Patent ID: 9538550
Date: 2017-01-03
CPC Classifications: H04B,H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. A method, comprising: determining at a first cell that one or more user equipment in the first cell should have at least one hybrid automatic repeat request cycle skipped based at least on a load in the first cell, where the load in the first cell is determined using at least a backhaul latency and a number of user equipment per the first cell, where each of the one or more user equipment is to take part in an uplink coordinated multipoint transmission, and where skipping of the at least one hybrid automatic repeat request cycle is to be performed to enable the first cell to receive information from one or more second cells over one or more backhaul links for the hybrid automatic repeat request transmissions; scheduling and participating in a first hybrid automatic repeat request cycle for the one or more user equipment in order to receive a transmission at the first cell from the one or more user equipment; and skipping, for hybrid automatic repeat request cycles subsequent to the first hybrid automatic repeat request cycle, the at least one hybrid automatic repeat request cycle for the one or more user equipment by sending, prior to decoding information from the uplink coordinated multipoint transmissions, an acknowledgement to the one or more user equipment and not scheduling the one or more user equipment for a physical downlink control channel grant for the at least one hybrid automatic repeat request cycle, wherein the skipping depends on at least one of: a backhaul latency, a load in the first cell, a type of the user equipment, and a request to the one or more second cells.