Communications device, infrastructure equipment and methods for the reception of control information by a communications device in a wireless communiations network

1. A method of receiving data by a communications device in a wireless communications network, the method comprising

receiving a downlink control message transmitted in first downlink communications resources of a wireless access interface provided by the wireless communications network, the downlink control message providing an indication of second downlink communications resources from which the communications device is configured to receive downlink data, and

receiving the downlink data from the second downlink communications resources, wherein the communications device is configured to operate in a first reception mode in which a receiver of the communications device is configured to receive the downlink data transmitted according to a first format via the second downlink communications resources, or to operate in a second reception mode in which the receiver of the communications device is configured to receive the downlink data transmitted according to a second format via the second downlink communications resources, the method comprising

receiving a mode switching control message, the mode switching control message indicating that a mode of operation of the communications device is to be changed from one of the first reception mode and the second reception mode to the other of the first reception mode and the second reception mode until another mode switching control message is received, and

transmitting one or more signals to confirm a current mode of operation, wherein the transmitting the one or more signals to confirm the current mode of operation comprises:

determining uplink communications resources allocated for a transmission of an acknowledgement of the mode switching control message,

determining that the acknowledgement is to be transmitted in response to receiving the mode switching control message, and

transmitting the acknowledgement using the allocated uplink communications resources.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the wireless access interface includes a time divided structure comprising communications resources divided into time divided units and the first reception mode is a cross-slot scheduling mode in which the first downlink communications resources are in a first time unit and the second downlink communications resources are in a second time unit later than the first time unit, and the second reception mode is a same-slot scheduling mode in which at least a portion of the first downlink communications resources are in the same time unit as the second downlink communications resources.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein in the first reception mode, the communications device is configured to disable a receiver for receiving downlink data after receiving the downlink control message in the first downlink communications resources and before the end of the first time unit.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein determining that the acknowledgement is to be transmitted in response to receiving the mode switching control message comprises determining that a current mode of operation is the cross-slot scheduling mode, and the mode switching control message indicates that the mode of operation is to be changed to the same-slot scheduling mode.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining that the acknowledgement is to be transmitted in response to receiving the mode switching control message comprises determining that the mode switching control message comprises an indication that an acknowledgement is to be transmitted if the mode switching control message is successfully received.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the allocated uplink communications resources are on a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH).

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the determined uplink communications resources are determined based on communications resources used for the transmission of the mode switching control message.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the communications resources of the wireless access interface are divided in time into time units, each time unit comprising a plurality of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol periods,

the mode switching control message comprises one or more of an indication of a time duration, an indication of a time unit and an indication of a number of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol periods, and

the allocated uplink communications resources are determined based on the one or more of the indication of the time duration, the indication of the time unit and the indication of the number of OFDM symbol periods.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the mode switching control message is transmitted in downlink control information on a physical downlink control channel.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining that the acknowledgement is to be transmitted in response to receiving the mode switching control message comprises determining that the mode switching control message indicates that the mode of operation of the communications device is to be changed from a current reception mode to a new reception mode, and

determining that the communications device, when operating in accordance with the current reception mode cannot receive the downlink data transmitted using the new reception mode.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining that the acknowledgement is to be transmitted in response to receiving the mode switching control message comprises determining that the mode switching control message indicates one or more of a Wake-up outside active time, a Wake-up inside active time, enabling cross slot scheduling, a change from single cell operation to multi-cell operation or vice versa, a change in bandwidth part, a change in secondary cell, a change in multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) layer adaptation, a change of CORESET/search/space/candidate for subsequent PDCCH decoding, a change of PDCCH monitoring periodicity, a semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) activation, and a change of discontinuous reception (DRX) configuration.

12. A method of receiving data by a communications device in a wireless communications network, the method comprising

receiving a mode switching control message, the mode switching control message indicating that a mode of operation of the communications device is to be changed from one of a first reception mode and a second reception mode to the other of the first reception mode and the second reception mode until another mode switching control message is received, wherein the communications device is configured to operate in the first reception mode in which a receiver of the communications device is configured to receive downlink data transmitted according to a first format or to operate in the second reception mode in which the receiver of the communications device is configured to receive the downlink data transmitted according to a second format,

receiving a downlink control message transmitted in first downlink communications resources of a wireless access interface provided by the wireless communications network, the downlink control message providing an indication of second downlink communications resources from which the communications device is configured to receive the downlink data, the downlink control message comprising an indication of an entry in a predetermined table of entries for indicating that the second downlink communications resources of a shared channel are allocated to the communications device,

determining that the indicated entry is associated with allocated communications resources of the shared channel which cannot be validly allocated in a current mode of operation of one of the first reception mode and the second reception mode, and

in response to determining that the indicated entry is associated with allocated communications resources of the shared channel which cannot be validly allocated in the current mode of operation, performing an operation which indicates to the wireless communications network that there is a mismatch between the current mode of operation and the mode of operation of the communications device expected by the wireless communications network.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the operation which indicates to the wireless communications network that there is a mismatch comprises

transmitting an operation mode mismatch indication, the operation mode mismatch indication indicating that the scheduling control information comprised an indication of an entry of a table corresponding to communications resources of the shared channel which cannot be validly allocated in the current mode of operation.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein the scheduling control information comprised an indication of a table corresponding to communications resources of the shared channel, and

the operation which indicates to the wireless communications network that there is a mismatch comprises

transmitting an operation mode mismatch indication, the operation mode mismatch indication indicating that the table differs from the table used by the communications device in the current mode of operation.

15. The method of claim 13 , wherein transmitting the operation mode mismatch indication comprises transmitting a radio resource control (RRC) message comprising the operation mode mismatch indication.

16. The method of claim 13 , wherein transmitting the operation mode mismatch indication comprises transmitting the operation mode mismatch indication using communications resources allocated for transmitting hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the transmitting the current mode of operation comprises:

determining uplink communications resources allocated for a transmission of acknowledgement information relating to the downlink data, and

transmitting using the uplink communications resources an indication of a current mode of operation of the communications device.

18. The method of claim 1 , the method comprising

in response to receiving the mode switching control message, updating a change of operation mode count value,

wherein the transmitting the current mode of operation comprises:

determining uplink communications resources allocated for a transmission of acknowledgement information relating to the downlink data, and

transmitting using the uplink communications resources an indication of the change of operation mode count value.

19. A method of transmitting data to a communications device in a wireless communications network, the method comprising

transmitting a downlink control message in first downlink communications resources of a wireless access interface provided by the wireless communications network, the downlink control message providing an indication of second downlink communications resources from which the communications device is configured to receive downlink data,

transmitting the downlink data from the second downlink communications resources, wherein the communications device is configured to operate in a first reception mode in which a receiver of the communications device is configured to receive the downlink data transmitted according to a first format via the second downlink communications resources, or to operate in a second reception mode in which the receiver of the communications device is configured to receive the downlink data transmitted according to a second format via the second downlink communications resources,

transmitting a mode switching control message, the mode switching control message indicating that a mode of operation of the communications device is to be changed from one of the first reception mode and the second reception mode to the other of the first reception mode and the second reception mode until another mode switching control message is received, and

receiving one or more signals to confirm a current mode of operation, wherein the receiving the one or more signals comprises:

determining uplink communications resources allocated for a transmission of an acknowledgement of the mode switching control message by the communications device,

determining that the acknowledgement is to be transmitted in response to receiving the mode switching control message, and

receiving the acknowledgement using the allocated uplink communications resources.

20. A method of transmitting data to a communications device in a wireless communications network, the method comprising

transmitting a mode switching control message, the mode switching control message indicating that a mode of operation of the communications device is to be changed from one of a first reception mode and a second reception mode to the other of the first reception mode and the second reception mode until another mode switching control message is received, wherein the communications device is configured to operate in the first reception mode in which a receiver of the communications device is configured to receive downlink data transmitted according to a first format or to operate in the second reception mode in which the receiver of the communications device is configured to receive the downlink data transmitted according to a second format,

transmitting a downlink control message transmitted in first downlink communications resources of a wireless access interface provided by the wireless communications network, the downlink control message providing an indication of second downlink communications resources from which the communications device is configured to receive the downlink data, the downlink control message comprising an indication of an entry in a predetermined table of entries for indicating that the second downlink communications resources of a shared channel are allocated to the communications device,

transmitting the downlink data from the second downlink communications resources,

determining that the communications device has performed an operation which indicates to the wireless communications network that there is a mismatch between a current mode of operation of one of the first reception mode and the second reception mode, and the mode of operation of the communications device expected by the wireless communications network, and

in response to determining that the communications device has performed the operation, determining that the indicated entry is associated with allocated communications resources of the shared channel which cannot be validly allocated in the current mode of operation.