User equipment and methods for PDCP duplication in 5G RAN

1. A method of wireless communication of a user equipment (UE), comprising:

receiving a radio bearer configuration;

configuring, based on the radio bearer configuration, a radio bearer including a first logical channel on a first carrier and a second logical channel on a second carrier;

determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication;

communicating a first packet on the first logical channel and a duplicated first packet on the second logical channel in response to a determination to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication; and

obtaining one or more measurements of a channel condition at the UE, wherein the determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication includes:

determining to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication in an up-link direction in response to determining that the one or more measurements are in a predetermined relationship with one or more predetermined thresholds.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

communicating packets only on one of the first logical channel and the second logical channel or communicating different packets on the first logical channel and the second logical channel in response to a determination not to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the radio bearer configuration includes a set of parameters associated with the first logical channel and the second logical channel, wherein the determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication includes:

determining to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication based on an activation indication included in the radio bearer configuration.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the radio bearer configuration is received via a radio resource control (RRC) message.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication includes:

detecting an activation indication or a deactivation indication;

determining to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication in response to detecting the activation indication; and

determining to deactivate the radio bearer to not perform duplication in response to detecting the deactivation indication.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the activation indication or the deactivation indication is contained in a medium access control (MAC) control element.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the activation indication or the deactivation indication is represented by a logical channel identifier included in the MAC control element.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more measurements of the channel condition include a channel quality indicator.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the channel quality indicator indicates at least one of a Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) measurement, a Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) measurement, a Radio Link Monitoring (RLM) measurement, and a power headroom measurement.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more predetermined thresholds are received through a radio resource control (RRC) message from a base station.

11. A method of wireless communication of a user equipment (UE), comprising:

receiving a radio bearer configuration;

configuring, based on the radio bearer configuration, a radio bearer including a first logical channel on a first carrier and a second logical channel on a second carrier;

determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication;

communicating a first packet on the first logical channel and a duplicated first packet on the second logical channel in response to a determination to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication;

obtaining one or more first measurements of a first channel condition in a first cell at the UE; and

obtaining one or more second measurements of a second channel condition in a second cell at the UE;

wherein the determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication includes:

determining to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication in response to determining that the one or more first measurements are in a first predetermined relationship with one or more first predetermined thresholds and that the one or more second measurements are in a second predetermined relationship with one or more second predetermined thresholds.

12. A method of wireless communication of a user equipment (UE), comprising:

receiving a radio bearer configuration;

configuring, based on the radio bearer configuration, a radio bearer including a first logical channel on a first carrier and a second logical channel on a second carrier;

determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication;

communicating a first packet on the first logical channel and a duplicated first packet on the second logical channel in response to a determination to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication; and

obtaining a measurement of a transmission condition at the UE, wherein the determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication includes:

determining to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication in response to determining that the measurement of the transmission condition is in a predetermined relationship with a predetermined threshold.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the measurement of the transmission condition measures at least one of

a packet loss condition;

a packet error rate;

a physical channel block error rate (BLER);

a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARD) failure count;

a radio link control (RLC) retransmission count; and

missing packets based on packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) sequence numbers.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first packet is a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) packet.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the communicating the first packet on the first logical channel and the duplicated first packet on the second logical channel includes:

transmitting the first packet on the first logical channel in an uplink direction; and

transmitting the duplicated first packet on the second logical channel in the uplink direction.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the communicating the first packet on the first logical channel and the duplicated first packet on the second logical channel includes:

receiving the first packet on the first logical channel in a downlink direction successfully; and

receiving the duplicated first packet on the second logical channel in the downlink direction successfully; and

discarding the duplicated first packet.

17. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

deactivating one of the first carrier and the second carrier in response to a determination not to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication; and

switching at least one component of the UE operating the deactivated carrier to a power saving mode.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein the switching the at least one component includes at least one of:

switching off a radio frequency (RF) transceiver operating the deactivated carrier;

entering, by the at least one component, into a discontinuous reception (DRX) inactive state; and

entering, by the at least one component, into a radio resource control (RRC) inactive state.

19. The method of claim 18 , further comprising:

switching the at least one component to a normal mode from the power saving mode in response to a determination to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication.

20. An apparatus for a wireless communication, the apparatus being a user equipment (UE), comprising:

a memory; and

at least one processor coupled to the memory and performing, when instructed by code in the memory, operations of:

receiving a radio bearer configuration;

configuring, based on the radio bearer configuration, a radio bearer including a first logical channel on a first carrier and a second logical channel on a second carrier;

determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication;

communicating a first packet on the first logical channel and a duplicated first packet on the second logical channel in response to a determination to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication; and

obtaining one or more measurements of a channel condition at the UE, wherein the determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication includes:

determining to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication in an up-link direction in response to determining that the one or more measurements are in a predetermined relationship with one or more predetermined thresholds.

21. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer executable code for a user equipment (UE), the computer-readable medium comprising code, when executed by a processor of the UE, instructing the processor to perform operations of:

receiving a radio bearer configuration;

configuring, based on the radio bearer configuration, a radio bearer including a first logical channel on a first carrier and a second logical channel on a second carrier;

determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication;

communicating a first packet on the first logical channel and a duplicated first packet on the second logical channel in response to a determination to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication; and

obtaining one or more measurements of a channel condition at the UE, wherein the determining whether to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication includes:

determining to activate the radio bearer to perform duplication in an up-link direction in response to determining that the one or more measurements are in a predetermined relationship with one or more predetermined thresholds.