Patent ID: 11895635
Assignee: CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS OPERATING, LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 6:
7. A communications method comprising:
receiving user equipment capability information at a first wireless base station from a first user equipment device;
determining, by the first wireless base station, whether to allocate licensed or unlicensed spectrum to the first user equipment device based on the received user equipment capability information;
communicating a first spectrum allocation grant to the first user equipment device identifying the allocated spectrum for use by the first user equipment device;
prior to communicating the first spectrum allocation grant to the first user equipment device identifying the allocated spectrum for use by the first user equipment device:
allocating bandwidth part spectrum for use by the first user equipment device based on: (i) rankings of available spectrum, said available spectrum having been segmented into separate bandwidth parts of contiguous resource blocks, and (ii) a ranking of the first user equipment device based on the user equipment capability information, and
sending bandwidth part configuration information to the first user equipment device; and

wherein said determining, by the first wireless base station, whether to allocate licensed or unlicensed spectrum to the first user equipment device based on the received user equipment capability information further includes: determining which licensed or unlicensed bandwidth part spectrum is available for use by the first wireless base station to allocate to the first user equipment device based on a first user equipment capability score and quality scores for the licensed and unlicensed spectrum bandwidth parts.