Patent ID: 8767644
Filing Date: 2014-07-01
Classification: H04W

Abstract:
1. A method in a wireless communication network node for signaling contention-based uplink grants to user equipments, said method comprising: allocating a range of uplink resource blocks for use in making a plurality of contention-based uplink grants within a given scheduling interval, wherein the range of uplink resource blocks comprises different subsets of uplink resource blocks and wherein each contention-based uplink grant in the plurality of contention-based uplink grants maps to a subset of uplink resource blocks out of the different subsets within the allocated range of uplink resource blocks; and transmitting a single contention-based uplink grant message that indicates the allocated range of uplink resource blocks, wherein the single contention-based uplink grant message also indicates one or more access probabilities to be used by the user equipments in determining whether or not to perform a contention-based uplink transmission.