Patent Publication Number: US-2021167899-A1

Title: Hybrid automatic repeat request (harq) techniques for non-terrestrial networks

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/652,115, filed Apr. 3, 2018, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein. 
    
    
     BACKGROUND 
     In terrestrial networks such as New Radio (NR), Long Term Evolution (LTE), or Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), the propagation delay is negligible due to the fact that the distance that a radio frequency (RF) signal has to traverse between a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) and a base station (BS) is at most a few tens of kilometers. For example, the propagation delays for LTE systems can be approximately nanoseconds or microseconds depending on the distance. Typically, the maximum number of Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) retransmissions (including the original transmission) is set at four for LTE systems, which means that in the worst case, the delay for a successful decode can be tolerated by most applications of interest. However, in non-terrestrial networks (NTNs), the propagation delay is not negligible. Typical propagation delays for Geostationary Equatorial Orbit (GEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) systems can be up to 135 ms, 45 ms, and 10 ms, respectively. In case of using HARQ for NTNs, the delay taking into account the maximum number of retransmissions may become prohibitively large for most applications. Furthermore, due to the large propagation delay, channel state information (CSI), irrespective of how frequent the channel is estimated and fed back, may become stale by the time the transmitter receives the feedback from the receiver. In case of HARQ, these issues may lead to increase in latencies for decoding a transport block (TB). Thus, methods and apparatuses that optimize resource usage for HARQ stop-and-wait procedure over an NTN link are needed. 
     SUMMARY 
     Methods and apparatuses are described herein for providing Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) techniques for non-terrestrial networks. For example, a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) may transmit, to a base station (BS), uplink (UL) feedback that includes configuration information for one or more redundancy versions (RVs) and one or more cross redundancy versions (cRVs). The configuration information may include a bitmap indicating at least one of a number of RVs per a bundle, an RV index, a code block group (CBG) index, transmission time interval (TTI) mapping information, or cRV signaling information indicating one or moreTBs across which at least one cRV is to be generated. The WTRU may receive, from the BS, first downlink control information (DCI) indicating that one or more first RVs are configured for a first transport block (TB). The WTRU may receive, from the BS, the one or more first RVs associated with a first TB and decode, based on the one or more first RVs, the first TB. If of the first TB using the one or more first RVs is unsuccessfully decoded, the WTRU may generate a first estimated TB that includes estimated information bits for the first TB. The WTRU may receive, from the BS, second DCI indicating that one or more second RVs and at least one cRV are configured for the second TB. The WTRU may receive, from the BS, the one or more second RVs associated with a second TB and the at least one cRV associated with the first TB and second TB. The at least one cRV may include a plurality of information and/or parity bits generated across the first TB and second TB. The WTRU may then decode, based on the one or more second RVs, the second TB. If the second TB using the one or more second RVs is unsuccessfully decoded, the WTRU may generate a second estimated TB that includes estimated information bits for the second TB. If at least one of the first TB or the second TB is unsuccessfully decoded, the WTRU may decode the first TB and second TB jointly based on the at least one cRV. Specifically, if at least one of the first estimated TB or the second estimated TB is generated, the WTRU may perform at least one of: (1) concatenating the first estimated TB and the second TB; (2) concatenating the first TB and the second estimated TB; or (3) concatenating the first estimated TB and the second estimated TB, in order to generate a concatenated TB. Once the concatenated TB is generated, the WTRU may decode the concatenated TB based on the at least one cRV. If the concatenated TB is successfully decoded, the WTRU may transmit positive HARQ feedback to the BS. If the concatenated TB is unsuccessfully decoded, the WTRU may transmit negative HARQ feedback to the BS. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       A more detailed understanding may be had from the following description, given by way of example in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein: 
         FIG. 1A  is a system diagram illustrating an example communications system in which one or more disclosed embodiments may be implemented; 
         FIG. 1B  is a system diagram illustrating an example wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) that may be used within the communications system illustrated in  FIG. 1A  according to an embodiment; 
         FIG. 1C  is a system diagram illustrating an example radio access network (RAN) and an example core network (CN) that may be used within the communications system illustrated in  FIG. 1A  according to an embodiment; 
         FIG. 1D  is a system diagram illustrating a further example RAN and a further example CN that may be used within the communications system illustrated in  FIG. 1A  according to an embodiment; 
         FIG. 2  is a diagram illustrating an example multiple Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) process per HARQ entity; 
         FIG. 3  is a diagram illustrating example generation of redundancy versions (RVs) and Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) feedbacks based on the RVs; 
         FIG. 4  is a diagram illustrating example transport block (TB) segmentation based on code block groups (CBGs); 
         FIG. 5A  is a diagram illustrating an example transmission of a TB that includes RVs for decoding; 
         FIG. 5B  is a diagram illustrating an example transmission of a TB that includes an RV and a cross redundancy version (cRV) jointly for multiple TBs; 
         FIG. 6A  is a diagram illustrating an example transmission of RVs as a bundle where the RVs are associated with a particular TB; 
         FIG. 6B  is a diagram illustrating an example transmission of RVs and a cRV where the cRV is associated with multiple TBs; 
         FIG. 7  a diagram illustrating an example joint decoding procedure with cRV associated with multiple TBs; 
         FIG. 8  is a diagram illustrating an example encoding procedure for cRVs generated across multiple TBs; 
         FIG. 9  is a diagram illustrating an example cRV transmission by bundling with any number of individual RVs; 
         FIG. 10  is a diagram illustrating an example decoding procedure using a cRV generated across multiple TBs; 
         FIG. 11  is a diagram illustrating an example cRV-based joint decoding of code blocks (CBs) belonging to different TBs; 
         FIG. 12  is a diagram illustrating an example cRV generation between multiple TBs for different CBGs; and 
         FIG. 13  is a diagram illustrating an example decoding procedure using cRV generated across multiple CBGs. 
     
    
    
     DESCRIPTION 
       FIG. 1A  is a diagram illustrating an example communications system  100  in which one or more disclosed embodiments may be implemented. The communications system  100  may be a multiple access system that provides content, such as voice, data, video, messaging, broadcast, etc., to multiple wireless users. The communications system  100  may enable multiple wireless users to access such content through the sharing of system resources, including wireless bandwidth. For example, the communications systems  100  may employ one or more channel access methods, such as code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA), single-carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA), zero-tail unique-word DFT-Spread OFDM (ZT UW DTS-s OFDM), unique word OFDM (UW-OFDM), resource block-filtered OFDM, filter bank multicarrier (FBMC), and the like. 
     As shown in  FIG. 1A , the communications system  100  may include wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs)  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d , a RAN  104 / 113 , a CN  106 / 115 , a public switched telephone network (PSTN)  108 , the Internet  110 , and other networks  112 , though it will be appreciated that the disclosed embodiments contemplate any number of WTRUs, base stations, networks, and/or network elements. Each of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d  may be any type of device configured to operate and/or communicate in a wireless environment. By way of example, the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d , any of which may be referred to as a “station” and/or a “STA”, may be configured to transmit and/or receive wireless signals and may include a user equipment (UE), a mobile station, a fixed or mobile subscriber unit, a subscription-based unit, a pager, a cellular telephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a smartphone, a laptop, a netbook, a personal computer, a wireless sensor, a hotspot or Mi-Fi device, an Internet of Things (IoT) device, a watch or other wearable, a head-mounted display (HMD), a vehicle, a drone, a medical device and applications (e.g., remote surgery), an industrial device and applications (e.g., a robot and/or other wireless devices operating in an industrial and/or an automated processing chain contexts), a consumer electronics device, a device operating on commercial and/or industrial wireless networks, and the like. Any of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  and  102   d  may be interchangeably referred to as a UE. 
     The communications systems  100  may also include a base station  114   a  and/or a base station  114   b . Each of the base stations  114   a,    114   b  may be any type of device configured to wirelessly interface with at least one of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d  to facilitate access to one or more communication networks, such as the CN  106 / 115 , the Internet  110 , and/or the other networks  112 . By way of example, the base stations  114   a,    114   b  may be a base transceiver station (BTS), a Node-B, an eNode B, a Home Node B, a Home eNode B, a gNB, a NR NodeB, a site controller, an access point (AP), a wireless router, and the like. While the base stations  114   a,    114   b  are each depicted as a single element, it will be appreciated that the base stations  114   a,    114   b  may include any number of interconnected base stations and/or network elements. 
     The base station  114   a  may be part of the RAN  104 / 113 , which may also include other base stations and/or network elements (not shown), such as a base station controller (BSC), a radio network controller (RNC), relay nodes, etc. The base station  114   a  and/or the base station  114   b  may be configured to transmit and/or receive wireless signals on one or more carrier frequencies, which may be referred to as a cell (not shown). These frequencies may be in licensed spectrum, unlicensed spectrum, or a combination of licensed and unlicensed spectrum. A cell may provide coverage for a wireless service to a specific geographical area that may be relatively fixed or that may change over time. The cell may further be divided into cell sectors. For example, the cell associated with the base station  114   a  may be divided into three sectors. Thus, in one embodiment, the base station  114   a  may include three transceivers, i.e., one for each sector of the cell. In an embodiment, the base station  114   a  may employ multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) technology and may utilize multiple transceivers for each sector of the cell. For example, beamforming may be used to transmit and/or receive signals in desired spatial directions. 
     The base stations  114   a,    114   b  may communicate with one or more of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d  over an air interface  116 , which may be any suitable wireless communication link (e.g., radio frequency (RF), microwave, centimeter wave, micrometer wave, infrared (IR), ultraviolet (UV), visible light, etc.). The air interface  116  may be established using any suitable radio access technology (RAT). 
     More specifically, as noted above, the communications system  100  may be a multiple access system and may employ one or more channel access schemes, such as CDMA, TDMA, FDMA, OFDMA, SC-FDMA, and the like. For example, the base station  114   a  in the RAN  104 / 113  and the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may implement a radio technology such as Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA), which may establish the air interface  115 / 116 / 117  using wideband CDMA (WCDMA). WCDMA may include communication protocols such as High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and/or Evolved HSPA (HSPA+). HSPA may include High-Speed Downlink (DL) Packet Access (HSDPA) and/or High-Speed UL Packet Access (HSUPA). 
     In an embodiment, the base station  114   a  and the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may implement a radio technology such as Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA), which may establish the air interface  116  using Long Term Evolution (LTE) and/or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) and/or LTE-Advanced Pro (LTE-A Pro). 
     In an embodiment, the base station  114   a  and the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may implement a radio technology such as NR Radio Access , which may establish the air interface  116  using New Radio (NR). 
     In an embodiment, the base station  114   a  and the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may implement multiple radio access technologies. For example, the base station  114   a  and the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may implement LTE radio access and NR radio access together, for instance using dual connectivity (DC) principles. Thus, the air interface utilized by WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may be characterized by multiple types of radio access technologies and/or transmissions sent to/from multiple types of base stations (e.g., a eNB and a gNB). 
     In other embodiments, the base station  114   a  and the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may implement radio technologies such as IEEE 802.11 (i.e., Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), IEEE 802.16 (i.e., Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX)), CDMA2000, CDMA2000 1X, CDMA2000 EV-DO, Interim Standard 2000 (IS-2000), Interim Standard 95 (IS-95), Interim Standard 856 (IS-856), Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), GSM EDGE (GERAN), and the like. 
     The base station  114   b  in  FIG. 1A  may be a wireless router, Home Node B, Home eNode B, or access point, for example, and may utilize any suitable RAT for facilitating wireless connectivity in a localized area, such as a place of business, a home, a vehicle, a campus, an industrial facility, an air corridor (e.g., for use by drones), a roadway, and the like. In one embodiment, the base station  114   b  and the WTRUs  102   c ,  102   d  may implement a radio technology such as IEEE 802.11 to establish a wireless local area network (WLAN). In an embodiment, the base station  114   b  and the WTRUs  102   c ,  102   d  may implement a radio technology such as IEEE 802.15 to establish a wireless personal area network (WPAN). In yet another embodiment, the base station  114   b  and the WTRUs  102   c ,  102   d  may utilize a cellular-based RAT (e.g., WCDMA, CDMA2000, GSM, LTE, LTE-A, LTE-A Pro, NR etc.) to establish a picocell or femtocell. As shown in  FIG. 1A , the base station  114   b  may have a direct connection to the Internet  110 . Thus, the base station  114   b  may not be required to access the Internet  110  via the CN  106 / 115 . 
     The RAN  104 / 113  may be in communication with the CN  106 / 115 , which may be any type of network configured to provide voice, data, applications, and/or voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services to one or more of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d.  The data may have varying quality of service (QoS) requirements, such as differing throughput requirements, latency requirements, error tolerance requirements, reliability requirements, data throughput requirements, mobility requirements, and the like. The CN  106 / 115  may provide call control, billing services, mobile location-based services, pre-paid calling, Internet connectivity, video distribution, etc., and/or perform high-level security functions, such as user authentication. Although not shown in  FIG. 1A , it will be appreciated that the RAN  104 / 113  and/or the CN  106 / 115  may be in direct or indirect communication with other RANs that employ the same RAT as the RAN  104 / 113  or a different RAT. For example, in addition to being connected to the RAN  104 / 113 , which may be utilizing a NR radio technology, the CN  106 / 115  may also be in communication with another RAN (not shown) employing a GSM, UMTS, CDMA 2000, WiMAX, E-UTRA, or WiFi radio technology. 
     The CN  106 / 115  may also serve as a gateway for the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d  to access the PSTN  108 , the Internet  110 , and/or the other networks  112 . The PSTN  108  may include circuit-switched telephone networks that provide plain old telephone service (POTS). The Internet  110  may include a global system of interconnected computer networks and devices that use common communication protocols, such as the transmission control protocol (TCP), user datagram protocol (UDP) and/or the internet protocol (IP) in the TCP/IP internet protocol suite. The networks  112  may include wired and/or wireless communications networks owned and/or operated by other service providers. For example, the networks  112  may include another CN connected to one or more RANs, which may employ the same RAT as the RAN  104 / 113  or a different RAT. 
     Some or all of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d  in the communications system  100  may include multi-mode capabilities (e.g., the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c ,  102   d  may include multiple transceivers for communicating with different wireless networks over different wireless links). For example, the WTRU  102   c  shown in  FIG. 1A  may be configured to communicate with the base station  114   a,  which may employ a cellular-based radio technology, and with the base station  114   b,  which may employ an IEEE 802 radio technology. 
       FIG. 1B  is a system diagram illustrating an example WTRU  102 . As shown in  FIG. 1B , the WTRU  102  may include a processor  118 , a transceiver  120 , a transmit/receive element  122 , a speaker/microphone  124 , a keypad  126 , a display/touchpad  128 , non-removable memory  130 , removable memory  132 , a power source  134 , a global positioning system (GPS) chipset  136 , and/or other peripherals  138 , among others. It will be appreciated that the WTRU  102  may include any sub-combination of the foregoing elements while remaining consistent with an embodiment. 
     The processor  118  may be a general purpose processor, a special purpose processor, a conventional processor, a digital signal processor (DSP), a plurality of microprocessors, one or more microprocessors in association with a DSP core, a controller, a microcontroller, Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) circuits, any other type of integrated circuit (IC), a state machine, and the like. The processor  118  may perform signal coding, data processing, power control, input/output processing, and/or any other functionality that enables the WTRU  102  to operate in a wireless environment. The processor  118  may be coupled to the transceiver  120 , which may be coupled to the transmit/receive element  122 . While  FIG. 1B  depicts the processor  118  and the transceiver  120  as separate components, it will be appreciated that the processor  118  and the transceiver  120  may be integrated together in an electronic package or chip. 
     The transmit/receive element  122  may be configured to transmit signals to, or receive signals from, a base station (e.g., the base station  114   a ) over the air interface  116 . For example, in one embodiment, the transmit/receive element  122  may be an antenna configured to transmit and/or receive RF signals. In an embodiment, the transmit/receive element  122  may be an emitter/detector configured to transmit and/or receive IR, UV, or visible light signals, for example. In yet another embodiment, the transmit/receive element  122  may be configured to transmit and/or receive both RF and light signals. It will be appreciated that the transmit/receive element  122  may be configured to transmit and/or receive any combination of wireless signals. 
     Although the transmit/receive element  122  is depicted in  FIG. 1B  as a single element, the WTRU  102  may include any number of transmit/receive elements  122 . More specifically, the WTRU  102  may employ MIMO technology. Thus, in one embodiment, the WTRU  102  may include two or more transmit/receive elements  122  (e.g., multiple antennas) for transmitting and receiving wireless signals over the air interface  116 . 
     The transceiver  120  may be configured to modulate the signals that are to be transmitted by the transmit/receive element  122  and to demodulate the signals that are received by the transmit/receive element  122 . As noted above, the WTRU  102  may have multi-mode capabilities. Thus, the transceiver  120  may include multiple transceivers for enabling the WTRU  102  to communicate via multiple RATs, such as NR and IEEE 802.11, for example. 
     The processor  118  of the WTRU  102  may be coupled to, and may receive user input data from, the speaker/microphone  124 , the keypad  126 , and/or the display/touchpad  128  (e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD) display unit or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display unit). The processor  118  may also output user data to the speaker/microphone  124 , the keypad  126 , and/or the display/touchpad  128 . In addition, the processor  118  may access information from, and store data in, any type of suitable memory, such as the non-removable memory  130  and/or the removable memory  132 . The non-removable memory  130  may include random-access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), a hard disk, or any other type of memory storage device. The removable memory  132  may include a subscriber identity module (SIM) card, a memory stick, a secure digital (SD) memory card, and the like. In other embodiments, the processor  118  may access information from, and store data in, memory that is not physically located on the WTRU  102 , such as on a server or a home computer (not shown). 
     The processor  118  may receive power from the power source  134 , and may be configured to distribute and/or control the power to the other components in the WTRU  102 . The power source  134  may be any suitable device for powering the WTRU  102 . For example, the power source  134  may include one or more dry cell batteries (e.g., nickel-cadmium (NiCd), nickel-zinc (NiZn), nickel metal hydride (NiMH), lithium-ion (Li-ion), etc.), solar cells, fuel cells, and the like. 
     The processor  118  may also be coupled to the GPS chipset  136 , which may be configured to provide location information (e.g., longitude and latitude) regarding the current location of the WTRU  102 . In addition to, or in lieu of, the information from the GPS chipset  136 , the WTRU  102  may receive location information over the air interface  116  from a base station (e.g., base stations  114   a,    114   b ) and/or determine its location based on the timing of the signals being received from two or more nearby base stations. It will be appreciated that the WTRU  102  may acquire location information by way of any suitable location-determination method while remaining consistent with an embodiment. 
     The processor  118  may further be coupled to other peripherals  138 , which may include one or more software and/or hardware modules that provide additional features, functionality and/or wired or wireless connectivity. For example, the peripherals  138  may include an accelerometer, an e-compass, a satellite transceiver, a digital camera (for photographs and/or video), a universal serial bus (USB) port, a vibration device, a television transceiver, a hands free headset, a Bluetooth® module, a frequency modulated (FM) radio unit, a digital music player, a media player, a video game player module, an Internet browser, a Virtual Reality and/or Augmented Reality (VR/AR) device, an activity tracker, and the like. The peripherals  138  may include one or more sensors, the sensors may be one or more of a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a hall effect sensor, a magnetometer, an orientation sensor, a proximity sensor, a temperature sensor, a time sensor; a geolocation sensor; an altimeter, a light sensor, a touch sensor, a magnetometer, a barometer, a gesture sensor, a biometric sensor, and/or a humidity sensor. 
     The WTRU  102  may include a full duplex radio for which transmission and reception of some or all of the signals (e.g., associated with particular subframes for both the UL (e.g., for transmission) and downlink (e.g., for reception) may be concurrent and/or simultaneous. The full duplex radio may include an interference management unit  139  to reduce and or substantially eliminate self-interference via either hardware (e.g., a choke) or signal processing via a processor (e.g., a separate processor (not shown) or via processor  118 ). In an embodiment, the WTRU  102  may include a half-duplex radio for which transmission and reception of some or all of the signals (e.g., associated with particular subframes for either the UL (e.g., for transmission) or the downlink (e.g., for reception)). 
       FIG. 10  is a system diagram illustrating the RAN  104  and the CN  106  according to an embodiment. As noted above, the RAN  104  may employ an E-UTRA radio technology to communicate with the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  over the air interface  116 . The RAN  104  may also be in communication with the CN  106 . 
     The RAN  104  may include eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c , though it will be appreciated that the RAN  104  may include any number of eNode-Bs while remaining consistent with an embodiment. The eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c  may each include one or more transceivers for communicating with the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  over the air interface  116 . In one embodiment, the eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c  may implement MIMO technology. Thus, the eNode-B  160   a , for example, may use multiple antennas to transmit wireless signals to, and/or receive wireless signals from, the WTRU  102   a.    
     Each of the eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c  may be associated with a particular cell (not shown) and may be configured to handle radio resource management decisions, handover decisions, scheduling of users in the UL and/or DL, and the like. As shown in  FIG. 1C , the eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c  may communicate with one another over an X2 interface. 
     The CN  106  shown in  FIG. 10  may include a mobility management entity (MME)  162 , a serving gateway (SGW)  164 , and a packet data network (PDN) gateway (or PGW)  166 . While each of the foregoing elements are depicted as part of the CN  106 , it will be appreciated that any of these elements may be owned and/or operated by an entity other than the CN operator. 
     The MME  162  may be connected to each of the eNode-Bs  162   a ,  162   b ,  162   c  in the RAN  104  via an S1 interface and may serve as a control node. For example, the MME  162  may be responsible for authenticating users of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c , bearer activation/deactivation, selecting a particular serving gateway during an initial attach of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c , and the like. The MME  162  may provide a control plane function for switching between the RAN  104  and other RANs (not shown) that employ other radio technologies, such as GSM and/or WCDMA. 
     The SGW  164  may be connected to each of the eNode Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c  in the RAN  104  via the S1 interface. The SGW  164  may generally route and forward user data packets to/from the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c . The SGW  164  may perform other functions, such as anchoring user planes during inter-eNode B handovers, triggering paging when DL data is available for the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c , managing and storing contexts of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c , and the like. 
     The SGW  164  may be connected to the PGW  166 , which may provide the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  with access to packet-switched networks, such as the Internet  110 , to facilitate communications between the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  and IP-enabled devices. 
     The CN  106  may facilitate communications with other networks. For example, the CN  106  may provide the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  with access to circuit-switched networks, such as the PSTN  108 , to facilitate communications between the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  and traditional land-line communications devices. For example, the CN  106  may include, or may communicate with, an IP gateway (e.g., an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) server) that serves as an interface between the CN  106  and the PSTN  108 . In addition, the CN  106  may provide the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  with access to the other networks  112 , which may include other wired and/or wireless networks that are owned and/or operated by other service providers. 
     Although the WTRU is described in  FIGS. 1A-1D  as a wireless terminal, it is contemplated that in certain representative embodiments that such a terminal may use (e.g., temporarily or permanently) wired communication interfaces with the communication network. 
     In representative embodiments, the other network  112  may be a WLAN. 
     A WLAN in Infrastructure Basic Service Set (BSS) mode may have an Access Point (AP) for the BSS and one or more stations (STAs) associated with the AP. The AP may have an access or an interface to a Distribution System (DS) or another type of wired/wireless network that carries traffic in to and/or out of the BSS. Traffic to STAs that originates from outside the BSS may arrive through the AP and may be delivered to the STAs. Traffic originating from STAs to destinations outside the BSS may be sent to the AP to be delivered to respective destinations. Traffic between STAs within the BSS may be sent through the AP, for example, where the source STA may send traffic to the AP and the AP may deliver the traffic to the destination STA. The traffic between STAs within a BSS may be considered and/or referred to as peer-to-peer traffic. The peer-to-peer traffic may be sent between (e.g., directly between) the source and destination STAs with a direct link setup (DLS). In certain representative embodiments, the DLS may use an 802.11e DLS or an 802.11z tunneled DLS (TDLS). A WLAN using an Independent BSS (IBSS) mode may not have an AP, and the STAs (e.g., all of the STAs) within or using the IBSS may communicate directly with each other. The IBSS mode of communication may sometimes be referred to herein as an “ad-hoc” mode of communication. 
     When using the 802.11ac infrastructure mode of operation or a similar mode of operations, the AP may transmit a beacon on a fixed channel, such as a primary channel. The primary channel may be a fixed width (e.g., 20 MHz wide bandwidth) or a dynamically set width via signaling. The primary channel may be the operating channel of the BSS and may be used by the STAs to establish a connection with the AP. In certain representative embodiments, Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) may be implemented, for example in in 802.11 systems. For CSMA/CA, the STAs (e.g., every STA), including the AP, may sense the primary channel. If the primary channel is sensed/detected and/or determined to be busy by a particular STA, the particular STA may back off. One STA (e.g., only one station) may transmit at any given time in a given BSS. 
     High Throughput (HT) STAs may use a 40 MHz wide channel for communication, for example, via a combination of the primary 20 MHz channel with an adjacent or nonadjacent 20 MHz channel to form a 40 MHz wide channel. 
     Very High Throughput (VHT) STAs may support 20 MHz, 40 MHz, 80 MHz, and/or 160 MHz wide channels. The 40 MHz, and/or 80 MHz, channels may be formed by combining contiguous 20 MHz channels. A 160 MHz channel may be formed by combining 8 contiguous 20 MHz channels, or by combining two non-contiguous 80 MHz channels, which may be referred to as an 80+80 configuration. For the 80+80 configuration, the data, after channel encoding, may be passed through a segment parser that may divide the data into two streams. Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) processing, and time domain processing, may be done on each stream separately. The streams may be mapped on to the two 80 MHz channels, and the data may be transmitted by a transmitting STA. At the receiver of the receiving STA, the above described operation for the 80+80 configuration may be reversed, and the combined data may be sent to the Medium Access Control (MAC). 
     Sub 1 GHz modes of operation are supported by 802.11af and 802.11ah. The channel operating bandwidths, and carriers, are reduced in 802.11af and 802.11ah relative to those used in 802.11n, and 802.11ac. 802.11af supports 5 MHz, 10 MHz and 20 MHz bandwidths in the TV White Space (TVWS) spectrum, and 802.11ah supports 1 MHz, 2 MHz, 4 MHz, 8 MHz, and 16 MHz bandwidths using non-TVWS spectrum. According to a representative embodiment, 802.11ah may support Meter Type Control/Machine-Type Communications, such as MTC devices in a macro coverage area. MTC devices may have certain capabilities, for example, limited capabilities including support for (e.g., only support for) certain and/or limited bandwidths. The MTC devices may include a battery with a battery life above a threshold (e.g., to maintain a very long battery life). 
     WLAN systems, which may support multiple channels, and channel bandwidths, such as 802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11af, and 802.11ah, include a channel which may be designated as the primary channel. The primary channel may have a bandwidth equal to the largest common operating bandwidth supported by all STAs in the BSS. The bandwidth of the primary channel may be set and/or limited by a STA, from among all STAs in operating in a BSS, which supports the smallest bandwidth operating mode. In the example of 802.11ah, the primary channel may be 1 MHz wide for STAs (e.g., MTC type devices) that support (e.g., only support) a 1 MHz mode, even if the AP, and other STAs in the BSS support 2 MHz, 4 MHz, 8 MHz, 16 MHz, and/or other channel bandwidth operating modes. Carrier sensing and/or Network Allocation Vector (NAV) settings may depend on the status of the primary channel. If the primary channel is busy, for example, due to a STA (which supports only a 1 MHz operating mode), transmitting to the AP, the entire available frequency bands may be considered busy even though a majority of the frequency bands remains idle and may be available. 
     In the United States, the available frequency bands, which may be used by 802.11ah, are from 902 MHz to 928 MHz. In Korea, the available frequency bands are from 917.5 MHz to 923.5 MHz. In Japan, the available frequency bands are from 916.5 MHz to 927.5 MHz. The total bandwidth available for 802.11ah is 6 MHz to 26 MHz depending on the country code. 
       FIG. 1D  is a system diagram illustrating the RAN 113 and the CN 115 according to an embodiment. As noted above, the RAN 113 may employ an NR radio technology to communicate with the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  over the air interface  116 . The RAN  113  may also be in communication with the CN  115 . 
     The RAN  113  may include gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c , though it will be appreciated that the RAN  113  may include any number of gNBs while remaining consistent with an embodiment. The gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  may each include one or more transceivers for communicating with the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  over the air interface  116 . In one embodiment, the gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  may implement MIMO technology. For example, gNBs  180   a ,  108   b  may utilize beamforming to transmit signals to and/or receive signals from the gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c . Thus, the gNB  180   a , for example, may use multiple antennas to transmit wireless signals to, and/or receive wireless signals from, the WTRU  102   a.  In an embodiment, the gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  may implement carrier aggregation technology. For example, the gNB  180   a  may transmit multiple component carriers to the WTRU  102   a  (not shown). A subset of these component carriers may be on unlicensed spectrum while the remaining component carriers may be on licensed spectrum. In an embodiment, the gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  may implement Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) technology. For example, WTRU  102   a  may receive coordinated transmissions from gNB  180   a  and gNB  180   b  (and/or gNB  180   c ). 
     The WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may communicate with gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  using transmissions associated with a scalable numerology. For example, the OFDM symbol spacing and/or OFDM subcarrier spacing may vary for different transmissions, different cells, and/or different portions of the wireless transmission spectrum. The WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may communicate with gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  using subframe or transmission time intervals (TTIs) of various or scalable lengths (e.g., containing varying number of OFDM symbols and/or lasting varying lengths of absolute time). 
     The gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  may be configured to communicate with the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  in a standalone configuration and/or a non-standalone configuration. In the standalone configuration, WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may communicate with gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  without also accessing other RANs (e.g., such as eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c ). In the standalone configuration, WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may utilize one or more of gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  as a mobility anchor point. In the standalone configuration, WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may communicate with gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  using signals in an unlicensed band. In a non-standalone configuration WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may communicate with/connect to gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  while also communicating with/connecting to another RAN such as eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c.  For example, WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may implement DC principles to communicate with one or more gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  and one or more eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c  substantially simultaneously. In the non-standalone configuration, eNode-Bs  160   a ,  160   b ,  160   c  may serve as a mobility anchor for WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  and gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  may provide additional coverage and/or throughput for servicing WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c.    
     Each of the gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  may be associated with a particular cell (not shown) and may be configured to handle radio resource management decisions, handover decisions, scheduling of users in the UL and/or DL, support of network slicing, dual connectivity, interworking between NR and E-UTRA, routing of user plane data towards User Plane Function (UPF)  184   a ,  184   b , routing of control plane information towards Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF)  182   a ,  182   b  and the like. As shown in  FIG. 1D , the gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  may communicate with one another over an Xn interface. 
     The CN  115  shown in  FIG. 1D  may include at least one AMF  182   a ,  182   b , at least one UPF  184   a ,  184   b , at least one Session Management Function (SMF)  183   a ,  183   b , and possibly a Data Network (DN)  185   a ,  185   b . While each of the foregoing elements are depicted as part of the CN  115 , it will be appreciated that any of these elements may be owned and/or operated by an entity other than the CN operator. 
     The AMF  182   a ,  182   b  may be connected to one or more of the gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  in the RAN  113  via an N2 interface and may serve as a control node. For example, the AMF  182   a ,  182   b  may be responsible for authenticating users of the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c , support for network slicing (e.g., handling of different PDU sessions with different requirements), selecting a particular SMF  183   a ,  183   b , management of the registration area, termination of NAS signaling, mobility management, and the like. Network slicing may be used by the AMF  182   a ,  182   b  in order to customize CN support for WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  based on the types of services being utilized WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c.  For example, different network slices may be established for different use cases such as services relying on ultra-reliable low latency (URLLC) access, services relying on enhanced massive mobile broadband (eMBB) access, services for machine type communication (MTC) access, and/or the like. The AMF  162  may provide a control plane function for switching between the RAN  113  and other RANs (not shown) that employ other radio technologies, such as LTE, LTE-A, LTE-A Pro, and/or non-3GPP access technologies such as WiFi. 
     The SMF  183   a ,  183   b  may be connected to an AMF  182   a ,  182   b  in the CN  115  via an N11 interface. The SMF  183   a ,  183   b  may also be connected to a UPF  184   a ,  184   b  in the CN  115  via an N4 interface. The SMF  183   a ,  183   b  may select and control the UPF  184   a ,  184   b  and configure the routing of traffic through the UPF  184   a ,  184   b . The SMF  183   a ,  183   b  may perform other functions, such as managing and allocating UE IP address, managing PDU sessions, controlling policy enforcement and QoS, providing downlink data notifications, and the like. A PDU session type may be IP-based, non-IP based, Ethernet-based, and the like. 
     The UPF  184   a ,  184   b  may be connected to one or more of the gNBs  180   a ,  180   b ,  180   c  in the RAN  113  via an N3 interface, which may provide the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  with access to packet-switched networks, such as the Internet  110 , to facilitate communications between the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  and IP-enabled devices. The UPF  184 ,  184   b  may perform other functions, such as routing and forwarding packets, enforcing user plane policies, supporting multi-homed PDU sessions, handling user plane QoS, buffering downlink packets, providing mobility anchoring, and the like. 
     The CN  115  may facilitate communications with other networks. For example, the CN  115  may include, or may communicate with, an IP gateway (e.g., an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) server) that serves as an interface between the CN  115  and the PSTN  108 . In addition, the CN  115  may provide the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  with access to the other networks  112 , which may include other wired and/or wireless networks that are owned and/or operated by other service providers. In one embodiment, the WTRUs  102   a ,  102   b ,  102   c  may be connected to a local Data Network (DN)  185   a ,  185   b  through the UPF  184   a,    184   b  via the N3 interface to the UPF  184   a,    184   b  and an N6 interface between the UPF  184   a,    184   b  and the DN  185   a ,  185   b.    
     In view of  FIGS. 1A-1D , and the corresponding description of  FIGS. 1A-1D , one or more, or all, of the functions described herein with regard to one or more of: WTRU  102   a - d,  Base Station  114   a - b,  eNode-B  160   a - c , MME  162 , SGW  164 , PGW  166 , gNB  180   a - c,  AMF  182   a - ab,  UPF  184   a - b,  SMF  183   a - b,  DN  185   a - b,  and/or any other device(s) described herein, may be performed by one or more emulation devices (not shown). The emulation devices may be one or more devices configured to emulate one or more, or all, of the functions described herein. For example, the emulation devices may be used to test other devices and/or to simulate network and/or WTRU functions. 
     The emulation devices may be designed to implement one or more tests of other devices in a lab environment and/or in an operator network environment. For example, the one or more emulation devices may perform the one or more, or all, functions while being fully or partially implemented and/or deployed as part of a wired and/or wireless communication network in order to test other devices within the communication network. The one or more emulation devices may perform the one or more, or all, functions while being temporarily implemented/deployed as part of a wired and/or wireless communication network. The emulation device may be directly coupled to another device for purposes of testing and/or may performing testing using over-the-air wireless communications. 
     The one or more emulation devices may perform the one or more, including all, functions while not being implemented/deployed as part of a wired and/or wireless communication network. For example, the emulation devices may be utilized in a testing scenario in a testing laboratory and/or a non-deployed (e.g., testing) wired and/or wireless communication network in order to implement testing of one or more components. The one or more emulation devices may be test equipment. Direct RF coupling and/or wireless communications via RF circuitry (e.g., which may include one or more antennas) may be used by the emulation devices to transmit and/or receive data. 
     Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) protocols have been used since 3G systems. HARQ provides physical layer/medium access control (PHY/MAC) level error correction mechanism by repeating transmission of same/different sets of information/parity bits in addition to performing forward error correction (FEC). There are three types of HARQ protocols: chase combining and incremental redundancy (Type II and Type III). 
     In chase combining scheme, the same set of coded data is retransmitted, and the decoder combines multiple coded packets before the decoding operation. Combining multiple similarly coded packets yields an effective power gain, thus enhancing the probability of decoding. 
     In Type II HARQ of incremental redundancy scheme, additional parity information bits are transmitted in each re-transmission. Every re-transmission may not be decodable by itself, but can be jointly decoded by considering several previously performed re-transmissions containing different redundant versions (RVs). In Type III HARQ of incremental redundancy scheme, each retransmission is self-decodable. That is, the same information bits are sent with different sets of parity bits during each retransmission. 
     HARQ provides instantaneous feedback (subject to the timing considerations that depends on the hardware constraints, propagation delay, etc.,) on the decodabiity of transmitted codeword(s). This enables expedited feedback from the MAC layer instead of having to rely on the upper layers (e.g., radio link control (RLC) layer) to trigger an ARQ request in case of erroneous transmissions. Furthermore, HARQ feedback can be thought of providing one bit feedback of the latest channel state information, in addition to the channel quality indicator (CQI) feedback that is performed periodically/coarsely once in a configured time interval. 
     The primary disadvantage of performing a feedback every codeword is the delay incurred in sending the associated transport block (TB), as the transmitter needs to stop and wait (SAW) for a positive acknowledgement/negative acknowledgement (ACK/NACK) before it can send new TBs. If a NACK is received, the transmitter may re-transmit the codeword corresponding to the NACKed transport block. In order to enhance spectral efficiency, LTE introduced the concept of multiple HARQ process per HARQ entity. Here, each HARQ process runs independently enabling multiple TBs (i.e., SAW processes) to be run concurrently per HARQ entity. The maximum number of HARQ processes that can be run concurrently is proportional to round trip time, and hardware processing delays incurred, where the latter becomes negligible compared to the former for non-terrestrial network (NTNs). 
       FIG. 2  illustrates an example multiple parallel HARQ processes per HARQ entity  200 . As illustrated in  FIG. 2 , multiple stop and wait (SAW) processes may be applied to the eNB  260  and the WTRU  202 . For example, the eNB  260  can transmit another HARQ process while waiting for ACK from one process. While processing the data (e.g., TB) received in the first HARQ process, the WTRU  202  can continue to receive another data using the second process and so on. The multiple HARQ processes operating in parallel may form one HARQ entity. Specifically, the eNB  260  may transmit TB 4   212  to the WTRU  202  while waiting for HARQ feedback (i.e. in this case, ACK  220 ) for the previous transmission of TB 3   210  from TB 3  HARQ processing. After the completion of any of the HARQ processes, the WTRU  202  can continue to receive TB 4   232  (i.e. new data) from the eNB  260  and initiate another HARQ processing for TB 4   232  while performing the HARQ processing for TB 3   230  (in this example, NACK  240 ). After the HARQ processing for TB 3   230  is initaiated, the WTRU  202  makes an attempt to decode TB 3   230 . If TB 3   230  is not correctly decoded, the WTRU  202  may inform the eNB  260  NACK  240 . Upon receiving the NACK  240 , the eNB  260  may retransmit TB 3   250  to the WTRU  202 . These multiple HARQ processes (e.g., HARQ processes for TB 1 -TB 8 ) operating in parallel to form one HARQ entity, combines the simplicity of a SAW protocol while still allowing continuous transmission of data. 
     For frequency division duplex (FDD) systems in LTE, the maximum number of HARQ processes that can be supported is fixed at eight. The number of HARQ processes for time division duplex (TDD) is related to the frame configuration and varies between 4 and 15. There are two types of HARQ procedures, namely: asynchronous and synchronous. In the asynchronous HARQ procedure used in LTE downlink, the HARQ process number and the redundancy version (RV) are explicitly indicated in the downlink control information (DCI). In the synchronous HARQ procedure used in uplink, the WTRU uses HARQ process number based on the subframe number, and hence the eNB can decipher the HARQ process number implicitly. For example, HARQ process number corresponding to subframe i, could be (i mod 8), for implicit determination by the eNB. The RV transmitted in a subframe for a synchronous HARQ process could be pre-determined (i.e. non-adaptive) or can be signaled by the eNB in DCI 0 (adaptive). 
       FIG. 3  illustrates example generation  300  of redundancy versions (RVs) and Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) feedbacks based on the RVs, which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. As illustrated in  FIG. 3 , at the transmitters side, the transport block (TB)  305  obtained by the PHY may include original data with code redundancy check (CRC) bits. The TB  305  may be segmented into multiple code blocks and encoded using a turbo encoder or other channel coding schemes. For example, ⅓ rate turbo coding may be applied to the multiple code blocks to generate the output bits  310 . The output bits  310  may include systematic bits and multiple parity bits (e.g., first and second parity bits) where the systematic bits, first parity and second parity bits are separately interleaved. 
     The interleaved bits may be inserted into a circular buffer with systematic bits inserted first, followed by alternating insertions of first and second parity bits. The subsets of interleaved bits may be selected from the circular buffer based on redundancy versions (RVs). RV-0 (redundancy version-0)  315  may represent more or less the systematic bits, while RV-1  320 , RV-2, RV-3 may represent mostly the parity bits. The transmitter may first transmit the RV0  315  at the effective coding rate ⅘ to the receiver. If the transmitter receives the NACK  340  from the receiver, the transmitter may then transmit RV1  320  to the receiver. At the receiver&#39;s side, the receiver may receive the RV0  315  and decode the RV0  315  to obtain the original data (or actual data). If the receiver fails to decode, the receiver may generate NACK feedback  340  and transmit to the transmitter as the HARQ feedback. The receiver may then receive the RV1  320  from the transmitter and decode RV0  315  and RV1  320  together to obtain the original date (i.e. TB  305 ). If the receiver successfully decodes, then the receiver may transmit ACK  350  to the transmitter. In LTE, the rate matching and hybrid ARQ functionality may operate on all code blocks, and an ACK/NACK may be sent on the TB, and not on code blocks. 
       FIG. 4  illustrates example transport block segmentation  400  based on code block/code block group (CBG), which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. In case of New Radio (NR), or other fifth generation (5G) networks, the TB  405  obtained by the PHY may be segmented into code blocks  410 ,  411 ,  412 ,  413 ,  414 ,  415 ,  416 ,  417 , similar to LTE. As illustrated in  FIG. 4 , the TB  405  may include CB 0   410 , CB 1   411 , CB 2   412 , CB 3   413 , CB 4   414 , CB 5   415 , CB 6   416 , CB 7   417 . Furthermore, NR supports the concept of CBGs  420 ,  425 ,  430  that represent multiple code blocks  410 ,  411 ,  412 ,  413 ,  414 ,  415 ,  416 ,  417 , as shown in  FIG. 4 . For example, CBG 0   420  may include CB 0   410 , CB 1   411 , CB 2   412 , CBG 1   425  may include CB 3   413 , CB 4   414 , CB 5   415 , and CBG 3   430  may include CB 6   416  and CB 7   417 . HARQ feedback in NR may support reporting ACK/NACK per CBG. This enables the transmitter to re-transmit the RV corresponding only to those CBG (or code blocks that belong to this CBG), instead of having to retransmit the RV corresponding to the entire TB. 
     In terrestrial systems (e.g., NR, LTE, WCDMA, and other cellular or wireless systems, line WLAN), the propagation delay is negligible (e.g., on the order of nano/micro seconds) due to the fact that the worst case distance that an RF signal may have to traverse is between the WTRU at cell edge and the base station, which at most may be a few tens of kilometers. Typically, the maximum number of HARQ retransmissions (including the original transmission) is set at four for LTE systems, which means that the worst case delay for a successful decode (which in this example is eight times the one-way propagation delay) can be tolerated by most applications of interest. However, in the case of non-terrestrial network (NTN) systems, the propagation delay is not negligible. Typical propagation delays for Geostationary Equatorial Orbit (GEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) systems are respectively ˜135 ms, ˜45 ms, and ˜10 ms. In the case of bent pipe communications, the propagation delays would be twice the numbers quoted above. Furthermore, the worst case delay taking into account the maximum number of retransmissions in the case of using HARQ for NTN becomes prohibitive for most applications. It is clear that deploying conventional HARQ schemes to NTN will incur significant delays. 
     Another significant issue due to large propagation delays, is the problem with channel estimation. Irrespective of how frequent the channel is estimated and fed back, the channel state indicator (CSI) becomes stale by the time the transmitter receives the feedback if channel coherence time is smaller than propagation time. Hence, adaptation of modulation/coding scheme based on CSI becomes largely ineffective. Thus, transmissions have to be performed almost blind/semi-blind. Though large scale fading effects can be estimated (that depends on the distance), it may not always be possible to estimate the small scale fading effects. 
     To summarize, large propagation delays present in NTN leads to the following problems: HARQ round trip time (RTT) where a feedback is provided on every transmitted redundancy version (RV) incurs large delay overhead, and due to the stale CSI, adapting the modulation/coding based on CSI is analogous to performing blind adaptation and amounts to not making use of the CSI information. 
     The embodiments described herein are provided for any type of wireless networks including terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks. The types of wireless networks may include, but are not limited to, Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN), Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Warless Ad Hoc Network, Warless Metropolitan Area Network (WMAN), Wireless Wide Area Network (WAN), Cellular Network such as LTE and NR, Global Area Network (GAN), and Space Network. The term non-terrestrial network may refer to networks, or segments of networks, using an airborne or space-borne vehicle to embark a transmission/reception equipment relay node or base station. Space-borne vehicles may refer to satellites or satelies base stations including Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites, Medium Earth Orbiting (MEO) satellites, Geostationary Earth Orbiting (GEO) satellites as well as Highly Elliptical Orbiting (HEO) satellites. Airborne vehicles may refer to High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) encompassing Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)—including tethered UAS, Lighter than Air UAS and Heavier than Air UAS—all operating at altitude; typically between 8 and 50 km, quasi-stationary. 
     Embodiments for a dynamic HARQ bundling scheme where the bundle size is adapted per transmission based on coarse feedback is disclosed herein. The term bundling may refer to transmitting more than one redundancy versions in one or more transmit time intervals (TTIs). Embodiments for cross redundancy version (cRV) for providing redundancy versions across transport blocks are also disclosed herein. Furthermore, embodiments providing more information in the NACK feedback are disclosed herein. The information in the NACK feedback will help the transmitter to choose the right coded bits/redundancy version(s) to transmit, to enhance the chances of successful decoding. The term redundancy version (RV) may be defined as a set of information bits/parity bits that are needed to decode code block (CB), code block group (CBG), transport block (TB), or the like. One or more RVs for a TB may be generated soleley based on the TB under consideration. The term cross redundancy version (cRV) is defined as a set of information bits/parity bits that were generated from/between/across multiple CBs, CBGs, or TBs. Specifically, the cRV may be punctured from/between/across one or more RVs generated from multiple CBs, CBGs, or TBs. 
     Embodiments for dynamic HARQ bundling scheme are described herein. LTE systems allow TTI bundling on the uplink for certain applications where the WTRU bundles all RVs of a TB, and transmits them in separate TTIs. The feedback for the bundle is sent after the transmission of all the RVs. TTI bundling is typically enabled on demand by the eNB for a WTRU that it deems to be at cell edge and specifically for low-rate applications such as VoLTE. However, there is a possibility that some of the RV transmissions may be considered redundant and not be used for decoding. For example, if the channel is good, it may be sufficient to have RV-0 (i.e. systematic bits) and RV-2 (i.e. parity) to be able to decode the codeword. Thus, transmitting all the RVs (e.g., RV-0, RV-2, RV-3, RV-1) may lead to inefficient resource utilization in the sense that transmission of RV-3, RV-1 was not needed for decoding the systematic bits in this example. 
     The adaptive (or dynamic) RV bundling scheme may address these inefficient resource utilization. For example, the number of RV bundles transmitted in a TTI may be adaptive and may be applied to downlink as well as uplink of the NTN link. Based on a (coarse or uplink) feedback, the number of RV-bundles that are transmitted in a TTI may be varied. For example, if the channel is estimated to be poor, all the RV bundles may be transmitted in the current TTI, while if the channel is estimated to be good, then only fewer RVs, for example RVO, may be transmitted. The feedback (or uplink/slow feedback) may indicate one or more of the following. 
     Statistical information such as the channel statistics experienced over the last reporting period. The reporting period is quasi static and can be changed by the BS (e.g., eNB) based on statistical reasoning. This may include the percentage of times the channel exceeding /within preconfigured thresholds, for example:
         CSI&lt;THR 1     THR 2 ≤CSI≤THR 3     CSI≥THR 4         

     The percentage of times decoding was successful/unsuccessful with different combinations of the RVs used. For example, assuming that four RVs (RV- 0 , RV- 1 , RV- 2 . RV- 3 ) are used, the combination may include:
         RV- 0     RV- 0 , RV- 2     RV- 0 , RV- 3     RV- 0 , RV- 1     RV- 0 , RV- 2 , RV- 3     RV- 0 , RV- 2 , RV- 1     RV- 0 , RV- 2 , RV- 3     RV- 0 , RV- 2 , RV- 3 , RV- 1         

     Based on the feedback obtained, the transmitter may adapt the number of the RVs per bundle and the RV indices that need to be sent either in a single TTI or across multiple TTIs. For example, a bitmap may represent the number of RV, RV, and the TTI relationship that needs to be used to transmit them. The following Table 1 is an example of a bitmap: 
     
       
         
           
               
               
               
               
               
             
               
                   
                 TABLE 1 
               
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                   
                 Num 
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                 Bitmap 
                 RVs 
                 RVs 
                 TTI map 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
            
               
                   
                 xxx00 
                 2 
                 RV0, RV2 
                 n 
               
               
                   
                 xxx01 
                 2 
                 RV0, RV3 
                 (n, n + 1) 
               
               
                   
                 xxx10 
                 3 
                 RV0, RV2, RV3 
                 (n, n + 1) 
               
               
                   
                 xxx11 
                 3 
                 RV0, RV2, RV1 
                 (n, n + 1, n + 4) 
               
               
                   
                 . . . 
                 . . . 
                 . . . 
                 . . . 
               
               
                   
                   
               
            
           
         
       
     
     In Table 1, character ‘x’ of the bitmap may be either a bit  1  or bit  0 . Only the last 2 bits of the bitmap are detailed in this example. As discrete examples from Table 1, the bitmap equal to ‘xxx00’ corresponds to both RV 0  and RV 2  transmitted in the same TTI-n, while the bitmap of ‘xxx01’ corresponds to RV 0  and RV 3  transmitted in consecutive TTIs n and n+1 respectively. Similarly, the bitmap ‘xxx10’ indicates two RVs, RV 0  and RV 2 , transmitted in nth TTI, while RV 3  is transmitted in (n+1) th  TTI. When RVs are to be transmitted on different TTIs, the TTIs need not be consecutive and the TTI pattern is inferred by the bitmap. The feedback from the receiver may indicate the example bitmap in Table 1 that the transmitter should be using for subsequent transmission. 
     In the case of NR, where a CBG concept applies, when CBG count equals 1, the feedback discussed above for the LTE case may apply. For example, when CBG count equals 1, all code blocks of a transport block are part of the same CBG. When CBG count is greater than 1, the feedback discussed above for LTE may be modified. The percentage of times decoding was successful/unsuccessful with different combinations of RVs used can be calculated for all the CBGs combined, or per CBG, or subgroups of CBGs. For example, if the number of CBGs configured is three, the statistics may be provided for CBG 1 , CBG 2 , CBG 3  individually, or all of them combined, or subgroups of (CBG 1 , CBG 2 ), and CBG 3 . Based on the feedback obtained, the transmitter may adapt the number of the RVs for CBG and the actual RVs that need to be sent for a CBG either in a single TTI or across multiple TTIs. An example is shown in Table 2. Alternately or additionally, the feedback from the receiver may simply indicate the bitmap in Table 2 that the transmitter should be using for subsequent transmission. 
     
       
         
           
               
               
               
               
             
               
                 TABLE 2 
               
               
                   
               
               
                 Bit 
                 Num 
                   
                   
               
               
                 map 
                 RVs 
                 RVs/CBG 
                 TTI map 
               
               
                   
               
             
            
               
                 xxx00 
                 2 
                 RV0 of all CBGs 
                 n 
               
               
                   
                   
                 RV1 of CBG 1 , CBG 3   
               
               
                 xxx01 
                 2 
                 RV0 all CBGs (TTI: n) 
                 (n, n + 3) 
               
               
                   
                   
                 RV3 of all CBGs (TTI: n + 3) 
               
               
                 xxx10 
                 3 
                 RV0 of all CBGs (TTI: n) 
                 (n, n + 1) 
               
               
                   
                   
                 RV2 of CBG 1  (TTI: n + 1) 
               
               
                   
                   
                 RV3 ofCBG 2 , CBG 3  (TTI: n + 1) 
               
               
                 xxx11 
                 3 
                 RV0 of all CBGs (TTI: n) 
                 (n, n + 1, n + 5) 
               
               
                   
                   
                 RV2 of all CBGs(TT: n + 1) 
               
               
                   
                   
                 RV1 of CBG 3  (TTI: n + 5) 
               
               
                 . . . 
                 . . . 
                 . . . 
                 . . . 
               
               
                   
               
            
           
         
       
     
     The number of bundles to be transmitted on HARQ feedback may be adaptive, and may vary with the channel statistics reported or estimated. The HARQ feedback may be provided as a summary, periodically over a configured time period or aperiodically on demand, and need not be on a per TTI basis or per TB basis. The feedback may provide channel statistics over the configured time period (as described above), and need not be the latest/current channel realization. 
     In the case of uplink, the WTRU may send over physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) a ‘slow rate’ feedback summary on the channel statistics experienced (described above) over the last configured time period, or aperiodically on demand. The WTRU may also transmit the feedback instantaneously over physical uplink control channel (PUCCH). Based on the feedback, the number of bundles that are used by the BS (e.g., eNB) for every TB, throughout the next bundled transmission time period, T BundlePeriod  (e.g., next, T BundlePeriod &gt;1 TTIs), is signaled explicitly to the WTRU through DCI, MAC-CE or RRC layer parameter such as ‘adaptive bundle size=x’, based on a bitmap as shown in Table or Table 2. T BundePeriod  is semi-static and may be changed by the gNB eNB. 
     Alternately or additionally, the WTRU may signal directly the bitmap on a dedicated resource in PUCCH that the BS (e.g., eNB) needs to follow. An RRC identifier, adaptive bundling=True can be configured to indicate that both the WTRU and BS (e.g., eNB) do not have to provide a HARQ feedback per TB/CBG as in the conventional case. Further, there may be an implicit way of letting the BS (e.g., eNB) know the RV that the WTRU is transmitting. In LTE, for a HARQ process, if one RV is transmitted per TTI, the RV transmitted in the kth subframe may be given by (k mod x), where x is the number of RVs (which is 4 in LTE). 
     In the case of downlink, the BS (e.g., eNB) may directly signal the bitmap on DCI, MAC-CE or RRC layer in the bundle parameters that the WTRU needs to use. 
     Alternatively or additionally, multiple RVs may be transmitted per TTI sufficiently spaced apart in subcarrier/PRB allocations so as to leverage frequency diversity. The number of RVs, and the PRB allocations may be signaled via DCI, MAC-CE, RRC. This is applicable for both uplink and downlink scenarios. 
       FIG. 5A  illustrates an example transmission  500  of a transport block (TB) that includes an redundancy versions (RV) for decoding, which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. As mentioned previously, if the channel is better than what was estimated, some of the transmitted RVs may be redundant for decoding. This is illustrated in  FIG. 5A , where the RVs  505 ,  510  are bundled and transmitted (without the transmitter getting feedback) in one/multiple TTIs. As illustrated in  FIG. 5A , RV 2   510  may not be required for decoding, as decoding is possible with only RV 0   505 . 
     It should be noted in  FIG. 5A  that the transmitter would not have transmitted RV 2   510  in the first place, had the channel prediction been performed precisely. Thus, an appropriate bundle size as discussed above (in this example, a bundle of size one, containing only RV 0   505 ) could have been transmitted. However, as discussed previously, in NTNs, the channel state information may become stale due to high propagation delays. 
     Thus, the bundling needs to be such that the transmitter should not provide more than required redundancies per TB, as this leads to wastage of resources, but rather provide redundancies across TBs, leading to increased spectral efficiency. As the RVs are transmitted as a bundle (across one or multiple TTIs), the transmitter has no way of obtaining feedback, and it transmits all the RVs (e.g., RV 0   505 , RV 2   510 ) using the same MCS, and number of resource blocks. That is, in this example, the amount of resource blocks that was used for transmission of the RV 2   510  was redundant (i.e. the spectral inefficiency which is the ratio of the number of additional PRBs used to the number of PRBs actually required, is 100%). 
       FIG. 5B  illustrates an example transmission  550  of a transport block (TB) that includes an RV and a cross redundancy version (cRV) jointly for multiple TBs, which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. Controlled redundancy may be introduced so as to maintain the chances of successful decoding, yet be spectrally efficient. This leads to the notion of cross redundancy versions (cRV)  560  that introduces redundancy version(s) across multiple TBs  565 ,  570  as illustrated in  FIG. 5B . For example, the cRV  560  illustrated in  FIG. 5B  denotes the redundancy version jointly for TBs, TB 1    565 , and TB 2    570 . The cRV-based scheme is efficient because cRV  560  is transmitted jointly for TB 1    565  and TB 2    570  as a part of TB 2    570  transmission. Specifically, assuming for simplicity that TB 1    565 , and TB 2    570  are of same size and hence similar MCS and number of physical resource blocks (PRBs) would be used for both TBs  565 ,  570  for bundled transmission, it can be seen that the average spectral inefficiency across TB 1    565 , and TB 2    570  may be reduced to 50%, while providing the required redundancy per TB. Thus, the cRV  560  may not only produce parity individually for its codewords/code blocks (CBs)/code block groups (CBG) in a TB, but also generates one or more redundancy versions jointly across codewords/CBs/CBGs between multiple TBs. In addition to transmitting RVs for individual CBGs for a TB, one or more cRVs may be transmitted across CBs/CBGs between multiple TBs. Thus, the cRVs may be defined as the RVs generated or punctured across or between CBs/CBGs/codewords belonging to different TBs. 
       FIG. 6A  illustrates an example transmission  600  of redundancy versions (RVs) as a bundle where the RVs are associated with a particular transport block (TB). As illustrated in  FIG. 6A , RV 0   602 , RV 1   604 , RV 2   606 , and RV 3   608  are associated with TB 1   610 . These RV 0   602 , RV 1   604 , RV 2   606 , and RV 3   608  may be transmitted as a bundle across one TTI, or may be transmitted each in a TTI totaling 4 TTIs . Once a transmitter sends RV 0   602 , RV 1   604 , RV 2   606 , and RV 3   608  to a receiver, the receiver may decode TB 1   610  using RV 0   602 , RV 1   604 , RV 2   606 , and/or RV 3   608 . If TB 1   610  is successfully decoded, the receiver may transmit positive HARQ feedback (i.e. ACK) to the transmitter. If TB 1   610  is not successfully decoded, the receiver may transmit a negative HARQ feedback (i.e. NACK) to the transmitter. Similarly, as illustrated in  FIG. 6A , RV 0   612 , RV 1   614 , RV 2   616 , and RV 3   618  are associated with TB 2   620 . These RV 0   612 , RV 1   614 , RV 2   616 , and RV 3   618  may be transmitted as a bundle during TB 2  transmit interval (e.g., TTI). Once the transmitter sends RV 0   612 , RV 1   614 , RV 2   616 , and RV 3   618  to the receiver, the receiver may decode TB 2   620  using RV 0   612 , RV 1   614 , RV 2   616 , and/or RV 3   618 . If TB 2   620  is successfully decoded, the receiver may transmit positive HARQ feedback (i.e. ACK) to the transmitter. If TB 2   620  is not successfully decoded, the receiver may transmit negative HARQ feedback (i.e. NACK) to the transmitter. The size of bundle for the RVs  602 ,  604 , 606 ,  608  associated with TB 1   610  or RVs  612 ,  614 ,  616 ,  618  associated with TB 2   620  may be predetermined, fixed, or signaled. For example, in LTE, the size of bundle may be 4 per TB and the RVs in a bundle may only correspond to a particular TB. 
       FIG. 6B  illustrates an example transmission  650  of redundancy versions (RVs) and a cross redundancy version (cRV) where the cRV is associated with multiple transport blocks (TBs), which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. As illustrated in  FIG. 6B , RV 0   662  and RV 1   664  are associated with TB 1   660  and may be transmitted as a bundle during TB 1  transmit interval (e.g., TTI). Similarly, RV 0   672  and RV 1   674  are associated with TB 2   670 , but RV 0   672  and RV 1   674  are transmitted with cRV  676  during TB 2  transmit interval (e.g., TTI). The cRV  676  may include information and/or parity bits that correspond to TB 1   660  and TB 2   670 . These coded (information and/or parity) bits may be used to decode TB 1   660  and TB 2   670 . The cRV  676  may be generated across TB 1   660  and TB 2   670 . Specifically, information bits from TB 1   660  and information bits from TB 2   670  may be combined to generate concatenated information bits. These concatenated information bits may be channel coded/rate matched to generate one or more RVs (i.e. RVs for concatenated TB). These RVs may be punctured with puncturing ratio to generate the cRV  676 . Although two TBs  660 ,  670  are illustrated in  FIG. 6B , the number of TBs in generating a cRV is not limited. Moreover, one or more cRVs may be generated from/across/between any number of TBs. In some embodiments, one or more cRV may be generated from/across/between multiple code block groups (CBGs) associated with one or more TBs. 
       FIG. 7  illustrates an example joint decoding procedure  700  with cross redundancy version (cRV) associated with multiple transport blocks (TBs), which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. At step  710 , a WTRU may transmit, to a base station (BS) (e.g., gNB), uplink (UL) feedback (or slow feedback) that includes configuration for redundancy versions (RVs) and cross redundancy versions (cRVs). The UL feedback (or slow feedback) may refer to feedback based on multiple TTIs, unlike instantaneous feedback that is performed every TTI. Specifcially, the UL feedback (or slow feedback) may be generated based on statistical information of one or more TTIs associated with current and/or past transmissions. Examples of the statistical information may include, but are not limited to, channel statistics in a certain reporting interval, how many timies a channel exceeds some threshold, and how many times the channel is within a certain range. The configuration included in the UL feedback (or slow feedback) may include, but are not limited to, a number of RVs per bundle, an RV index, a CBG index, TTI mapping for TBs, and cRV signaling information. The cRV signaling information may include, but are not limited to, the number of TBs for which a cRV is valid, the actual TBs for which the cRV applies, and CBGs for which the cRV is transmitted. In the embodiment illustrated in  FIG. 6B , the UL feedback may indicate the BS that: (1) the number of RVs per TB is two; (2) cRV  676  is associated with (or generated across) TB 1   660  and TB 2   670 ; and (3) cRV  676  is transmitted in TB 2   670  transmission interval. 
     In an embodiment, the UL feedback may be transmitted using an indicator or a bitmap that includes the configuration information described above. Alternatively or additionally, the examples of configuration information included in the indicator or the bitmap are described in Tables 1, 2 3 and/or 4 throughout this disclosure. 
     
       
         
           
               
               
               
               
             
               
                   
                 TABLE 3 
               
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                   
                   
                 TBs considered for 
               
               
                   
                 cRV 
                 # TBs 
                 encoding 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
            
               
                   
                 3 
                 1 
                 n 
               
               
                   
                 4 
                 2 
                 (n − 1, n) 
               
               
                   
                 5 
                 3 
                 (n − 1, n, n + 1) 
               
               
                   
                   
               
            
           
         
       
     
     For example, as shown in Table 3, the cRV configuration may indicate that cRV4 is associated with two TBs, which are to be transmitted in previous transmission interval (i.e. n−1) and current transmission interval (i.e. n). The current transmission n may indicate that the cRV4 is included in the current transmission. In the example of  FIG. 6B , n 31  1 indicates the previous transmission interval of TB 1  and n indicates the current transmission interval of TB 2  that includes cRV  676  transmission. 
     At step  720 , the WTRU may receive (or read), from the BS, downlink control information (DCI) via a downlink control channel. The DCI may include configuration information indicating that one or more RVs are configured for a first transport block (TB 1 ). This is because the transmitter (e.g., BS) does not have to transmit all RVs associated with the first TB. The transmitter may select one or more RVs and transmit them to the WTRU with indication of RV numbers. Based on the DCI, the WTRU may determine that which RV(s) is/are configured for the first TB. The WTRU may then receive, from the BS, the one or more RVs associated with the first TB. At step  730 , the WTRU may decode, using the configured RVs, the first TB. If the received TB 1  is unsuccessfully decoded, the WTRU may generate a first estimated TB (i.e. TB 1 est    735 ) that includes estimated information bits for the first TB. 
     At step  740 , the WTRU may receive (or read), from the BS, another downlink control information (DCI) via a downlink control channel. The DCI may include configuration information indicating that one or more RVs and at least one cRV are configured for a second transport block (TB 2 ). Based on the DCI, the WTRU may determine which RV(s) is/are configured for the second TB and whether cRV is configured for the second TB (e.g., configured for the second TB transmission). The WTRU may also determine whether the cRV is associated with the first and second TBs or any other TBs. More specifically, the WTRU may determine which TBs are associated with the received cRV. The WTRU may then receive, from the BS, the one or more RVs associated with the second TB. At step  750 , the WTRU may decode, using the configured RVs, the second TB. If the received TB 2  is unsuccessfully decoded, the WTRU may generate a second estimated TB (i.e. T 2 est    755 ) that includes estimated information bits for the second TB. 
     At step  760 , the WTRU may set up joint decoder using the configured cRV. For example, if at least one of first TB (e.g., TB 1 ) or the second TB (e.g., TB 2 ) is unsuccessfully decoded, the WTRU may decode the first and second TBs jointly based on the cRV at step  770 . Specifically, if the first estimated TB  735  is generated (i.e. TB 1  is not successfully decoded) but the second estimated TB  755  is not generated (i.e. TB 2  is successfully decoded), the WTRU may concatenate the first estimated TB  735  and the second TB and decode the concatenated TB using the cRV. If the first estimated TB  735  is not generated (i.e. TB 1  is successfully decoded) but the second estimated TB  755  is generated (i.e. TB 2  is not successfully decoded), the WTRU may concatenate the first TB and the second estimate TB  755  and decode the concatenated TB using the cRV. If the first estimated TB  735  is generated (i.e. TB 1  is not successfully decoded) and the second estimated TB  755  is generated (i.e. TB 2  is not successfully decoded), the WTRU may concatenate the first estimate TB  735  and the second estimate TB  755  and decode the concatenated TB using the cRV. 
     If the concatenated TB is successfully decoded at step  770 , final decoded information bits, TB 1   780  and TB 2   775 , are generated and the WTRU may transmit positive HARQ feedback corresponding to TB 1  and TB 2  to the BS. If the concatenated TB is not successfully decoded, the WTRU may transmit negative HARQ feedback to the BS corresponding to TB 1  and TB 2 . 
     Embodiments for cross redundancy versions (cRVs) generation (e.g., encoding and decoding) are described herein. As shown in  FIG. 4 , a TB can be segmented into code blocks (CBs) that are further mapped into code block groups (CBG).  FIG. 8  illustrates an example encoding procedure  800  for cRVs generated across multiple TBs, which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. Although the encoding procedure  800  illustrates two TBs  805 ,  810  segmented into CBs  806 ,  807 ,  808 ,  809 ,  811 ,  812 ,  813 ,  814 ,  815 ,  816  and cRVs  865 ,  870 ,  875  generated across/between two TBs  805 ,  810 , this encoding scheme can be extend to more than two TBs. The cRVs can also be generated across/between multiple CBGs for a single TB or multiple TBs. 
     Referring now to  FIGS. 8 , TB 1    805  and TB 2    810  are two transport blocks of size m, and n respectively. Without loss of generality, m is less than n (i.e. m&lt;n). CB k   m , denotes the m th  code block associated to an (individual) transport block k (k=1,2). Further, the m th  code block corresponding to the concatenation of TB 1    805  and TB 2    810  is denoted by CB 12   m . It is noted that code block size may be fixed, given conditions, per standards. It is also noted that in  FIG. 8 , the code block size for TB 1    805  and TB 2    810  need not be the same. The encoding of the joint TB, denoted by TB 12    830 , to generate the cRVs  865 ,  870 ,  875  proceeds according to the following steps. 
     a 1 , a 2  . . . a m−1 , a m  may denote the input bits of transport block TB 1    805 , and b 1 , b 2  . . . b n  denote the input bits of transport block, TB 2    810 . The transport blocks TB 1    805  and TB 2    810  may be first interleaved as shown in step  820  to obtain TB 12    830 . It is noted that the purpose of the interleaver is to uniformly intersperse the input bits of TB 1    805  and TB 2    810  in the concatenated transport block TB 12    830 . This may be done with the intention that any code block, CB 12   m  (e.g., CB 12   1    831 , CB 12   2    832 , CB 12   3    833 , CB 12   4    834 , CB 12   5    835 , CB 12   6    836 , CB 12   7    837 , CB 12   8   838 , CB 12   9   839 , CB 12   10    840 ) corresponding to the concatenated transport block (e.g., TB 12    830 ), has roughly the same number of input bits (or proportional to their transport block size) of TB 1    805  and TB 2    810 . In this example, the output of the interleaver yields the input bits a 1 , b 1 , a 2 , b 2 , a 3 , b 3  . . . . a m , b m , b m+1 , . . . b n . In other embodiments, alternate interleavers are possible. 
     Using the fixed code block size specified in standards, TB 12    830  may be segmented in code blocks, CB 12   m  (m=1,2 . . . ) that includes the fixed size code redundancy check (CRC) attachment. It is noted that CB 1   m  (m=1,2 . . . ) and CB 2   m  (m=1,2 . . . ) may have their own CRCs. 
     Each of the code blocks, CB 12   m  (m=1,2 . . . )  831 ,  832 ,  833 ,  834 ,  835 ,  836 ,  837 ,  838 ,  839 ,  840  is channel encoded, (e.g., Low Density Parity Check Code (LDPC), Polar coding, or the like) using the parity check matrix specified in standards, and rate matched outputs are obtained. 
     The rate matched outputs of all the code blocks  831 ,  832 ,  833 ,  834 ,  835 ,  836 ,  837 ,  838 ,  839 ,  840  may be sequentially concatenated to yield the different rate matched versions for the concatenated TB  830  as denoted in step  880 . The rate matched outputs of the concatenated TB  830  are represented by, (RV) 12 =[(RV 0 ) 12    845 , (RV 1 ) 12    850 , (RV 2 ) 12    855 , (RV 3 ) 12    860 ]. Here, (RVx) 12    845 ,  850 ,  855 ,  860  denotes the redundancy version x (x=0,1,2,3) generated for TB 12    830 . (RV) 12  denotes all the redundancy versions concatenated for the joint Transport Block TB 12    830 . 
     Finally, the cRVs (e.g., (cRV 1 ) 12 ,(cRV 2 ) 12 ,(cRV 3 ) 12 ) may be generated from (RV) 12    845 ,  850 ,  855 ,  860  as follows. (RV 0 ) 12    845  may not be considered as part of cRVs  865 ,  870 ,  875 , as it represents mostly the systematic bits. As shown in step  885 , (RV 1 ) 12    850 , (RV 2 ) 12    855 , (RV 3 ) 12    860  may be punctured according to the ratio of size of the (e.g., individual) TB in which one or more of the cRVs  865 ,  870 ,  875  will be transmitted to the sum of the sizes of the TBs  805 ,  810  across which the cRVs  865 ,  870 ,  875  are generated. For example, if one or more of the cRVs  865 ,  870 ,  875  are transmitted as a bundle along with TB 2    810 , and the one or more of the cRVs  865 ,  870 ,  875  are generated between TB 1    805  and TB 2    810 , the puncturing ratio may be, 
     
       
         
           
             r 
             = 
             
               
                 
                   T 
                    
                   
                     B 
                     2 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     T 
                      
                     
                       B 
                       1 
                     
                   
                   + 
                   
                     T 
                      
                     
                       B 
                       2 
                     
                   
                 
               
               . 
             
           
         
       
     
     Thus, to obtain (cRVx) 12    865 ,  870 ,  875  where x=1,2,3, (RVx) 12    845 ,  850 ,  855 ,  860  where x=0,1,2,3 may be punctured with ratio r, as shown in step  885 . Puncturing (RVx) 12    845 ,  850 ,  855 ,  860  may mean taking one or more bits (or dropping zero or more bits) from (RVx) 12    845 ,  850 ,  855 ,  860  to generate (cRVx) 12    865 ,  870 ,  875 . It may or may not take all of the bits from (RVx) 12    845 ,  850 ,  855 ,  860 . For example, every other bit may be taken from (RV 1 ) 12    845  to generate (cRV 1 ) 12    865  with half ratio (i.e. ½). In an embodiment, a set of allowable puncturing ratio sets, S={s 1 , s 2  . . . s k } (satisfying s i &lt;s i+1 ) may be predefined and for the obtained puncturing ratio, r, the highest s m  such that s m ≤r may be chosen. That means, the puncturing may actually be performed with ratio {circumflex over (r)}=s m . For example, if 
     
       
         
           
             
               S 
               = 
               
                 { 
                 
                   
                     1 
                     4 
                   
                   , 
                   
                     1 
                     2 
                   
                   , 
                   
                     3 
                     4 
                   
                   , 
                   
                     7 
                     8 
                   
                 
                 } 
               
             
             , 
           
         
       
     
     and it the ratio of me TB sizes are such that, r=0.79, the actual puncturing ratio used may be, 
     
       
         
           
             
               r 
               ^ 
             
             = 
             
               
                 3 
                 4 
               
               . 
             
           
         
       
     
     Finally, the cRVs generated are (cRV) 12 =[(cRV 1 ) 12    865 , (cRV 2 ) 12    870 , (cRV 3 ) 12    875 ]. It is noted that the cRVs  865 ,  870 ,  875  can be generated from any number of TBs. 
     Embodiments for cRV transmission with bundling are described herein. cRV that represents the cross parity between two or more transport blocks may always be transmitted along with the one or more redundancy versions of the individual transport blocks as a bundle. This is due to the fact that in partial HARQ Incremental Redundancy (IR), a transport block may need to be decodable using the individual redundancy versions and hence it is possible for a device to estimate the information/input bits. Since redundancy version 0 (that represents mostly the systematic bits) of the individual transport blocks may be transmitted in any bundle, nothing may be gained from transmitting cross redundancy version 0 which again represents the systematic bits. This is why any of (cRVx) 12  (x=1,2,3), for example, are assumed to be transmitted as a part of the cRV transmission. Furthermore, (cRVx) 12  (x=1,2,3) may be transmitted as a bundle along with any number of redundancy versions of individual transport blocks. 
       FIG. 9  illustrates an example cross redundancy version (cRV) transmission by bundling with any number of individual redundancy versions (RVs), which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. In  FIG. 9 , (RVx) k  may represent individual redundancy version x of transport block k, and (cRVx) kp  may represent cross redundancy version x between TB k  and TB p . As illustrated in  FIG. 9 , (cRV 2 ) 12    920  may be generated between/across TB 1   930  and TB 2   935  and transmitted along with (RV 0 ) 2    910  and (RV 1 ) 2    915  of the individual TB 2   935  as a bundle. The receiver may initiate the process of decoding TB 2   935  after it receives all (RV 0 ) 2    910 , (RV 1 ) 2    915 , and (cRV 2 ) 12    920  as a bundle. In another example illustrated in  FIG. 9 , (cRV 1 ) 12    965  may be generated between/across TB 1   970  and TB 2   975  and transmitted along with (RV 0 ) 2    950 , (RV 3 ) 2    955 , and (RV 2 ) 2    960  of the individual TB 2   975  as a bundle. The receiver may initiate the process of decoding TB 2   975  after it receives all (RV 0 ) 2    950 , (RV 3 ) 2    955 , (RV 2 ) 2    960  and (cRV 1 ) 12    965  as a bundle. 
       FIG. 10  illustrates an example decoding procedure  1000  using a cRV generated across multiple TBs, which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. Although the decoding procedure  1000  is illustrated with two TBs, this decoding scheme can be extend to more than two TBs. The cRV  1050  may also be generated across/between multiple CBGs for a single TB or multiple TBs. 
     Assuming that (RVx) 1  (where x=0, 1, 2, 3, . . . ) denotes one or more redundancy versions of TB 1 , TB 1  may be individually decoded and estimated at step  1005  using the individual redundancy versions (RV 0 ) 1 , and any or all of (RV 1 ) 1 , (RV 2 ) 1 , (RV 3 ) 1  depending on what was transmitted in the bundle. After TB 1  is decoded or estimated, the estimate of input bits of the transport block, TB 1  (i.e. TB 1_est ) may be generated, for example, a′ 1 , a′ 2  . . . . a′ m−1 , a′ m    1015 . The estimated information bits a′ 1 , a′ 2  . . . . a′ m−1 , a′ m    1015  may or may not be accurate. In other words, TB 1  may or may not be successfully decoded. 
     Similarly, assuming that (RVx) 2  (where x=0, 1, 2, 3, . . . ) denotes one or more redundancy versions of TB 2 , TB 2  may be individually decoded and estimated at step  1010 , using the individual redundancy versions (RV 0 ) 2 , and any or all of (RV 1 ) 2 , (RV 2 ) 2 , (RV 3 ) 3  depending on what was transmitted in the bundle. After TB 2  is decoded or estimated, the estimate of input bits of the transport block, TB 2  (i.e. TB 2_est ) may be generated, for example b′ 1 , b′ 2  . . . . b′ n−1 , b′ n    1020  based on the individual redundancy versions (RV 0 ) 2 , and any or all of (RV 1 ) 2 , (RV 2 ) 2 , (RV 3 ) 2 . The estimated information bits b′ 1 , b′ 2  . . . . b′ n−1 , b′ n    1020  may or may not be accurate. In other words, TB 2  may or may not be successfully decoded. 
     In case that one or both the transport blocks TB 1 , and TB 2  were not successfully decoded (i.e. inaccurate information bits are generated at least one of TBs) based on the individual redundant versions, the receiver may uses the cRV  1050  to obtain the final decoded output  1055  as follows. At step  1025 , using the signaled or agreed upon interleaver between the transmitter and receiver, the receiver may form an estimate of the concatenated transport block TB 12 , as shown in  FIG. 10 . It is noted that ‘Estimate TB 1  or TB 1_est ’ and or ‘Estimate TB 2  or TB 2_est ’ may be maintained at the receivers buffers and may not be discarded even if the transport block was decoded correctly. The number of successfully or unsuccessfully decoded transport block estimates to be maintained in the buffers at the receiver may equal the maximum number of transport blocks across which the cRV  1050  is generated. For example, in Table 4 below, the maximum number of TBs across which a cRV is generated is 4, which corresponds to cRV 7 . On the downlink, a WTRU may be preconfigured (or predetermined) or configured via radio resource control (RRC) signaling the number of buffers to maintain per HARQ process with value cRV SBSize  by a BS (e.g., eNB or gNB). On the uplink, the number of soft buffers the BS (e.g., eNB or gNB) maintains per HARQ process per HARQ entity may be predetermined, signaled , or implementation specific. 
     The estimate of concatenated transport block (i.e. Estimate of TB 12    1030 ) may be divided into code block segments (e.g., CB 12   1    1031 , CB 12   2    1032 , CB 12   3    1032 , CB 12   3    1033 , CB 12   4    1034 , CB 12   5    1035 , CB 12   6    1036 , CB 12   7    1037 , CB 12   8    1038 , CB 12   9    1039 , and CB 12   10    1040 ), for example, using a code block segment size as standardized for any LTE/NR wireless unit. 
     As an example, a′ 1 , b′ 1 , a′ 2 , b′ 2 , a′ 3 , b′ 3 , a′ 4 , b′ 4  may be the estimate of the input bits of the first code block CB 12   1  at the receiver. It is noted that the corresponding input bits of the concatenated transport block encoded at the transmitter would have been a 1 , b 1 , a 2 , b 2 , a 3 , b 3 , a 4 , b 4 . 
     For the aforementioned sequence of information bits of the code block, it is noted that the redundant versions (e.g., RV 0 , RV 1 , RV 2 , RV 3 ) are well defined in the standards. Specifically, for any parity bit (of the information bit sequence {a 1 , b 1 , a 2 , b 2 , a 3 , b 3 , a 4 , b 4 } belonging to any redundant version, the information bits that participate in a parity bit is well defined according to the parity matrix. As the cRV are obtained by puncturing the well-defined redundancy versions (as illustrated in  FIG. 11 ), it follows that the information that the receiver needs, to be able to use the cRV to jointly decode TB 1 , and TB 2  is the puncturing matrix/ratio ({circumflex over (r)}) used or the puncturing ratio sets, S={s 1 , s 2  . . . s k }, that was used during the encoding process in  FIG. 11 . The puncturing matrix/ratio ({circumflex over (r)}), may need not be signaled explicitly (although this can be signaled), but can be inferred implicitly by the receiver. The receiver knows the transport block sizes, TB 1 , and TB 2  that it has received (although the receiver was unable to decode either of them) and, because the receiver gets the cRV as a bundle during TB 2  transmission, it can infer 
     
       
         
           
             r 
             = 
             
               
                 
                   T 
                    
                   
                     B 
                     2 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     T 
                      
                     
                       B 
                       1 
                     
                   
                   + 
                   
                     T 
                      
                     
                       B 
                       2 
                     
                   
                 
               
               . 
             
           
         
       
     
     Thus, if the puncturing ratio sets, S={s 1 , s 2  . . . s k }, is signaled, the receiver can find out the actual puncturing ratio {circumflex over (r)}=s m , where m=arg max k  s k ≤r, which was used in the cRV encoding process. It is noted that if the receiver gets the cRV as a bundle during TB 1  transmission, the receiver may infer 
     
       
         
           
             
               r 
               = 
               
                 
                   T 
                    
                   
                     B 
                     1 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     T 
                      
                     
                       B 
                       1 
                     
                   
                   + 
                   
                     TB 
                     2 
                   
                 
               
             
             , 
           
         
       
     
     and may then estimate {circumflex over (r)} accordingly. 
       FIG. 11  illustrates an example cross redundancy version (cRV)-based joint decoding  1100  of code blocks (CBs) belonging to different transport blocks (TBs), which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. The code blocks in this example cRV-based decoding may belong to TB 1 , and TB 2 . As illustrated in  FIG. 11 , the top most parity checks correspond to the redundancy versions for the individual transport block TB 1    1105  where the information bits a′ 1 , a′ 2  a′ 3  a′ 4    1110  participate. The bottom most parity checks denote the redundancy versions for the individual transport block, TB 2    1120  where only the information bits b′ 1 , b′ 2  b′ 3  b′ 4    1120  participate. The parity checks at the center correspond to cRV  1130  where information bits from both TBs participate. Specifically, a WTRU may decode TB 1  using individual RVs  1105  configured for TB 1  and obtain TB 1_est , which is the information bits a′ 1 , a′ 2  a′ 3  a′ 4    1110 . Similarly, the WTRU may decode TB 2  using individual RVs  1120  configured for TB 2  and obtain TB 2_est , which is the information bits b′ 1 , b′ 2  b′ 3  b′ 4    1120 . The WTRU may use the configured cRV  1130  to set up joint decoder and decode TB 1  and TB 2  using a′ 1 , a′ 2  a′ 3  a′ 4    1110 , b′ 1 , b′ 2  b′ 3  b′ 4    1125 , and the cRV  1130 . 
     The parameters that the receiver needs to be able to use cRV for joint decoding of code blocks/transport blocks may include, but are not limited to, the interleavers for interleaving the transport blocks to form the concatenated transport block, and the puncturing ratio set S={s 1 , s 2  . . . s k }, to rate match the cRV depending on the TB where the cRV is bundled and transmitted. These parameters can be signaled through DCI, higher layer signaling such as RRC, MAC-CE or can be fixed or predetermined (e.g., similar to the fixed encoders/parity check matrix definition in the standards). 
     Embodiments for cross redundancy version (cRV) with code block groups (CBGs) are described herein. Such embodiments may include, but are not limited to, cRV encoding, transmission and decoding when CBGs are used in one or more transport blocks (TBs). 
     In this case, the HARQ feedback may be provided per CBG, and redundancy versions may be produced per CBG. Thus, a redundancy version for a TB can be modeled as concatenation of redundancy versions of individual CBGs. For example, RV 1  for TB 1 , denoted by (RV 1 ) 1 , can be written as (RV 1 ) 1 =[(RV 1 ) 1   1 , (RV 1 ) 1   2 , (RV 1 ) 1   3 ], where (RV 1 ) 1   1 , (RV 1 ) 1   2 , (RV 1 ) 1   3  represents the redundancy version-1 of CBGs  1 ,  2 , and  3  respectively. Henceforth, the following notation will be used: (RVx) k   m  represents the redundancy version x (where x=0,1,2,3) for CBG m, and TB k; and (RVx) k  represents the redundancy version x for all CBGs in TB k. 
       FIG. 12  illustrates an example cross redundancy version (cRV) generation  1200  between multiple transport blocks (TBs) for different code block groups (CBGs), which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. cRVs  1221 ,  1251 ,  1281 ,  1226 ,  1256 ,  1286 ,  1231 ,  1261 ,  1291  can be generated between CBGs  1220 ,  1225 ,  1230 ,  1250 ,  1255 ,  1260  of a single TB or different TBs  1205 ,  1240 . As illustrated in  FIG. 12 , TB 1    1205  includes code blocks, CB 1   1    1211 , CB 1   2    1212 , CB 1   3    1213 , CB 1   4    1214 , CB 1   5    1215 , CB 1   6    1216 , CB 1   7    1217 , and CB 1   8    1218 . Each of the code blocks may be grouped by one or more code block groups. For example, CB 1   1    1211 , CB 1   2    1212 , and CB 1   3    1213  may be grouped by CBG 1   1    1220 , CB 1   4    1214 , CB 1   5    1215 , and CB 1   6    1216  may be grouped by CBG 1   2    1225 . CB 1   7    1217  and CB 1   8    1218  may be grouped by CBG 1   3    1230 . Similarly, TB 2    1240  includes code blocks, CB 2   1    1241 , CB 2   2    1242 , CB 2   3    1243 , CB 2   4    1244 , CB 2   5    1245 , CB 2   6    1246 , CB 2   7    1247 , and CB 2   5    1248 . Each of the code blocks may be grouped by one or more code block groups. For example, CB 2   1    1241 , CB 2   2    1242 , and CB 2   3    1243  may be grouped by CBG 2   1    1250 , CB 2   4    1244 , CB 2   5    1245 , and CB 2   6    1246  may be grouped by CBG 2   2    1255 . CB 2   7    1247 , and CB 2   8    1248  may be grouped by CBG 2   3    1260 . 
     The notations used in  FIG. 12  are as follows. CBG k   m  denote the code block group corresponding to CBG m of TB k. Similar notation may apply to the code block CB k   m . (cRVx) pq   m  denotes the cross redundancy version x (x=1,2,3) generated for group m, by CBG p   m  (from TB p ), and CBG q   m  (from TB q ). For example, (cRV 2 ) 12   3    1261  denotes the cross redundancy version 2 corresponding to code block group 3, generated by CBG 1   3    1230  (from TB 1    1205 ), and CBG 2   3    1260  (from TB 2    1240 ). (cRVx) pq  represents the cross redundancy version x (x=1,2,3) for all code blocks groups between TB p  and TB q . For example, (cRV 2 ) 12    1295  represents cRV 2  for all CBGs (i.e. (cRV 2 ) 12   1    1251 , (cRV 2 ) 12   2    1256 , (cRV 2 ) 12   3    1261 ) between TB 1    1205  and TB 2    1240 . 
     cRV generation proceeds as follows. Similar numbered code block groups in TB 1    1205  and TB 2    1240  are used to generate cross redundancy versions. For example, cross parity bits produced jointly using CBG 1   3    1230  and CBG 2   3    1260  yields cross redundancy versions: (cRV 1 ) 12   3 , (cRV 2 ) 12   3 , and (cRV 3 ) 12   3 . The procedure for generating cross redundancy versions between CBGs belonging to two different transport blocks is similar to the encoding procedure depicted in  FIG. 8 , with the transport blocks TB 1  and TB 2  replaced by code block groups CBG k   m . That is, an interleaver may be used to produce a concatenated code block group, and the concatenated code block group may be segmented into code blocks, and encoding is performed per code block in a typical manner. For example, an interleaver  1270  is used to concatenate CBG 1   2    1225  and CBG 2   2    1255 . Channel coding and/or rate matching may be performed on the concatenated CBG, thereby generating one or more redundancy versions. These redundancy versions may be punctured with individual CBG rate matching to generate cRVs, (cRV 1 ) 12   2 , (cRV 2 ) 12   2 , and (cRV 3 ) 12   2 . 
     As encoding of cRV may be performed per CBG, independent interleavers may be provided per CBG, if required. Furthermore, puncturing ratio for generating cRV per CBG may depend on the TB that it is transmitted using, and also on the CBG sizes it occupies in the corresponding transport blocks. For example, the puncturing ratio for obtaining cross redundancy version for code block group, m, from the redundancy versions of the concatenated code block groups CBG 1   m  and CBG 2   m , is 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 r 
                 m 
               
               = 
               
                 
                   C 
                    
                   B 
                    
                   
                     G 
                     m 
                     i 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     C 
                      
                     B 
                      
                     
                       G 
                       m 
                       1 
                     
                   
                   + 
                   
                     C 
                      
                     B 
                      
                     
                       G 
                       m 
                       2 
                     
                   
                 
               
             
             , 
           
         
       
     
     if the cRV is transmitted as a bundle in TB i  (i=1,2). (cRVx) 12   m  (x=1,2,3) for a specific code block group, m may also be transmitted as a part of the bundle along with the individual redundancy versions of k th  transport block, (RVx) k  (x=0,1,2,3). 
     Finally, it is noted that in addition that cRV can be generated across multiple transport blocks (e.g., current, past and future TBs), cross redundancy versions may be generated across dissimilar CBGs. For example, cRV may be obtained by generating parity bits using CBG 1   2    1225 , and CBG 2   3    1260  (i.e., between code block group 2 of TB 1    1205  and code block group 3 of TB 2    1240 ) unlike constraining them to be generated using similar numbered code block groups as the example illustrated in  FIG. 12 . 
     Embodiments for cRV signaling are described herein. 4G/NR systems currently use four redundancy versions for a transport block. With the cross redundancy version (cRV) described herein, the signaling of RV may incorporate: (1) the number of transport blocks for which a cRV is valid; (2) the actual transport blocks for which the cRV applies; and (3) code block groups for which the cRV is transmitted. An example of cRV signaling is provided in Table 4 below. 
     
       
         
           
               
             
               
                 TABLE 4 
               
             
            
               
                   
               
               
                 Example cRV signaling 
               
            
           
           
               
               
               
               
            
               
                   
                   
                 TBs considered for 
                 Code Block 
               
               
                 cRV 
                 # TBs 
                 encoding 
                 Groups 
               
               
                   
               
               
                 0 
                 1 
                 n 
                 All 
               
               
                 1 
                 1 
                 n 
                 All 
               
               
                 2 
                 1 
                 n 
                 All 
               
               
                 3 
                 1 
                 n 
                 All 
               
               
                 4 
                 2 
                 (n, n + 1) 
                 Even CBGs 
               
               
                 5 
                 3 
                 (n − 1, n, n + 1) 
                 Odd CBGs 
               
               
                 6 
                 3 
                 (n − 1, n, n + 4) 
                 CBG mod 3 == 0 
               
               
                 7 
                 4 
                 (n − 1, n, n + 2, n + 5) 
                 All 
               
               
                   
               
            
           
         
       
     
     In Table 4 above, the first four rows represents the redundancy versions associated to individual (or single) TB (e.g., used in NR/LTE systems). The last four rows represent the redundancy versions associated with multiple transport blocks. n denotes the current transmission of TB that includes RVs associated with the current TB. n−1 denotes the previous transmission of TB that includes RVs associated with the previous TB. n+1 denotes the next transmission of TB that includes RVs associated with the next TB. For example, cRV1 (i.e. cRV=1) above represents redundancy versions for all CBGs associated to the current TB (i.e. n). It is noted in this example that the cRV may become the legacy RV as the coding is performed only within the current TB. Specifically, assuming that only one TB, TB1, is considered for encoding and TB 1  comprises three CBGs, CBG 1   1 , CBG 1   2 , CBG 1   3 , cRV 1  simply represents the legacy redundancy version associated with only TB 1 . Once cRV 1  is generated, cRV 1  is transmitted during TTI for the current TB (i.e. n). To summarize, the first four rows may represent redundancy versions that are generated within a TB and may be transmitted at the current time instant n. 
     In another example, cRV 4  (i.e. cRV=4) above represents redundancy version only for even CBGs associated to the current (i.e. n) and the next (i.e. n+1) transport block. It is assumed that there are three TBs transmitted: TB 1  transmitted at time n−1, TB 2  transmitted at time n, and TB 3  transmitted at time n+1. It is also assumed that time instant n, the transmission of TB 2  is performed. In this case, two TBs, TB 1  and TB 3 , would be encoded where TB 1  comprises three CBGs, CBG  1   1 , CBG 1   2 , CBG 1   3 , and TB 3  comprises three CBGs, CBG 3   1 , CBG 3   2 , CBG 3   3 . cRV 4  is generated across RVs generated from even CBGs, CBG 1   2  of TB 1  and CBG 3   2  of TB 3 . Once the cRV 4  is generated, the cRV 4  is transmitted during TTI at time instant n (i.e. along with TB 2  transmission at the current time instant n). 
     Similarly, cRV 6  (i.e. cRV=6) above represents redundancy version for CBGs that satisfy CBG mod 3==0 associated to the current (i.e. n), previous (n−1), and future (n+4) transport block that would be transmitted four subframes later. For example, assuming that three TBs, TB 1  (e.g., transmitted at time n−1), TB 2  (e.g., transmitted at time instant n) and TB 3  (e.g., transmitted at time instant n+4) are considered for encoding, and TB 1  comprises three CBGs, CBG 1   1 , CBG 1   2 , CBG 1   3 , TB 2  comprises three CBGs, CBG 2   1 , CBG 2   2 , CBG 2   3 , and TB 3  comprises three CBGs, CBG 3   1 , CBG 3   2 , CBG 3   3 , cRV 6  is generated across RVs generated from CBGs that satisfies CBG mod 3==0. In this example, those CBGs are CBG 1   3  of TB 1 , CBG 2   3  of TB 2 , and CBG 3   3  of TB 3 . Once the cRV 6  is generated, the cRV 6  is transmitted during TTI for the current TB (i.e. n). In general, code blocks that satisfy CBG mod N==0 (N&gt;0) may be transmitted. There may be an explicit signaling to indicate the redundancy version that should be transmitted or is transmitted, through DCI. Alternately or additionally, there may be implicit signaling where a cRV transmission depends on subframe number/SFN. Some examples are cRV 4  sent when ((TTI mod 4==0) &amp;&amp; (SFN mod 3 ==0)), and/or cRV 7  sent when (TTI mod 6==0). 
     Embodiments for cRV decoding with CBGs are described herein. Decoding of cRV using CBGs is similar to decoding of cRV using TBs described in  FIG. 10 . In this embodiment, it is assumed that one or more TBs are associated with a cross redundancy version. That is, the CBGs of one or more TBs have been used in generating the cRV. Using a cRV to jointly decode CBGs of the TB, proceeds according to the following steps. 
     The individual redundancy versions of CBGs of a TB may be used to check whether decoding is successful. For example, assuming that (cRV 2 ) 12  is used to decode all CBGs associated with TB 1 , (cRV 2 ) 12  may denote the cross parity of all CBGs associated with TB 1 , and TB 2 . The procedure may begin by decoding all CBGs of TB 1  using the received individual redundancy versions (e.g., (RV 0 ) 1 , (RV 2 ) 1 ). If decoding is not successful using the individual redundancy versions, the CBGs of current TB may be stored in a buffer for possible joint decoding with past or future CBGs of other TBs. If decoding is successful, the decoded data may be sent to the upper layers, and a copy may be kept in the buffer as it may possibly be useful for decoding erroneous CBGs of other TBs received in the future. 
       FIG. 13  illustrates an example decoding procedure  1300  using cross redundancy version (cRV) generated across multiple code block groups (CBGs), which may be used in any combination of other embodiments described herein. As illustrated in  FIG. 13 , a receiver (e.g., WTRU) may receive a TB and determine whether the TB is associated with cRV generated across multiple CBGs associated with the TB at step  1310 . If the TB is associated with the cRV, the receiver may copy the CBGs of the TB in its buffer as step  1315  and decode the TB using individual RVs generated from the multiple CBGs associated with the TB. At step  1330 , if the TB is successfully decoded using the individual RVs, the receiver may initiate another decoding procedure for the next TB at step  1335 . If the TB is not successfully decoded at step  1330 , the receiver may first check whether required TBs of cRV are received or not at step  1350 . If the receiver received the required TB, the receiver may decode CBGs of undecodable TB using relevant TBs from buffer and cRV at step  1370 . If the TB is successfully decoded at step  1380 , the receiver may transmit positive HARQ feedback. If the TB is not successfully decoded, the receiver may send negative HARQ feedback at  1345  for retransmission of the TB or relevant portion of the TB. At step  1310 , if the TB is not associated with the cRV, the receiver may first determine whether the TB is successfully decoded using individual RVs at step  1320 . If the TB is successfully decoded using the individual RVs at step  1320 , the receiver may transmit positive HARQ feedback at step  1340  to indicate that the TB is successfully decoded with the individual RVs. If the TB is not successfully decoded using the individual RVs at step  1320 , the receiver may transmit negative HARQ feedback at step  1345  for retransmission of the TB or relevant portion of the TB. 
     It is noted that that for the case when a TB is not associated with a cross redundancy version, the ‘default’ mode of operation occurs, where either a HARQ retransmission or higher layer retransmission (e.g., RLC) needs to be performed. 
     The worst case buffer requirements and the case delay incurred for the proposed scheme are described. The worst case buffer requirements for decoding the current TB that is associated with a cRV may depend on the maximum number of TBs required for decoding the current TB. For the example scenario in Table 4, it may be equal to four times the inverse of the minimum code rate per user. The worst case delay incurred for decoding a TB that is associated with a cRV may depend on the difference between the maximum and minimum TB associated with a particular cRV. For the case when cRV=7 in Table 4, the worst case delay incurred in decoding a TB may be equal to 6 TTIs (i.e. n+5-(n−1)). However, it should be noted that, if the individual RVs (i.e., RVx, where x=0,1,2,3) are sufficient to decode the current TB, there may be no delay incurred in decoding this TB, although this TB may still have to be stored in the buffer because it may be useful in decoding future erroneous TBs. 
     A cross TB based approach described above might make sense in case of NTN. In a scenario where all bundles of a TB are transmitted in a subframe, and that a cRV depends on at most N TBs, the maximum delay that is introduced due to cRV in decoding a TB may be N subframes. As long as N&lt;&lt;round trip delay (RTT) of NTN (e.g., a reasonable choice of N=2 or 3), delay that is introduced due to cRV (conditioned on successful decoding) is still several orders less than what would be experienced if the MAC or the RLC layer is going to request a re-transmission that would incur at least the NTN propagation delay. Even if decoding is unsuccessful using cRV, the increase in delay incurred due to cRV decoding, as a percentage of NTN RTT may be insignificant. 
     The aforementioned discussions emphasize how cRV could be used for a HARQ process. It should be noted that the same concepts and embodiments can extended across HARQ processes. Furthermore, the principles described are also applicable to LTE systems where the difference is that Turbo codes are used in LTE, while LDPC are used in NR. 
     LTE systems provide a one bit feedback on the outcome of HARQ decoding. Although it is in general not possible for the transmitter to take the best action on a one bit feedback, this protocol has been followed partly due to less feedback complexity/overhead. 
     However, in the case of NTN, retransmissions are costly due to large propagation delays and there is a need to minimize the number of retransmissions. Hence, it may be beneficial if the transmitter is provided information not only on the actual outcome of the decoding operation, but also the decoder state information, as this would help the transmitter to perform intelligent retransmissions. For example, the transmitter may decide to perform the following based on the decoder state information: to decide on the bundle size to be used in the current TTI, and/or to decide the number of parity bits to be transmitted in each RV. 
     In what follows, a log likelihood ratio feedback that provides an indication of the soft values obtained in the HARQ decoding process is described. 
     The log-likelihood ratio (also called L-value) of a binary random variable U, may be defined to be: 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 L 
                 U 
               
                
               
                 ( 
                 u 
                 ) 
               
             
             = 
             
               log 
                
               
                 
                   
                     P 
                     U 
                   
                    
                   
                     ( 
                     
                       u 
                       = 
                       
                         + 
                         1 
                       
                     
                     ) 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     P 
                     U 
                   
                    
                   
                     ( 
                     
                       u 
                       = 
                       
                         - 
                         1 
                       
                     
                     ) 
                   
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     Here the random variable, U, may represent the information bit that is intended to be decoded. As shown above, when U is equally likely to be +1 or −1, then the log likelihood ratio may become zero. Alternately or additionally, the parameter, |L U (u)|, may be considered in denoting the confidence that the decoded bit is a +1 or −1. That is, if L U (u)&gt;&gt;0, then it is possible to say with very high confidence that U=+1, than when L U (u) is positive, and close to zero. The aposteriori (channel) log-likelihood ratio may be defined to be 
     
       
         
           
             
               L 
                
               
                 ( 
                 
                   u 
                   | 
                   y 
                 
                 ) 
               
             
             = 
             
               log 
                
               
                 
                   P 
                    
                   
                     ( 
                     
                       u 
                       = 
                       
                         
                           + 
                           1 
                         
                         | 
                         y 
                       
                     
                     ) 
                   
                 
                 
                   P 
                    
                   
                     ( 
                     
                       u 
                       = 
                       
                         
                           - 
                           1 
                         
                         | 
                         y 
                       
                     
                     ) 
                   
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     where, u represents the information bit that is to be decoded, and y represents the coded channel outputs (y is a vector). The log likelihood ratio of a transmitted bit (L(û)) can be obtained using the a priori L-value, channel L-value, the extrinsic L-values (through parity bits), or the like. 
     The following provides some embodiments of the HARQ feedback protocol. y i  represents all bits of all redundancy versions transmitted up and until the i th  HARQ re-transmission. L(û l ) represents the L-value obtained at the end of the i th  HARQ re-transmission. It is noted that L(û l ) depends on L(u| i ). The percentage of bits for which the following holds: THR 1 &lt;L(û)≤THR 2  may be calcualted. Typically, THR 1 , THR 2  are close to zero with THR 1  being a negative number and THR 2  being a positive number. In this example, the idea is to observe that the percentage of bits whose confidence measure |L(û)| is low. Based on the number of bits allocated, feedback the outcome of the HARQ along with the percentage of bits satisfying the above L-value criterion. 
     For the case when 3 bits are allocated for HARQ feedback, one bit may be used for the decoding outcome (ACK/NACK), and the other 2 bits may be used to indicate the quantized percentage value for which the aforementioned L-value criterion is satisfied. That is, ‘00’ may indicate the percentage (for which the criterion is satisfied) to lie between 10% and 25%; ‘01’ may indicate the percentage to lie between 30% and 50%, and or the like. 
     Embodiments for DCI format for bundling are described herein. A DCI may indicate the MCS to be used for each of the redundancy versions per transport block for bundling scenarios. It is noted that current systems allow only the same MCS to be used for transmitting all redundancy versions while bundling. 
     The DCI described herein may indicate the raw MCS (e.g., 5 bits) to be used for every redundancy version, or it may indicate the ‘delta_MCS’ value for redundancy versions 1,2,3 with respect to redundancy version-0. 
     In a first embodiment, the DCI may indicate MCS of all redundancy versions with multiple bits (e.g., 5 bits) during bundled transmission. For example, for RV- 0 , MCS 1  may be represented with a first multiple bits (e.g., 5 bits). For RV- 1 , MCS 2  may be represented with a second multiple bits (e.g., 5 bits). For RV- 2 , MCS 3  may be represented with a third multiple bits (e.g., 5 bits). For RV- 3 , MCS 4  may be represented with a fourth multiple bits (e.g., 5 bits). With the example of 5 bits, 32 MCS can be represented for each RVs. MCS 1 , MCS 2 , MCS 3 , MCS 4 , in this example may be the same or different. The first, second, third, and fourth multiple bits may be the same or different. This first embodiment may provide flexibility in MCS assignment to all redundancy versions. 
     In a second embodiment, the DCI may indicate the base MCS for RV- 0 , and a ‘delta_MCS’ for other redundancy versions such as RV- 1 , RV- 2  and RV- 3  with respect to the MCS used for RV- 0 . For example, for RV- 0 , base_MCS may be represented with multiple bits (e.g., 5 bits). The base_MCS may have the maximum flexibility for the MCS to be used. For RV- 1 , delta_MCS 1  may be represented with multiple bits (e.g., 2 bits). For RV- 2 , delta_MCS 2  may be represented by multiple bits (e.g., 2 bits). For RV- 3 , delta_MC 3  may be represented with multiple bits (e.g., 2 bits). The second embodiment may provide constraints on MCS assignments for redundancy versions 1, 2, 3 as lesser bits (e.g., 2 bits) are assigned for signaling them compared to redundancy version-0. Compared to the first embodiment where total 20 bits (i.e. 5+5+5+5 bits) are used to express the redundancy versions, the second embodiment may use only 11 bits (i.e. 5+2+2+2 bits) to express the redundancy versions. For example, the actual MCS that would be used for RV- 3  transmission in the second embodiment may be ‘base_MCS+delta_MC 3 ’. Specifically, only 2 bits (i.e. total four possibilities) may express the redundancy version for MC 3  with base_MCS as reference. 
     Although features and elements are described above in particular combinations, one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that each feature or element can be used alone or in any combination with the other features and elements. In addition, the methods described herein may be implemented in a computer program, software, or firmware incorporated in a computer-readable medium for execution by a computer or processor. Examples of computer-readable media include electronic signals (transmitted over wired or wireless connections) and computer-readable storage media. Examples of computer-readable storage media include, but are not limited to, a read only memory (ROM), a random access memory (RAM), a register, cache memory, semiconductor memory devices, magnetic media such as internal hard disks and removable disks, magneto-optical media, and optical media such as CD-ROM disks, and digital versatile disks (DVDs). A processor in association with software may be used to implement a radio frequency transceiver for use in a WTRU, UE, terminal, base station, RNC, or any host computer.