a MAC control element for a periodic buffer status report with buffer status indicating zero value for all logical channel groups (LCGs) and includes zero MAC-service data units (SDUs), wherein a MAC entity shall not generate the MAC PDU for a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) entity in the following cases:

in case the MAC entity is configured with skipUplinkTXDynamic and the uplink grant indicated to the HARQ entity was addressed to a cell radio network temporary identifier (C-RNTI);

in case the uplink grant indicated to the HARQ entity is a configured uplink grant.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the uplink grant skipping is a process where the user equipment does not use the allocated resources for uplink transmission.

3. The method of claim 1 , the causing transmission of the buffer status report the MAC entity delivering at least one MAC PDU to a physical layer entity, wherein the MAC PDU comprises the buffer status report indicating that buffered data associated with an LCG cannot be transmitted over the allocated resources.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the configured grant is a semi-persistent grant.

5. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions stored thereon that, when executed by at least one processor, are configured to cause a computing system to:

determine, by a user equipment, whether or not buffered data is available for transmission;

cause, when determining that the buffered data is available for transmission and cannot be transmitted over allocated resources of an uplink grant, transmission of a buffer status report over the allocated resources to indicate that the buffered data is available for transmission; and

enforce uplink grant skipping only when a medium access control (MAC) protocol data unit (PDU) includes only a MAC control element for a periodic buffer status report with buffer status indicating zero value for all logical channel groups (LCGs) and includes zero MAC service data units (SDUs), wherein a MAC entity shall not generate the MAC PDU for a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) entity in the following cases:

in case the MAC entity is configured with skipUplinkTXDynamic and the uplink grant indicated to the HARQ entity was addressed to a cell radio network temporary identifier (C-RNTI);

in case the uplink grant indicated to the HARQ entity is a configured uplink grant.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5 , wherein the uplink grant skipping is a process where the user equipment does not use the allocated resources for uplink transmission.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5 , the cause transmission of the buffer status report causes the MAC entity delivering at least one MAC PDU to a physical layer entity, wherein the MAC PDU comprises the buffer status report indicating that buffered data associated with an LCG cannot be transmitted over the allocated resources.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5 , wherein the configured grant is a semi-persistent grant.

9. A user equipment comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program code;

the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the user equipment at least to:

determine, by the user equipment, whether or not buffered data is available for transmission;

cause, when determining that the buffered data is available for transmission and cannot be transmitted over allocated resources of an uplink grant, transmission of a buffer status report over the allocated resources to indicate that the buffered data is available for transmission; and

enforce uplink grant skipping only when a medium access control (MAC) protocol data unit (PDU) includes only a MAC control element for a periodic buffer status report with buffer status indicating zero value for all logical channel groups (LCGs) and includes zero MAC service data units (SDUs), wherein a MAC entity shall not generate the MAC PDU for a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) entity in the following cases:

in case the MAC entity is configured with skipUplinkTXDynamic and the uplink grant indicated to the HARQ entity was addressed to a cell radio network temporary identifier (C-RNTI);

in case the uplink grant indicated to the HARQ entity is a configured uplink grant.

Assignments (2)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Aug 9, 2022
From: WU, CHUNLI; SEBIRE, BENOIST PIERRE; TURTINEN, SAMULI HEIKKI
To: NOKIA SHANGHAI BELL CO., LTD.; NOKIA SOLUTIONS AND NETWORKS OY
Reel/Frame 060761/0038 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Aug 9, 2022
From: NOKIA SHANGHAI BELL CO., LTD.; NOKIA SOLUTIONS AND NETWORKS OY
To: NOKIA TECHNOLOGIES OY
Reel/Frame 060761/0625 →
Continuity (2)
Continuation 16641568
Related Publication 20220377781A1 · Nov 24, 2022
References Cited (54)
US 8942124B2 · Marchand et al. · 2015 [cited by applicant]
US 9451600B2 · Park et al. · 2016 [cited by applicant]
US 11212843B2 · Loehr · 2021 [cited by examiner]
US 11425747B2 · Wu et al. · 2022 [cited by applicant]
US 20090175214A1 · Sfar et al. · 2009 [cited by applicant]
US 20090197610A1 · Chun et al. · 2009 [cited by applicant]
US 20100074222A1 · Wu · 2010 [cited by applicant]
US 20110026625A1 · Susitaival et al. · 2011 [cited by applicant]
US 20110255492A1 · Dai et al. · 2011 [cited by applicant]
US 20150110040A1 · Zhao · 2015 [cited by applicant]
US 20150282213A1 · Sun et al. · 2015 [cited by applicant]
US 20160080116A1 · Bucknell et al. · 2016 [cited by applicant]
US 20160157268A1 · Wakabayashi et al. · 2016 [cited by applicant]
US 20170311317A1 · Dinan · 2017 [cited by applicant]
US 20170325255A1 · Xu et al. · 2017 [cited by applicant]
US 20170373789A1 · Huang et al. · 2017 [cited by applicant]
US 20180139724A1 · Loehr et al. · 2018 [cited by applicant]
US 20180227941A1 · Zhang et al. · 2018 [cited by applicant]
US 20180270699A1 · Babaei · 2018 [cited by examiner]
US 20180317123A1 · Chen · 2018 [cited by examiner]
US 20180338320A1 · Fodor et al. · 2018 [cited by applicant]
US 20190075550A1 · Lee · 2019 [cited by examiner]
US 20190158233A1 · Lee · 2019 [cited by examiner]
US 20190320339A1 · Laselva et al. · 2019 [cited by applicant]
US 20200029352A1 · Aiba · 2020 [cited by examiner]
US 20200178282A1 · Yi et al. · 2020 [cited by applicant]
US 20200404691A1 · Wu · 2020 [cited by examiner]
US 20210058328A1 · Xu et al. · 2021 [cited by applicant]
US 20210058939A1 · Chandran · 2021 [cited by applicant]
US 20240121702A1 · Adjakple · 2024 [cited by examiner]
CN 102291760A · 2011 [cited by applicant]
CN 102612143A · 2012 [cited by applicant]
CN 102740483A · 2012 [cited by applicant]
CN 103327536A · 2013 [cited by applicant]
EP 2675081A1 · 2013 [cited by applicant]
TW 201001938A · 2010 [cited by applicant]
TW 201707491A · 2017 [cited by applicant]
WO 2012097694A1 · 2012 [cited by applicant]
WO 2014181177A1 · 2014 [cited by applicant]
WO 2015099321A1 · 2015 [cited by applicant]
WO 2017074437A1 · 2017 [cited by applicant]
R2-153332—Skipping uplink transmission with no data to transmit, 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #91 Aug. 24 to 28, 2015, Beijing, China (Year: 2015) [cited by examiner]
U.S. Appl. No. 16/641,568, filed Feb. 24, 2020, Allowed. [cited by applicant]
Office Action for Chinese Application No. 201780095434.6, mailed on Oct. 26, 2022, 15 pages. [cited by applicant]
“3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification (Release 14)”, 3GPP TS 36.… [cited by applicant]
“3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification (Release 15)”, 3GPP TS 38.321, V1.0.0, Sep. 2017, 47 pages. [cited by applicant]
“3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; NR and NG-RAN Overall Description; Stage 2 (Release 15)”, 3GPP TS 38.300, V15.2.0, Jun. 2018, 87 pages. [cited by applicant]
“Running CR for Introduction of Shortened TTI and Processing Time for LTE”, 3GPP TSG-RAN2 Meeting #99, R2-1708613, Ericsson, Aug. 21-25, 2017, 60 pages. [cited by applicant]
“UL Skipping with LCH Restriction”, 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 meeting #99bis, R2-17xxxxx, Agenda: x.x.x, Nokia, Oct. 9-13, 2017, 2 pages. [cited by applicant]
Extended European Search Report for Application No. 17926839.6, mailed on Apr. 8, 2021, 7 pages. [cited by applicant]
International Search Report and Written Opinion received for corresponding Patent Cooperation Treaty Application No. PCT/CN2017/104045, dated Jun. 27, 2018, 9 pages. [cited by applicant]
Tentative Rejection received for corresponding Taiwan Patent Application No. 107133926, dated Aug. 12, 2019, 3 pages of Tentative Rejection and 2 pages of translation available. [cited by applicant]
Office Action for European Application No. 17926839.6, mailed on Jun. 9, 2023, 8 pages. [cited by applicant]
Office Action for European Application No. 17926839.6, mailed on Apr. 2, 2024, 6 pages. [cited by applicant]