Patent ID: 9742535
Date: 2017-08-22
CPC Classifications: H04J,H04L

Claim:
1. A method for performing virtualization of a radio access technology (RAT) over Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) wireless networks, wherein at least one user terminal is wirelessly connected to at least one base station, both the at least one user terminal and the at least one base station supporting baseband processing required by the RAT in addition to baseband processing required for operation in the OFDMA wireless network, the method comprising: splitting OFDMA time-frequency resources into, in uplink operation, an OFDMA region comprising part of a spectrum and OFDMA symbols reserved for operation of the OFDMA wireless network, and an uplink virtualization region comprising a remaining part of the spectrum and the OFDMA symbols, the uplink virtualization region being non-overlapping with the OFDMA region and being reserved for virtualization of the RAT; and into, in downlink operation, a common control region comprising part of a spectrum and a number of OFDMA symbols reserved for common control information that is common to the OFDMA wireless network and the RAT, a data and control region comprising part of the spectrum and a number of OFDMA symbols that are not used for common control information but are reserved for data and control information of the OFDMA wireless network, and a downlink virtualization region comprising a remaining part of the spectrum and the OFDMA symbols that are reserved for virtualization of the RAT, the common control region, the data and control region, and the downlink virtualization region being non-overlapping with each other; reserving, in the downlink operation, resource elements of the OFDMA time-frequency resources in the downlink virtualization region, for insertion of downlink reference signals including complex sequences known by a receiver to perform downlink channel estimation by the at least one user terminal with a specified separation between signals in time and frequency domains; inserting, in the uplink operation, training or pilot signals along the OFDMA time-frequency resources of the uplink virtualization region by mapping the training or pilot signals over time-frequency resources scheduled for a particular user according to a multiple access scheme supported by the RAT, the mapping including reserving a number of time-frequency resources for the training or pilot signals with a specified separation between signals in the time and frequency domains; and mapping, in the downlink operation and the uplink operation, complex baseband symbols corresponding to information from the RAT into the OFDMA time-frequency resources of the downlink and uplink virtualization regions in the downlink operation and the uplink operation, respectively, by: