RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR UE-INITIATED REPORTING

Methods and apparatuses for resource management for user equipment (UE)-initiated reporting. A method performed by a UE includes receiving first information related to a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) for transmission of an indicator to indicate transmission of a beam report, receiving second information related to a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) for transmission of the beam report, and determining a PUCCH resource based on the first information. The method further includes determining, based on the indicator or the determined PUCCH resource and the second information, a PUSCH resource, transmitting the indicator via the PUCCH resource, and transmitting the beam report via the PUSCH resource.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communication systems and, more specifically, the present disclosure relates to methods and apparatuses for resource management for user equipment (UE)-initiated reporting.

BACKGROUND

Wireless communication has been one of the most successful innovations in modern history. Recently, the number of subscribers to wireless communication services exceeded five billion and continues to grow quickly. The demand of wireless data traffic is rapidly increasing due to the growing popularity among consumers and businesses of smart phones and other mobile data devices, such as tablets, “note pad” computers, net books, eBook readers, and machine type of devices. In order to meet the high growth in mobile data traffic and support new applications and deployments, improvements in radio interface efficiency and coverage are of paramount importance. To meet the demand for wireless data traffic having increased since deployment of 4G communication systems, and to enable various vertical applications, 5G communication systems have been developed and are currently being deployed.

SUMMARY

The present disclosure relates to resource management for UE-initiated reporting.

In one embodiment, a UE is provided. The UE includes a transceiver configured to receive first information related to a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) for transmission of an indicator to indicate transmission of a beam report and receive second information related to a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) for transmission of the beam report. The UE further includes a processor operably coupled with the transceiver. The processor is configured to determine, based on the first information, a PUCCH resource and determine, based on (i) the indicator or (ii) the determined PUCCH resource and the second information, a PUSCH resource. The transceiver is further configured to transmit, via the PUCCH resource, the indicator; and transmit, via the PUSCH resource, the beam report.

In another embodiment, a base station (BS) is provided. The BS includes a processor and a transceiver operably coupled with the processor. The transceiver is configured to transmit first information related to a PUCCH for an indicator to indicate transmission of a beam report, transmit second information related to a PUSCH for the beam report, receive, via a PUCCH resource, the indicator, and receive, via a PUSCH resource, the beam report. The PUCCH resource is based on the first information. The PUSCH resource is based on (i) the indicator or (ii) the determined PUCCH resource and the second information.

In yet another embodiment, a method performed by a UE is provided. The method includes receiving first information related to a PUCCH for transmission of an indicator to indicate transmission of a beam report, receiving second information related to a PUSCH for transmission of the beam report, and determining a PUCCH resource based on the first information. The method further includes determining, based on the indicator or the determined PUCCH resource and the second information, a PUSCH resource, transmitting the indicator via the PUCCH resource, and transmitting the beam report via the PUSCH resource.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following documents and standards descriptions are hereby incorporated by reference into the present disclosure as if fully set forth herein: [1] 3GPP TS 38.211 v16.1.0, “NR; Physical channels and modulation;” [2] 3GPP TS 38.212 v16.1.0, “NR; Multiplexing and Channel coding;” [3] 3GPP TS 38.213 v16.1.0, “NR; Physical Layer Procedures for Control;” [4] 3GPP TS 38.214 v16.1.0, “NR; Physical Layer Procedures for Data;” [5] 3GPP TS 38.321 v16.1.0, “NR; Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification;” and [6] 3GPP TS 38.331 v16.1.0, “NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) Protocol Specification.”

FIGS. 1-3 below describe various embodiments implemented in wireless communications systems and with the use of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) or orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) communication techniques. The descriptions of FIGS. 1-3 are not meant to imply physical or architectural limitations to how different embodiments may be implemented. Different embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented in any suitably arranged communications system.

FIG. 1 illustrates an example wireless network 100 according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The embodiment of the wireless network 100 shown in FIG. 1 is for illustration only. Other embodiments of the wireless network 100 could be used without departing from the scope of this disclosure.

As shown in FIG. 1, the wireless network 100 includes a gNB 101 (e.g., base station, BS), a gNB 102, and a gNB 103. The gNB 101 communicates with the gNB 102 and the gNB 103. The gNB 101 also communicates with at least one network 130, such as the Internet, a proprietary Internet Protocol (IP) network, or other data network.

The gNB 102 provides wireless broadband access to the network 130 for a first plurality of user equipments (UEs) within a coverage area 120 of the gNB 102. The first plurality of UEs includes a UE 111, which may be located in a small business; a UE 112, which may be located in an enterprise; a UE 113, which may be a WiFi hotspot; a UE 114, which may be located in a first residence; a UE 115, which may be located in a second residence; and a UE 116, which may be a mobile device, such as a cell phone, a wireless laptop, a wireless PDA, or the like. The gNB 103 provides wireless broadband access to the network 130 for a second plurality of UEs within a coverage area 125 of the gNB 103. The second plurality of UEs includes the UE 115 and the UE 116. In some embodiments, one or more of the gNBs 101-103 may communicate with each other and with the UEs 111-116 using 5G/NR, long term evolution (LTE), long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A), WiMAX, WiFi, or other wireless communication techniques.

The dotted lines show the approximate extents of the coverage areas 120 and 125, which are shown as approximately circular for the purposes of illustration and explanation only. It should be clearly understood that the coverage areas associated with gNBs, such as the coverage areas 120 and 125, may have other shapes, including irregular shapes, depending upon the configuration of the gNBs and variations in the radio environment associated with natural and man-made obstructions.

As described in more detail below, one or more of the UEs 111-116 include circuitry, programing, or a combination thereof for resource management for UE-initiated reporting. In certain embodiments, one or more of the BSs 101-103 include circuitry, programing, or a combination thereof to support resource management for UE-initiated reporting.

Although FIG. 1 illustrates one example of a wireless network, various changes may be made to FIG. 1. For example, the wireless network 100 could include any number of gNBs and any number of UEs in any suitable arrangement. Also, the gNB 101 could communicate directly with any number of UEs and provide those UEs with wireless broadband access to the network 130. Similarly, each gNB 102-103 could communicate directly with the network 130 and provide UEs with direct wireless broadband access to the network 130. Further, the gNBs 101, 102, and/or 103 could provide access to other or additional external networks, such as external telephone networks or other types of data networks.

FIG. 2 illustrates an example gNB 102 according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The embodiment of the gNB 102 illustrated in FIG. 2 is for illustration only, and the gNBs 101 and 103 of FIG. 1 could have the same or similar configuration. However, gNBs come in a wide variety of configurations, and FIG. 2 does not limit the scope of this disclosure to any particular implementation of a gNB.

As shown in FIG. 2, the gNB 102 includes multiple antennas 205a-205n, multiple transceivers 210a-210n, a controller/processor 225, a memory 230, and a backhaul or network interface 235.

The transceivers 210a-210n receive, from the antennas 205a-205n, incoming radio frequency (RF) signals, such as signals transmitted by UEs in the wireless network 100. The transceivers 210a-210n down-convert the incoming RF signals to generate IF or baseband signals. The IF or baseband signals are processed by receive (RX) processing circuitry in the transceivers 210a-210n and/or controller/processor 225, which generates processed baseband signals by filtering, decoding, and/or digitizing the baseband or IF signals. The controller/processor 225 may further process the baseband signals.

Transmit (TX) processing circuitry in the transceivers 210a-210n and/or controller/processor 225 receives analog or digital data (such as voice data, web data, e-mail, or interactive video game data) from the controller/processor 225. The TX processing circuitry encodes, multiplexes, and/or digitizes the outgoing baseband data to generate processed baseband or IF signals. The transceivers 210a-210n up-converts the baseband or IF signals to RF signals that are transmitted via the antennas 205a-205n.

The controller/processor 225 can include one or more processors or other processing devices that control the overall operation of the gNB 102. For example, the controller/processor 225 could control the reception of uplink (UL) channel signals and the transmission of downlink (DL) channel signals by the transceivers 210a-210n in accordance with well-known principles. The controller/processor 225 could support additional functions as well, such as more advanced wireless communication functions. For instance, the controller/processor 225 could support beam forming or directional routing operations in which outgoing/incoming signals from/to multiple antennas 205a-205n are weighted differently to effectively steer the outgoing signals in a desired direction. Any of a wide variety of other functions could be supported in the gNB 102 by the controller/processor 225.

The controller/processor 225 is also capable of executing programs and other processes resident in the memory 230, such as supporting resource management for UE-initiated reporting. The controller/processor 225 can move data into or out of the memory 230 as required by an executing process.

The controller/processor 225 is also coupled to the backhaul or network interface 235. The backhaul or network interface 235 allows the gNB 102 to communicate with other devices or systems over a backhaul connection or over a network. The interface 235 could support communications over any suitable wired or wireless connection(s). For example, when the gNB 102 is implemented as part of a cellular communication system (such as one supporting 5G/NR, LTE, or LTE-A), the interface 235 could allow the gNB 102 to communicate with other gNBs over a wired or wireless backhaul connection. When the gNB 102 is implemented as an access point, the interface 235 could allow the gNB 102 to communicate over a wired or wireless local area network or over a wired or wireless connection to a larger network (such as the Internet). The interface 235 includes any suitable structure supporting communications over a wired or wireless connection, such as an Ethernet or transceiver.

The memory 230 is coupled to the controller/processor 225. Part of the memory 230 could include a RAM, and another part of the memory 230 could include a Flash memory or other ROM.

Although FIG. 2 illustrates one example of gNB 102, various changes may be made to FIG. 2. For example, the gNB 102 could include any number of each component shown in FIG. 2. Also, various components in FIG. 2 could be combined, further subdivided, or omitted and additional components could be added according to particular needs.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example UE 116 according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The embodiment of the UE 116 illustrated in FIG. 3 is for illustration only, and the UEs 111-115 of FIG. 1 could have the same or similar configuration. However, UEs come in a wide variety of configurations, and FIG. 3 does not limit the scope of this disclosure to any particular implementation of a UE.

As shown in FIG. 3, the UE 116 includes antenna(s) 305, a transceiver(s) 310, and a microphone 320. The UE 116 also includes a speaker 330, a processor 340, an input/output (I/O) interface (IF) 345, an input 350, a display 355, and a memory 360. The memory 360 includes an operating system (OS) 361 and one or more applications 362.

The transceiver(s) 310 receives from the antenna(s) 305, an incoming RF signal transmitted by a gNB of the wireless network 100. The transceiver(s) 310 down-converts the incoming RF signal to generate an intermediate frequency (IF) or baseband signal. The IF or baseband signal is processed by RX processing circuitry in the transceiver(s) 310 and/or processor 340, which generates a processed baseband signal by filtering, decoding, and/or digitizing the baseband or IF signal. The RX processing circuitry sends the processed baseband signal to the speaker 330 (such as for voice data) or is processed by the processor 340 (such as for web browsing data).

TX processing circuitry in the transceiver(s) 310 and/or processor 340 receives analog or digital voice data from the microphone 320 or other outgoing baseband data (such as web data, e-mail, or interactive video game data) from the processor 340. The TX processing circuitry encodes, multiplexes, and/or digitizes the outgoing baseband data to generate a processed baseband or IF signal. The transceiver(s) 310 up-converts the baseband or IF signal to an RF signal that is transmitted via the antenna(s) 305.

The processor 340 can include one or more processors or other processing devices and execute the OS 361 stored in the memory 360 in order to control the overall operation of the UE 116. For example, the processor 340 could control the reception of DL channel signals and the transmission of UL channel signals by the transceiver(s) 310 in accordance with well-known principles. In some embodiments, the processor 340 includes at least one microprocessor or microcontroller.

The processor 340 is also capable of executing other processes and programs resident in the memory 360. For example, the processor 340 may execute processes to utilize and/or identify resource management for UE-initiated reporting as described in embodiments of the present disclosure. The processor 340 can move data into or out of the memory 360 as required by an executing process. In some embodiments, the processor 340 is configured to execute the applications 362 based on the OS 361 or in response to signals received from gNBs or an operator. The processor 340 is also coupled to the I/O interface 345, which provides the UE 116 with the ability to connect to other devices, such as laptop computers and handheld computers. The I/O interface 345 is the communication path between these accessories and the processor 340.

The processor 340 is also coupled to the input 350, which includes, for example, a touchscreen, keypad, etc., and the display 355. The operator of the UE 116 can use the input 350 to enter data into the UE 116. The display 355 may be a liquid crystal display, light emitting diode display, or other display capable of rendering text and/or at least limited graphics, such as from web sites.

The memory 360 is coupled to the processor 340. Part of the memory 360 could include a random-access memory (RAM), and another part of the memory 360 could include a Flash memory or other read-only memory (ROM).

Although FIG. 3 illustrates one example of UE 116, various changes may be made to FIG. 3. For example, various components in FIG. 3 could be combined, further subdivided, or omitted and additional components could be added according to particular needs. As a particular example, the processor 340 could be divided into multiple processors, such as one or more central processing units (CPUs) and one or more graphics processing units (GPUs). In another example, the transceiver(s) 310 may include any number of transceivers and signal processing chains and may be connected to any number of antennas. Also, while FIG. 3 illustrates the UE 116 configured as a mobile telephone or smartphone, UEs could be configured to operate as other types of mobile or stationary devices.

FIG. 4A and FIG. 4B illustrate an example of wireless transmit and receive paths 400 and 450, respectively, according to embodiments of the present disclosure. For example, a transmit path 400 may be described as being implemented in a gNB (such as gNB 102), while a receive path 450 may be described as being implemented in a UE (such as UE 116). However, it will be understood that the receive path 450 can be implemented in a gNB and that the transmit path 400 can be implemented in a UE. In some embodiments, the transmit path 400 and/or receive path 450 is configured to support utilize resource management for UE-initiated reporting as described in embodiments of the present disclosure.

As illustrated in FIG. 4A, the transmit path 400 includes a channel coding and modulation block 205, a serial-to-parallel (S-to-P) block 410, a size N Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) block 415, a parallel-to-serial (P-to-S) block 420, an add cyclic prefix block 425, and an up-converter (UC) 430. The receive path 250 includes a down-converter (DC) 455, a remove cyclic prefix block 460, a S-to-P block 465, a size N Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) block 470, a parallel-to-serial (P-to-S) block 475, and a channel decoding and demodulation block 480.

In the transmit path 400, the channel coding and modulation block 405 receives a set of information bits, applies coding (such as a low-density parity check (LDPC) coding), and modulates the input bits (such as with Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) or Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)) to generate a sequence of frequency-domain modulation symbols. The serial-to-parallel block 410 converts (such as de-multiplexes) the serial modulated symbols to parallel data in order to generate N parallel symbol streams, where N is the IFFT/FFT size used in the gNB 102 and the UE 116. The size N IFFT block 415 performs an IFFT operation on the N parallel symbol streams to generate time-domain output signals. The parallel-to-serial block 420 converts (such as multiplexes) the parallel time-domain output symbols from the size N IFFT block 415 in order to generate a serial time-domain signal. The add cyclic prefix block 425 inserts a cyclic prefix to the time-domain signal. The up-converter 430 modulates (such as up-converts) the output of the add cyclic prefix block 425 to a RF frequency for transmission via a wireless channel. The signal may also be filtered at a baseband before conversion to the RF frequency.

As illustrated in FIG. 4B, the down-converter 455 down-converts the received signal to a baseband frequency, and the remove cyclic prefix block 460 removes the cyclic prefix to generate a serial time-domain baseband signal. The serial-to-parallel block 465 converts the time-domain baseband signal to parallel time-domain signals. The size N FFT block 470 performs an FFT algorithm to generate N parallel frequency-domain signals. The (P-to-S) block 475 converts the parallel frequency-domain signals to a sequence of modulated data symbols. The channel decoding and demodulation block 480 demodulates and decodes the modulated symbols to recover the original input data stream.

Each of the gNBs 101-103 may implement a transmit path 400 that is analogous to transmitting in the downlink to UEs 111-116 and may implement a receive path 450 that is analogous to receiving in the uplink from UEs 111-116. Similarly, each of UEs 111-116 may implement a transmit path 400 for transmitting in the uplink to gNBs 101-103 and may implement a receive path 450 for receiving in the downlink from gNBs 101-103.

Each of the components in FIGS. 4A and 4B can be implemented using only hardware or using a combination of hardware and software/firmware. As a particular example, at least some of the components in FIGS. 4A and 4B may be implemented in software, while other components may be implemented by configurable hardware or a mixture of software and configurable hardware. For instance, the FFT block 470 and the IFFT block 415 may be implemented as configurable software algorithms, where the value of size N may be modified according to the implementation.

Although FIGS. 4A and 4B illustrate examples of wireless transmit and receive paths 400 and 450, respectively, various changes may be made to FIGS. 4A and 4B. For example, various components in FIGS. 4A and 4B can be combined, further subdivided, or omitted and additional components can be added according to particular needs. Also, FIGS. 4A and 4B are meant to illustrate examples of the types of transmit and receive paths that can be used in a wireless network. Any other suitable architectures can be used to support wireless communications in a wireless network.

As illustrated in FIG. 5A, in a wireless system 500, a beam 501 for a device 504 can be characterized by a beam direction 502 and a beam width 503. For example, the device 504 (or UE 116) transmits RF energy in a beam direction and within a beam width. The device 504 receives RF energy in a beam direction and within a beam width. As illustrated in FIG. 5A, a device at point A 505 can receive from and transmit to device 504 as Point A is within a beam width and direction of a beam from device 504. As illustrated in FIG. 5A, a device at point B 506 cannot receive from and transmit to device 504 as Point B 506 is outside a beam width and direction of a beam from device 504. While FIG. 5A, for illustrative purposes, shows a beam in 2-dimensions (2D), it should be apparent to those skilled in the art, that a beam can be in 3-dimensions (3D), where the beam direction and beam width are defined in space.

FIG. 5B illustrates an example of a multi-beam operation 550 according to embodiments of the present disclosure. For example, the multi-beam operation 550 can be utilized by UE 116 of FIG. 3. This example is for illustration only and other embodiments can be used without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

In a wireless system, a device can transmit and/or receive on multiple beams. This is known as “multi-beam operation”. While FIG. 5B, for illustrative purposes, a beam is in 2D, it should be apparent to those skilled in the art, that a beam can be 3D, where a beam can be transmitted to or received from any direction in space.

FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a transmitter structure 600 for beamforming according to embodiments of the present disclosure. In certain embodiments, one or more of gNB 102 or UE 116 includes the transmitter structure 600. For example, one or more of antenna 205 and its associated systems or antenna 305 and its associated systems can be included in transmitter structure 600. This example is for illustration only and other embodiments can be used without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

Accordingly, embodiments of the present disclosure recognize that Rel-14 LTE and Rel-15 NR support up to 32 channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS) antenna ports which enable an eNB or a gNB to be equipped with a large number of antenna elements (such as 64 or 128). A plurality of antenna elements can then be mapped onto one CSI-RS port. For mmWave bands, although a number of antenna elements can be larger for a given form factor, a number of CSI-RS ports, that can correspond to the number of digitally precoded ports, can be limited due to hardware constraints (such as the feasibility to install a large number of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs)/digital-to-analog converters (DACs) at mmWave frequencies) as illustrated in FIG. 6. Then, one CSI-RS port can be mapped onto a large number of antenna elements that can be controlled by a bank of analog phase shifters 601. One CSI-RS port can then correspond to one sub-array which produces a narrow analog beam through analog beamforming 605. This analog beam can be configured to sweep across a wider range of angles 620 by varying the phase shifter bank across symbols or slots/subframes. The number of sub-arrays (equal to the number of RF chains) is the same as the number of CSI-RS ports NCSI-PORT. A digital beamforming unit 610 performs a linear combination across NCSI-PORT analog beams to further increase a precoding gain. While analog beams are wideband (hence not frequency-selective), digital precoding can be varied across frequency sub-bands or resource blocks. Receiver operation can be conceived analogously.

Since the transmitter structure 600 of FIG. 6 utilizes multiple analog beams for transmission and reception (wherein one or a small number of analog beams are selected out of a large number, for instance, after a training duration that is occasionally or periodically performed), the term “multi-beam operation” is used to refer to the overall system aspect. This includes, for the purpose of illustration, indicating the assigned DL or UL TX beam (also termed “beam indication”), measuring at least one reference signal for calculating and performing beam reporting (also termed “beam measurement” and “beam reporting”, respectively), and receiving a DL or UL transmission via a selection of a corresponding RX beam. The system of FIG. 6 is also applicable to higher frequency bands such as >52.6 GHz (also termed frequency range 4 or FR4). In this case, the system can employ only analog beams. Due to the O2 absorption loss around 60 GHz frequency (˜10 dB additional loss per 100 m distance), a larger number and narrower analog beams (hence a larger number of radiators in the array) are needed to compensate for the additional path loss.

The text and figures are provided solely as examples to aid the reader in understanding the present disclosure. They are not intended and are not to be construed as limiting the scope of the present disclosure in any manner. Although certain embodiments and examples have been provided, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art based on the disclosures herein that changes in the embodiments and examples shown may be made without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. The transmitter structure 600 for beamforming is for illustration only and other embodiments can be used without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

Any of the above variation embodiments can be utilized independently or in combination with at least one other variation embodiment.

In this disclosure, a beam is determined by either of;

In either case, the ID of the source reference signal identifies the beam.

The TCI state and/or the spatial relation reference RS can determine a spatial Rx filter for reception of downlink channels at the UE, or a spatial TX filter for transmission of uplink channels from the UE.

In (up to Rel.17) NR specification, the most resource-efficient reporting mechanism for a content (e.g. beam, CSI etc., or in general different report quantities) is aperiodic (in conjunction with aperiodic CSI-RS). On the other hand, with a well-chosen periodicity, periodic reporting (followed by semi-persistent) results in the lowest latency at the expense of resources. Although aperiodic reporting seems preferred from the overall operational perspective, in a few relevant scenarios the NW/gNB lacks knowledge on the DL channel condition—or, in other words, the UE (e.g., the UE 116) knows the DL channel condition better. Embodiments of the present disclosure recognize that, in this case, it is clearly beneficial if the UE can initiate its own aperiodic reporting for a content (e.g. beam, CSI etc.) or trigger a beam switching for a condition or event. For instance, when the UE is configured only with aperiodic beam reporting and the channel condition is worsened to the point of beam failure, the loss of link due to beam failure can be avoided if the UE can transmit an aperiodic beam report without having to wait for a beam report request/trigger from the NW/gNB or trigger a new beam update without having to wait for a beam change or update indication from the NW/gNB. Likewise, when the UE is configured only with aperiodic CSI reporting and the channel condition is worsened due to UE speed/movement, the performance degradation due to faster link quality degradation can be avoided if the UE can transmit an aperiodic CSI report without having to wait for a CSI request/trigger from the NW/gNB or trigger a new beam update without having to wait for a beam change or update indication from the NW/gNB. Such UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching for a content can be enabled for other types of report quantities (different from common beam or CSI reports) and application scenarios.

Although UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching and/or beam activation/deactivation can be beneficial, efficient designs are needed to ensure that the latency is reduced and, at the same time, error events can be minimized. Therefore, there is a need for efficient designs for UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching and/or beam activation/deactivation for a content that can offer good trade-off between latency and reliability, in particular, when the UE-initiated beam management framework can include multiple report types (or report quantities), or/and multiple event types when a report types can be associated with an event (e.g. for beam report, the event can be beam failure, and for CSI, the event can be user throughput degradation or increasing retransmission rate). This disclosure provides example embodiments on the mentioned UE-initiated beam management framework herein including CSI/beam reporting, beam switching and beam activation/sub-selection. Furthermore, this disclosure also provides various design options for determining modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) for the L1 signaling mediums (including physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) and physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH)) that carries the UE-initiated report(s).

The present disclosure provides various detailed design examples on the UE-initiated beam management framework including UE-initiated/triggered beam/CSI reporting and/or UE-initiated/triggered beam switching and/or UE-initiated/triggered beam activation/deactivation/sub-selection. To better support/enable the UE-initiated and the event-based beam operations, this disclosure presents detailed methods of how to determine modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) for the L1 signaling mediums (including PUCCH and PUSCH) that carries the UE-initiated report(s).

In the present disclosure, a UE detects (or determines) a need for transmitting a UE-initiated/UE-triggered report (or initiation/triggering) of a (report-)type (A), (B), or (C), where

The report is to facilitate/enable efficient/timely/fast/reliable communication over the link/channel between a target entity (e.g. NW/gNB or another device) and the UE, and the content (if reported) can include a quantity or quantities. At least one of the following examples can be used/configured for the content:

In one example, the report is targeting a physical layer (L1) communication (e.g. L1 DL/UL, or L1 sidelink (SL)), i.e. such reporting is to enable fast/reliable DL/UL or SL transmission/reception.

In one example, the link/channel between the target entity and the UE is a Uu interface (i.e. DL, UL).

In one example, the link/channel between the target entity and the UE is a sidelink (SL), or a device-to-device (D2D) or PC5 interface.

In one example, such reporting can be non-event-based or autonomous, the UE can initiate/trigger the report autonomously (i.e. without being associated with any event) or unconditionally/freely. For example, the UE can be configured with a triggering time window (or multiple UL slots), and the UE can trigger the report during this window.

In one example, such reporting can be event-based, i.e., the UE can initiate/trigger the report only when it detects an event associated with the report, where the event can be of a (event-)type: type 0, type 1, and so on. In one example, type 0 corresponds to a beam-related event, type 1 corresponds to a CSI-related event, type 2 corresponds to a time-domain channel property (TDCP)-related event, and type 3 can be a non-CSI-related event (examples provided later). In one example, if a metric (depending on the event-type) is less than or equal to a threshold (or greater than or equal to a threshold), the event is detected or declared positive. The threshold is chosen such that a failure (e.g. beam/link failure) can be detected before it actually happens, and the UE-initiated report can avoid the failure.

In one example, such reporting can be non-event-based or event-based, based on report-type.

In one example, such reporting can be non-event-based or event-based, based on a configuration.

A few examples of the event-types and the report-types are provided in Table 1 (for joint) and Table 2/Table 3 (for separate). In these examples, the event-types and the report-types are separate (explicit). However, they can also be joint, as shown in Table 4. A few examples of the autonomous UE-initiated report are shown in Table 5.

Report

Event type
Type
message
Content

(B)
No
Yes

(B)
No
Yes

(B)
No
Yes

4. other (content-
(A)
Yes (no need for content)
No

4
Other

(A)
Yes
No

(B)
No
Yes

(C)
Yes
Yes

Report

Type
Trigger/pre-notification message
Content

1
No
Beam

4
No
CSI

non-event-based or autonomous UE-initiated report

Report

Type
Trigger/pre-notification message
Content

1
No
Beam

2
Yes
Beam

3
No
CSI

4
Yes
CSI

In one example, when there is no content associated with a pre-notification message/trigger, i.e., the report-type is (A), the trigger/pre-notification message simply provides a ‘hint/alarm/cue’ to the target entity according to at least one of the following examples.

In one embodiment, a UE could send to the network (e.g., the network 130) one or more indicators/triggers each comprising/including/containing or corresponding to one or more of:

Throughout the present disclosure, an index could correspond to the “first”, the “second”, and etc. Furthermore, throughout the present disclosure, “trigger” can also be referred to as “initiate” or “indicate”; i.e., they can be used/applied to various design examples throughout the present disclosure interchangeably. For instance, the UE could send to the network an indicator to trigger a TCI state change/update/switch for one or more channels or signals. Furthermore, throughout the present disclosure, a MCS can be replaced by a transport block size (TBS) and/or a MCS table can be replaced by a TBS table, and the corresponding operations/procedures equally apply.

The indicator(s) described herein in the present disclosure could correspond to the trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report, or part of the (corresponding) content in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report. Furthermore, the signaling medium/container for reporting the indicator(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure (or equivalently, the trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report, or part of the (corresponding) content in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report) could be PUCCH, PUSCH, physical random access channel (PRACH), MAC CE, uplink control information (UCI) and etc. The UE may expect to receive from the network an acknowledgement (ACK) (or negative ACK (NACK)) for the indicator(s) specified herein in the present disclosure within a first time window/offset (e.g., in terms of the number of slots/symbols/etc.) starting from the transmission of the indicator(s) (e.g., starting from the corresponding slot/symbol/etc.). The value of the first time window/offset could be: (i) fixed in the system specification(s), (ii) configured/provided/indicated by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling/parameter and/or MAC CE command and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling, or (iii) autonomously determined by the UE and sent to the network via uplink channels such as PUCCH/PUSCH.

The UE could be indicated/configured/provided by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling/parameter and/or MAC CE command and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling, the ACK (or NACK) for the indicator(s) specified herein in the present disclosure. For instance, The UE could be indicated/configured/provided by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling/parameter and/or MAC CE command and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling, a one-bit indicator to indicate ACK or NACK for the indicator(s) specified herein in the present disclosure for the UE-initiated beam operation; when/if the one-bit indicator is set to ‘1’ (or ‘0’), the one-bit indicator could indicate an ACK for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation; and when/if the one-bit indicator is not present/configured or is set to ‘0’ (or ‘1’), the one-bit indicator could indicate a NACK for the indicator(s) sent by the UE (e.g., the UE 116) for the UE-initiated beam operation. Furthermore, when/if provided/indicated in a DCI, the ACK (or NACK)—e.g., the one-bit indicator as described herein—for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation such as UE-initiated TCI state(s)/beam(s) switching/update/change could be indicated/provided via one or more new/dedicated DCI fields—e.g., denoted by ‘ACK/NACK for UE-initiated beam switching’ field(s) in the DCI. Alternatively, when/if provided/indicated in a DCI, the ACK (or NACK)—e.g., the one-bit indicator as described herein—for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation including UE-initiated TCI state(s)/beam(s) switching/update/change could be indicated/provided via/by repurposing one or more bits of one or more existing DCI fields in the DCI. For instance, the ‘New Data Indicator’ (NDI) field in a DCI could be repurposed/used to indicate the ACK (or NACK) for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation; when/if the NDI field is toggled or is set to ‘1’ (or ‘0’), the NDI could indicate an ACK for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation including UE-initiated TCI state(s)/beam(s) switching/update/change; otherwise, the NDI could indicate a NACK for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation including UE-initiated TCI state(s)/beam(s) switching/update/change.

A UE could determine modulation and/or coding scheme(s) for the signaling medium(s)-including PUCCH and PUSCH—that carries the indicator(s)/report(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure for the UE-initiated reporting according to one or more of:

an example of association(s)/mapping(s) between MCS(s), type(s) of indicator(s)/report(s) for the UE-

initiated reporting, and payload size of the indicator(s)/report(s) for the UE-initiated reporting

Type(s) of the

for the UE-initiated
the indicator(s)/report(s) for
Modulation

MCS index in

reporting
the UE-initiated reporting
scheme
Coding scheme
a MCS table

message

with a target code-rate

message

with a target code-rate

with a target code-rate

message and UE-initiated

with a target code-rate

Trigger/pre-notification
>11
bits
64 QAM
Polar code with a
6

message and UE-initiated

In one embodiment, the association/mapping between one or more of (1) type(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s), (2) signaling medium(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s), (3) format(s) of the signaling medium(s) that carries the indicator(s)/report(s), (4) payload size(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s), (5) purpose(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s) and (6) network's indication(s)/configuration(s), e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure for the UE-initiated reporting and various modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) used for the signaling medium(s) to that sends/carries the indicator(s)/report(s) for the UE-initiated reporting could be fixed (e.g., provided in look-up tables) in system specifications.

an example of association(s)/mapping(s) between MCS(s), type(s)

of indicator(s)/report(s), signaling medium(s) and the corresponding

signaling medium format(s) for the UE-initiated reporting

MCS index (associating

to a modulation order

Type(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s)
Signaling medium(s)
and a target code-rate)

for the UE-initiated reporting
and format(s)
in a MCS table

Trigger/pre-notification message and
CG PUSCH
4

Trigger/pre-notification message and
CG PUSCH
6

In one embodiment, a UE could be provided/configured indicated by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), the association/mapping between one or more of (1) type(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s), (2) signaling medium(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s), (3) format(s) of the signaling medium(s) that carries the indicator(s)/report(s), (4) payload size(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s), (5) purpose(s) of the indicator(s)/report(s) and (6) network's indication(s)/configuration(s), e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure for the UE-initiated reporting and various modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) used for the signaling medium(s) that sends/carries the indicator(s)/report(s) for the UE-initiated reporting.

A MCS table specified herein in the present disclosure could comprise one or more rows with each row comprising at least a modulation order and a target code-rate for the corresponding channel coding scheme (e.g., Reed-Muller, polar and/or LDPC code(s)). A MCS table could correspond to one of those used for determining the MCSs for PDSCH reception(s)/PUSCH transmission(s) in the system specifications (e.g., the MCS Index tables 5.1.3.1.-1, 5.1.3.1.-2, 5.1.3.1.-3, 6.1.4.1-1 and 6.1.4.1-2 in the 3GPP TS 38.214 [REF4]. Alternatively, the UE could be indicated/provided/configured by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), one or more such MCS table(s) for the UE-initiated reporting according to those specified herein in the present disclosure.

In one embodiment, the UE could send to the network the trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-) type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure to also indicate the MCS(s) used for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message.

As specified herein in the present disclosure, a UE could determine the signaling medium(s), format(s) of the signaling medium(s) and/or MCS for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends the trigger/pre-notification message as specified herein in the present disclosure according to one of:

In one embodiment, the UE could be provided/indicated/configured by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), one or more configurations for CG PUSCH(s), wherein a configuration for a CG PUSCH provides at least MCS information for the CG PUSCH. For this case, the UE could send to the network (e.g., the network 130) a trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure to also indicate the configuration(s) for the CG PUSCH(s), and therefore, the corresponding CG PUSCH(s) and their corresponding/associated MCS(s), to use for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message. Optionally, the UE (e.g., the UE 116) could send to the network a trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure, wherein the trigger/pre-notification message could also provide/indicate/include/comprise/contain the configuration(s) for the CG PUSCH(s), and therefore, the corresponding CG PUSCH(s) and their corresponding/associated MCS(s), to use for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message.

In one embodiment, the UE could send to the network a trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-) type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure, wherein the trigger/pre-notification message could also provide/indicate/include/comprise/contain information related to the MCS(s) used for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message. As specified herein in the present disclosure, the information related to the MCS(s) could include modulation order(s), target code-rate(s) for a given channel coding scheme, channel coding scheme(s), index(s) of candidate MCS(s) among one or more indicated/provided configured candidate MCSs, MCS index(es) each corresponding to a row in a (provided/indicated/configured) MCS table comprising at least a modulation order and a target code-rate for a corresponding channel coding scheme.

The UE could send to the network the trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure to also indicate the MCS(s) used for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message when/if one or more of the following conditions are held/satisfied/achieved.

Otherwise, i.e., when/if one or more of the conditions herein are not held/achieved/satisfied, the UE could send to the network a trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-) type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure that also provides/indicates/includes/comprises/contains the information related to the MCS(s) used for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message.

In one embodiment, the UE could send to the network, e.g., in a single reporting instance, the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s)—e.g., including one or more resource indicators, beam metrics, configurations/activations/indications of TCI states and/or etc.—in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure in two parts (a first part or part 1 and a second part or part 2). Part 1 and part 2 of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure could be separately encoded and reported in a single reporting instance. The first part (or part 1) of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report could be of fixed payload size, which could provide or indicate information related to the second part (or part 2) of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report. Furthermore, part 1 of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report could be used to identify/indicate the size of the payload in part 2 of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report. Part 1 of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report shall be transmitted in its entirety before the transmission of part 2 of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report. In one example, part 2 of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report can be absent. When absent, the UE-initiated beam/CSI report is via part 1 only (i.e. one part UCI), and when present, the UE-initiated beam/CSI report is via both part 1 and part 2 (i.e. two-part UCI). In one example, part 2 of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report is present, but its payload could vary depending on the information in part 1. In the present disclosure, part 1 of the UE-initiated beam/CSI report could provide/indicate information related to the MCS(s) used for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends (part 1 and/or part 2 of) the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message.

Optionally, the UE could send to the network (e.g., the network 130) a trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure to also indicate the MCS(s) used for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends, e.g., part 1 of, the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or the UE could send to the network a trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure that also provides/indicates/includes/comprises/contains the information related to the MCS(s) used for the signaling medium(s) that carries/sends, e.g., part 1 of, the UE-initiated beam/CSI report(s) in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report as specified herein in the present disclosure associated/corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message.

In (up to Rel.17) NR specification, the most resource-efficient reporting mechanism for a content (e.g. beam, CSI etc., or in general different report quantities) is aperiodic (in conjunction with aperiodic CSI-RS). On the other hand, with a well-chosen periodicity, periodic reporting (followed by semi-persistent) results in the lowest latency at the expense of resources. Although aperiodic reporting seems preferred from the overall operational perspective, in a few relevant scenarios the NW/gNB lacks knowledge on the DL channel condition—or, in other words, the UE knows the DL channel condition better. In this case, it is clearly beneficial if the UE can initiate its own aperiodic reporting for a content (e.g. beam, CSI etc.) or trigger a beam switching for a condition or event. For instance, when the UE is configured only with aperiodic beam reporting and the channel condition is worsened to the point of beam failure, the loss of link due to beam failure can be avoided if the UE can transmit an aperiodic beam report without having to wait for a beam report request/trigger from the NW/gNB or trigger a new beam update without having to wait for a beam change or update indication from the NW/gNB. Likewise, when the UE is configured only with aperiodic CSI reporting and the channel condition is worsened due to UE speed/movement, the performance degradation due to faster link quality degradation can be avoided if the UE can transmit an aperiodic CSI report without having to wait for a CSI request/trigger from the NW/gNB or trigger a new beam update without having to wait for a beam change or update indication from the NW/gNB. Such UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching for a content can be enabled for other types of report quantities (different from common beam or CSI reports) and application scenarios.

Although UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching and/or beam activation/deactivation can be beneficial, efficient designs are needed to ensure that the latency is reduced and, at the same time, error events can be minimized. Therefore, there is a need for efficient designs for UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching and/or beam activation/deactivation for a content that can offer good trade-off between latency and reliability, in particular, when the UE-initiated beam management framework can include multiple report types (or report quantities), or/and multiple event types when a report types can be associated with an event (e.g. for beam report, the event can be beam failure, and for CSI, the event can be user throughput degradation or increasing retransmission rate).

The present disclosure provides various detailed design examples on the UE-initiated beam management framework including UE-initiated/triggered beam/CSI reporting and/or UE-initiated/triggered beam switching and/or UE-initiated/triggered beam activation/deactivation/sub-selection. To better support/enable the UE-initiated and the event-based beam operations, this disclosure presents detailed methods of sending the UE-initiated report as a UCI over PUCCH and/or PUSCH.

In one example, when there is no content associated with a pre-notification message/trigger, i.e., the report-type is (A), the trigger/pre-notification message simply provides a ‘hint/alarm/cue’ to the target entity according to at least one of the following examples.

In one embodiment, a UE could send to the network, in one or more UE-initiated report, one or more indicators/triggers (or contents as specified herein in the present disclosure corresponding to the trigger/pre-notification message) each comprising/including/containing or corresponding to one or more of:

Throughout the present disclosure, an index could correspond to the “first”, the “second”, and etc. Furthermore, throughout the present disclosure, “trigger” can also be referred to as “initiate” or “indicate”; i.e., they can be used/applied to various design examples throughout the present disclosure interchangeably. For instance, the UE could send to the network an indicator to trigger a TCI state change/update/switch for one or more channels or signals. Furthermore, throughout the present disclosure, a MCS can be replaced by a transport block size (TBS) and/or a MCS table can be replaced by a TBS table, and the corresponding operations/procedures equally apply.

The indicator(s) described herein in the present disclosure could correspond to the trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report, or part of the (corresponding) content in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report. Furthermore, the signaling medium/container for reporting the indicator(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure (or equivalently, the trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report, or part of the (corresponding) content in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report) could be PUCCH, PUSCH, PRACH, MAC CE, UCI and etc. The UE (e.g., the UE 116) may expect to receive from the network an ACK (or NACK) for the indicator(s) specified herein in the present disclosure within a first time window/offset (e.g., in terms of the number of slots/symbols/etc.) starting from the transmission of the indicator(s) (e.g., starting from the corresponding slot/symbol/etc.). The value of the first time window/offset could be: (i) fixed in the system specification(s), (ii) configured/provided/indicated by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling/parameter and/or MAC CE command and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling, or (iii) autonomously determined by the UE and sent to the network via uplink channels such as PUCCH/PUSCH.

The UE could be indicated/configured/provided by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling/parameter and/or MAC CE command and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling, the ACK (or NACK) for the indicator(s) specified herein in the present disclosure. For instance, The UE could be indicated/configured/provided by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling/parameter and/or MAC CE command and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling, a one-bit indicator to indicate ACK or NACK for the indicator(s) specified herein in the present disclosure for the UE-initiated beam operation; when/if the one-bit indicator is set to ‘1’ (or ‘0’), the one-bit indicator could indicate an ACK for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation; and when/if the one-bit indicator is not present/configured or is set to ‘0’ (or ‘1’), the one-bit indicator could indicate a NACK for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation. Furthermore, when/if provided/indicated in a DCI, the ACK (or NACK)—e.g., the one-bit indicator as described herein—for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation such as UE-initiated TCI state(s)/beam(s) switching/update/change could be indicated/provided via one or more new/dedicated DCI fields—e.g., denoted by ‘ACK/NACK for UE-initiated beam switching’ field(s)—in the DCI. Alternatively, when/if provided/indicated in a DCI, the ACK (or NACK)—e.g., the one-bit indicator as described herein—for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation including UE-initiated TCI state(s)/beam(s) switching/update/change could be indicated/provided via/by repurposing one or more bits of one or more existing DCI fields in the DCI. For instance, the ‘New Data Indicator’ (NDI) field in a DCI could be repurposed/used to indicate the ACK (or NACK) for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation; when/if the NDI field is toggled or is set to ‘1’ (or ‘0’), the NDI could indicate an ACK for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation including UE-initiated TCI state(s)/beam(s) switching/update/change; otherwise, the NDI could indicate a NACK for the indicator(s) sent by the UE for the UE-initiated beam operation including UE-initiated TCI state(s)/beam(s) switching/update/change.

Throughout the present disclosure, a UE-initiated (UEI) report could provide/contain/include/comprise one or more of the indicators/triggers as described herein in the present disclosure, which could correspond to the trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report, or part of the (corresponding) content in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report according to those specified herein in the present disclosure. For this case, uplink control information (UCI) types reported in a PUCCH could include the UEI report, and UCI bits could include UEI report bits.

A UE could be configured up to four sets of PUCCH resources in a PUCCH-Config. A PUCCH resource set is provided by PUCCH-ResourceSet and is associated with a PUCCH resource set index provided by pucch-ResourceSetId, with a set of PUCCH resource indexes provided by resourceList that provides a set of pucch-ResourceId used in the PUCCH resource set, and with a maximum number of UCI information bits the UE can transmit using a PUCCH resource in the PUCCH resource set provided by maxPayloadSize. For the first PUCCH resource set, the maximum number of UCI information bits is 2. A maximum number of PUCCH resource indexes for a set of PUCCH resources is provided by maxNrofPUCCH-ResourcesPerSet. The maximum number of PUCCH resources in the first PUCCH resource set is 32 and the maximum number of PUCCH resources in the other PUCCH resource sets is 8.

If the UE transmits OUCI UCI information bits, that include hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) information bits and UEI report bits, the UE could determine a PUCCH resource set to be

Furthermore, if a UE is not transmitting PUSCH, and the UE is transmitting UCI, the UE could transmit UCI in a PUCCH using

A UE could first determine a number of UEI report bits OUEI and a corresponding set of PUCCH resources according to those specified herein in the present disclosure. If OUEI=0, the UE may not transmit a PUCCH that only includes UEI report bits.

In addition, for a PUCCH transmission with UEI report, a UE could determine a PUCCH resource on the cell of the PUCCH transmission, after determining a set of PUCCH resources for OUEI UEI report bits. The PUCCH resource determination could be based on a PUCCH resource indicator field, if present, in a last DCI format, excluding the semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) activation DCI, among one or more DCI formats that provide necessary information related to the UEI report, indicating a same slot for the PUCCH transmission, that the UE detects and for which the UE transmits corresponding UEI report in the PUCCH.

For the first set of PUCCH resources and when the size RPUCCH of resourceList is larger than eight, when a UE provides UEI report in a PUCCH transmission in response to detecting a last DCI format in a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) reception, excluding the SPS activation DCI, among one or more DCI formats that provide necessary information related to the UEI report, indicating a same slot for the PUCCH transmission, the UE determines a PUCCH resource with index rPUCCH, 0≤rPUCCH≤RPUCCH−1, as

where NCCE,p is a number of CCEs in CORESET p of the PDCCH reception for the DCI format, nCCE,p is the index of a first CCE for the PDCCH reception, and ΔPRI is a value of the PUCCH resource indicator field in the corresponding DCI format. When the PDCCH reception includes first and second PDCCH candidates from respective first and second search space sets, the CORESET is associated with the search space set having the smaller index. If

If a UE transmits a PUCCH with UEI report using PUCCH format 0, the UE could determine values m0 and mCS for computing a value of cyclic shift α where m0 is provided by initialCyclicShift of PUCCH-format0 or, if initialCyclicShift is not provided, by the initial cyclic shift index and mCS is determined from the value of one UEI report bit or from the values of two UEI report bits as specified herein in the present disclosure, respectively.

mapping of values for one UEI report

bit to sequences for PUCCH format 0

UEI report bit value
0
1

mapping of values for two UEI report

bits to sequences for PUCCH format 0

If a UE transmits a PUCCH with UEI report using PUCCH format 1, the UE could be provided a value for m0 by initialCyclicShift of PUCCH-format or, if initialCyclicShift is not provided, by the initial cyclic shift index.

If a UE transmits a PUCCH with OUEI UEI report bits and OCRC bits using PUCCH format 2 or PUCCH format 3 in a PUCCH resource that includes MRBPUCCH physical resource blocks (PRBs), the UE could determine a number of PRBs MRB,minPUCCH for the PUCCH transmission to be the minimum number of PRBs, that is smaller than or equal to a number of PRBs MRBPUCCH provided respectively by nrofPRBs of PUCCH-format2 or nrofPRBs of PUCCH-format3 and start from the first PRB from the number of PRBs, that results to (OUEI+OCRC)≤MRB,minPUCCH·Nsc,ctrlRB·Nsymb-UCIPUCCH·Qm·r and, if MRBPUCCH>1, (OUEI+OCRC)>(MRB,minPUCCH−1)·Nsc,ctrlRB·Nsymb-UCIPUCCH·Qm·r, where Nsc,ctrlRB, Nsymb-UCIPUCCH, Qm, and r are defined in clause 9.2.5.2 in the 3GPP TS 38.213 [REF3]. For PUCCH format 3, if MRB,minPUCCH is not equal 2α2·3α3·5α5, MRB,minPUCCH is increased to the nearest allowed value of nrofPRBs. If (OUCI+OCRC)>(MRBPUCCH−1)·Nsc,ctrlRB·Nsymb-UCIPUCCH·Qm·r, the UE could transmit the PUCCH over MRBPUCCH PRBS.

If a UE is provided a first interlace of MInterlace,0PUCCH PRBs by interlace0 in InterlaceAllocation and transmits a PUCCH with OUCI UEI report bits and OCRC bits using PUCCH format 2 or PUCCH format 3, the UE could transmit the PUCCH over the first interlace if (OUEI+OCRC)≤MInterlace,0PUCCH·Nsc,ctrlRB·Nsymb-UCIPUCCH·Qm·r; otherwise, if the UE is provided a second interlace by interlace1 in PUCCH-format2 or PUCCH-format3, the UE could transmit the PUCCH over the first and second interlaces.

A UE could be be provided by higher layer parameter(s)/signaling(s) a set of configurations for UEI report in a PUCCH transmission using either PUCCH format 0 or PUCCH format 1. Furthermore, the UE can be provided, by phy-PriorityIndex in the higher layer parameter(s)/signaling(s) that provides the set of UEI report configurations, a priority index 0 or a priority index 1 for the UEI report. If the UE is not provided a priority index for UEI report, the corresponding priority index is 0. The UE could also be provided a periodicity UEIreportPERIODICITY in symbols or slots and an offset UEI reportOFFSET in slots by periodicityAndOffset for a PUCCH transmission conveying the UEI report. If UEIreportPERIODICITY is larger than one slot, the UE could determine a transmission occasion for the UEI report (e.g., a trigger/pre-notification message as specified herein in the present disclosure) in a PUCCH to be in a slot with number ns,fμ in a frame with number nf if (nf·Nslotframe,μ+ns,fμ-UEIreportOFFSET)mod(UEIreportPERIODICITY)=0. Furthermore, if UEIreportPERIODICITY is one slot, the UE could expect or expect that UEIreportOFFSET=0 and every slot is a transmission occasion for the UEI report in a PUCCH. If UEIreportPERIODICITY is smaller than one slot, the UE could determine a transmission occasion for the UEI report in a PUCCH to start in a symbol with index l if (l−l0modUEIreportPERIODICITY)modUEIreportPERIODICITY=0 where l0 is the value of startingSymbolIndex.

For example, if the UE determines that, for a transmission occasion for the UEI report in a PUCCH, the number of symbols available for the PUCCH transmission in a slot is smaller than the value provided by nrofSymbols, the UE may not transmit the PUCCH in the slot. The UEI reporting transmission occasions in a PUCCH could be subject to the limitations for UE transmissions. The UE could transmit a PUCCH in the PUCCH resource for the corresponding configuration for UEI reporting only when the UE transmits a positive UEI report value. For a positive UEI report value transmission using PUCCH format 0, the UE could transmit the PUCCH by obtaining m0 as described herein in the present disclosure and by setting mCS=0. For a positive UEI report value transmission using PUCCH format 1, the UE could transmit the PUCCH by setting b(0)=0 according to those specified herein in the present disclosure.

For another example, if a UE is configured with multiple PUCCH resources in a slot to transmit the UEI reports as specified herein in the present disclosure

Furthermore, a UE could be provided/indicated/configured by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signalling(s)/parameter(s)—e.g., a higher layer parameter simultaneousHARQ-ACK-CSI-UEIreport—and MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signalling(s), to multiplex DL HARQ-ACK information, with or without SR, and/or CSI report(s), and/or UEI report(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure in a same PUCCH; otherwise, the UE drops the CSI report(s) and includes only DL HARQ-ACK information, with or without SR, in the PUCCH, or the UE drops the CSI report(s) and includes the UEI report(s) and/or DL HARQ-ACK information in the PUCCH, with or without SR, or the UE drops the UEI report(s) and includes the CSI report(s) and/or DL HARQ-ACK information, with or without SR, in the PUCCH. If the UE would transmit multiple PUCCHs in a slot that include DL HARQ-ACK information, and/or CSI report(s), and/or UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, the UE could expect to be provided a same configuration (of) simultaneousHARQ-ACK-CSI-UEIreport for each of PUCCH formats 2, 3, and 4.

If a UE would transmit multiple PUCCHs in a slot that include HARQ-ACK information, and/or SR, and/or CSI reports and/or UEI report(s), and any PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information in the slot that satisfies the timing conditions as provided in system specification(s) and does not overlap with any other PUCCH or PUSCH in the slot that does not satisfy the timing conditions as those provided in system specifications, the UE could multiplex the HARQ-ACK information, and/or SR, and/or CSI reports, and/or UEI report(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and determine corresponding PUCCH(s) for transmission in the slot according to the following pseudo-code. If the multiple PUCCHs do not include HARQ-ACK information and do not overlap with any PUSCH transmission by the UE in response to a DCI format detection by the UE, the timing conditions provided in the corresponding system specification(s) do not apply.

the UE

Set Q to the set of resources for transmission of corresponding PUCCHs in a single slot without repetitions where

Set C(Q) to the cardinality of Q

Set Q(j, 0)to be the first symbol of resource Q(j) in the slot

Set L(Q(j)) to be the number of symbols of resource Q(j) in the slot

Set j = 0 - index of first resource in set Q

Set o = 0 - counter of overlapped resources

and the resources in set Q are of same priority index, or

o = 0, the resources in set Q are of different priority indexes, and

the UE is provided uci-MuxWithDiffPrio

determine a single resource for multiplexing UCI associated with

set the index of the single resource to j

j = 0 % start from the beginning after reordering unmerged

resources at next step

order(Q) % function that re-orders resources in current set Q

Set C(Q) to the cardinality of Q

end if

end if

end while

The function order(Q) performs the following pseudo-code

while k < C(Q) − 1 % the next two while loops are to re-order the

end if

end while

end while

For each PUCCH resource in the set Q that satisfies the timing conditions provided in the corresponding system specification(s), when applicable,

In one embodiment, UE behaviours/procedures for multiplexing HARQ-ACK and/or CSI and/or SR and/or UEI report(s) in a PUCCH are provided expecting one or more of the followings:

In one example, a UE could be configured to transmit K PUCCHs for respective K SRs in a slot, as determined by a set of schedulingRequestResourceId, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR-SCell, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR2 if the UE provides twoLRRcapability, and a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-LBT-SCell, with SR transmission occasions that could overlap with a transmission of a PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information from the UE in the slot or with a transmission of a PUCCH with CSI report(s) from the UE in the slot or with a transmission of a PUCCH with UEI report(s) from the UE in the slot. In another example, a UE could be configured to transmit K PUCCHs for respective K UEI reports as specified herein in the present disclosure in a slot, as determined by a set of configurations for the UEI reporting as specified herein in the present disclosure, with transmission occasions for UEI report(s) that could overlap with a transmission of a PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information from the UE in the slot or with a transmission of a PUCCH with CSI report(s) from the UE in the slot or with a SR transmission occasion from the UE in the slot.

In one example, if a UE would transmit a PUCCH with positive UEI report value and at most two HARQ-ACK information bits in a resource using PUCCH format 0, the UE could transmit the PUCCH in the resource using PUCCH format 0 in PRB(s) for HARQ-ACK information. The UE could determine a value of m0 and mCS for computing a value of cyclic shift α [4, TS 38.211] [REF1] where m0 is provided by initialCyclicShift of PUCCH-format0, and mCS is determined from the value of one HARQ-ACK information bit or from the values of two HARQ-ACK information bits as in Table 10 and Table 11, respectively. Furthermore, if the UE would transmit negative UEI report value and a PUCCH with at most two HARQ-ACK information bits in a resource using PUCCH format 0, the UE could transmit the PUCCH in the resource using PUCCH format 0 for HARQ-ACK information as specified herein in the present disclosure.

mapping of values for one HARQ-ACK information bit and positive

UEI report value to sequences for PUCCH format 0

mapping of values for two HARQ-ACK information bits and

positive UEI report value to sequences for PUCCH format 0

If a UE would transmit a PUCCH with positive SR and at most two UEI report bits in a resource using PUCCH format 0, the UE could transmit the PUCCH in the resource using PUCCH format 0 in PRB(s) for UEI reporting as described herein in the present disclosure. The UE could determine a value of m0 and mCS for computing a value of cyclic shift α where m0 is provided by initialCyclicShift of PUCCH-format0, and mCS is determined from the value of one UEI report bit or from the values of two UEI report bits as in Table 12 and Table 13, respectively, wherein the UEI report could include at least a trigger/pre-notification message as specified herein in the present disclosure. If the UE would transmit negative SR and a PUCCH with at most two UEI report bits in a resource using PUCCH format 0, the UE could transmit the PUCCH in the resource using PUCCH format 0 for the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure.

mapping of values for one UEI report bit and

positive SR to sequences for PUCCH format 0

UEI report bit value
0
1

mapping of values for two UEI report bits and

positive SR to sequences for PUCCH format 0

In one example, if a UE would transmit SR in a resource using PUCCH format 0 and UEI report bits in a resource using PUCCH format 1 in a slot, the UE could transmit only a PUCCH with the UEI report bits in the resource using PUCCH format 1. In another example, if a UE would transmit UEI report bits in a resource using PUCCH format 0 and HARQ-ACK information bits in a resource using PUCCH format 1 in a slot, the UE could transmit (1) only a PUCCH with the UEI report bits in the resource using PUCCH format 1, or (2) only a PUCCH with the HARQ-ACK information bits in the resource using PUCCH format 1, according to e.g. network's configuration(s)/indication(s) via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), and/or UE's capability reporting.

In one example, if the UE would transmit positive SR in a first resource using PUCCH format 1 and at most two UEI report bits in a second resource using PUCCH format 1 in a slot, the UE could transmit a PUCCH with the UEI report bits in the first resource using PUCCH format 1. If a UE would not transmit a positive SR in a resource using PUCCH format 1 and would transmit at most two UEI report bits in a resource using PUCCH format 1 in a slot, the UE could transmit a PUCCH in the resource using PUCCH format 1 for UEI reporting as specified herein in the present disclosure. In another example, if the UE would transmit positive UEI report value in a first resource using PUCCH format 1 and at most two HARQ-ACK information bits in a second resource using PUCCH format 1 in a slot, the UE could transmit, (1) a PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information bits in the first resource using PUCCH format 1, or (2) a PUCCH with UEI report bits in the first resource using PUCCH format 1, according to e.g. network's configuration(s)/indication(s) via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), and/or UE's capability reporting. If a UE would not transmit a positive UEI report value in a resource using PUCCH format 1 and would transmit at most two HARQ-ACK information bits in a resource using PUCCH format 1 in a slot, the UE could transmit (1) a PUCCH in the resource using PUCCH format 1 for HARQ-ACK information, or (2) a PUCCH in the resource using PUCCH format 1 for UEI reporting, according to e.g. network's configuration(s)/indication(s) via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), and/or UE's capability reporting.

In one example, if a UE would transmit a PUCCH with OUEI UEI report bits in a resource using PUCCH format 2 or PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4 in a slot, as described herein in the present disclosure, ┌ log2(K+1)┐ bits representing a negative or positive SR, in ascending order of the values of schedulingRequestResourceId, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR-SCell, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR2 if the UE provides twoLRRcapability, and a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-LBT-SCell, could be appended to the UEI report bits and the UE could transmit the combined OUCI=OUEI+┌ log2(K+1)┐ UCI bits in a PUCCH using a resource with PUCCH format 2 or PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4 that the UE determines as described herein in the present disclosure. If one of the SRs is a positive LRR, the value of the ┌ log2(K+1)┐ bits indicates the positive LRR. An all-zero value for the ┌ log2(K+1)┐ bits represents a negative SR value across K SRs.

In another example, if a UE would transmit a PUCCH with OACK HARQ-ACK information bits in a resource using PUCCH format 2 or PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4 in a slot, ┌ log2(L+1)┐ bits representing (positive/negative value of) a UEI report could be appended to the HARQ-ACK information bits and the UE could transmit the combined OUCI=OACK+┌ log2(L+1)┐ UCI bits in a PUCCH using a resource with PUCCH format 2 or PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4 that the UE determines as described herein in the present disclosure. For this case/design example, an all-zero value for the ┌ log2(L+1)┐ bits could represent a negative UEI report value across L UEI reports.

In another example, if a UE would transmit a PUCCH with OCSI CSI report bits in a resource using PUCCH format 2 or PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4 in a slot, ┌ log2(L+1)┐ bits representing (positive/negative value of) a UEI report could be prepended to the CSI information bits and the UE could transmit a PUCCH with the combined OUCI=┌ log2(L+1)┐+OCSI UCI bits in a resource using the PUCCH format 2 or PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4 for CSI reporting. For this case/design example, an all-zero value for the ┌ log2(L+1)┐ bits could represent a negative UEI report value across all L UEI reports.

In one example, a UE could determine PUCCH resource(s) for transmitting the corresponding UCI according to one or more of:

For a transmission occasion of a single UEI report as specified herein in the present disclosure, a PUCCH resource could be provided by the network (e.g., the network 130) via a higher layer parameter/signalling pucch-UEI-ResourceList. For a transmission occasion of multiple UEI reports, corresponding PUCCH resources can be provided by the network via a higher layer parameter/signalling multi-UEI-PUCCH-ResourceList. If a UE is provided first and second PUCCH-Config, multi-UEI-PUCCH-ResourceList is provided by the first PUCCH-Config, and PUCCH-ResourceId in pucch-CSI-ResourceList or multi-UEI-PUCCH-ResourceList could indicate a corresponding PUCCH resource in PUCCH-Resource provided by the first PUCCH-Config.

A UE could be configured by maxCodeRate a code rate for multiplexing HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s), and/or CSI report(s) in a PUCCH transmission using PUCCH format 2, PUCCH format 3, or PUCCH format 4. Denote as

In the following

If a UE (e.g., the UE 116) has one or more CSI reports and zero or more HARQ-ACK/SR information bits and/or one or more UEI reports (e.g., each includes at least the trigger/pre-notification message and/or the corresponding content(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure) to transmit in a PUCCH where the HARQ-ACK, if any, is in response to a PDSCH reception without a corresponding PDCCH

If a UE has HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s) and wideband or sub-band CSI reports to transmit and the UE determines a PUCCH resource with PUCCH format 2, or the UE has HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s) and wideband CSI reports to transmit and the UE determines a PUCCH resource with PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4, where

If a UE is provided a first interlace of MInterlace,0PUCCH PRBs by interlace0 in InterlaceAllocation, the UE has HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure and wideband or sub-band CSI reports to transmit, and the UE determines a PUCCH resource with PUCCH format 2, or the UE has HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s) and wideband CSI reports to transmit and the UE determines a PUCCH resource with PUCCH format 3, where

If a UE has HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s) and sub-band CSI reports to transmit and the UE determines a PUCCH resource with PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4, where

If a UE is provided a first interlace of MInterlace,0PUCCH PRBs by interlace0 in InterlaceAllocation, the UE has HARQ-ACK, UEI report(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure, SR and sub-band CSI reports to transmit, and the UE determines a PUCCH resource with PUCCH format 3, where

Offset values are defined for a UE to determine a number of resources for multiplexing UE-initiated (UEI) report(s) in a PUSCH. The offset values are signalled to a UE either by a DCI format scheduling the PUSCH transmission or by higher layers.

mapping of beta_offset values for UEI report(s), CG-UCI,

or UTO-UCI and the index signaled by higher layers

mapping of four beta_offset indicator values to offset indexes

‘00’
1st offset index provided by higher layers

‘01’
2nd offset index provided by higher layers

‘10’
3rd offset index provided by higher layers

‘11’
4th offset index provided by higher layers

mapping of two beta_offset indicator values to offset indexes

‘0’
1st offset index provided by higher layers

‘1’
2nd offset index provided by higher layers

If a DCI format that does not include a beta_offset indicator field schedules the PUSCH transmission from the UE and the UE is provided betaOffsets=‘semiStatic’ or betaOffsetsDCI-0-2=‘semiStaticDCI-0-2’, the UE applies the βoffsetUEI value that is provided by betaOffsets=‘semiStatic’ for DCI formats 0_0/0_1 or by betaOffsetsDCI-0-2=‘semiStaticDCI-0-2’ for DCI format 0_2 for the corresponding UEI reports. If the PUSCH transmission has priority 0 or priority 1 and the UE is configured by uci-MuxWithDiffPrio to multiplex the UEI report(s) of priority 1 or priority 0, respectively, and if the UE multiplexes the UEI report(s) of priority 1 or priority 0, the UE applies corresponding βoffsetUEI,1 or βoffsetUEI,2 provided by betaOffsetsCrossPri1=‘semiStatic’ for DCI formats 0_0/0_1, by betaOffsetsCrossPri1DCI-0-2=‘semiStatic’ for DCI format 0_2, and by betaOffsetsCrossPri1DCI-0-3=‘semiStatic’ for DCI format 0_3, or by betaOffsetsCrossPri0=‘semiStatic’ for DCI format 0_0/0_1, by betaOffsetsCrossPri0DCI-0-2=‘semiStatic’ for DCI format 0_2, and by betaOffsetsCrossPri0DCI-0-3=‘semiStatic’ for DCI format 0_3, respectively.

If the PUSCH transmission is with a configured grant and the UE is provided CG-UCI-OnPUSCH=‘semiStatic’, the UE applies the βoffsetUEI value that is provided by CG-UCI-OnPUSCH=‘semiStatic’ for the corresponding UEI report(s). If the PUSCH transmission has priority 0 or priority 1 and the UE is configured by uci-MuxWithDiffPrio to multiplex the UEI report(s) of priority 1 or priority 0, respectively, and if the UE multiplexes the UEI report(s) of priority 1 or priority 0, the UE applies corresponding βoffsetUEI,1 or βoffsetUEI,2 provided by cg-betaOffsetsCrossPri1=‘semiStatic’ or cg-betaOffsetsCrossPri0=‘semiStatic’, respectively.

If the PUSCH transmission is scheduled by DCI format 0_0 and the UE is provided betaOffsets=‘dynamic’, the UE applies the βoffsetUEI value that is determined from the first value of betaOffsets=‘dynamic’. If the UE is configured by uci-MuxWithDiffPrio to multiplex the UE-initiated (UEI) report(s) of priority 1, the UE applies corresponding βoffsetUEI,1 provided by the first value of betaOffsetsCrossPri1=‘dynamic’.

If the PUSCH transmission is a configured grant Type 2 PUSCH and the UE is provided CG-UCI-OnPUSCH=‘dynamic’, the UE (e.g., the UE 116) applies the βoffsetUEI value that is determined from the first value of CG-UCI-OnPUSCH=‘dynamic’. If the PUSCH transmission has priority 0 or priority 1 and the UE is configured by uci-MuxWithDiffPrio to multiplex the UEI report(s) of priority 1 or priority 0, respectively, and if the UE multiplexes the UEI report(s) of priority 1 or priority 0, the UE applies corresponding βoffsetUEI,1 or βoffsetUEI,0 provided by the first value of cg-betaOffsetsCrossPri1=‘dynamic’ or cg-betaOffsetsCrossPri0=‘dynamic’, respectively.

UEI report(s) offsets βoffsetUEI are configured to values according to Table 14 provided in the present disclosure. The betaOffsetUEI-Index1, betaOffsetUEI-Index2, and betaOffsetUEI-Index3 respectively provide indexes Ioffset,0UEI, Ioffset,1UEI, and Ioffset,2UEI for the UE to use if the UE multiplexes up to 2 UEI report(s) bits, more than 2 and up to 11 UEI report(s) bits, and more than 11 bits in the PUSCH, respectively.

Offsets βoffsetUEI,0 for multiplexing UEI report(s) with priority 0 in a PUSCH transmission with priority 1 are configured to values according to Table 14. The first, second and third values provided by any of betaOffsetsCrossPri0, betaOffsetsCrossPri0DCI-0-2, betaOffsetsCrossPri1DCI-0-3, or cg-betaOffsetsCrossPri0 respectively provide indexes Ioffset,0UEI,0, Ioffset,1UEI,0, and Ioffset,2UEI,0 for the UE to use if the UE multiplexes up to 2 bits, more than 2 and up to 11 bits, and more than 11 bits of UEI report(s) with priority 0 in the PUSCH transmission with priority 1, respectively.

Offsets βoffsetUEI,1 for multiplexing UEI report(s) with priority 1 in a PUSCH transmission with priority 0 are configured to values according to Table 14. The first, second and third values provided by any of betaOffsetsCrossPri1, betaOffsetsCrossPri1DCI-0-2, or cg-betaOffsetsCrossPri1 respectively provide indexes Ioffset,0UEI,1, Ioffset,1UEI,1, and Ioffset,2UEI,1 for the UE to use if the UE multiplexes up to 2 bits, more than 2 and up to 11 bits, and more than 11 bits of UEI report(s) with priority 1 in the PUSCH transmission with priority 0, respectively.

If a DCI format that includes a beta_offset indicator field with one bit or two bits, as configured by UCI-OnPUSCH for DCI format 0_1 or UCI-OnPUSCH-DCI-0-2 for DCI format 0_2 or UCI-OnPUSCH-DCI-0-3, schedules the PUSCH transmission from the UE, the UE is provided by each of {betaOffsetUEI-Index1, betaOffsetUEI-Index2, betaOffsetUEI-Index3}, the {first, second, third} values provided by betaOffsetsCrossPri0, or betaOffsetsCrossPri0DCI-0-2, or betaOffsetsCrossPri0DCI-0-3, and the {first, second, third} values provided by betaOffsetsCrossPri1, or betaOffsetsCrossPri1DCI-0-2, or betaOffsetsCrossPri0DCI-0-3, a set of two or four IoffsetUEI, IoffsetUEI,0, and IoffsetUEI,1 indexes from Table 14 for multiplexing UEI report(s) including e.g. the trigger/pre-notification message as specified herein in the present disclosure in the PUSCH transmission. The beta_offset indicator field indicates a IoffsetUEI value and/or a IoffsetUEI,0 value, and/or a IoffsetUEI,1 value from the respective sets of values, with the mapping defined in Table 15 and in Table 16 provided herein in the present disclosure. If the PUSCH transmission has priority 0 or priority 1, and the UE is provided uci-MuxWithDiffPrio, and the UE multiplexes the UEI report(s) of priority 1 or priority 0 in the PUSCH, the UE applies the {first, second, third} values provided by betaOffsetsCrossPri1=‘dynamic’ for DCI format 0_1, betaOffsetsCrossPri1DCI-0-2=‘dynamic’ for DCI format 0_2, or betaOffsetsCrossPri1DCI-0-3=‘dynamic’ for DCI format 0_3, or applies the {first, second, third} values provided by betaOffsetsCrossPri0=‘dynamic’ for DCI format 0_1, betaOffsetsCrossPri0DCI-0-2=‘dynamic’ for DCI format 0_2, or betaOffsetsCrossPri0DCI-0-3=‘dynamic’ for DCI format 0_3.

For a PUSCH transmission that is configured by a ConfiguredGrantConfig and includes CG-UCI, the UE multiplexes the CG-UCI in the PUSCH transmission using a IoffsetCG-UCI value provided by betaOffsetCG-UCI with the mapping defined in Table 14. The CG-UCI has same priority value as the PUSCH. If the UE is provided cg-UCI-Multiplexing and multiplexes UEI report(s) of same priority value as the CG-UCI in the PUSCH transmission, the UE jointly encodes the UEI report(s) and the CG-UCI and determines a number of resources for multiplexing the combined information in a PUSCH using βoffsetUEI which provides indexes Ioffset,1UEI and Ioffset,2UEI for the UE to use if the UE multiplexes up to 11, and more than 11 combined information bits, respectively.

For a PUSCH transmission that is configured by a ConfiguredGrantConfig and includes UTO-UCI, the UE multiplexes the UTO-UCI in the PUSCH transmission using a IoffsetUTO-UCI value provided by betaOffsetUTO-UCI with the mapping defined in Table 14. The UTO-UCI has same priority value as the PUSCH. If the UE multiplexes UEI report(s) of same priority value as the UTO-UCI in the PUSCH transmission, the UE jointly encodes the corresponding UEI report(s) and the UTO-UCI and determines a number of resources for multiplexing the combined information in the PUSCH using βoffsetUEI which provides indexes Ioffset,1UEI and Ioffset,2UEI for the UE to use if the UE multiplexes up to 11, and more than 11 combined information bits, respectively.

In (up to Rel.17) NR specification, the most resource-efficient reporting mechanism for a content (e.g. beam, CSI etc., or in general different report quantities) is aperiodic (in conjunction with aperiodic CSI-RS). On the other hand, with a well-chosen periodicity, periodic reporting (followed by semi-persistent) results in the lowest latency at the expense of resources. Although aperiodic reporting seems preferred from the overall operational perspective, in a few relevant scenarios the NW/gNB lacks knowledge on the DL channel condition—or, in other words, the UE knows the DL channel condition better. In this case, it is clearly beneficial if the UE can initiate its own aperiodic reporting for a content (e.g. beam, CSI etc.) or trigger a beam switching for a condition or event. For instance, when the UE is configured only with aperiodic beam reporting and the channel condition is worsened to the point of beam failure, the loss of link due to beam failure can be avoided if the UE can transmit an aperiodic beam report without having to wait for a beam report request/trigger from the NW/gNB or trigger a new beam update without having to wait for a beam change or update indication from the NW/gNB. Likewise, when the UE is configured only with aperiodic CSI reporting and the channel condition is worsened due to UE speed/movement, the performance degradation due to faster link quality degradation can be avoided if the UE can transmit an aperiodic CSI report without having to wait for a CSI request/trigger from the NW/gNB or trigger a new beam update without having to wait for a beam change or update indication from the NW/gNB. Such UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching for a content can be enabled for other types of report quantities (different from common beam or CSI reports) and application scenarios.

Although UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching and/or beam activation/deactivation can be beneficial, efficient designs are needed to ensure that the latency is reduced and, at the same time, error events can be minimized. Therefore, there is a need for efficient designs for UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching and/or beam activation/deactivation for a content that can offer good trade-off between latency and reliability, in particular, when the UE-initiated beam management framework can include multiple report types (or report quantities), or/and multiple event types when a report types can be associated with an event (e.g. for beam report, the event can be beam failure, and for CSI, the event can be user throughput degradation or increasing retransmission rate).

The present disclosure provides various detailed design examples on the UE-initiated beam management framework including UE-initiated/triggered beam/CSI reporting and/or UE-initiated/triggered beam switching and/or UE-initiated/triggered beam activation/deactivation/sub-selection. To better support/enable the UE-initiated and the event-based beam operations, this disclosure presents example embodiments on means of transmitting the UE-initiated report(s) along with its indicator(s) via various uplink channels.

In one example, when there is no content associated with a pre-notification (PN) message/trigger, i.e., the report-type is (A), the trigger/pre-notification message could simply provide a ‘hint/alarm/cue’ to the target entity (or purpose of the PN message/trigger as specified herein in the present disclosure) according to at least one of the following examples.

In the present disclosure, the UE could determine one or more purposes of the PN message/trigger and send the corresponding PN message(s)/trigger(s) to the network (e.g., the network 130) according to one or more of:

In one embodiment, a UE could send to the network one or more indicators/triggers or report quantities (e.g., in part of the content(s) in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report) each comprising/including/containing or corresponding to one or more of:

Throughout the present disclosure, an index could correspond to the “first”, the “second”, and etc. Furthermore, throughout the present disclosure, “trigger” can also be referred to as “initiate” or “indicate”; i.e., they can be used/applied to various design examples throughout the present disclosure interchangeably. For instance, the UE could send to the network an indicator to trigger a TCI state change/update/switch for one or more channels or signals. The indicator(s)/trigger(s) described herein in the present disclosure could correspond to (or could be in part of) the trigger/pre-notification (PN) message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report, or could correspond to (or could be in part of) the (corresponding) content in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report.

In one example, when a UE could or is able to or is configured to send to the network a UEI report comprising at least a pre-notification message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or the (corresponding) content—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, the UE could send to the network a pre-notification (PN) message/trigger and/or the corresponding content(s) according to one or more of:

In one example, when a UE could or is able to or is configured to send to the network a UEI report comprising at least a pre-notification message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or the (corresponding) content—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, the UE could send to the network a pre-notification (PN) message/trigger and the corresponding content(s) same via/in a report/reporting instance/transmission/transmission occasion (e.g., via/in a same set of uplink resources including PUCCH(s), PUSCH(s), MAC CE(s), PRACH(s) and etc.) or different reports/reporting instances/transmissions/transmission occasions (e.g., via/in different sets of uplink resources including PUCCH(s), PUSCH(s), MAC CE(s), PRACH(s) and etc.) according to one or more of:

The indicator(s)/trigger(s) described herein in the present disclosure could correspond to (or could be in part of) the trigger/pre-notification (PN) message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report, or could correspond to (or could be in part of) the (corresponding) content in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report. Furthermore, the signaling medium/container for reporting a UE-initiated (UEI) report comprising at least the indicator(s)/trigger(s) or the report quantities or the pre-notification message/trigger or the corresponding content(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure (or equivalently, the trigger/pre-notification message in a (report-)type (A) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report, or part of the (corresponding) content in a (report-)type (B) based report or a (report-)type (C) based report) could be PUCCH, PUSCH, PRACH, MAC CE, UCI and etc.

In one operation mode (Mode A), upon detection and/or declaration of one or more of the events (e.g., the fourth event) as specified or defined herein in the present disclosure, a/the UE could transmit or send to the network a UEI (beam) report, wherein the UEI report(s) could contain, provide, include or comprise at least a pre-notification (PN) message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or the (corresponding) UEI report content(s) or report quantity(s)—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure. For this case/setting,

The (downlink/uplink) DCI (in Step-2) in response to the transmission of the PN message/trigger in Step-1 could be in various DCI formats including (uplink) DCI format(s) including DCI format(s) 0_0, 0_1, 0_2 and/or 0_3, (downlink) DCI format(s) including DCI format(s) 1_0, 1_1, 1_2 and/or 1_3, group common DCI format(s) 2_1, 2_2, 2_3 and/or 2_4 for a group of UEs, and/or etc. When/if a group common DCI (e.g., of DCI format(s) 2_1, 2_2, 2_3 and/or 2_4) is provided or indicated in response to the PN message/trigger transmission in Step-1 via/in the first UL channel:

In one operation mode (Mode B), upon detection and/or declaration of one or more of the events (e.g., the fourth event) as specified or defined herein in the present disclosure, a/the UE could transmit or send to the network a UEI (beam) report, wherein the UEI report(s) could contain, provide, include or comprise at least a pre-notification (PN) message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or the (corresponding) UEI report content(s) or report quantity(s)—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure. For this case/setting,

In one operation mode (Mode C), upon detection and/or declaration of one or more of the events (e.g., the fourth event) as specified or defined herein in the present disclosure, a/the UE could transmit or send to the network a UEI (beam) report, wherein the UEI report(s) could contain, provide, include or comprise at least a pre-notification (PN) message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or the (corresponding) UEI report content(s) or report quantity(s)—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure. For this case/setting,

Supporting Mode A (and/or Mode B and/or Mode C) and therefore the corresponding operations could be a basic UE feature such that when/if a UE supports the UE-initiated/event-driven beam reporting/management (or for a UE supporting the UE-initiated/event-driven beam reporting/management), the UE could or would need to support at least Mode A (and/or Mode B and/or Mode C) and therefore the corresponding operations. Supporting Mode B (and/or Mode A and/or Mode C) and therefore the corresponding operations could be optional for a UE supporting the UE-initiated/event-driven beam reporting/management; in this case, the UE could indicate to the network in their capability signaling(s) one or more of:

That is, a UE's capability or capability signaling could comprise one or more components each indicating support of:

According to those specified/defined herein in the present disclosure, a UEI report (or a first UEI report) could correspond to a PN message/trigger transmitted/sent via the first UL channel that comprises the one or more (periodic) PUCCH resources (in Mode A, Mode B and/or Mode C); or, a UEI report (or a first UEI report) could correspond to or could be referred to as the first UL channel, and therefore, the corresponding one or more (periodic) PUCCH resources (in Mode A, Mode B and/or Mode C) comprised therein.

According to those specified/defined herein in the present disclosure, a UEI report (or a second UEI report) could correspond to UEI report content(s)/quantity(s) as specified/defined herein in the present disclosure transmitted/sent via the second UL channel that comprises the one or more periodic/semi-persistent PUCCH resources (e.g., pre-configured by the network for sending the UEI report content(s)/quantity(s)) and/or the one or more PUSCH resources (e.g., pre-configured by the network for sending the UEI report content(s)/quantity(s) including CG PUSCH of Type1 and/or Type2, dynamically granted/scheduled by the network for sending the UEI report content(s)/quantity(s) including DG PUSCH) in Mode A, Mode B and/or Mode C; or, a UEI report (or a second UEI report) could correspond to or could be referred to as the second UL channel, and therefore, the corresponding one or more periodic/semi-persistent PUCCH resources (e.g., pre-configured by the network for sending the UEI report content(s)/quantity(s)) and/or the one or more PUSCH resources (e.g., pre-configured by the network for sending the UEI report content(s)/quantity(s) including CG PUSCH of Type1 and/or Type2, dynamically granted/scheduled by the network for sending the UEI report content(s)/quantity(s) including DG PUSCH) in Mode A, Mode B and/or Mode C comprised therein.

In PHY prioritization/multiplexing handling, in one example, a UEI report or a first UEI report or a second UEI report or a PN message/trigger transmitted/sent via the first PUCCH channel could be of a higher priority than a SR and/or a LRR. That is, the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to the UEI report or the first UEI report or the second UEI report or the PN message/trigger transmitted/sent via the first PUCCH channel could be higher (or lower) than the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to a SR and/or the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to a LRR.

In PHY prioritization/multiplexing handling, in another example, a UEI report or a first UEI report or a second UEI report or a PN message/trigger transmitted/sent via the first PUCCH channel could be of a lower priority than a SR and/or a LRR. That is, the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to the UEI report or the first UEI report or the second UEI report or the PN message/trigger transmitted/sent via the first PUCCH channel could be lower (or higher) than the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to a SR and/or the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to a LRR.

In PHY prioritization/multiplexing handling, in another example, a UEI report or a first UEI report or a second UEI report or a PN message/trigger transmitted/sent via the first PUCCH channel could be of a higher priority than a SR, and of a lower priority than a LRR. That is, the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to the UEI report or the first UEI report or the second UEI report or the PN message/trigger transmitted/sent via the first PUCCH channel could be higher (or lower) than the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to a SR, and lower (or higher) than the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to a LRR.

According to those specified/defined herein in the present disclosure, when a first PUCCH channel/resource that carries or conveys a PN message/trigger (or a first UEI report) as specified/defined herein in the present disclosure would overlap or collide with a second PUCCH channel/resource in time, wherein:

Furthermore, in PHY prioritization/multiplexing handling, a UEI report or a second UEI report or a first UEI report or UEI report content(s)/quantity(s) as specified/defined herein in the present disclosure transmitted/sent via the second PUSCH resource/channel could be the same as (e.g., of a same priority as) a CSI report; or, a UEI report or a second UEI report or a first UEI report or UEI report content(s)/quantity(s) as specified/defined herein in the present disclosure transmitted/sent via the second PUSCH resource/channel could be handled in a similar or same manner to or as a CSI report. That is, the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to the UEI report or the second UEI report or the first UEI report or the UEI report content(s)/quantity(s) as specified/defined herein in the present disclosure transmitted/sent via the second PUSCH resource/channel could have the same value as or could be the same as/identical to the Phy-PriorityIndex associated to a CSI report.

Additionally, when a first PUCCH channel/resource that carries or conveys a PN message/trigger (or a first UEI report) as specified/defined herein in the present disclosure would overlap or collide with a PUSCH channel/resource in time,

The UE could be provided or indicated or configured by the network, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s) based on or subject/according to a corresponding UE's capability or capability signaling, whether (or not) the UE could piggyback the PN message/trigger (or equivalently the first UEI report), and therefore, the number of UCI bits used to represent the PN message/trigger (e.g., 1 bit or 2 bits), in/into/on the PUSCH channel/resource (e.g., when/if the first PUCCH resource/channel that could carry or convey the PN message/trigger would overlap or collide with the PUSCH channel/resource in time) according to or following those specified herein in the present disclosure.

According to or following those specified herein in the present disclosure, when/if:

In one embodiment, (1) PUSCH transmission(s) can be dynamically scheduled by an UL grant in a DCI, and/or (2) PUSCH transmission(s) can be (dynamically) triggered, initiated or requested by the UE via transmitting/sending their UEI report(s)—e.g., via a pre-notification message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or via the (corresponding) content—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or (3) PUSCH transmission(s) can be (dynamically) triggered, initiated or requested by the UE via transmitting/sending their UEI report(s)—e.g., via a pre-notification message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or via the (corresponding) content—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure and dynamically scheduled by an UL grant in a DCI associated/addressed to the UEI report(s). In one example, the UE could first send/transmit to the network the UEI report(s), e.g., the trigger/pre-notification message of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, to trigger, initiate or request the network to schedule PUSCH transmission(s). The UE (e.g., the UE 116) could expect to receive, within a time window starting from the last symbol/slot of the transmission of the UEI report(s), an UL grant in a DCI to schedule the PUSCH transmission(s), wherein the UL grant or the corresponding DCI could be associated/addressed to the UEI report(s) and/or the trigger/pre-notification message conveyed therein. For this case, the time window could be determined according to: (i) fixed rule(s)/value(s) in system specification(s), (ii) network's configuration(s)/indication(s), e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), and/or (iii) UE's autonomous determination/selection, which could be further sent to the network via/in part of the UEI report(s), beam/CSI report(s) and/or etc. When/if the UE does not receive, within the time window as specified/described herein, an UL grant in a DCI associated/addressed to the UEI report(s) that schedules the PUSCH transmission(s), the UE could re-send or re-transmit the UEI report(s) including at least the trigger/pre-notification message as described/specified herein in the present disclosure.

In one embodiment, the PUSCH transmission(s) can correspond to a configured grant (CG) Type-1 or Type-2. The CG Type-1 PUSCH transmission(s) could be semi-statically configured to operate upon the reception of higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant and/or ueInitiatedReporting, wherein the higher layer parameter ueInitiatedReporting (e.g., when/if set to ‘enabled’) could provide/indicate/configure to the UE that the corresponding CG Type-1 PUSCH transmission(s) is for transmitting the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, without the detection of an UL grant in a DCI. The configured grant Type-2 PUSCH transmission could be (1) semi-persistently scheduled by an UL grant in a valid activation DCI after the reception of higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including ueInitiatedReporting, wherein the higher layer parameter ueInitiatedReporting (e.g., when/if set to ‘enabled’) could provide/indicate/configure to the UE that the corresponding CG Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) is for transmitting the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, but not including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant, (2) (semi-persistently) triggered, initiated or requested by the UE via transmitting/sending their UEI report(s)—e.g., via a pre-notification message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or via the (corresponding) content—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure after the reception of higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including ueInitiatedReporting, wherein the higher layer parameter ueInitiatedReporting (e.g., when/if set to ‘enabled’) could provide/indicate/configure to the UE that the corresponding CG Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) is for transmitting the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, but not including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant, and/or (3) (semi-persistently) triggered, initiated or requested by the UE via transmitting/sending their UEI report(s)—e.g., via a pre-notification message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or via the (corresponding) content—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure and semi-persistently scheduled by an UL grant in a valid activation DCI after the reception of higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including ueInitiatedReporting, wherein the higher layer parameter ueInitiatedReporting (e.g., when/if set to ‘enabled’) could provide/indicate/configure to the UE that the corresponding CG Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) is for transmitting the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, but not including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant. In one example, the UE could first send/transmit to the network the UEI report(s), e.g., the trigger/pre-notification message of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, to trigger, initiate or request the network to (semi-persistently) schedule CG Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s). The UE could expect to receive, within a time window starting from the last symbol/slot of the transmission of the UEI report(s), an UL grant in a valid activation DCI to semi-persistently schedule the PUSCH transmission(s) after the reception of higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including ueInitiatedReporting, wherein the higher layer parameter ueInitiatedReporting (e.g., when/if set to ‘enabled’) could provide/indicate/configure to the UE that the corresponding CG Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) is for transmitting the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, but not including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant, and the UL grant or the corresponding valid activation DCI could be associated/addressed to the UEI report(s) and/or the trigger/pre-notification message conveyed therein. For this case, the time window could be determined according to: (i) fixed rule(s)/value(s) in system specification(s), (ii) network's configuration(s)/indication(s), e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), and/or (iii) UE's autonomous determination/selection, which could be further sent to the network via/in part of the UEI report(s), beam/CSI report(s) and/or etc. When/if the UE does not receive, within the time window as specified/described herein, an UL grant in a valid activation DCI associated/addressed to the UEI report(s) that schedules the CG Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) after the reception of higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including ueInitiatedReporting, wherein the higher layer parameter ueInitiatedReporting (e.g., when/if set to ‘enabled’) could provide/indicate/configure to the UE that the corresponding CG Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) is for transmitting the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, but not including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant, the UE could re-send or re-transmit the UEI report(s) including at least the trigger/pre-notification message as described/specified herein in the present disclosure.

For PUSCH transmission(s) as described/specified herein in the present disclosure, (1) a UE could upon detection of a PDCCH with a configured DCI format 0_0, 0_1 or 0_2 transmit the corresponding PUSCH(s) as indicated by that DCI unless the UE does not generate a transport block, (2) a UE could upon transmission of a UEI report (e.g., within a time window), e.g., the trigger/pre-notification message of (report-)type (A) or (report-) type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure transmit the corresponding PUSCH(s) unless the UE does not generate a transport block, wherein the time window could be determined from the last symbol/block of the transmission of the UEI report, and according to: (i) fixed rule(s)/value(s) in system specification(s), (ii) network's configuration(s)/indication(s), e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), and/or (iii) UE's autonomous determination/selection, which could be further sent to the network via/in part of the UEI report(s), beam/CSI report(s) and/or etc., and/or (3) a UE could upon detection of a PDCCH with a configured DCI format 0_0, 0_1 or 0_2 that is associated/addressed to a previously sent UEI report according to those specified herein in the present disclosure transmit the corresponding PUSCH(s) as indicated by that DCI unless the UE does not generate a transport block. The UE could maintain or track a counter and a timer associated to a UEI report, e.g., a pre-notification message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or the (corresponding) content—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and/or a corresponding UEI report ID/index. For example,

For this case/design example, the first UEI report could also be referred to/represented as/by the first UEI report ID/index.

A UE could receive from the network (e.g., the network 130), in higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant and/or ueInitiatedReporting that configures/provides CG Type-1/Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s), one or more sets of resource allocation parameters or configurations with each set comprising one or more candidate resource allocation parameters or configurations for the corresponding CG Type-1/Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s), wherein the higher layer parameter ueInitiatedReporting (e.g., when/if set to ‘enabled’) could provide/indicate/configure to the UE that the corresponding CG Type-1/Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) is for transmitting the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, without or with the detection of an UL grant in a DCI. A set of one or more, e.g., K≥1, candidate resource allocation parameters or configurations could include or comprise or contain or provide or correspond to at least:

Each of the one or more, e.g., K≥1, candidate resource allocation parameters or configurations in a set could also correspond to or provide number of DM-RS code-division multiplexing (CDM) groups, DM-RS ports, SRS resource indication and DM-RS sequence initialization, wherein the bit value for DM-RS sequence initialization, precoding information and number of layers, SRS resource indicator could be provided by the corresponding higher layer parameters antennaPort, dmrs-SeqInitialization, precodingAndNumberOfLayers, and srs-ResourceIndicator, respectively—or equivalently, a set of one or more, e.g., K≥1, candidate resource allocation parameters or configurations could also include or comprise or contain or provide or correspond to one or more, e.g., K≥1, candidate higher layer parameters antennaPort's, and/or one or more, e.g., K≥1, candidate higher layer parameters dmrs-SeqInitialization's, and/or one or more, e.g., K≥1, candidate higher layer parameters precodingAndNumberOfLayers's, and/or one or more, e.g., K≥1, candidate higher layer parameters srs-ResourceIndicator's.

For a set of one or more, e.g., K≥1, candidate resource allocation parameters or configurations as specified/described herein in the present disclosure provided/configured in a higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant and/or ueInitiatedReporting that configures/provides CG Type-1/Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s)—a CG PUSCH resource as described herein in the present disclosure could also be referred to/represented as/by or correspond to a CG Type-1/Type-2 PUSCH resource or transmission:

For the design examples specified/described herein in the present disclosure,

The described/specified design examples related to the determination of the CG PUSCH configuration(s)/resource(s) to use for transmitting the UEI report(s) throughput the present disclosure are applicable for both Type-1 and Type-2 CG PUSCH transmissions.

In one embodiment, a UE could transmit a first UEI report, wherein the first UEI report could comprise at least a pre-notification (PN) message/trigger—e.g., of (report-)type (A) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and a second UEI report, wherein the second UEI report could comprise at least the content(s)—e.g., of (report-)type (B) or (report-)type (C) as specified herein in the present disclosure-comprising one or more of the indicators/triggers or the report quantities as specified herein in the present disclosure, corresponding/associated/linked to the first UEI report according to those specified herein in the present disclosure. After the UE has sent to the network the first UEI report (or the PN message in the first UEI report), the UE could expect to be provided/configured/indicated by the network within a time window, e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s)—e.g., via/in higher layer parameter of configuredGrantConfig including rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant and/or ueInitiatedReporting that configures/provides CG Type-1/Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) wherein the higher layer parameter ueInitiatedReporting (e.g., when/if set to ‘enabled’) could provide/indicate/configure to the UE that the corresponding CG Type-1/Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) is for transmitting the UEI report(s) according to those specified herein in the present disclosure, without or with the detection of an UL grant in a DCI—and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), one or more sets of resource allocation parameters or configurations with each set comprising one or more candidate resource allocation parameters or configurations for the corresponding CG Type-1/Type-2 PUSCH transmission(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure. The UE could then determine/identify the CG PUSCH resource(s) for transmitting at least the second UEI report. The time window could be determined according to: (i) fixed rule(s)/value(s) in system specification(s), (ii) network's configuration(s)/indication(s), e.g., via higher layer RRC signaling(s)/parameter(s) and/or MAC CE command(s) and/or dynamic DCI based L1 signaling(s), and/or (iii) UE's autonomous determination/selection, which could be further sent to the network (e.g., the network 130) via/in part of the UEI report(s), beam/CSI report(s) and/or etc.

To determine a modulation order, target code rate, redundancy version and transport block size for the physical uplink shared channel used for transmitting the UEI report(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure, the UE could first

FIG. 7 illustrates an example method 700 performed by a UE in a wireless communication system according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The method 700 of FIG. 7 can be performed by any of the UEs 111-116 of FIG. 1, such as the UE 116 of FIG. 3, and a corresponding method can be performed by any of the BSs 101-103 of FIG. 1, such as BS 102 of FIG. 2. The method 700 is for illustration only and other embodiments can be used without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

The method 700 begins with the UE receiving first information related to a PUCCH for transmission of an indicator to indicate transmission of a beam report (710) and receives second information related to a PUSCH for transmission of the beam report (720).

The UE then determines a PUCCH resource based on the first information (730) and determines a PUSCH resource based on the indicator or the determined PUCCH resource and the second information (740). In various embodiments, the second information includes a set of candidate resource configurations, and the indicator indicates a selection of a resource configuration from the set of candidate resource configurations. In various embodiments, the second information includes a resource configuration for one or more PUSCH resources each associated with the PUCCH resource, and the PUSCH resource corresponds to one of the one or more PUSCH resources associated with the PUCCH resource.

The UE then transmits the indicator via the PUCCH resource (750) and transmits the beam report via the PUSCH resource (760). In various embodiments, when the PUCCH resource overlaps with a resource for a PUCCH associated with a SR, the UE multiplexes the SR and the indicator in the PUCCH resource based on a priority of the SR and a priority of the beam report. In various embodiments, when the PUCCH resource overlaps with a resource for a PUSCH carrying HARQ-ACK information bits, the UE appends the indicator to the HARQ-ACK information bits.

In various embodiments, the first information indicates at least one of a priority index, a periodicity, an offset, a maximum number of transmissions, and a transmission timer. The UE, after transmission of the indicator a first time, starts the transmission timer. After transmission of the indicator a second time, the UE increments a counter by one. Then, when the counter reaches the maximum number of transmissions before the transmission timer expires or when the transmission timer expires, the UE terminates transmission of the indicator.