Patent Description:
In <NUM>/NR the intra-frequency cell identification delay requirements measurements correspond to TPSS/SSS_sync (time period used in Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS) or Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS detection), TSSB_time_index (time period used to acquire the index of the SSB being measured), TSSB_measurement_period (measurement period of SSB based measurement) as defined in the Third Generation Partnership Project's (3GPP's) Technical Specification <NUM>. The intra-frequency cell identification delay requirements measurements depend among other things on the configuration of each particular user equipment (UE).

For example, the number of receive (Rx) beams used by any given user equipment (UE) is implementation-specific. To have a single number for the Rx beams to define beamforming requirements to allow intra-frequency cell identification delay requirements measurements is limiting, as different UE types could have different numbers of antenna elements and different number of Rx beams.

Mechanisms are needed to allow intra-frequency cell identification delay requirements measurements given their dependency on UE configurations. WO <NUM>/<NUM> A1 discloses methods for adaptively configuring a measurement period in a user equipment or another network node. The measurement period can be determined based at least in part on an assessment of one or more conditions, wherein each of the measurement periods is associated with at least one condition. The determined measurement period can be used for performing and/or reporting one or more measurements. <NPL> discloses RRM core requirements for UE Rx beamforming in FR2. <NPL> specifies requirements for support of Radio Resource Management for FDD and TDD modes of New Radio (NR). These requirements include requirements on measurements in NR and the UE as well as requirements on node dynamical behavior and interaction, in terms of delay and response characteristics.

Preferred advantageous embodiments thereof are defined by the sub-features of the dependent claims.

The following detailed description refers to the accompanying drawings. The same reference numbers may be used in different drawings to identify the same or similar elements. In the following description, for purposes of explanation and not limitation, specific details are set forth such as particular structures, architectures, interfaces, techniques, etc. in order to provide a thorough understanding of the various aspects of various embodiments. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of the present disclosure that the various aspects of the various embodiments may be practiced in other examples that depart from these specific details. In certain instances, descriptions of well-known devices, circuits, and methods are omitted so as not to obscure the description of the various embodiments with unnecessary detail. For the purposes of the present document, the phrase "A or B" means (A), (B), or (A and B).

In <NUM>/NR the intra-frequency cell identification delay requirements measurements are comprised of TPSS/SSS_sync (time period used in Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS) or Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS detection), TSSB_time_index (time period used to acquire the index of the SSB being measured), T SSB_measurement_period (measurement period of SSB based measurement). Intra-frequency cells may include neighbor cells on the same frequency as the serving cell, but with a different primary scrambling code. The intra-frequency cell info list sent in SIB11 may include up to <NUM> cells, indexed from <NUM> to <NUM>. SIB11 refers to the system information block type <NUM> in NR which contains measurement control information to be used in a cell.

It is noted that frequency range in which <NUM> NR operates are categories into following two designations: (<NUM>) FR1 corresponding to a frequency range from <NUM> to <NUM>; and
(<NUM>) FR2 corresponding to a frequency range is from <NUM> to <NUM>. In addition, "SSB" as used herein refers to "Secondary Synchronization Block," "RRM" refers to "Radio Resource Management," "SS" refers to "Synchronization Signal," "Rx" refers to "Receive," and "SMTC" refers to "SS/PBCH Block Measurement Time Configuration," where PBCH refers to "Physical Broadcast Channel.

The intra-frequency cell identification delay requirements were defined in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Technical Specification (TS) <NUM> version <NUM>. <NUM> (TS <NUM> v15. <NUM>) as follows:.

In the above equations, Kca is defined or FR1, as Kca =<NUM> for measurements on frequencies corresponding to PCell or PSCell, and Kca is defined as Kca =number of configured SCells for measurements on frequencies corresponding to FR1 only SCells.

The time period for detection and measurement, that is, the TPSS/SSS_sync, TSSB_measurement_period, and TSSB_time_index values may be defined in certain instances based on a generic formula corresponding to FR1 without measurement gaps by a maximum value as between a lower bound value, and a value based on a number of samples times a SS/PBCH Block Measurement Time Configuration (SMTC_period), where "PBCH" stands for "Physical Broadcast Channel. " The TPSS/SSS_sync, TSSB_measurement_period, and TSSB_time_index values may be based on: <MAT>.

The lower bound and number of samples are based on a tradeoff between the mobility of the UE in question, that is, the UE mobility and power consumption by the UE, which tradeoff may be found through simulation and numerical analysis for the required cell acquisition or measurement.

In FR2 the UE needs to perform Rx beam sweeping in order to identify the cell. The time period for detection and measurement, that is, the TPSS/SSS_sync, TSSB_measurement_period, and TSSB_time_index values may be defined in certain instances based on a generic formula corresponding to FR2 without measurement gaps by a maximum value as between a lower bound value, and scale factor times a value based on a number of samples times a SMTC_period. One or more of the TPSS/SSS_sync, TSSB_measurement_period, and TSSB_time_index values may be based on: <MAT> where N is a scale factor to account for Rx beam sweeping.

From measurement perspective, a FR2 UE will utilize the analog and/or digital receiver beamforming for the measurement. Hence, longer measurement time is needed for FR2 to allow for the FR2 UE to sweep the whole space. An FR2 UE is required to decode PBCH payload during intra-frequency measurement and thus the longer time is needed for intra-frequency measurement. Hence, the measurement requirements are specified for FR1 and FR2 separately.

The gNodeB with which the UE is to communicate, or more network elements of a core network within a network that includes the cells, may determine values for TPSS/SSS_sync, TSSB_measurement_period, and TSSB_time_index in order for the network to have knowledge regarding intra-frequency cell identification delays for UEs within the network. However, by way of example, the number of samples and the scale factor N in Equation <NUM> depends on the UE. Again, by way of example, to have a single scale factor to allow intra-frequency cell identification delay requirements measurements would be limiting, as different UE types could have different numbers of antenna elements and different number of Rx beams. In addition, having a large value for N could impact mobility requirements (if the UE moves, the given larger N may no longer be applicable), whereas having a small value for N to account for RX beam sweeping would fail to accommodate all types of UEs, which may provide larger beam sweeping capabilities than for example their mobile counterparts.

According to the invention, as shown by way of example in <FIG>, a process <NUM> may include, at operation <NUM>, generating a signal including capability information of the UE, wherein a time period for intra-frequency cell detection and measurement for the UE is based on the capability information. Process <NUM> further includes, at operation <NUM>, causing a transmission of the signal within a cellular network to include the UE using a radio frequency (RF) interface of the UE.

Referring now to <FIG>, according an embodiment as shown in process 200A, a UE may be configured to indicate at operation 202A, its capability, such as signaling delay for Rx beam forming. At operation 204A, the gNodeB (or potentially the core network) is to adjust the timers and delay requirements in the context of intra-frequency cell identification delay requirements measurements based on the capability indication by the UE.

The term "network element" may describe a physical or virtualized equipment used to provide wired or wireless communication network services. The term "network element" may be considered synonymous to and/or referred to as a networked computer, networking hardware, network equipment, router, switch, hub, bridge, radio network controller, radio access network device, gateway, server, VNF, NFVI, and/or the like.

According to yet another embodiment, a UE may be configured to indicate its "type," in terms of whether the type is "stationary," "low mobility," or "high mobility.

According to an embodiment, as shown by way of example by the process 200B in <FIG>, the UE may indicate, at operation 202B, its mobility type as its capability, that is, whether it is "stationary," has "low mobility," or "high mobility. " Whether a device's mobility can be characterized as "stationary," "low" or "high" may be predefined for the UE and/or based on UE application needs. A stationary or low mobility UE could have a large number of beams and take longer time for cell identification without impacting mobility performance, whereas a high mobility UE could take shorter time for Rx beam sweeping and cell identification. The delay requirements would be set at operation 204B by a gNode B or core network according to the mobility type declared by the UE, and the gNodeB or core network could also set the SMTC periodicity for the cells to be measured based on the UE mobility. For example, gNodeB or core network could set a lower periodicity for high mobility UEs, and higher periodicity for low mobility or stationary UEs.

According to one embodiment, as shown by process 200C of <FIG>, the UE may at operation 202C indicate its capability in terms of the number of beams required for SSB- based measurements, such as cell identification, radio link monitoring, and beam failure detection. At operation 204C, the gNodeB or core network may set the requirements for the SSB-based measurements delay based on the indicated capability, and may further set the SMTC periodicity based on the number of beam required for the SSB-based measurements.

According to one embodiment, the UE may signal the number of beams it uses for Rx beam sweeping for cell identification purposes. This number could be used as the scale factor N in the requirements noted above. A UE capability indication for the maximum number of Rx beams used for CSI-RS, maxNumberRxBeam, at the Radio Frequency (RF) layer may, according to one embodiment, be used for the latter purpose.

According to the invention, a UE is configured to indicate its capability in terms of time needed for cell identification. For example, the UE may indicate its capability in terms of whether the time needed for cell identification is "long," "medium," or "short.

Referring now to <FIG>, a process <NUM> to be performed at a New Radio (NR) evolved Node B (gNodeB) incudes, at operation <NUM>, processing a signal including capability information of a UE of the NR network, and, at operation <NUM>, determining a time period for intra-frequency cell detection and measurement for the UE based on the capability information.

As noted above, because of differing UE implementations, including different UE types, UE power requirements, UE mobilities, etc., for example in the case of FR2, the number of Rx beams and the delay requirements could be different as between the UEs. According to some embodiments, when the UE can signal its capabilities, gNodeB or core network could use this capability to determine or adjust delay requirement for a given UE.

The requirements for PSS/SSS detection, SSB index acquisition and measurement in FR2 are defined as the following in TS <NUM> v.

"DRX" refers to Discontinuous Reception, and is a technique that allows the mobile station to power down significant amounts of its internal circuitry for a high percentage of the time when it is in the idle mode. The period of time when the mobile station will be powered down is commonly called the "Sleep mode".

When intra-frequency SMTC is fully non overlapping with measurement gaps, Kp=<NUM>.

When intra-frequency is partially overlapping with measurement gaps, Kp = <NUM>/(<NUM>-(SMTC period /MGRP)), where SMTC period < MGRP. "MGRP" refers to Measurement Gap Repetition Period.

In FR2 in order to detect multiple intra-frequency cells, the UE needs to perform Rx beam sweeping. The number of Rx beams used by the UE depends on a number of factors, including: (<NUM>) the UE type, for example, whether the UE is a handheld UE or a vs Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) UE; handheld UEs have more mobility than CPE UEs, and typically a larger number of antenna elements; (<NUM>) the number of antenna panels and antenna elements per panel for a given UE; and (<NUM>) other implementation-based features of the UE.

In some embodiments, UE capability signaling may be defined in order for network elements of the core network or a gNodeB (or gNB) to determine the time and delay requirements based on the UE capability signaling.

The UE capability signaling may be implemented according to various embodiments and the delay requirements modified accordingly on gNodeB or core network side.

Some embodiments may utilize one or both of two sets of requirements for UE requiring small delay vs long delay for Rx beam sweeping. With this the UE capability signaling shall declare short vs long delay for Rx beam sweeping and cell identification. The UE capability signaling would be based on the UE implementation and the requirements would be appropriate for the same.

According to one embodiment, a time period for detection and measurement, that is, the TPSS/SSS_sync, TSSB_measurement_period, and TSSB_time_index values may be defined in certain instances based on a generic formula by a maximum value as between a lower bound value, and scale factor times a value based on a number of samples times a SMTC_period, where the scale factor has one value, Nshort, when the UE has indicated that its beam sweeping delay is short, and another value, Nlong, when the UE has indicated that its beam sweeping delay is long. Whether a beam sweeping delay is "short" or "long" may be defined predefined for the UE and/or based on UE application needs. One or more of the TPSS/SSS_sync, TSSB_measurement_period, and TSSB_time_index values may therefore be based on: <MAT> <MAT>.

where Nshort is a scale factor to account for Rx beam sweeping corresponding to a UE with a short beam sweeping delay, and Nlong is a scale factor to account for Rx beam sweeping corresponding to a UE with a long beam sweeping delay.

Some embodiments may include a combination of two or more of the embodiments noted herein. Based on signaling from the UE as described above, a gNodeB or core network may determine delay requirements and associated timers for each UE accordingly.

<FIG> illustrates an architecture of a system <NUM> of a network according to some embodiments. The system <NUM> is shown to include a user equipment (UE) <NUM> and a UE <NUM>. The UEs <NUM> and <NUM> are illustrated as smartphones (e.g., handheld touchscreen mobile computing devices connectable to one or more cellular networks), but may also comprise any mobile or non-mobile computing device.

The UEs <NUM> and <NUM> may be configured to connect, e.g., communicatively couple, with a radio access network (RAN) <NUM>. The UEs <NUM> and <NUM> utilize connections <NUM> and <NUM>, respectively, each of which comprises a physical communications interface or layer (discussed in further detail below); in this example, the connections <NUM> and <NUM> are illustrated as an air interface to enable communicative coupling, and can be consistent with cellular communications protocols.

According to some embodiments, the UEs <NUM> and <NUM> can be configured to communicate using Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) communication signals with each other or with any of the RAN nodes <NUM> and <NUM> over a multicarrier communication channel in accordance various communication techniques, such as, but not limited to, an Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) communication technique (e.g., for downlink communications) or a Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) communication technique (e.g., for uplink and ProSe or sidelink communications), although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect.

The RAN <NUM> is shown to be communicatively coupled to a core network (CN) <NUM> - via an S1 interface <NUM>. In embodiments, the CN <NUM> may be an evolved packet core (EPC) network, a NextGen Packet Core (NPC) network, or some other type of CN. In this embodiment the S1 interface <NUM> is split into two parts: the S1-U interface <NUM>, which carries traffic data between the RAN nodes <NUM> and <NUM> and the serving gateway (S-GW) <NUM>, and the S1-mobility management entity (MME) interface <NUM>, which is a signaling interface between the RAN nodes <NUM> and <NUM> and MMEs <NUM>.

The CN <NUM> includes network elements. The term "network element" may describe a physical or virtualized equipment used to provide wired or wireless communication network services. In this embodiment, the CN <NUM> comprises, as network elements, the MMEs <NUM>, the S-GW <NUM>, the Packet Data Network (PDN) Gateway (P-GW) <NUM>, and a home subscriber server (HSS) <NUM>.

<FIG> illustrates example interfaces of baseband circuitry according to various embodiments. The baseband circuitry <NUM> may comprise processors <NUM>-<NUM> and a memory <NUM> utilized by said processors. Each of the processors <NUM>-<NUM> may include a memory interface, 504A-504E, respectively, to send/receive data to/from the memory <NUM>. Baseband circuitry <NUM> may also include an audio digital signal processor (Audio DSP) <NUM>.

The baseband circuitry <NUM> may further include one or more interfaces to communicatively couple to other circuitries/devices, such as a memory interface <NUM> (e.g., an interface to send/receive data to/from memory external to the baseband circuitry <NUM>), an application circuitry interface <NUM> (e.g., an interface to send/receive data to/from an application circuitry), an RF circuitry interface <NUM> (e.g., an interface to send/receive data to/from an RF circuitry), a wireless hardware connectivity interface <NUM> (e.g., an interface to send/receive data to/from Near Field Communication (NFC) components, Bluetooth® components (e.g., Bluetooth® Low Energy), Wi-Fi® components, and other communication components), and a power management interface <NUM> (e.g., an interface to send/receive power or control signals to/from a power management integrated circuit (PMIC).

<FIG> is a block diagram illustrating components, according to some example embodiments, able to read instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. Specifically, <FIG> shows a diagrammatic representation of hardware resources <NUM> including one or more processors (or processor cores) <NUM>, one or more memory/storage devices <NUM>, and one or more communication resources <NUM>, each of which may be communicatively coupled via a bus <NUM>. For embodiments where node virtualization (e.g., NFV) is utilized, a hypervisor <NUM> may be executed to provide an execution environment for one or more network slices/sub-slices to utilize the hardware resources <NUM>.

Instructions <NUM> may comprise software, a program, an application, an applet, an app, or other executable code for causing at least any of the processors <NUM> to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. The instructions <NUM> may reside, completely or partially, within at least one of the processors <NUM> (e.g., within the processor's cache memory), the memory/storage devices <NUM>, or any suitable combination thereof. Furthermore, any portion of the instructions <NUM> may be transferred to the hardware resources <NUM> from any combination of the peripheral devices <NUM> or the databases <NUM>. Accordingly, the memory of processors <NUM>, the memory/storage devices <NUM>, the peripheral devices <NUM>, and the databases <NUM> are examples of computer-readable and machine-readable media.

in some embodiments, the electronic device(s), network(s), system(s), chip(s) or component(s), or portions or implementations thereof, of <FIG>, or some other figure herein, may be configured to perform one or more processes, techniques, or methods as described herein, or portions thereof. Embodiments of such processes are depicted in <FIG>. For example, a process according to an embodiments may include indicating, or causing to be indicated, capability to the network about its rx beam sweeping delay requirement.

Claim 1:
A New Radio, NR, User Equipment, UE (<NUM>, <NUM>), comprising a Radio Frequency, RF, interface (<NUM>) and a baseband processor (<NUM>-<NUM>) coupled to the RF interface (<NUM>), wherein the baseband processor is configured (<NUM>-<NUM>) to:
generate (<NUM>) a signal including capability information of the UE (<NUM>, <NUM>), wherein a time period for intra-frequency cell detection and measurement for the UE (<NUM>, <NUM>) is determined by a NR evolved Node B, gNodeB (<NUM>, <NUM>), based on the capability information; and
cause a transmission (<NUM>) of the signal including the capability information of the UE (<NUM>, <NUM>) to the NR gNodeB (<NUM>, <NUM>);
wherein the capability information includes:
information regarding an identification time period for intra-frequency cell identification by the UE (<NUM>, <NUM>); and
information on whether the identification time period for intra-frequency cell identification by the UE (<NUM>, <NUM>) is long, medium or short.