PATENT DOCUMENT

Publication Number: US-11363608-B2
Application Number: US-201816638384-A
Country: US
Kind Code: B2

Title: Unlicensed narrowband internet of things control channel communication

Abstract:
In embodiments, a base station may be able to identify whether a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol. Based on this identification, the base station may further be able to identify a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs). Finally, the base station may be able to transmit the eNCCEs on the subcarriers. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.

Claims:
The invention claimed is: 
     
       1. An apparatus to be used in a base station of a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises:
 means to identify whether a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol or a wideband (WB) protocol; 
 means to identify, based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB) on which the base station is to transmit a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH); 
 means to aggregate two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE), wherein the feCCE has DMRS that are orthogonal to DMRS of another feCCE of the ePDCCH; 
 means to transmit an indication of the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB; and 
 means to transmit the transmission related to the ePDCCH on the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
 
     
     
       2. The apparatus of  claim 1 , further comprising means to identify, based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs). 
     
     
       3. The apparatus of  claim 1 , wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     
     
       4. The apparatus of  claim 1 , further comprising means to transmit the transmission related to the ePDCCH on the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     
     
       5. The apparatus of  claim 1 , wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     
     
       6. The apparatus of  claim 1 , further comprising means to transmit a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     
     
       7. An apparatus for a user equipment (UE), wherein the apparatus comprises:
 a radio frequency (RF) interface to cause reception, by the UE, of a transmission from a base station; and 
 a processor coupled with the RF interface, configured to:
 identify that the UE is to operate in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol within a cellular network; 
 identify, based on the transmission received from the base station, an indication of a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB); and 
 identify, based on the indication, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on the plurality of subcarriers; 
 wherein the transmission includes a further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) that is based on aggregation, by the base station, of two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs), wherein the feCCE has DMRS that are orthogonal to DMRS of another feCCE of the ePDCCH. 
 
 
     
     
       8. The apparatus of  claim 7 , wherein the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     
     
       9. The apparatus of  claim 7 , wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     
     
       10. The apparatus of  claim 7 , wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     
     
       11. The apparatus of  claim 7 , wherein the processor is configured to identify, in a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE), a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH). 
     
     
       12. A method for a user equipment (UE), comprising:
 identifying that the UE is to operate in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol within a cellular network; 
 receiving a first transmission from a base station; 
 identifying, based on the first transmission received from a base station, an indication of a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB); and 
 identifying, based on the indication, a second transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on the plurality of subcarriers; 
 wherein the transmission includes a further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) that is based on aggregation, by the base station, of two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs), wherein the feCCE has DMRS that are orthogonal to DMRS of another feCCE of the ePDCCH. 
 
     
     
       13. The method of  claim 12 , wherein the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     
     
       14. The method of  claim 12 , wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     
     
       15. The method of  claim 12 , wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     
     
       16. The method of  claim 12 , further comprising identifying, in a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE), a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH).

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION 
     This application is a National Phase entry application of International Patent Application No. PCT/US2018/045728 filed Aug. 8, 2018, which claims priority to International Patent Application PCT/CN2017/097121, filed Aug. 11, 2017, under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and further claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/658,990, filed Apr. 17, 2018, the subject matter of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. 
    
    
     BACKGROUND 
     The third-generation partnership project (3GPP) has standardized two designs to support internet of things (IoT) services, namely enhanced Machine Type Communication (eMTC) and NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT). As eMTC and NB-IoT user equipments (UEs) may be deployed in huge numbers, lowering the cost of these UEs may help enable implementation of IoT. Also, low power consumption by the UEs may be desirable to extend the life time of the battery. In addition, there are substantial use cases of devices deployed deep inside buildings, which may require coverage enhancement in comparison to the defined long-term evolution (LTE) cell coverage footprint. In summary, eMTC, and NB-IoT techniques may help ensure that the UEs have low cost, low power consumption, and enhanced coverage. 
     However, in the industrial IoT applications, the UE requirements may be divergent. Some devices may have the cost limitation with low data rate, and low latency, some devices may have a relative high data rate requirement with tolerable cost consideration. In order to support these divergent devices with divergent service, a work item with hybrid licensed narrow band Internet of Thing (IoT) is agreed. 
     Generally, both eMTC and NB-IoT operate in the licensed frequency spectrum. On the other hand, the scarcity of the licensed spectrum in the low frequency band results in a deficit in the data rate boost. Thus, there are emerging interests in the operation of LTE systems in the unlicensed frequency spectrum. 
     Potential LTE operation in the unlicensed frequency spectrum includes, but is not limited to the Carrier Aggregation based on licensed assisted access (LAA)/enhanced LAA (eLAA) systems, LTE operation in the unlicensed spectrum via dual connectivity (DC), and the standalone LTE system in the unlicensed spectrum where LTE-based technology solely operates in unlicensed spectrum without requiring an “anchor” in licensed spectrum. This standalone operation in the unlicensed frequency spectrum may be referred to as MulteFire. 
     Generally, the target band for NB unlicensed IoT is the sub-1 gigahertz (GHz) band many regulatory jurisdictions. Regulation may define the operation of such a system for either digital modulation or frequency hopping (FH). Digital modulation may require system bandwidth greater than 500 kilohertz (KHz) with a power spectral density (PSD) limitation of 8 decibel-milliwatts (dBm) per 3 KHz; while frequency hopping may instead have limitations on the duty cycle and the number of hops. Different number of hops result in different max transmission power. In the European union (EU), four new sub-channels have been proposed to be used for this specific band. These sub-channels are: 865.6 megahertz (MHz) ˜865.8 MHz, 866.2 MHz˜866.4 MHz, 866.8 MHz˜867.0 MHz, and 867.4 MHz˜867.6 MHz. In the EU, the regulation regarding these sub-channels states that: 1) maximum equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) is 27 dBm; 2) adaptive power control is required; 3) bandwidth should be smaller than 200 kHz; and 4) the duty cycle for network access points is smaller than 10%, otherwise the duty cycle should be 2.5% for other types of equipments. While operating a NB-IoT system in this band as a digital modulation system is appealing, operating as a FH system provides more benefits: frequency diversity is exploited by operating the system as FH system, while the initial access timing might be longer. More importantly, digital modulation with 3 resource blocks (RB) may have the same transmission power as FH with 1 RB, which translates in a loss in terms of coverage of about ˜5 dB. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  depicts a subframe that includes one or more enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs), in accordance with various embodiments. 
         FIG. 2  depicts an alternative configuration of a subframe that includes one or more eNCCEs, in accordance with various embodiments. 
         FIG. 3  depicts an example of eNCCE renumbering, in accordance with various embodiments. 
         FIG. 4  depicts an example of an RB with eNCCEs related to wideband (WB) UEs and narrowband (NB) UEs, in accordance with various embodiments. 
         FIG. 5  depicts an example of eNCCE aggregation, in accordance with various embodiments. 
         FIG. 6  depicts an alternative example of eNCCE aggregation, in accordance with various embodiments. 
         FIG. 7  illustrates an architecture of a system of a network in accordance with some embodiments. 
         FIG. 8  illustrates an architecture of a system of a network in accordance with some embodiments. 
         FIG. 9  illustrates an example of infrastructure equipment in accordance with various embodiments. 
         FIG. 10  illustrates an example of a platform in accordance with various embodiments. 
         FIG. 11  illustrates example components of baseband circuitry and radio front end modules (RFEM) in accordance with some embodiments. 
         FIG. 12  illustrates example interfaces of baseband circuitry in accordance with some embodiments. 
         FIG. 13  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. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings which form a part hereof, wherein like numerals designate like parts throughout, and in which is shown by way of illustration embodiments in which the subject matter of the present disclosure may be practiced. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural or logical changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. Therefore, the following detailed description is not to be taken in a limiting sense. 
     For the purposes of the present disclosure, the phrase “A or B” means (A), (B), or (A and B). For the purposes of the present disclosure, the phrase “A, B, or C” means (A), (B), (C), (A and B), (A and C), (B and C), or (A, B and C). 
     The description may use perspective-based descriptions such as top/bottom, in/out, over/under, and the like. Such descriptions are merely used to facilitate the discussion and are not intended to restrict the application of embodiments described herein to any particular orientation. 
     The description may use the phrases “in an embodiment,” or “in embodiments,” which may each refer to one or more of the same or different embodiments. Furthermore, the terms “comprising,” “including,” “having,” and the like, as used with respect to embodiments of the present disclosure, are synonymous. 
     The term “coupled with,” along with its derivatives, may be used herein. “Coupled” may mean one or more of the following. “Coupled” may mean that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact. However, “coupled” may also mean that two or more elements indirectly contact each other, but yet still cooperate or interact with each other, and may mean that one or more other elements are coupled or connected between the elements that are said to be coupled with each other. The term “directly coupled” may mean that two or elements are in direct contact. 
     In various embodiments, the phrase “a first feature formed, deposited, or otherwise disposed on a second feature,” may mean that the first feature is formed, deposited, or disposed over the feature layer, and at least a part of the first feature may be in direct contact (e.g., direct physical or electrical contact) or indirect contact (e.g., having one or more other features between the first feature and the second feature) with at least a part of the second feature. 
     Various operations may be described as multiple discrete operations in turn, in a manner that is most helpful in understanding the claimed subject matter. However, the order of description should not be construed as to imply that these operations are necessarily order dependent. 
     As used herein, the term “module” may refer to, be part of, or include an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), an electronic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) or memory (shared, dedicated, or group) that execute one or more software or firmware programs, a combinational logic circuit, or other suitable components that provide the described functionality. 
     Embodiments herein may be described with respect to various Figures. Unless explicitly stated, the dimensions of the Figures are intended to be simplified illustrative examples, rather than depictions of relative dimensions. For example, various lengths/widths/heights of elements in the Figures may not be drawn to scale unless indicated otherwise. 
     Generally, some embodiments herein may relate to design co-existence between low cost UEs with narrow bandwidth capability and UEs with wide bandwidth capability in one system. Specifically, the channel design including the initial access procedure and channel bandwidth may be discussed herein. Other embodiments may relate to UE capability reporting, which is related to UE&#39;s bandwidth capability, soft buffer capability, etc. These embodiments may enable design of the physical downlink control channel for UEs with different bandwidth capability. 
     Embodiments may also relate to the design of downlink control information (DCI) for downlink and uplink scheduling for unlicensed NB-IOT system. In these embodiments, the described DCI and search space design for unlicensed NB-IOT systems may operate as, and include the advantages of, a FH system. 
     Downlink Control Channel Design Based on Narrowband Physical Downlink Control Channel (NPDCCH) 
     In legacy downlink control channel structures for the NB-IoT system, two narrowband control channel elements (NCCEs) may be contained within a single resource block (RB). 
     In one embodiment herein, the physical channel for a UE with wide bandwidth capability may be realized by enlarging the NCCEs to an increased number of RBs. These enlarged NCCEs may be referred to herein as an eNCCE. An example of the eNCCE is illustrated in  FIGS. 1 and 2 . 
     Generally, in reference to  FIGS. 1 and 2 , for a UE with NB capability, the physical resource block (PRB) carrier index for the enhanced NPDCCH (eNPDCCH) may be configured by the base station through higher layer signaling. Specifically, a base station in the cellular network such as an evolved nodeB (eNB) may transmit one or more indications to a UE that is configured to operate in accordance with the NB protocol in the cellular network. The indications may be transmitted via higher layer signaling. The UE may then be able to use those indications to identify information related to the eNPDCCH such as the PRB configuration or the carrier index of subcarriers on which the eNPDCCH will be transmitted. 
     Further, for a UE configured to operate in accordance with a WB protocol in the cellular network, multiple search candidates may span the available bandwidth. More specifically, multiple search candidates may span the available bandwidth, and the base station may then have the flexibility to assign different UEs at the location(s) of different ones of the candidates. 
     As used herein, the term “WB” refers to operation wherein the eNPDCCH is transmitted on more than one RB. For example, when the UE is operating in accordance with a WB protocol, the eNPDCCH may be transmitted on subcarriers of six RBs. By contrast, the term “NB” refers to operation wherein the eNPDCCH is transmitted on subcarriers of a single RB. 
     More generally, as shown in  FIGS. 1 and 2 , one eNCCE may be composed of six consecutive subcarriers spanning 14 orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) symbols. Alternatively, in some embodiments one eNCCE may be composed of 12 consecutive subcarriers spanning 7 OFDM symbols. 
     Specifically,  FIG. 1  depicts a subframe  100 . The subframe may be organized along the frequency axis (F) and the time axis (T). A unit along the frequency axis F may be referred to as a subcarrier. A unit along the time axis T may be referred to as a symbol. A resource element (RE)  120  may refer to a unit that is a single subcarrier at a single symbol. 
     Generally, the subframe  100  may be formed of six RBs  103 , each of which may include 12 subcarriers. Further, the subframe may span two time slots  115 , each of which may include 7 symbols. 
     An RB  103  may include two eNCCEs such as eNCCEs  105  and  110 . As shown in  FIG. 1 , each eNCCE  105  and  110  may include 14 symbols along the time axis T and six subcarriers along the frequency axis F. Generally, the eNCCEs  105  and  110  may additionally include control elements such as control elements  125 . The control elements  125  may be, for example reference signals that help a receiver locate a given subframe  100 , time slot  115 , or eNCCE  105  or  110 . Alternatively, the control elements  125  may include a guard element or other information that may be used by a receiver in other ways. 
       FIG. 2  depicts an alternative configuration of a subframe  200 . Similarly to subframe  100 , subframe  200  may be organized along the frequency axis (F) and the time axis (T), and a unit of the subframe may be referred to as a RE  220 . Subframe  200  may be made up of six RBs  203  and may span two time slots  215 . Each RB  203  may include 12 subcarriers and 14 symbols. Similarly to RB  103 , each RB  203  may include two eNCCEs  205  and  210 . However, in subframe  200 , the eNCCEs may be split within an RB  203  along the time axis T rather than the frequency axis F. Specifically, each eNCCE  205  and  210  may by composed of six symbols and 12 subcarriers. Similarly to eNCCEs  105  and  110 , eNCCEs  205  and  210  may include one or more control elements  125  at specified REs within the eNCCEs  105  and  110 . 
     In one embodiment, the aggregation level (AL) of an eNCCE may be increased beyond 2. That is, subcarriers of more than 2 eNCCEs may be used to transmit information related to the eNPDCCH. Taking a subframe with six RBs as an example, the AL for transmission of physical downlink control information such as information that may be transmitted via the eNPDCCH may take values of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12. 
     In one embodiment, the eNCCEs may be aggregated in the distributed manner, e.g. {0, 11} for AL=2, {0, 3, 6, 9} for AL=4, etc. Additionally or alternatively, the eNCCEs may be aggregated in the localized manner, e.g. {0, 1} for AL=2, {0, 1, 2, 3} for AL=4, etc. 
     In one embodiment, the eNCCE may be re-ordered. For example, for a UE with WB capability, the eNCCE may be numbered in the increasing order of subcarrier indexes, and PRB indexed. For instance, for a channel with a 6 RB bandwidth, eNCCE #0 may occupy subcarriers 0 through 5 of the RB#0, eNCCE #1 may occupy subcarriers 6 through 11 of the RB#0, eNCCE #2 may occupy subcarriers 0 through 5 of the RB#1, eNCCE #3 may occupy subcarriers 6 through 11 of RB#1, and so on. This configuration may be, for example, the configuration of the subframe  100  depicted in  FIG. 1 . 
     For a UE with NB capability, the eNCCE may reuse the legacy numbering within the configured 1 RB range. Here, the base station may configure the largest PRB or carrier index to the UE with NB capability to avoid the mutual impact between a configuration for a UE acting in accordance with the WB protocol and a UE acting in accordance with the NB protocol. Alternatively, for UEs with WB capability, the eNCCE may be numbered in the decreasing order of subcarrier indexes and PRB indexed. 
       FIG. 3  depicts an example of this renumbering. Specifically,  FIG. 3  depicts a subframe  300 , which may be similar in structure to subframes  100  or  200 . Specifically, the subframe  300  may include a number of RBs  303 , which may be similar to RBs  103  and  203 . The RBs with the lowest index,  305 , may include eNCCEs related to a UE that operates in accordance with a WB protocol. By contrast, the RB with the highest index  310  may be include eNCCEs related to a UE that operates in accordance with a NB protocol. 
     In some embodiments the search space candidates for UEs with WB capability may be increased as compared with legacy NB-IOT search space candidates. Specifically, the UEs with WB capability may use the search space candidates in the eMTC system based on eNCCE. 
     In some embodiments, the base station may transmit a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) Specifically, the DMRS may be related to transmission of the NPDCCH. In some embodiments, the DMRS may use a narrowband reference signal (NRS) RE.  FIG. 4  depicts an example of an RB  403 . Similarly to RBs  103  or  203 , the RB  403  may be composed of 12 subcarriers along the frequency axis F, and 14 symbols along the time axis T. Specifically, the RB  403  may occupy two time slots  405 , which may be similar to time slots  115  or  215 . Further, the RB  403  may have a number of REs  415 , which may be similar to REs  120  or  220 . 
     The RB  403  may include a number of control elements  420  and  425 . Specifically, the control elements  420  or  425 , or both, may be reference signal (RS) REs. In embodiments one or both of control elements  420  and  425  may be NRS REs, which may be used to transmit the DMRS. 
     Downlink Control Channel Designed Based on Enhanced Physical Downlink Control Channel (ePDCCH) 
     The legacy ePDCCH structure may be based on a single RB that includes 16 enhanced resource element groups (eREGs) and four enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs). By contrast, embodiments herein may be based on use of one PRB ePDCCH for UEs that operate in accordance with NB protocols. Generally, for a UE with NB capability, the PRB/carrier index for further ePDCCH (fePDCCH) may be configured by the base station through high layer signaling. 
     To further simplify the capability for NB UEs, two eCCEs may be aggregated by default, to generate a further eCCE (feCCE) with more REs. For instance, the eCCE0 and eCCE1 may be aggregated, then the DMRS REs of AP107 and AP108 in legacy ePDCCH may be utilized for DMRS REs of the aggregated feCCE0. Similarly, the eCCE 2 and eCCE3 may be aggregated, then the DMRS REs of AP109 and AP 110 in the legacy ePDCCH may be utilized for DMRS REs of the aggregated feCCE 1. 
     An example of this aggregation is depicted in  FIG. 5 . Specifically,  FIG. 5  depicts an RB with two slots,  505  and  510 , each comprising 7 symbols in the time direction and 12 subcarriers in the frequency direction. The non-shaded REs  515  of the slots may relate to REs of feCCE0, and the shaded REs  520  may relate to REs of feCCE1. The RB may further include DMRS REs  525  for feCCE1and DMRS REs  530  for feCCE0. 
     Alternatively, eCCE0 and eCCE2 are aggregated, and eCCE0 and eCCE2 are aggregated, then the DMRS of different feCCE can be orthogonal by OCC. It will be understood that this combination may be only one combination, and in another embodiment eCCE0 and eCCe2 may be aggregated, and eCCE1 and eCCE2 may be aggregated, etc.  FIG. 6  depicts an example of this embodiment. Similarly to  FIG. 5 ,  FIG. 6  depicts an RB that includes two slots  605  and  610 , each composed of 7 symbols in the time direction and 12 subcarriers in the frequency direction. The non-shaded REs  615  may relate to REs of feCCE0, and the shaded REs  620  may relate to REs of feCCE1. The slots  605  and  610  may further include DMRS REs  525  and  530 , which may be orthogonal to one another. Specifically, the values of the DMRS for feCCE0 may include a value of 1 at DMRS RE  525  and a value of 1 at DMRS RE  530 . The values of the DMRS for feCCE1 may include a value of 1 at DMRS RE  525  and a value of −1 at DMRS RE  530 . It will be understood that the embodiments of  FIG. 5 or 6  are intended as examples and other embodiments may have other configurations or other values for the aggregated eCCEs. 
     In some embodiments, for a UE with NB capability, the search space candidates, AL, repetition, etc. may reuse values of NB-IOT based on feCCEs. The UEs with NB capability, the search space candidates, AL, repetition, etc. may also reuse values of eMTC based on eCCEs. 
     Physical Downlink Control Channel for Paging/RA 
     In some embodiments, one downlink control paging channel may page UEs with NB capability and UEs with WB capability at the same time. Alternatively, the paging for UEs with NB capability may be different from that of the UEs with WB capability, which are separately configured by the base station through high layer signaling. Similarly, the PRB or carrier index for NB or WB downlink control channel can be configured by eNB through high layer signaling; or be pre-defined with the largest/small/central index. 
     In some embodiments, the downlink control channel resources for random access response (RAR)/Msg3 or re-transmission (ReTx)/Msg4 may be pre-defined. For example, the resources may be pre-defined to be the PRB or carrier with the smallest/largest/central/etc. index. 
     UEs with NB capability and UEs with WB capability may share the same downlink control channel, if UE&#39;s capability is reported after radio resource control (RRC) connection. Alternatively, UEs with NB capability and UEs with WB capability may receive different downlink control channel for RAR/Msg3 ReTx/Msg4, if they can report the capacity at the RACH procedure. After RRC connection, the UE specific downlink control channels configuration can be configured by eNB through high layer signaling. 
     Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) Scheduling 
     In the legacy NB-IOT system, the DCI format N1 may be utilized to schedule the PDSCH. Examples of use of the DCI N1 format are depicted below in Tables 1 and 2 for unicast PDSCH scheduling and paging scheduling, respectively. 
     
       
         
           
               
             
               
                 TABLE 1 
               
             
            
               
                   
               
               
                 the DCI N1 for unicast PDSCH scheduling 
               
            
           
           
               
               
            
               
                   
                 Number 
               
               
                 Indicator 
                 of bits 
               
               
                   
               
            
           
           
               
               
            
               
                 Flag for format N0/format N1 differentiation 
                 1 
               
               
                 NPDCCH order indicator 
                 1 
               
               
                 Scheduling delay 
                 3 
               
               
                 Resource assignment 
                 3 
               
               
                 Modulation and coding scheme 
                 4 
               
               
                 Repetition number 
                 4 
               
               
                 New data indicator (reserved if cyclic redundancy check (CRC) 
                 1 
               
               
                 is scrambled with a random access - radio network temporary 
               
               
                 identifier (RA-RNTI) 
               
               
                 Narrowband physical uplink shared channel (NPUSCH) format 2 
                 4 
               
               
                 (hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ- 
               
               
                 ACK)) resource (reserved if CRC is scrambled with a RA-RNTI) 
               
               
                 DCI subframe repetition number 
                 2 
               
               
                   
               
            
           
         
       
     
     
       
         
           
               
             
               
                 TABLE 2 
               
             
            
               
                   
               
               
                 the DCI N1 for paging scheduling 
               
            
           
           
               
               
               
            
               
                   
                   
                 Number 
               
               
                   
                 Indicator 
                 of bits 
               
               
                   
                   
               
            
           
           
               
               
               
            
               
                   
                 Flag for paging/direct indication differentiation 
                 1 
               
               
                   
                 Resource assignment 
                 3 
               
               
                   
                 Modulation and coding scheme 
                 4 
               
               
                   
                 Repetition number 
                 4 
               
               
                   
                 DCI subframe repetition number 
                 3 
               
               
                   
                   
               
            
           
         
       
     
     UE-Specific Search Space (UESS) 
     In one embodiment, transmission related to unlicensed NB-IOT may reuse the legacy DCI format N1, and the corresponding UESS. In one embodiment, the maximum DCI repetition times (Rmax) for Unicasted PDSCH scheduling may be reduced to:
         r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64;   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128;   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256; or   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256, r512       

     In one embodiment, the legacy larger repetition times such as r128, r256, r512, r1024, or r2048 may not be needed. In other words, in some embodiments the maximum possible repetition time may be r64. 
     Type 1 Cell Search Space (CSS)-Paging 
     For the Type 1 CSS for paging, the DCI subframe repetition number may be 3 bits. In one embodiment, unlicensed NB-IOT may reuse the legacy DCI format N2 for Type1 CSS, and the corresponding search space. 
     In one embodiment, the maximum DCI repetition times Rmax for paging scheduling, npdcch-NumRepetitionPaging, may be reduced to:
         r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64;   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128;   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256; or   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256, r512       

     In one embodiment, the legacy larger repetition times such as r128, r256, r512, r1024, or r2048 may not be needed. In other words, in some embodiments the maximum possible repetition time may be r64. 
     In one embodiment, the search space of Type 1 CSS may be configured as illustrated in the following table 3: 
     
       
         
           
               
               
             
               
                   
                 TABLE 3 
               
             
            
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                 NCCE indices of 
               
               
                   
                 monitored NPDCCH 
               
               
                   
                 candidates 
               
            
           
           
               
               
               
               
            
               
                 R max   
                 R 
                 L′ = 1 
                 L′ = 2 
               
               
                   
               
            
           
           
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
            
               
                 1 
                 1 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 2 
                 1 
                 2 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 4 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 8 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 16 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 16 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 32 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 16 
                 32 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 64 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 16 
                 32 
                 64 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 DCI 
                 000 
                 001 
                 010 
                 011 
                 100 
                 101 
                 110 
                 111 
               
               
                 subframe 
               
               
                 repetition 
               
               
                 number 
               
               
                   
               
               
                 Note 1: 
               
               
                 The terminology{x, y} may denote NPDCCH Format1 candidate corresponding to NCCEs ‘x’ and ‘y’ is monitored. 
               
            
           
         
       
     
     In another embodiment, the search space of Type 1 CSS may be configured as illustrated in the following table 4: 
     
       
         
           
               
               
             
               
                   
                 TABLE 4 
               
             
            
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                 NCCE indices of 
               
               
                   
                 monitored NPDCCH 
               
               
                   
                 candidates 
               
            
           
           
               
               
               
               
            
               
                 R max   
                 R 
                 L′ = 1 
                 L′ = 2 
               
               
                   
               
            
           
           
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
            
               
                 1 
                 1 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 2 
                 1 
                 2 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 4 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 8 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 16 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 16 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 32 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 16 
                 32 
                 — 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 64 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 16 
                 32 
                 64 
                 — 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 128 
                 1 
                 2 
                 4 
                 8 
                 16 
                 32 
                 64 
                 128 
                 — 
                 {0, 1} 
               
               
                 DCI 
                 000 
                 001 
                 010 
                 011 
                 100 
                 101 
                 110 
                 111 
               
               
                 subframe 
               
               
                 repetition 
               
               
                 number 
               
               
                   
               
               
                 Note 1: 
               
               
                 The terminology{x, y} may denote NPDCCH Format1 candidate corresponding to NCCEs ‘x’ and ‘y’ is monitored. 
               
            
           
         
       
     
     Type 2 CSS-RA 
     In one embodiment, unlicensed NB-IOT may reuse the legacy DCI format N2 for Type1 CSS, and the corresponding search space. In one embodiment, the maximum DCI repetition times Rmax for RA, npdcch-NumRepetitions-RA, may be reduced to:
         r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64;   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128;   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256; or   r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256, r512.       

     In some embodiments, the legacy larger repetition times such as r128, r256, r512, r1024, or r2048 may not be needed. In other words, in some embodiments the maximum possible repetition time may be r64. 
     Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) Scheduling 
     In some embodiments, the DCI for PUSCH scheduling may be as shown in the following Table 5: 
     
       
         
           
               
               
               
             
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                   
                 Number 
               
               
                   
                 Indicator 
                 of bits 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
            
               
                   
               
            
           
           
               
               
               
            
               
                   
                 Flag for format N0/format N1 differentiation 
                 1 
               
               
                   
                 Subcarrier indication 
                 6 
               
               
                   
                 Resource assignment 
                 3 
               
               
                   
                 Scheduling delay 
                 2 
               
               
                   
                 Modulation and coding scheme 
                 4 
               
               
                   
                 Redundancy version 
                 1 
               
               
                   
                 Repetition number 
                 3 
               
               
                   
                 New data indicator 
                 1 
               
               
                   
                 DCI subframe repetition number 
                 2 
               
               
                   
                   
               
            
           
         
       
     
     In one embodiment, unlicensed NB-IOT transmissions may reuse the legacy DCI format N0 for PUSCH scheduling, and the corresponding search space. In one embodiment, the reserved subcarrier indication may be interpreted as the explicit ACK of PUSCH. After receiving this explicit HARQ, a UE may flush its PUSCH buffer. In some embodiments, an additional reserved subcarrier indication can be interpreted as explicit ACK for early termination of PUSCH transmission. After UE receives the explicit ACK, it may similarly flush its PUSCH buffer. 
     In one embodiment, the larger repetition times of PUSCH may be reserved, e.g. 64, 128. The reserved states of repetition number may be utilized as the explicit ACK indication for early termination of machine type communication downlink control channel (MDCCH) or early termination of PUSCH transmission. In another embodiment, the reserved states of modulation and coding schemes may be utilized as the explicit ACK indication for early termination of MDCCH or early termination of PUSCH transmission. 
     In one embodiment, if only one HARQ is supported by UE, then one state of explicit ACK may be desired. In another embodiment, if two HARQ-ProcessesConfig is configured, then three states may be desired. Specifically, it may be desirable to have one state for ACK of HARQ 1; one state for ACK of HARQ 2; and one state for ACK of both HARQ 1 and HARQ 2. 
       FIG. 7  illustrates an architecture of a system XQ 00  of a network in accordance with some embodiments. The system XQ 00  is shown to include a user equipment (UE) XQ 01  and a UE XQ 02 . As used herein, the term “user equipment” or “UE” may refer to a device with radio communication capabilities and may describe a remote user of network resources in a communications network. The term “user equipment” or “UE” may be considered synonymous to, and may be referred to as client, mobile, mobile device, mobile terminal, user terminal, mobile unit, mobile station, mobile user, subscriber, user, remote station, access agent, user agent, receiver, radio equipment, reconfigurable radio equipment, reconfigurable mobile device, etc. Furthermore, the term “user equipment” or “UE” may include any type of wireless/wired device or any computing device including a wireless communications interface. In this example, UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  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, such as consumer electronics devices, cellular phones, smartphones, feature phones, tablet computers, wearable computer devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers, wireless handsets, desktop computers, laptop computers, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), in-car entertainment (ICE) devices, an Instrument Cluster (IC), head-up display (HUD) devices, onboard diagnostic (OBD) devices, dashtop mobile equipment (DME), mobile data terminals (MDTs), Electronic Engine Management System (EEMS), electronic/engine control units (ECUs), electronic/engine control modules (ECMs), embedded systems, microcontrollers, control modules, engine management systems (EMS), networked or “smart” appliances, machine-type communications (MTC) devices, machine-to-machine (M2M), Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and/or the like. 
     In some embodiments, any of the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  can comprise an Internet of Things (IoT) UE, which can comprise a network access layer designed for low-power IoT applications utilizing short-lived UE connections. An IoT UE can utilize technologies such as machine-to-machine (M2M) or machine-type communications (MTC) for exchanging data with an MTC server or device via a public land mobile network (PLMN), Proximity-Based Service (ProSe) or device-to-device (D2D) communication, sensor networks, or IoT networks. The M2M or MTC exchange of data may be a machine-initiated exchange of data. An IoT network describes interconnecting IoT UEs, which may include uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices (within the Internet infrastructure), with short-lived connections. The IoT UEs may execute background applications (e.g., keep-alive messages, status updates, etc.) to facilitate the connections of the IoT network. 
     The UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  may be configured to connect, e.g., communicatively couple, with a radio access network (RAN) XQ 10 . The RAN XQ 10  may be, for example, an Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN), a NextGen RAN (NG RAN), or some other type of RAN. The UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  utilize connections (or channels) XQ 03  and XQ 04 , respectively, each of which comprises a physical communications interface or layer (discussed in further detail infra). As used herein, the term “channel” may refer to any transmission medium, either tangible or intangible, which is used to communicate data or a data stream. The term “channel” may be synonymous with and/or equivalent to “communications channel,” “data communications channel,” “transmission channel,” “data transmission channel,” “access channel,” “data access channel,” “link,” “data link,” “carrier,” “radiofrequency carrier,” and/or any other like term denoting a pathway or medium through which data is communicated. Additionally, the term “link” may refer to a connection between two devices through a Radio Access Technology (RAT) for the purpose of transmitting and receiving information. In this example, the connections XQ 03  and XQ 04  are illustrated as an air interface to enable communicative coupling, and can be consistent with cellular communications protocols, such as a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol, a code-division multiple access (CDMA) network protocol, a Push-to-Talk (PTT) protocol, a PTT over Cellular (POC) protocol, a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) protocol, a 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) protocol, a fifth generation (5G) protocol, a New Radio (NR) protocol, and the like. 
     In this embodiment, the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  may further directly exchange communication data via a ProSe interface XQ 05 . The ProSe interface XQ 05  may alternatively be referred to as a sidelink (SL) interface comprising one or more logical channels, including but not limited to a Physical Sidelink Control Channel (PSCCH), a Physical Sidelink Shared Channel (PSSCH), a Physical Sidelink Discovery Channel (PSDCH), and a Physical Sidelink Broadcast Channel (PSBCH). In various implementations, the SL interface XQ 05  may be used in vehicular applications and communications technologies, which are often referred to as V2X systems. V2X is a mode of communication where UEs (for example, UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02 ) communicate with each other directly over the PC5/SL interface XQ 05  and can take place when the UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02  are served by RAN nodes XQ 11 , XQ 12  or when one or more UEs are outside a coverage area of the RAN XQ 10 . V2X may be classified into four different types: vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), vehicle-to-network (V2N), and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P). These V2X applications can use “co-operative awareness” to provide more intelligent services for end-users. For example, vehicle UEs (vUEs) XQ 01 , XQ 02 , RAN nodes XQ 11 , XQ 12 , application servers XQ 30 , and pedestrian UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02  may collect knowledge of their local environment (for example, information received from other vehicles or sensor equipment in proximity) to process and share that knowledge in order to provide more intelligent services, such as cooperative collision warning, autonomous driving, and the like. In these implementations, the UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02  may be implemented/employed as Vehicle Embedded Communications Systems (VECS) or vUEs. 
     The UE XQ 02  is shown to be configured to access an access point (AP) XQ 06  (also referred to as “WLAN node XQ 06 ”, “WLAN XQ 06 ”, “WLAN Termination XQ 06 ” or “WT XQ 06 ” or the like) via connection XQ 07 . The connection XQ 07  can comprise a local wireless connection, such as a connection consistent with any IEEE 802.11 protocol, wherein the AP XQ 06  would comprise a wireless fidelity (WiFi®) router. In this example, the AP XQ 06  is shown to be connected to the Internet without connecting to the core network of the wireless system (described in further detail below). In various embodiments, the UE XQ 02 , RAN XQ 10 , and AP XQ 06  may be configured to utilize LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA) operation and/or WLAN LTE/WLAN Radio Level Integration with IPsec Tunnel (LWIP) operation. The LWA operation may involve the UE XQ 02  in RRC_CONNECTED being configured by a RAN node XQ 11 , XQ 12  to utilize radio resources of LTE and WLAN. LWIP operation may involve the UE XQ 02  using WLAN radio resources (e.g., connection XQ 07 ) via Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) protocol tunneling to authenticate and encrypt packets (e.g., internet protocol (IP) packets) sent over the connection XQ 07 . IPsec tunneling may include encapsulating entirety of original IP packets and adding a new packet header, thereby protecting the original header of the IP packets. 
     The RAN XQ 10  can include one or more access nodes that enable the connections XQ 03  and XQ 04 . As used herein, the terms “access node,” “access point,” or the like may describe equipment that provides the radio baseband functions for data and/or voice connectivity between a network and one or more users. These access nodes can be referred to as base stations (BS), NodeBs, evolved NodeBs (eNBs), next Generation NodeBs (gNB), RAN nodes, Road Side Units (RSUs), and so forth, and can comprise ground stations (e.g., terrestrial access points) or satellite stations providing coverage within a geographic area (e.g., a cell). The term “Road Side Unit” or “RSU” may refer to any transportation infrastructure entity implemented in or by a gNB/eNB/RAN node or a stationary (or relatively stationary) UE, where an RSU implemented in or by a UE may be referred to as a “UE-type RSU”, an RSU implemented in or by an eNB may be referred to as an “eNB-type RSU.” The RAN XQ 10  may include one or more RAN nodes for providing macrocells, e.g., macro RAN node XQ 11 , and one or more RAN nodes for providing femtocells or picocells (e.g., cells having smaller coverage areas, smaller user capacity, or higher bandwidth compared to macrocells), e.g., low power (LP) RAN node XQ 12 . 
     Any of the RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12  can terminate the air interface protocol and can be the first point of contact for the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02 . In some embodiments, any of the RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12  can fulfill various logical functions for the RAN XQ 10  including, but not limited to, radio network controller (RNC) functions such as radio bearer management, uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management and data packet scheduling, and mobility management. 
     In accordance with some embodiments, the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  can be configured to communicate using Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) communication signals with each other or with any of the RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12  over a multicarrier communication channel in accordance with 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 OFDM signals can comprise a plurality of orthogonal subcarriers. 
     In some embodiments, a downlink resource grid can be used for downlink transmissions from any of the RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12  to the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02 , while uplink transmissions can utilize similar techniques. The grid can be a time-frequency grid, called a resource grid or time-frequency resource grid, which is the physical resource in the downlink in each slot. Such a time-frequency plane representation is a common practice for OFDM systems, which makes it intuitive for radio resource allocation. Each column and each row of the resource grid corresponds to one OFDM symbol and one OFDM subcarrier, respectively. The duration of the resource grid in the time domain corresponds to one slot in a radio frame. The smallest time-frequency unit in a resource grid is denoted as a resource element. Each resource grid comprises a number of resource blocks, which describe the mapping of certain physical channels to resource elements. Each resource block comprises a collection of resource elements; in the frequency domain, this may represent the smallest quantity of resources that currently can be allocated. There are several different physical downlink channels that are conveyed using such resource blocks. 
     According to various embodiments, the UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02  and the RAN nodes XQ 11 , XQ 12  communicate data (for example, transmit and receive) data over a licensed medium (also referred to as the “licensed spectrum” and/or the “licensed band”) and an unlicensed shared medium (also referred to as the “unlicensed spectrum” and/or the “unlicensed band”). The licensed spectrum may include channels that operate in the frequency range of approximately 400 MHz to approximately 3.8 GHz, whereas the unlicensed spectrum may include the 5 GHz band. 
     To operate in the unlicensed spectrum, the UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02  and the RAN nodes XQ 11 , XQ 12  may operate using Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), enhanced LAA (eLAA), and/or further eLAA (feLAA) mechanisms. In these implementations, the UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02  and the RAN nodes XQ 11 , XQ 12  may perform one or more known medium-sensing operations and/or carrier-sensing operations in order to determine whether one or more channels in the unlicensed spectrum is unavailable or otherwise occupied prior to transmitting in the unlicensed spectrum. The medium/carrier sensing operations may be performed according to a listen-before-talk (LBT) protocol. 
     LBT is a mechanism whereby equipment (for example, UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02 , RAN nodes XQ 11 , XQ 12 , etc.) senses a medium (for example, a channel or carrier frequency) and transmits when the medium is sensed to be idle (or when a specific channel in the medium is sensed to be unoccupied). The medium sensing operation may include clear channel assessment (CCA), which utilizes at least energy detection (ED) to determine the presence or absence of other signals on a channel in order to determine if a channel is occupied or clear. This LBT mechanism allows cellular/LAA networks to coexist with incumbent systems in the unlicensed spectrum and with other LAA networks. ED may include sensing radiofrequency (RF) energy across an intended transmission band for a period of time and comparing the sensed RF energy to a predefined or configured threshold. 
     Typically, the incumbent systems in the 5 GHz band are WLANs based on IEEE 802.11 technologies. WLAN employs a contention-based channel access mechanism, called carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). Here, when a WLAN node (e.g., a mobile station (MS) such as UE XQ 01  or XQ 02 , AP  106 , or the like) intends to transmit, the WLAN node may first perform CCA before transmission. Additionally, a backoff mechanism is used to avoid collisions in situations where more than one WLAN node senses the channel as idle and transmits at the same time. The backoff mechanism may be a counter that is drawn randomly within the contention window size (CWS), which is increased exponentially upon the occurrence of collision and reset to a minimum value when the transmission succeeds. The LBT mechanism designed for LAA is somewhat similar to the CSMA/CA of WLAN. In some implementations, the LBT procedure for DL or UL transmission bursts including PDSCH or PUSCH transmissions, respectively, may have an LAA contention window that is variable in length between X and Y extended CCA (ECCA) slots, where X and Y are minimum and maximum values for the CWSs for LAA. In one example, the minimum CWS for an LAA transmission may be 9 microseconds (μs); however, the size of the CWS and a maximum channel occupancy time (MCOT) (for example, a transmission burst) may be based on governmental regulatory requirements. 
     The LAA mechanisms are built upon carrier aggregation (CA) technologies of LTE-Advanced systems. In CA, each aggregated carrier is referred to as a component carrier (CC). A CC may have a bandwidth of 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20 MHz and a maximum of five CCs can be aggregated, and therefore, a maximum aggregated bandwidth is 100 MHz. In Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) systems, the number of aggregated carriers can be different for DL and UL, where the number of UL CCs is equal to or lower than the number of DL component carriers. In some cases, individual CCs can have a different bandwidth than other CCs. In Time Division Duplexing (TDD) systems, the number of CCs as well as the bandwidths of each CC is usually the same for DL and UL. 
     CA also comprises individual serving cells to provide individual CCs. The coverage of the serving cells may differ, for example, due to that CCs on different frequency bands will experience different pathloss. A primary service cell or primary cell (PCell) may provide a Primary CC (PCC) for both UL and DL, and may handle Radio Resource Control (RRC) and Non-Access Stratum (NAS) related activities. The other serving cells are referred to as secondary cells (SCells), and each SCell may provide an individual Secondary CC (SCC) for both UL and DL. The SCCs may be added and removed as required, while changing the PCC may require the UE XQ 01 , XQ 02  to undergo a handover. In LAA, eLAA, and feLAA, some or all of the SCells may operate in the unlicensed spectrum (referred to as “LAA SCells”), and the LAA SCells are assisted by a PCell operating in the licensed spectrum. When a UE is configured with more than one LAA SCell, the UE may receive UL grants on the configured LAA SCells indicating different Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) starting positions within a same subframe. 
     The physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) may carry user data and higher-layer signaling to the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02 . The physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) may carry information about the transport format and resource allocations related to the PDSCH channel, among other things. It may also inform the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  about the transport format, resource allocation, and H-ARQ (Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request) information related to the uplink shared channel. Typically, downlink scheduling (assigning control and shared channel resource blocks to the UE XQ 02  within a cell) may be performed at any of the RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12  based on channel quality information fed back from any of the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02 . The downlink resource assignment information may be sent on the PDCCH used for (e.g., assigned to) each of the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02 . 
     The PDCCH may use control channel elements (CCEs) to convey the control information. Before being mapped to resource elements, the PDCCH complex-valued symbols may first be organized into quadruplets, which may then be permuted using a sub-block interleaver for rate matching. Each PDCCH may be transmitted using one or more of these CCEs, where each CCE may correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements known as resource element groups (REGs). Four Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) symbols may be mapped to each REG. The PDCCH can be transmitted using one or more CCEs, depending on the size of the downlink control information (DCI) and the channel condition. There can be four or more different PDCCH formats defined in LTE with different numbers of CCEs (e.g., aggregation level, L=1, 2, 4, or 8). 
     Some embodiments may use concepts for resource allocation for control channel information that are an extension of the above-described concepts. For example, some embodiments may utilize an enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH) that uses PDSCH resources for control information transmission. The EPDCCH may be transmitted using one or more enhanced control channel elements (ECCEs). Similar to above, each ECCE may correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements known as an enhanced resource element groups (EREGs). An ECCE may have other numbers of EREGs in some situations. 
     The RAN XQ 10  is shown to be communicatively coupled to a core network (CN) XQ 20  via an S1 interface XQ 13 . In embodiments, the CN XQ 20  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 XQ 13  is split into two parts: the S1-U interface XQ 14 , which carries traffic data between the RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12  and the serving gateway (S-GW) XQ 22 , and the S1-mobility management entity (MME) interface XQ 15 , which is a signaling interface between the RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12  and MMEs XQ 21 . 
     In this embodiment, the CN XQ 20  comprises the MMEs XQ 21 , the S-GW XQ 22 , the Packet Data Network (PDN) Gateway (P-GW) XQ 23 , and a home subscriber server (HSS) XQ 24 . The MMEs XQ 21  may be similar in function to the control plane of legacy Serving General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Support Nodes (SGSN). The MMEs XQ 21  may manage mobility aspects in access such as gateway selection and tracking area list management. The HSS XQ 24  may comprise a database for network users, including subscription-related information to support the network entities&#39; handling of communication sessions. The CN XQ 20  may comprise one or several HSSs XQ 24 , depending on the number of mobile subscribers, on the capacity of the equipment, on the organization of the network, etc. For example, the HSS XQ 24  can provide support for routing/roaming, authentication, authorization, naming/addressing resolution, location dependencies, etc. 
     The S-GW XQ 22  may terminate the S1 interface XQ 13  towards the RAN XQ 10 , and routes data packets between the RAN XQ 10  and the CN XQ 20 . In addition, the S-GW XQ 22  may be a local mobility anchor point for inter-RAN node handovers and also may provide an anchor for inter-3GPP mobility. Other responsibilities may include lawful intercept, charging, and some policy enforcement. 
     The P-GW XQ 23  may terminate an SGi interface toward a PDN. The P-GW XQ 23  may route data packets between the EPC network XQ 20  and external networks such as a network including the application server XQ 30  (alternatively referred to as application function (AF)) via an Internet Protocol (IP) interface XQ 25 . Generally, the application server XQ 30  may be an element offering applications that use IP bearer resources with the core network (e.g., UMTS Packet Services (PS) domain, LTE PS data services, etc.). In this embodiment, the P-GW XQ 23  is shown to be communicatively coupled to an application server XQ 30  via an IP communications interface XQ 25 . The application server XQ 30  can also be configured to support one or more communication services (e.g., Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) sessions, PTT sessions, group communication sessions, social networking services, etc.) for the UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  via the CN XQ 20 . 
     The P-GW XQ 23  may further be a node for policy enforcement and charging data collection. Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) XQ 26  is the policy and charging control element of the CN XQ 20 . In a non-roaming scenario, there may be a single PCRF in the Home Public Land Mobile Network (HPLMN) associated with a UE&#39;s Internet Protocol Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN) session. In a roaming scenario with local breakout of traffic, there may be two PCRFs associated with a UE&#39;s IP-CAN session: a Home PCRF (H-PCRF) within an HPLMN and a Visited PCRF (V-PCRF) within a Visited Public Land Mobile Network (VPLMN). The PCRF XQ 26  may be communicatively coupled to the application server XQ 30  via the P-GW XQ 23 . The application server XQ 30  may signal the PCRF XQ 26  to indicate a new service flow and select the appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) and charging parameters. The PCRF XQ 26  may provision this rule into a Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) (not shown) with the appropriate traffic flow template (TFT) and QoS class of identifier (QCI), which commences the QoS and charging as specified by the application server XQ 30 . 
       FIG. 8  illustrates an architecture of a system XR 00  of a network in accordance with some embodiments. The system XR 00  is shown to include a UE XR 01 , which may be the same or similar to UEs XQ 01  and XQ 02  discussed previously; a RAN node XR 11 , which may be the same or similar to RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12  discussed previously; a Data Network (DN) XR 03 , which may be, for example, operator services, Internet access or 3rd party services; and a 5G Core Network (5GC or CN) XR 20 . 
     The CN XR 20  may include an Authentication Server Function (AUSF) XR 22 ; an Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) XR 21 ; a Session Management Function (SMF) XR 24 ; a Network Exposure Function (NEF) XR 23 ; a Policy Control Function (PCF) XR 26 ; a Network Function (NF) Repository Function (NRF) XR 25 ; a Unified Data Management (UDM) XR 27 ; an Application Function (AF) XR 28 ; a User Plane Function (UPF) XR 02 ; and a Network Slice Selection Function (NSSF) XR 29 . 
     The UPF XR 02  may act as an anchor point for intra-RAT and inter-RAT mobility, an external PDU session point of interconnect to DN XR 03 , and a branching point to support multi-homed PDU session. The UPF XR 02  may also perform packet routing and forwarding, perform packet inspection, enforce user plane part of policy rules, lawfully intercept packets (UP collection), traffic usage reporting, perform QoS handling for user plane (e.g., packet filtering, gating, UL/DL rate enforcement), perform Uplink Traffic verification (e.g., SDF to QoS flow mapping), transport level packet marking in the uplink and downlink, and downlink packet buffering and downlink data notification triggering. UPF XR 02  may include an uplink classifier to support routing traffic flows to a data network. The DN XR 03  may represent various network operator services, Internet access, or third party services. DN XR 03  may include, or be similar to, application server XQ 30  discussed previously. The UPF XR 02  may interact with the SMF XR 24  via an N4 reference point between the SMF XR 24  and the UPF XR 02 . 
     The AUSF XR 22  may store data for authentication of UE XR 01  and handle authentication related functionality. The AUSF XR 22  may facilitate a common authentication framework for various access types. The AUSF XR 22  may communicate with the AMF XR 21  via an N12 reference point between the AMF XR 21  and the AUSF XR 22 ; and may communicate with the UDM XR 27  via an N13 reference point between the UDM XR 27  and the AUSF XR 22 . Additionally, the AUSF XR 22  may exhibit an Nausf service-based interface. 
     The AMF XR 21  may be responsible for registration management (e.g., for registering UE XR 01 , etc.), connection management, reachability management, mobility management, and lawful interception of AMF-related events, and access authentication and authorization. The AMF XR 21  may be a termination point for an N11 reference point between the AMF XR 21  and the SMF XR 24 . The AMF XR 21  may provide transport for Session Management (SM) messages between the UE XR 01  and the SMF XR 24 , and act as a transparent proxy for routing SM messages. AMF XR 21  may also provide transport for short message service (SMS) messages between UE XR 01  and an SMS function (SMSF) (not shown by  FIG. 8 ). AMF XR 21  may act as Security Anchor Function (SEAF), which may include interaction with the AUSF XR 22  and the UE XR 01 , as well as receipt of an intermediate key that was established as a result of the UE XR 01  authentication process. Where UMTS Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) based authentication is used, the AMF XR 21  may retrieve the security material from the AUSF XR 22 . AMF XR 21  may also include a Security Context Management (SCM) function, which receives a key from the SEAF that it uses to derive access-network specific keys. Furthermore, AMF XR 21  may be a termination point of RAN CP interface, which may include or be an N2 reference point between the (R)AN XR 11  and the AMF XR 21 ; and the AMF XR 21  may be a termination point of NAS (N1) signalling, and perform NAS ciphering and integrity protection. 
     AMF XR 21  may also support NAS signalling with a UE XR 01  over an N3 interworking-function (IWF) interface. The N3IWF may be used to provide access to untrusted entities. N3IWF may be a termination point for the N2 interface between the (R)AN XR 11  and the AMF XR 21  for the control plane, and may be a termination point for the N3 reference point between the (R)AN XR 11  and the UPF XR 02  for the user plane. As such, the AMF XR 21  may handle N2 signalling from the SMF XR 24  and the AMF XR 21  for PDU sessions and QoS, encapsulate/de-encapsulate packets for IPSec and N3 tunnelling, mark N3 user-plane packets in the uplink, and enforce QoS corresponding to N3 packet marking, which may take into account QoS requirements associated to such marking received over N2. N3IWF may also relay uplink and downlink control-plane NAS signalling between the UE XR 01  and AMF XR 21  via an N1 reference point between the UE XR 01  and the AMF XR 21 , and relay uplink and downlink user-plane packets between the UE XR 01  and UPF XR 02 . The N3IWF also provides mechanisms for IPsec tunnel establishment with the UE XR 01 . The AMF XR 21  may exhibit an Namf service-based interface, and may be a termination point for an N14 reference point between two AMFs XR 21  and an N17 reference point between the AMF XR 21  and a 5G-Equipment Identity Register (5G-EIR) (not shown by  FIG. 8 ). 
     The SMF XR 24  may be responsible for session management (e.g., session establishment, modify and release, including tunnel maintain between UPF and AN node). The SMF XR 24  may also allocate and manage UE IP addresses (including optional authorization), select and control UP functions, and configures traffic steering at the UPF XR 02  to route traffic to a proper destination. The SMF XR 24  may also terminate interfaces towards Policy Control Functions, control part of policy enforcement and QoS, and perform lawful interception (e.g., for SM events and interface to LI system). The SMF XR 24  may also terminate SM parts of NAS messages, provide downlink data notification, and initiate AN specific SM information, sent via AMF over N2 to AN, and determine Session and Service Continuity (SSC) mode of a session. 
     The SMF XR 24  may include the following roaming functionality: handle local enforcement to apply QoS SLAB (VPLMN); charging data collection and charging interface (VPLMN); lawful intercept (in VPLMN for SM events and interface to LI System); and support for interaction with external DN for transport of signalling for PDU session authorization/authentication by external DN. An N16 reference point between two SMFs XR 24  may be included in the system XR 00 , which may be between another SMF XR 24  in a visited network and the SMF XR 24  in the home network in roaming scenarios. Additionally, the SMF XR 24  may exhibit the Nsmf service-based interface. 
     The NEF XR 23  may provide means for securely exposing the services and capabilities provided by 3GPP network functions for third party, internal exposure/re-exposure, Application Functions (e.g., AF XR 28 ), edge computing or fog computing systems, etc. In such embodiments, the NEF XR 23  may authenticate, authorize, and/or throttle the AFs. NEF XR 23  may also translate information exchanged with the AF XR 28  and information exchanged with internal network functions. For example, the NEF XR 23  may translate between an AF-Service-Identifier and an internal 5GC information. NEF XR 23  may also receive information from other network functions (NFs) based on exposed capabilities of other network functions. This information may be stored at the NEF XR 23  as structured data, or at a data storage NF using standardized interfaces. The stored information can then be re-exposed by the NEF XR 23  to other NFs and AFs, and/or used for other purposes such as analytics. Additionally, the NEF XR 23  may exhibit an Nnef service-based interface. 
     The NRF XR 25  may support service discovery functions, receive NF Discovery Requests from NF instances, and provide the information of the discovered NF instances to the NF instances. NRF XR 25  also maintains information of available NF instances and their supported services. As used herein, the terms “instantiate”, “instantiation”, and the like may refer to the creation of an instance, and an “instance” may refer to a concrete occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code. Additionally, the NRF XR 25  may exhibit the Nnrf service-based interface. 
     The PCF XR 26  may provide policy rules to control plane function(s) to enforce them, and may also support unified policy framework to govern network behavior. The PCF XR 26  may also implement a front end (FE) to access subscription information relevant for policy decisions in a Unified Data Repository (UDR) of the UDM XR 27 . The PCF XR 26  may communicate with the AMF XR 21  via an N15 reference point between the PCF XR 26  and the AMF XR 21 , which may include a PCF XR 26  in a visited network and the AMF XR 21  in case of roaming scenarios. The PCF XR 26  may communicate with the AF XR 28  via an N5 reference point between the PCF XR 26  and the AF XR 28 ; and with the SMF XR 24  via an N7 reference point between the PCF XR 26  and the SMF XR 24 . The system XR 00  and/or CN XR 20  may also include an N24 reference point between the PCF XR 26  (in the home network) and a PCF XR 26  in a visited network. Additionally, the PCF XR 26  may exhibit an Npcf service-based interface. 
     The UDM XR 27  may handle subscription-related information to support the network entities&#39; handling of communication sessions, and may store subscription data of UE XR 01 . For example, subscription data may be communicated between the UDM XR 27  and the AMF XR 21  via an N8 reference point between the UDM XR 27  and the AMF XR 21  (not shown by  FIG. 8 ). The UDM XR 27  may include two parts, an application FE and a User Data Repository (UDR) (the FE and UDR are not shown by  FIG. 8 ). The UDR may store subscription data and policy data for the UDM XR 27  and the PCF XR 26 , and/or structured data for exposure and application data (including Packet Flow Descriptions (PFDs) for application detection, application request information for multiple UEs XR 01 ) for the NEF XR 23 . The Nudr service-based interface may be exhibited by the UDR to allow the UDM XR 27 , PCF XR 26 , and NEF XR 23  to access a particular set of the stored data, as well as to read, update (e.g., add, modify), delete, and subscribe to notification of relevant data changes in the UDR. The UDM XR 27  may include a UDM FE, which is in charge of processing credentials, location management, subscription management and so on. Several different front ends may serve the same user in different transactions. The UDM-FE accesses subscription information stored in the UDR and performs authentication credential processing; user identification handling; access authorization; registration/mobility management; and subscription management. The UDR may interact with the SMF XR 24  via an N10 reference point between the UDM XR 27  and the SMF XR 24 . UDM XR 27  may also support SMS management, wherein an SMS-FE implements the similar application logic as discussed previously. Additionally, the UDM XR 27  may exhibit the Nudm service-based interface. 
     The AF XR 28  may provide application influence on traffic routing, provide access to the Network Capability Exposure (NCE), and interact with the policy framework for policy control. The NCE may be a mechanism that allows the 5GC and AF XR 28  to provide information to each other via NEF XR 23 , which may be used for edge computing implementations. In such implementations, the network operator and third party services may be hosted close to the UE XR 01  access point of attachment to achieve an efficient service delivery through the reduced end-to-end latency and load on the transport network. For edge computing implementations, the 5GC may select a UPF XR 02  close to the UE XR 01  and execute traffic steering from the UPF XR 02  to DN XR 03  via the N6 interface. This may be based on the UE subscription data, UE location, and information provided by the AF XR 28 . In this way, the AF XR 28  may influence UPF (re)selection and traffic routing. Based on operator deployment, when AF XR 28  is considered to be a trusted entity, the network operator may permit AF XR 28  to interact directly with relevant NFs. Additionally, the AF XR 28  may exhibit an Naf service-based interface. 
     The NSSF XR 29  may select a set of network slice instances serving the UE XR 01 . The NSSF XR 29  may also determine allowed Network Slice Selection Assistance Information (NSSAI) and the mapping to the Subscribed Single-NSSAIs (S-NSSAIs), if needed. The NSSF XR 29  may also determine the AMF set to be used to serve the UE XR 01 , or a list of candidate AMF(s) XR 21  based on a suitable configuration and possibly by querying the NRF XR 25 . The selection of a set of network slice instances for the UE XR 01  may be triggered by the AMF XR 21  with which the UE XR 01  is registered by interacting with the NSSF XR 29 , which may lead to a change of AMF XR 21 . The NSSF XR 29  may interact with the AMF XR 21  via an N22 reference point between AMF XR 21  and NSSF XR 29 ; and may communicate with another NSSF XR 29  in a visited network via an N31 reference point (not shown by  FIG. 8 ). Additionally, the NSSF XR 29  may exhibit an Nnssf service-based interface. 
     As discussed previously, the CN XR 20  may include an SMSF, which may be responsible for SMS subscription checking and verification, and relaying SM messages to/from the UE XR 01  to/from other entities, such as an Short Message Service (SMS)-Global Systems for Mobile Communication (GMSC)/Inter-Working Mobile Switching Center (IWMSC)/SMS-router. The SMS may also interact with AMF XR 21  and UDM XR 27  for notification procedure that the UE XR 01  is available for SMS transfer (e.g., set a UE not reachable flag, and notifying UDM XR 27  when UE XR 01  is available for SMS). 
     The CN XR 20  may also include other elements that are not shown by  FIG. 8 , such as a Data Storage system/architecture, a 5G-Equipment Identity Register (5G-EIR), a Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP), and the like. The Data Storage system may include a Structured Data Storage network function (SDSF), an Unstructured Data Storage network function (UDSF), and/or the like. Any NF may store and retrieve unstructured data into/from the UDSF (e.g., UE contexts), via N18 reference point between any NF and the UDSF (not shown by  FIG. 8 ). Individual NFs may share a UDSF for storing their respective unstructured data or individual NFs may each have their own UDSF located at or near the individual NFs. Additionally, the UDSF may exhibit an Nudsf service-based interface (not shown by  FIG. 8 ). The 5G-EIR may be an NF that checks the status of Permanent Equipment Identifiers (PEI) for determining whether particular equipment/entities are blacklisted from the network; and the SEPP may be a non-transparent proxy that performs topology hiding, message filtering, and policing on inter-PLMN control plane interfaces. 
     Additionally, there may be many more reference points and/or service-based interfaces between the NF services in the NFs; however, these interfaces and reference points have been omitted from  FIG. 8  for clarity. In one example, the CN XR 20  may include an Nx interface, which is an inter-CN interface between the MME (e.g., MME XQ 21 ) and the AMF XR 21  in order to enable interworking between CN XR 20  and CN XQ 20 . Other example interfaces/reference points may include an N5 g-EIR service-based interface exhibited by a 5G-EIR, an N27 reference point between an NRF in the visited network and the NRF in the home network; and an N31 reference point between the NSSF in the visited network and the NSSF in the home network. 
     In yet another example, system XR 00  may include multiple RAN nodes XR 11  wherein an Xn interface is defined between two or more RAN nodes XR 11  (e.g., gNBs and the like) connecting to 5GC XR 20 , between a RAN node XR 11  (e.g., gNB) connecting to 5GC XR 20  and an eNB (e.g., a RAN node XQ 11  of  FIG. 7 ), and/or between two eNBs connecting to 5GC XR 20 . In some implementations, the Xn interface may include an Xn user plane (Xn-U) interface and an Xn control plane (Xn-C) interface. The Xn-U may provide non-guaranteed delivery of user plane PDUs and support/provide data forwarding and flow control functionality. The Xn-C may provide management and error handling functionality, functionality to manage the Xn-C interface; and mobility support for UE XR 01  in a connected mode (e.g., CM-CONNECTED) including functionality to manage the UE mobility for connected mode between one or more RAN nodes XR 11 . The mobility support may include context transfer from an old (source) serving RAN node XR 11  to new (target) serving RAN node XR 11 ; and control of user plane tunnels between old (source) serving RAN node XR 11  to new (target) serving RAN node XR 11 . A protocol stack of the Xn-U may include a transport network layer built on Internet Protocol (IP) transport layer, and a GTP-U layer on top of a UDP and/or IP layer(s) to carry user plane PDUs. The Xn-C protocol stack may include an application layer signaling protocol (referred to as Xn Application Protocol (Xn-AP)) and a transport network layer that is built on an SCTP layer. The SCTP layer may be on top of an IP layer. The SCTP layer provides the guaranteed delivery of application layer messages. In the transport IP layer point-to-point transmission is used to deliver the signaling PDUs. In other implementations, the Xn-U protocol stack and/or the Xn-C protocol stack may be the same or similar to the user plane and/or control plane protocol stack(s) shown and described herein. 
       FIG. 9  illustrates an example of infrastructure equipment XS 00  in accordance with various embodiments. The infrastructure equipment XS 00  (or “system XS 00 ”) may be implemented as a base station, radio head, RAN node, etc., such as the RAN nodes XQ 11  and XQ 12 , and/or AP XQ 06  shown and described previously. In other examples, the system XS 00  could be implemented in or by a UE, application server(s) XQ 30 , and/or any other element/device discussed herein. The system XS 00  may include one or more of application circuitry XS 05 , baseband circuitry XS 10 , one or more radio front end modules XS 15 , memory XS 20 , power management integrated circuitry (PMIC) XS 25 , power tee circuitry XS 30 , network controller XS 35 , network interface connector XS 40 , satellite positioning circuitry XS 45 , and user interface XS 50 . In some embodiments, the device XT 00  may include additional elements such as, for example, memory/storage, display, camera, sensor, or input/output (I/O) interface. In other embodiments, the components described below may be included in more than one device (e.g., said circuitries may be separately included in more than one device for Cloud-RAN (C-RAN) implementations). 
     As used herein, the term “circuitry” may refer to, is part of, or includes hardware components such as an electronic circuit, a logic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), a field-programmable device (FPD) (for example, a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a programmable logic device (PLD), a complex PLD (CPLD), a high-capacity PLD (HCPLD), a structured ASIC, or a programmable System on Chip (SoC)), digital signal processors (DSPs), etc., that are configured to provide the described functionality. In some embodiments, the circuitry may execute one or more software or firmware programs to provide at least some of the described functionality. In addition, the term “circuitry” may also refer to a combination of one or more hardware elements (or a combination of circuits used in an electrical or electronic system) with the program code used to carry out the functionality of that program code. In these embodiments, the combination of hardware elements and program code may be referred to as a particular type of circuitry. 
     The terms “application circuitry” and/or “baseband circuitry” may be considered synonymous to, and may be referred to as “processor circuitry.” As used herein, the term “processor circuitry” may refer to, is part of, or includes circuitry capable of sequentially and automatically carrying out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations; and recording, storing, and/or transferring digital data. The term “processor circuitry” may refer to one or more application processors, one or more baseband processors, a physical central processing unit (CPU), a single-core processor, a dual-core processor, a triple-core processor, a quad-core processor, and/or any other device capable of executing or otherwise operating computer-executable instructions, such as program code, software modules, and/or functional processes. 
     Furthermore, the various components of the core network XQ 20  (or CN XR 20  discussed previously) may be referred to as “network elements.” 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, network node, router, switch, hub, bridge, radio network controller, radio access network device, gateway, server, virtualized network function (VNF), network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVI), and/or the like. 
     Application circuitry XS 05  may include one or more central processing unit (CPU) cores and one or more of cache memory, low drop-out voltage regulators (LDOs), interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as SPI, I2C or universal programmable serial interface module, real time clock (RTC), timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, general purpose input/output (I/O or IO), memory card controllers such as Secure Digital (SD/)MultiMediaCard (MMC) or similar, Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces, Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) interfaces and Joint Test Access Group (JTAG) test access ports. As examples, the application circuitry XS 05  may include one or more Intel Pentium®, Core®, or Xeon® processor(s); Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Ryzen® processor(s), Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), or Epyc® processors; and/or the like. In some embodiments, the system XS 00  may not utilize application circuitry XS 05 , and instead may include a special-purpose processor/controller to process IP data received from an EPC or 5GC, for example. 
     Additionally or alternatively, application circuitry XS 05  may include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more field-programmable devices (FPDs) such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and the like; programmable logic devices (PLDs) such as complex PLDs (CPLDs), high-capacity PLDs (HCPLDs), and the like; ASICs such as structured ASICs and the like; programmable SoCs (PSoCs); and the like. In such embodiments, the circuitry of application circuitry XS 05  may comprise logic blocks or logic fabric including other interconnected resources that may be programmed to perform various functions, such as the procedures, methods, functions, etc. of the various embodiments discussed herein. In such embodiments, the circuitry of application circuitry XS 05  may include memory cells (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, static memory (e.g., static random access memory (SRAM), anti-fuses, etc.)) used to store logic blocks, logic fabric, data, etc. in lookup-tables (LUTs) and the like. 
     The baseband circuitry XS 10  may be implemented, for example, as a solder-down substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. Although not shown, baseband circuitry XS 10  may comprise one or more digital baseband systems, which may be coupled via an interconnect subsystem to a CPU subsystem, an audio subsystem, and an interface subsystem. The digital baseband subsystems may also be coupled to a digital baseband interface and a mixed-signal baseband sub-system via another interconnect subsystem. Each of the interconnect subsystems may include a bus system, point-to-point connections, network-on-chip (NOC) structures, and/or some other suitable bus or interconnect technology, such as those discussed herein. The audio sub-system may include digital signal processing circuitry, buffer memory, program memory, speech processing accelerator circuitry, data converter circuitry such as analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter circuitry, analog circuitry including one or more of amplifiers and filters, and/or other like components. In an aspect of the present disclosure, baseband circuitry XS 10  may include protocol processing circuitry with one or more instances of control circuitry (not shown) to provide control functions for the digital baseband circuitry and/or radio frequency circuitry (for example, the radio front end modules XS 15 ). 
     User interface circuitry XS 50  may include one or more user interfaces designed to enable user interaction with the system XS 00  or peripheral component interfaces designed to enable peripheral component interaction with the system XS 00 . User interfaces may include, but are not limited to, one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), one or more indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)), a physical keyboard or keypad, a mouse, a touchpad, a touchscreen, speakers or other audio emitting devices, microphones, a printer, a scanner, a headset, a display screen or display device, etc. Peripheral component interfaces may include, but are not limited to, a non-volatile memory port, a universal serial bus (USB) port, an audio jack, a power supply interface, etc. 
     The radio front end modules (RFEMs) XS 15  may comprise a millimeter wave RFEM and one or more sub-millimeter wave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some implementations, the one or more sub-millimeter wave RFICs may be physically separated from the millimeter wave RFEM. The RFICs may include connections to one or more antennas or antenna arrays, and the RFEM may be connected to multiple antennas. In alternative implementations, both millimeter wave and sub-millimeter wave radio functions may be implemented in the same physical radio front end module XS 15 . The RFEMs XS 15  may incorporate both millimeter wave antennas and sub-millimeter wave antennas. 
     The memory circuitry XS 20  may include one or more of volatile memory including dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and/or synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), and nonvolatile memory (NVM) including high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as Flash memory), phase change random access memory (PRAM), magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc., and may incorporate the three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memories from Intel® and Micron®. Memory circuitry XS 20  may be implemented as one or more of solder down packaged integrated circuits, socketed memory modules and plug-in memory cards. 
     The PMIC XS 25  may include voltage regulators, surge protectors, power alarm detection circuitry, and one or more backup power sources such as a battery or capacitor. The power alarm detection circuitry may detect one or more of brown out (under-voltage) and surge (over-voltage) conditions. The power tee circuitry XS 30  may provide for electrical power drawn from a network cable to provide both power supply and data connectivity to the infrastructure equipment XS 00  using a single cable. 
     The network controller circuitry XS 35  may provide connectivity to a network using a standard network interface protocol such as Ethernet, Ethernet over GRE Tunnels, Ethernet over Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), or some other suitable protocol. Network connectivity may be provided to/from the infrastructure equipment XS 00  via network interface connector XS 40  using a physical connection, which may be electrical (commonly referred to as a “copper interconnect”), optical, or wireless. The network controller circuitry XS 35  may include one or more dedicated processors and/or FPGAs to communicate using one or more of the aforementioned protocol. In some implementations, the network controller circuitry XS 35  may include multiple controllers to provide connectivity to other networks using the same or different protocols. 
     The positioning circuitry XS 45  may include circuitry to receive and decode signals transmitted by one or more navigation satellite constellations of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Examples of navigation satellite constellations (or GNSS) may include United States&#39; Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia&#39;s Global Navigation System (GLONASS), the European Union&#39;s Galileo system, China&#39;s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, a regional navigation system or GNSS augmentation system (e.g., Navigation with Indian Constellation (NAVIC), Japan&#39;s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), France&#39;s Doppler Orbitography and Radio-positioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS), etc.), or the like. The positioning circuitry XS 45  may comprise various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, and the like to facilitate the communications over-the-air (OTA) communications) to communicate with components of a positioning network, such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. 
     Nodes or satellites of the navigation satellite constellation(s) (“GNSS nodes”) may provide positioning services by continuously transmitting or broadcasting GNSS signals along a line of sight, which may be used by GNSS receivers (e.g., positioning circuitry XS 45  and/or positioning circuitry implemented by UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02 , or the like) to determine their GNSS position. The GNSS signals may include a pseudorandom code (e.g., a sequence of ones and zeros) that is known to the GNSS receiver and a message that includes a time of transmission (ToT) of a code epoch (e.g., a defined point in the pseudorandom code sequence) and the GNSS node position at the ToT. The GNSS receivers may monitor/measure the GNSS signals transmitted/broadcasted by a plurality of GNSS nodes (e.g., four or more satellites) and solve various equations to determine a corresponding GNSS position (e.g., a spatial coordinate). The GNSS receivers also implement clocks that are typically less stable and less precise than the atomic clocks of the GNSS nodes, and the GNSS receivers may use the measured GNSS signals to determine the GNSS receivers&#39; deviation from true time (e.g., an offset of the GNSS receiver clock relative to the GNSS node time). In some embodiments, the positioning circuitry XS 45  may include a Micro-Technology for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (Micro-PNT) IC that uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking/estimation without GNSS assistance. 
     The GNSS receivers may measure the time of arrivals (ToAs) of the GNSS signals from the plurality of GNSS nodes according to its own clock. The GNSS receivers may determine time of flight (ToF) values for each received GNSS signal from the ToAs and the ToTs, and then may determine, from the ToFs, a three-dimensional (3D) position and clock deviation. The 3D position may then be converted into a latitude, longitude and altitude. The positioning circuitry XS 45  may provide data to application circuitry XS 05 , which may include one or more of position data or time data. Application circuitry XS 05  may use the time data to synchronize operations with other radio base stations (e.g., RAN nodes XQ 11 , XQ 12 , XR 11  or the like). 
     The components shown by  FIG. 9  may communicate with one another using interface circuitry. As used herein, the term “interface circuitry” may refer to, is part of, or includes circuitry providing for the exchange of information between two or more components or devices. The term “interface circuitry” may refer to one or more hardware interfaces, for example, buses, input/output (I/O) interfaces, peripheral component interfaces, network interface cards, and/or the like. Any suitable bus technology may be used in various implementations, which may include any number of technologies, including industry standard architecture (ISA), extended ISA (EISA), peripheral component interconnect (PCI), peripheral component interconnect extended (PCIx), PCI express (PCIe), or any number of other technologies. The bus may be a proprietary bus, for example, used in a SoC based system. Other bus systems may be included, such as an I2C interface, an SPI interface, point to point interfaces, and a power bus, among others. 
       FIG. 10  illustrates an example of a platform XT 00  (or “device XT 00 ”) in accordance with various embodiments. In embodiments, the computer platform XT 00  may be suitable for use as UEs XQ 01 , XQ 02 , XR 01 , application servers XQ 30 , and/or any other element/device discussed herein. The platform XT 00  may include any combinations of the components shown in the example. The components of platform XT 00  may be implemented as integrated circuits (ICs), portions thereof, discrete electronic devices, or other modules, logic, hardware, software, firmware, or a combination thereof adapted in the computer platform XT 00 , or as components otherwise incorporated within a chassis of a larger system. The block diagram of  FIG. 10  is intended to show a high level view of components of the computer platform XT 00 . However, some of the components shown may be omitted, additional components may be present, and different arrangement of the components shown may occur in other implementations. 
     The application circuitry XT 05  may include circuitry such as, but not limited to single-core or multi-core processors and one or more of cache memory, low drop-out voltage regulators (LDOs), interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as serial peripheral interface (SPI), inter-integrated circuit (I2C) or universal programmable serial interface circuit, real time clock (RTC), timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, general purpose input-output (IO), memory card controllers such as secure digital/multi-media card (SD/MMC) or similar, universal serial bus (USB) interfaces, mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) interfaces and Joint Test Access Group (JTAG) test access ports. The processor(s) may include any combination of general-purpose processors and/or dedicated processors (e.g., graphics processors, application processors, etc.). The processors (or cores) may be coupled with or may include memory/storage and may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory/storage to enable various applications or operating systems to run on the platform XT 00 . In some embodiments, processors of application circuitry XS 05 /XT 05  may process IP data packets received from an EPC or 5GC. 
     Application circuitry XT 05  may be or may include a microprocessor, a multi-core processor, a multithreaded processor, an ultra-low voltage processor, an embedded processor, or other known processing element. In one example, the application circuitry XT 05  may include an Intel® Architecture Core™ based processor, such as a Quark™, an Atom™, an i3, an i5, an i7, or an MCU-class processor, or another such processor available from Intel® Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif. The processors of the application circuitry XT 05  may also be one or more of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Ryzen® processor(s) or Accelerated Processing Units (APUs); A5-A9 processor(s) from Apple® Inc., Snapdragon™ processor(s) from Qualcomm® Technologies, Inc., Texas Instruments, Inc.® Open Multimedia Applications Platform (OMAP)™ processor(s); a MIPS-based design from MIPS Technologies, Inc.; an ARM-based design licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd.; or the like. In some implementations, the application circuitry XT 05  may be a part of a system on a chip (SoC) in which the application circuitry XT 05  and other components are formed into a single integrated circuit, or a single package, such as the Edison™ or Galileo™ SoC boards from Intel® Corporation. 
     Additionally or alternatively, application circuitry XT 05  may include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more field-programmable devices (FPDs) such as FPGAs and the like; programmable logic devices (PLDs) such as complex PLDs (CPLDs), high-capacity PLDs (HCPLDs), and the like; ASICs such as structured ASICs and the like; programmable SoCs (PSoCs); and the like. In such embodiments, the circuitry of application circuitry XT 05  may comprise logic blocks or logic fabric including other interconnected resources that may be programmed to perform various functions, such as the procedures, methods, functions, etc. of the various embodiments discussed herein. In such embodiments, the circuitry of application circuitry XT 05  may include memory cells (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, static memory (e.g., static random access memory (SRAM), anti-fuses, etc.)) used to store logic blocks, logic fabric, data, etc. in lookup-tables (LUTs) and the like. 
     The baseband circuitry XT 10  may be implemented, for example, as a solder-down substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. Although not shown, baseband circuitry XT 10  may comprise one or more digital baseband systems, which may be coupled via an interconnect subsystem to a CPU subsystem, an audio subsystem, and an interface subsystem. The digital baseband subsystems may also be coupled to a digital baseband interface and a mixed-signal baseband sub-system via another interconnect subsystem. Each of the interconnect subsystems may include a bus system, point-to-point connections, network-on-chip (NOC) structures, and/or some other suitable bus or interconnect technology, such as those discussed herein. The audio sub-system may include digital signal processing circuitry, buffer memory, program memory, speech processing accelerator circuitry, data converter circuitry such as analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter circuitry, analog circuitry including one or more of amplifiers and filters, and/or other like components. In an aspect of the present disclosure, baseband circuitry XT 10  may include protocol processing circuitry with one or more instances of control circuitry (not shown) to provide control functions for the digital baseband circuitry and/or radio frequency circuitry (for example, the radio front end modules XT 15 ). 
     The radio front end modules (RFEMs) XT 15  may comprise a millimeter wave RFEM and one or more sub-millimeter wave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some implementations, the one or more sub-millimeter wave RFICs may be physically separated from the millimeter wave RFEM. The RFICs may include connections to one or more antennas or antenna arrays, and the RFEM may be connected to multiple antennas. In alternative implementations, both millimeter wave and sub-millimeter wave radio functions may be implemented in the same physical radio front end module XT 15 . The RFEMs XT 15  may incorporate both millimeter wave antennas and sub-millimeter wave antennas. 
     The memory circuitry XT 20  may include any number and type of memory devices used to provide for a given amount of system memory. As examples, the memory circuitry XT 20  may include one or more of volatile memory including random access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM) and/or synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM), and nonvolatile memory (NVM) including high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as Flash memory), phase change random access memory (PRAM), magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc. The memory circuitry XT 20  may be developed in accordance with a Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) low power double data rate (LPDDR)-based design, such as LPDDR2, LPDDR3, LPDDR4, or the like. Memory circuitry XT 20  may be implemented as one or more of solder down packaged integrated circuits, single die package (SDP), dual die package (DDP) or quad die package (Q17P), socketed memory modules, dual inline memory modules (DIMMs) including microDIMMs or MiniDIMMs, and/or soldered onto a motherboard via a ball grid array (BGA). In low power implementations, the memory circuitry XT 20  may be on-die memory or registers associated with the application circuitry XT 05 . To provide for persistent storage of information such as data, applications, operating systems and so forth, memory circuitry XT 20  may include one or more mass storage devices, which may include, inter alia, a solid state disk drive (SSDD), hard disk drive (HDD), a micro HDD, resistance change memories, phase change memories, holographic memories, or chemical memories, among others. For example, the computer platform XT 00  may incorporate the three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memories from Intel® and Micron®. 
     Removable memory circuitry XT 23  may include devices, circuitry, enclosures/housings, ports or receptacles, etc. used to coupled portable data storage devices with the platform XT 00 . These portable data storage devices may be used for mass storage purposes, and may include, for example, flash memory cards (e.g., Secure Digital (SD) cards, microSD cards, xD picture cards, and the like), and USB flash drives, optical discs, external HDDs, and the like. 
     The platform XT 00  may also include interface circuitry (not shown) that is used to connect external devices with the platform XT 00 . The external devices connected to the platform XT 00  via the interface circuitry may include sensors XT 21 , such as accelerometers, level sensors, flow sensors, temperature sensors, pressure sensors, barometric pressure sensors, and the like. The interface circuitry may be used to connect the platform XT 00  to electro-mechanical components (EMCs) XT 22 , which may allow platform XT 00  to change its state, position, and/or orientation, or move or control a mechanism or system. The EMCs XT 22  may include one or more power switches, relays including electromechanical relays (EMRs) and/or solid state relays (SSRs), actuators (e.g., valve actuators, etc.), an audible sound generator, a visual warning device, motors (e.g., DC motors, stepper motors, etc.), wheels, thrusters, propellers, claws, clamps, hooks, and/or other like electro-mechanical components. In embodiments, platform XT 00  may be configured to operate one or more EMCs XT 22  based on one or more captured events and/or instructions or control signals received from a service provider and/or various clients. 
     In some implementations, the interface circuitry may connect the platform XT 00  with positioning circuitry XT 45 , which may be the same or similar as the positioning circuitry XS 45  discussed with regard to  FIG. 9 . 
     In some implementations, the interface circuitry may connect the platform XT 00  with near-field communication (NFC) circuitry XT 40 , which may include an NFC controller coupled with an antenna element and a processing device. The NFC circuitry XT 40  may be configured to read electronic tags and/or connect with another NFC-enabled device. 
     The driver circuitry XT 46  may include software and hardware elements that operate to control particular devices that are embedded in the platform XT 00 , attached to the platform XT 00 , or otherwise communicatively coupled with the platform XT 00 . The driver circuitry XT 46  may include individual drivers allowing other components of the platform XT 00  to interact or control various input/output (I/O) devices that may be present within, or connected to, the platform XT 00 . For example, driver circuitry XT 46  may include a display driver to control and allow access to a display device, a touchscreen driver to control and allow access to a touchscreen interface of the platform XT 00 , sensor drivers to obtain sensor readings of sensors XT 21  and control and allow access to sensors XT 21 , EMC drivers to obtain actuator positions of the EMCs XT 22  and/or control and allow access to the EMCs XT 22 , a camera driver to control and allow access to an embedded image capture device, audio drivers to control and allow access to one or more audio devices. 
     The power management integrated circuitry (PMIC) XT 25  (also referred to as “power management circuitry XT 25 ”) may manage power provided to various components of the platform XT 00 . In particular, with respect to the baseband circuitry XT 10 , the PMIC XT 25  may control power-source selection, voltage scaling, battery charging, or DC-to-DC conversion. The PMIC XT 25  may often be included when the platform XT 00  is capable of being powered by a battery XT 30 , for example, when the device is included in a UE XQ 01 , XQ 02 , XR 01 . 
     In some embodiments, the PMIC XT 25  may control, or otherwise be part of, various power saving mechanisms of the platform XT 00 . For example, if the platform XT 00  is in an RRC_Connected state, where it is still connected to the RAN node as it expects to receive traffic shortly, then it may enter a state known as Discontinuous Reception Mode (DRX) after a period of inactivity. During this state, the platform XT 00  may power down for brief intervals of time and thus save power. If there is no data traffic activity for an extended period of time, then the platform XT 00  may transition off to an RRC_Idle state, where it disconnects from the network and does not perform operations such as channel quality feedback, handover, etc. The platform XT 00  goes into a very low power state and it performs paging where again it periodically wakes up to listen to the network and then powers down again. The platform XT 00  may not receive data in this state, in order to receive data, it must transition back to RRC_Connected state. An additional power saving mode may allow a device to be unavailable to the network for periods longer than a paging interval (ranging from seconds to a few hours). During this time, the device is totally unreachable to the network and may power down completely. Any data sent during this time incurs a large delay and it is assumed the delay is acceptable. 
     A battery XT 30  may power the platform XT 00 , although in some examples the platform XT 00  may be mounted deployed in a fixed location, and may have a power supply coupled to an electrical grid. The battery XT 30  may be a lithium ion battery, a metal-air battery, such as a zinc-air battery, an aluminum-air battery, a lithium-air battery, and the like. In some implementations, such as in V2X applications, the battery XT 30  may be a typical lead-acid automotive battery. 
     In some implementations, the battery XT 30  may be a “smart battery,” which includes or is coupled with a Battery Management System (BMS) or battery monitoring integrated circuitry. The BMS may be included in the platform XT 00  to track the state of charge (SoCh) of the battery XT 30 . The BMS may be used to monitor other parameters of the battery XT 30  to provide failure predictions, such as the state of health (SoH) and the state of function (SoF) of the battery XT 30 . The BMS may communicate the information of the battery XT 30  to the application circuitry XT 05  or other components of the platform XT 00 . The BMS may also include an analog-to-digital (ADC) convertor that allows the application circuitry XT 05  to directly monitor the voltage of the battery XT 30  or the current flow from the battery XT 30 . The battery parameters may be used to determine actions that the platform XT 00  may perform, such as transmission frequency, network operation, sensing frequency, and the like. 
     A power block, or other power supply coupled to an electrical grid may be coupled with the BMS to charge the battery XT 30 . In some examples, the power block XQ 28  may be replaced with a wireless power receiver to obtain the power wirelessly, for example, through a loop antenna in the computer platform XT 00 . In these examples, a wireless battery charging circuit may be included in the BMS. The specific charging circuits chosen may depend on the size of the battery XT 30 , and thus, the current required. The charging may be performed using the Airfuel standard promulgated by the Airfuel Alliance, the Qi wireless charging standard promulgated by the Wireless Power Consortium, or the Rezence charging standard, promulgated by the Alliance for Wireless Power, among others. 
     Although not shown, the components of platform XT 00  may communicate with one another using a suitable bus technology, which may include any number of technologies, including industry standard architecture (ISA), extended ISA (EISA), peripheral component interconnect (PCI), peripheral component interconnect extended (PCIx), PCI express (PCIe), a Time-Trigger Protocol (TTP) system, or a FlexRay system, or any number of other technologies. The bus may be a proprietary bus, for example, used in a SoC based system. Other bus systems may be included, such as an I2C interface, an SPI interface, point to point interfaces, and a power bus, among others. 
       FIG. 11  illustrates example components of baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  and radio front end modules (RFEM) XS 15 /XT 15  in accordance with some embodiments. As shown, the RFEM XS 15 /XT 15  may include Radio Frequency (RF) circuitry XT 06 , front-end module (FEM) circuitry XT 08 , one or more antennas XT 10  coupled together at least as shown. 
     The baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more single-core or multi-core processors. The baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may include one or more baseband processors or control logic to process baseband signals received from a receive signal path of the RF circuitry XT 06  and to generate baseband signals for a transmit signal path of the RF circuitry XT 06 . Baseband processing circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may interface with the application circuitry XS 05 /XT 05  for generation and processing of the baseband signals and for controlling operations of the RF circuitry XT 06 . For example, in some embodiments, the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may include a third generation (3G) baseband processor XT 04 A, a fourth generation (4G) baseband processor XT 04 B, a fifth generation (5G) baseband processor XT 04 C, or other baseband processor(s) XT 04 D for other existing generations, generations in development or to be developed in the future (e.g., second generation (2G), sixth generation (6G), etc.). The baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  (e.g., one or more of baseband processors XT 04 A-D) may handle various radio control functions that enable communication with one or more radio networks via the RF circuitry XT 06 . In other embodiments, some or all of the functionality of baseband processors XT 04 A-D may be included in modules stored in the memory XT 04 G and executed via a Central Processing Unit (CPU) XT 04 E. The radio control functions may include, but are not limited to, signal modulation/demodulation, encoding/decoding, radio frequency shifting, etc. In some embodiments, modulation/demodulation circuitry of the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may include Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT), precoding, or constellation mapping/demapping functionality. In some embodiments, encoding/decoding circuitry of the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may include convolution, tail-biting convolution, turbo, Viterbi, or Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) encoder/decoder functionality. Embodiments of modulation/demodulation and encoder/decoder functionality are not limited to these examples and may include other suitable functionality in other embodiments. 
     In some embodiments, the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may include one or more audio digital signal processor(s) (DSP) XT 04 F. The audio DSP(s) XT 04 F may be include elements for compression/decompression and echo cancellation and may include other suitable processing elements in other embodiments. Components of the baseband circuitry may be suitably combined in a single chip, a single chipset, or disposed on a same circuit board in some embodiments. In some embodiments, some or all of the constituent components of the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  and the application circuitry XS 05 /XT 05  may be implemented together such as, for example, on a system on a chip (SoC) 
     In some embodiments, the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may provide for communication compatible with one or more radio technologies. For example, in some embodiments, the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may support communication with an evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (EUTRAN) or other wireless metropolitan area networks (WMAN), a wireless local area network (WLAN), a wireless personal area network (WPAN). Embodiments in which the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  is configured to support radio communications of more than one wireless protocol may be referred to as multi-mode baseband circuitry. 
     RF circuitry XT 06  may enable communication with wireless networks using modulated electromagnetic radiation through a non-solid medium. In various embodiments, the RF circuitry XT 06  may include switches, filters, amplifiers, etc. to facilitate the communication with the wireless network. RF circuitry XT 06  may include a receive signal path which may include circuitry to down-convert RF signals received from the FEM circuitry XT 08  and provide baseband signals to the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10 . RF circuitry XT 06  may also include a transmit signal path which may include circuitry to up-convert baseband signals provided by the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  and provide RF output signals to the FEM circuitry XT 08  for transmission. 
     In some embodiments, the receive signal path of the RF circuitry XT 06  may include mixer circuitry XT 06   a,  amplifier circuitry XT 06   b  and filter circuitry XT 06   c.  In some embodiments, the transmit signal path of the RF circuitry XT 06  may include filter circuitry XT 06   c  and mixer circuitry XT 06   a.  RF circuitry XT 06  may also include synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d  for synthesizing a frequency for use by the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the receive signal path and the transmit signal path. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the receive signal path may be configured to down-convert RF signals received from the FEM circuitry XT 08  based on the synthesized frequency provided by synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d.  The amplifier circuitry XT 06   b  may be configured to amplify the down-converted signals and the filter circuitry XT 06   c  may be a low-pass filter (LPF) or band-pass filter (BPF) configured to remove unwanted signals from the down-converted signals to generate output baseband signals. Output baseband signals may be provided to the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  for further processing. In some embodiments, the output baseband signals may be zero-frequency baseband signals, although this is not a requirement. In some embodiments, mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the receive signal path may comprise passive mixers, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. 
     In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the transmit signal path may be configured to up-convert input baseband signals based on the synthesized frequency provided by the synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d  to generate RF output signals for the FEM circuitry XT 08 . The baseband signals may be provided by the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  and may be filtered by filter circuitry XT 06   c.    
     In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the transmit signal path may include two or more mixers and may be arranged for quadrature downconversion and upconversion, respectively. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the transmit signal path may include two or more mixers and may be arranged for image rejection (e.g., Hartley image rejection). In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  may be arranged for direct downconversion and direct upconversion, respectively. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the transmit signal path may be configured for super-heterodyne operation. 
     In some embodiments, the output baseband signals and the input baseband signals may be analog baseband signals, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. In some alternate embodiments, the output baseband signals and the input baseband signals may be digital baseband signals. In these alternate embodiments, the RF circuitry XT 06  may include analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) circuitry and the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may include a digital baseband interface to communicate with the RF circuitry XT 06 . 
     In some dual-mode embodiments, a separate radio IC circuitry may be provided for processing signals for each spectrum, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. 
     In some embodiments, the synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d  may be a fractional-N synthesizer or a fractional N/N+1 synthesizer, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect as other types of frequency synthesizers may be suitable. For example, synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d  may be a delta-sigma synthesizer, a frequency multiplier, or a synthesizer comprising a phase-locked loop with a frequency divider. 
     The synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d  may be configured to synthesize an output frequency for use by the mixer circuitry XT 06   a  of the RF circuitry XT 06  based on a frequency input and a divider control input. In some embodiments, the synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d  may be a fractional N/N+1 synthesizer. 
     In some embodiments, frequency input may be provided by a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), although that is not a requirement. Divider control input may be provided by either the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  or the applications processor XS 05 /XT 05  depending on the desired output frequency. In some embodiments, a divider control input (e.g., N) may be determined from a look-up table based on a channel indicated by the applications processor XS 05 /XT 05 . 
     Synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d  of the RF circuitry XT 06  may include a divider, a delay-locked loop (DLL), a multiplexer and a phase accumulator. In some embodiments, the divider may be a dual modulus divider (DMD) and the phase accumulator may be a digital phase accumulator (DPA). In some embodiments, the DMD may be configured to divide the input signal by either N or N+1 (e.g., based on a carry out) to provide a fractional division ratio. In some example embodiments, the DLL may include a set of cascaded, tunable, delay elements, a phase detector, a charge pump and a D-type flip-flop. In these embodiments, the delay elements may be configured to break a VCO period up into Nd equal packets of phase, where Nd is the number of delay elements in the delay line. In this way, the DLL provides negative feedback to help ensure that the total delay through the delay line is one VCO cycle. 
     In some embodiments, synthesizer circuitry XT 06   d  may be configured to generate a carrier frequency as the output frequency, while in other embodiments, the output frequency may be a multiple of the carrier frequency (e.g., twice the carrier frequency, four times the carrier frequency) and used in conjunction with quadrature generator and divider circuitry to generate multiple signals at the carrier frequency with multiple different phases with respect to each other. In some embodiments, the output frequency may be a LO frequency (fLO). In some embodiments, the RF circuitry XT 06  may include an IQ/polar converter. 
     FEM circuitry XT 08  may include a receive signal path which may include circuitry configured to operate on RF signals received from one or more antennas XT 10 , amplify the received signals and provide the amplified versions of the received signals to the RF circuitry XT 06  for further processing. FEM circuitry XT 08  may also include a transmit signal path which may include circuitry configured to amplify signals for transmission provided by the RF circuitry XT 06  for transmission by one or more of the one or more antennas XT 10 . In various embodiments, the amplification through the transmit or receive signal paths may be done solely in the RF circuitry XT 06 , solely in the FEM XT 08 , or in both the RF circuitry XT 06  and the FEM XT 08 . 
     In some embodiments, the FEM circuitry XT 08  may include a TX/RX switch to switch between transmit mode and receive mode operation. The FEM circuitry may include a receive signal path and a transmit signal path. The receive signal path of the FEM circuitry may include an LNA to amplify received RF signals and provide the amplified received RF signals as an output (e.g., to the RF circuitry XT 06 ). The transmit signal path of the FEM circuitry XT 08  may include a power amplifier (PA) to amplify input RF signals (e.g., provided by RF circuitry XT 06 ), and one or more filters to generate RF signals for subsequent transmission (e.g., by one or more of the one or more antennas XT 10 ). 
     Processors of the application circuitry XS 05 /XT 05  and processors of the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may be used to execute elements of one or more instances of a protocol stack. For example, processors of the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10 , alone or in combination, may be used execute Layer 3, Layer 2, or Layer 1 functionality, while processors of the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may utilize data (e.g., packet data) received from these layers and further execute Layer 4 functionality (e.g., transmission communication protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP) layers). As referred to herein, Layer 3 may comprise a radio resource control (RRC) layer, described in further detail below. As referred to herein, Layer 2 may comprise a medium access control (MAC) layer, a radio link control (RLC) layer, and a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) layer, described in further detail below. As referred to herein, Layer 1 may comprise a physical (PHY) layer of a UE/RAN node, described in further detail below. 
       FIG. 12  illustrates example interfaces of baseband circuitry in accordance with some embodiments. As discussed above, the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  of FIGS. XS-XT 1  may comprise processors XT 04 A-XT 04 E and a memory XT 04 G utilized by said processors. Each of the processors XT 04 A-XT 04 E may include a memory interface, XU 04 A-XU 04 E, respectively, to send/receive data to/from the memory XT 04 G. 
     The baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10  may further include one or more interfaces to communicatively couple to other circuitries/devices, such as a memory interface XU 12  (e.g., an interface to send/receive data to/from memory external to the baseband circuitry XS 10 /XT 10 ), an application circuitry interface XU 14  (e.g., an interface to send/receive data to/from the application circuitry XS 05 /XT 05  of FIGS. XS-XT 1 ), an RF circuitry interface XU 16  (e.g., an interface to send/receive data to/from RF circuitry XT 06  of  FIG. 11 ), a wireless hardware connectivity interface XU 18  (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 XU 20  (e.g., an interface to send/receive power or control signals to/from the PMIC XT 25 . 
       FIG. 13  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. 13  shows a diagrammatic representation of hardware resources XZ 00  including one or more processors (or processor cores) XZ 10 , one or more memory/storage devices XZ 20 , and one or more communication resources XZ 30 , each of which may be communicatively coupled via a bus XZ 40 . As used herein, the term “computing resource”, “hardware resource”, etc., may refer to a physical or virtual device, a physical or virtual component within a computing environment, and/or physical or virtual component within a particular device, such as computer devices, mechanical devices, memory space, processor/CPU time and/or processor/CPU usage, processor and accelerator loads, hardware time or usage, electrical power, input/output operations, ports or network sockets, channel/link allocation, throughput, memory usage, storage, network, database and applications, and/or the like. For embodiments where node virtualization (e.g., NFV) is utilized, a hypervisor XZ 02  may be executed to provide an execution environment for one or more network slices/sub-slices to utilize the hardware resources XZ 00 . A “virtualized resource” may refer to compute, storage, and/or network resources provided by virtualization infrastructure to an application, device, system, etc. 
     The processors XZ 10  (e.g., a central processing unit (CPU), a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) processor, a graphics processing unit (GPU), a digital signal processor (DSP) such as a baseband processor, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), another processor, or any suitable combination thereof) may include, for example, a processor XZ 12  and a processor XZ 14 . 
     The memory/storage devices XZ 20  may include main memory, disk storage, or any suitable combination thereof. The memory/storage devices XZ 20  may include, but are not limited to any type of volatile or non-volatile memory such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random-access memory (SRAM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), Flash memory, solid-state storage, etc. 
     The communication resources XZ 30  may include interconnection or network interface components or other suitable devices to communicate with one or more peripheral devices XZ 04  or one or more databases XZ 06  via a network XZ 08 . For example, the communication resources XZ 30  may include wired communication components (e.g., for coupling via a Universal Serial Bus (USB)), cellular communication components, NFC components, Bluetooth® components (e.g., Bluetooth® Low Energy), Wi-Fi® components, and other communication components. As used herein, the term “network resource” or “communication resource” may refer to computing resources that are accessible by computer devices via a communications network. The term “system resources” may refer to any kind of shared entities to provide services, and may include computing and/or network resources. System resources may be considered as a set of coherent functions, network data objects or services, accessible through a server where such system resources reside on a single host or multiple hosts and are clearly identifiable. 
     Instructions XZ 50  may comprise software, a program, an application, an applet, an app, or other executable code for causing at least any of the processors XZ 10  to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. The instructions XZ 50  may reside, completely or partially, within at least one of the processors XZ 10  (e.g., within the processor&#39;s cache memory), the memory/storage devices XZ 20 , or any suitable combination thereof. Furthermore, any portion of the instructions XZ 50  may be transferred to the hardware resources XZ 00  from any combination of the peripheral devices XZ 04  or the databases XZ 06 . Accordingly, the memory of processors XZ 10 , the memory/storage devices XZ 20 , the peripheral devices XZ 04 , and the databases XZ 06  are examples of computer-readable and machine-readable media. 
     For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components set forth in one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, processes, and/or methods as set forth in the example section below. For example, the baseband circuitry as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below. For another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc. as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures may be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below in the example section. 
     EXAMPLES OF VARIOUS EMBODIMENTS 
     Example 1 includes a method to be performed by a base station in a cellular network, the method comprising: identifying, by the base station, whether a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol; identifying, by the base station based on whether the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol or the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs); and transmitting, by the base station, the eNCCEs on the subcarriers. 
     Example 2 includes the method of example 1, wherein the WB protocol and the NB protocol relate to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within a cellular network. 
     Example 3 includes the method of example 1, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol, the number of RBs is greater than 1. 
     Example 4 includes the method of example 3, wherein a first group of subcarriers of a first RB include a first eNCCE, a second group of subcarriers of the first RB include a second eNCCE, and a third group of subcarriers of a second RB include a third eNCCE. 
     Example 5 includes the method of example 3, wherein the number of RBs is 6. 
     Example 6 includes the method of any of examples 1-5, further comprising transmitting, by the base station, a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 7 includes the method of any of examples 1-5, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 8 includes the method of example 7, further comprising transmitting, by the base station to the UE that is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on subcarriers of a single physical resource block (PRB). 
     Example 9 includes the method of example 8, further comprising aggregating, by the base station, two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE). 
     Example 10 includes the method of any of examples 1-5, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of one RB. 
     Example 11 includes the method of any of examples 1-5, wherein the WB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of greater than one RB. 
     Example 12 includes a method to be performed by a base station in a cellular network, the method comprising: identifying, by the base station, that a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol; identifying, by the base station based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB) on which the base station is to transmit a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH); and transmitting, by the base station to the UE, an indication of the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     Example 13 includes the method of example 12, further comprising identifying, by the base station based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs). 
     Example 14 includes the method of example 13, wherein the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 15 includes the method of example 13, further comprising transmitting, by the base station, the eNCCEs on the subcarriers of the RB. 
     Example 16 includes the method of any of examples 12-15, wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     Example 17 includes the method of any of examples 12-15, further comprising transmitting, by the base station, the transmission related to the ePDCCH on the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     Example 18 includes the method of any of examples 12-15, further comprising aggregating, by the base station, two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE). 
     Example 19 includes the method of any of examples 12-15, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     Example 20 includes the method of any of examples 12-15, further comprising transmitting, by the base station, a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 21 includes an apparatus to be used in a base station of a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises: means to identify whether a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol; means to identify, based on whether the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol or the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs); and means to transmit the eNCCEs on the subcarriers. 
     Example 22 includes the apparatus of example 21, wherein the WB protocol and the NB protocol relate to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within a cellular network. 
     Example 23 includes the apparatus of example 21, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol, the number of RBs is greater than 1. 
     Example 24 includes the apparatus of example 23, wherein a first group of subcarriers of a first RB include a first eNCCE, a second group of subcarriers of the first RB include a second eNCCE, and a third group of subcarriers of a second RB include a third eNCCE. 
     Example 25 includes the apparatus of example 23, wherein the number of RBs is 6. 
     Example 26 includes the apparatus of any of examples 21-25, further comprising means to transmit a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 27 includes the apparatus of any of examples 21-25, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 28 includes the apparatus of example 27, further comprising means to transmit, to the UE that is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on subcarriers of a single physical resource block (PRB). 
     Example 29 includes the apparatus of example 28, further comprising means to aggregate two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE). 
     Example 30 includes the apparatus of any of examples 21-25, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of one RB. 
     Example 31 includes the apparatus of any of examples 21-25, wherein the WB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of greater than one RB. 
     Example 32 includes an apparatus to be used in a base station of a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises: means to identify that a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol; means to identify, based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB) on which the base station is to transmit a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH); and means to transmit, to the UE, an indication of the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     Example 33 includes the apparatus of example 32, further comprising means to identify, based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs). 
     Example 34 includes the apparatus of example 33, wherein the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 35 includes the apparatus of example 33, further comprising means to transmit the eNCCEs on the subcarriers of the RB. 
     Example 36 includes the apparatus of any of examples 32-35, wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     Example 37 includes the apparatus of any of examples 32-35, further comprising means to transmit the transmission related to the ePDCCH on the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     Example 38 includes the apparatus of any of examples 32-35, further comprising means to aggregate two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE). 
     Example 39 includes the apparatus of any of examples 32-35, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     Example 40 includes the apparatus of any of examples 32-35, further comprising means to transmit a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 41 includes one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, upon execution of the instructions by a processor of a base station in a cellular network, are to cause the base station to: identify whether a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol; identify, based on whether the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol or the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs); and transmit the eNCCEs on the subcarriers. 
     Example 42 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 41, wherein the WB protocol and the NB protocol relate to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within a cellular network. 
     Example 43 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 41, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol, the number of RBs is greater than 1. 
     Example 44 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 43, wherein a first group of subcarriers of a first RB include a first eNCCE, a second group of subcarriers of the first RB include a second eNCCE, and a third group of subcarriers of a second RB include a third eNCCE. 
     Example 45 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 43, wherein the number of RBs is 6. 
     Example 46 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 41-45, wherein the instructions are further to transmit a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 47 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 41-45, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 48 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 47, wherein the instructions are further to transmit, to the UE that is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on subcarriers of a single physical resource block (PRB). 
     Example 49 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 48, wherein the instructions are further to aggregate two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE). 
     Example 50 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 41-45, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of one RB. 
     Example 51 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 41-45, wherein the WB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of greater than one RB. 
     Example 52 includes one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, upon execution of the instructions by a processor of a base station in a cellular network, are to cause the base station to: identify that a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol; identify, based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB) on which the base station is to transmit a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH); and transmit, to the UE, an indication of the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     Example 53 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 52, wherein the instructions are further to identify, based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs). 
     Example 54 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 53, wherein the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 55 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 53, wherein the instructions are further to transmit the eNCCEs on the subcarriers of the RB. 
     Example 56 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 52-55, wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     Example 57 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 52-55, wherein the instructions are further to transmit the transmission related to the ePDCCH on the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     Example 58 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 52-55, wherein the instructions are further to aggregate two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE). 
     Example 59 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 52-55, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     Example 60 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 52-55, wherein the instructions are further to transmit a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 61 includes an apparatus for use in a base station of a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises: a processor to: identify whether a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol; and identify, based on whether the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol or the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs); and a radio frequency (RF) interface coupled with the processor, wherein the RF interface is to facilitate transmission, by the base station, of the eNCCEs on the subcarriers. 
     Example 62 includes the apparatus of example 61, wherein the WB protocol and the NB protocol relate to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within a cellular network. 
     Example 63 includes the apparatus of example 61, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol, the number of RBs is greater than 1. 
     Example 64 includes the apparatus of example 63, wherein a first group of subcarriers of a first RB include a first eNCCE, a second group of subcarriers of the first RB include a second eNCCE, and a third group of subcarriers of a second RB include a third eNCCE. 
     Example 65 includes the apparatus of example 63, wherein the number of RBs is 6. 
     Example 66 includes the apparatus of any of examples 61-65, wherein the RF interface is further to facilitate transmission, by the base station, of a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 67 includes the apparatus of any of examples 61-65, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 68 includes the apparatus of example 67, wherein the RF interface is further to facilitate transmission, to the UE that is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, of a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on subcarriers of a single physical resource block (PRB). 
     Example 69 includes the apparatus of example 68, wherein the processor is further to aggregate two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE). 
     Example 70 includes the apparatus of any of examples 61-65, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of one RB. 
     Example 71 includes the apparatus of any of examples 61-65, wherein the WB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of greater than one RB. 
     Example 72 includes an apparatus for use in a base station of a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises: a processor to: identify that a user equipment (UE) is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol; and identify, based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB) on which the base station is to transmit a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH); and a radio frequency (RF) interface communicatively coupled with the processor, the RF interface to facilitate transmission, to the UE, of an indication of the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     Example 73 includes the apparatus of example 72, wherein the processor is further to identify, based on the identification that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, a number of resource blocks (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs). 
     Example 74 includes the apparatus of example 73, wherein the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 75 includes the apparatus of example 73, wherein the RF interface is further to facilitate transmission of the eNCCEs on the subcarriers of the RB. 
     Example 76 includes the apparatus of any of examples 72-75, wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     Example 77 includes the apparatus of any of examples 72-75, wherein the RF interface is further to facilitate transmission of the transmission related to the ePDCCH on the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB. 
     Example 78 includes the apparatus of any of examples 72-75, wherein the processor is further to aggregate two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) of the ePDCCH to generate a single further eCCE (feCCE). 
     Example 79 includes the apparatus of any of examples 72-75, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     Example 80 includes the apparatus of any of examples 72-75, wherein the RF interface is further to facilitate transmission of a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 81 includes a method to be performed by a user equipment (UE) in a cellular network, the method comprising: identifying, by the UE, a transmission received from a base station; identifying, by the UE within the transmission, a number of resource block (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs), wherein the number of resource blocks (RBs) is based on whether the UE is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol; and identifying, by the UE, the eNCCEs within the identified RBs. 
     Example 82 includes the method of example 81, wherein the WB protocol and the NB protocol relate to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within a cellular network. 
     Example 83 includes the method of example 81, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol, the number of RBs is greater than 1. 
     Example 84 includes the method of example 83, wherein a first group of subcarriers of a first RB include a first eNCCE, a second group of subcarriers of the first RB include a second eNCCE, and a third group of subcarriers of a second RB include a third eNCCE. 
     Example 85 includes the method of example 83, wherein the number of RBs is 6. 
     Example 86 includes the method of any of examples 81-85, further comprising identifying, by the UE, a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 87 includes the method of any of examples 81-85, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 88 includes the method of example 87, further comprising identifying, by the UE from the base station, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on subcarriers of a single physical resource block (PRB), wherein the transmission is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     Example 89 includes the method of example 88, further comprising identifying, by the UE within a single further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) of the ePDCCH, two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) that were aggregated together to form the feCCE. 
     Example 90 includes the method of any of examples 81-85, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of one RB. 
     Example 91 includes the method of any of examples 81-85, wherein the WB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of greater than one RB. 
     Example 92 includes a method to be performed by a user equipment (UE) that is to operate in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol within a cellular network, the method comprising: identifying, by the UE based on a transmission received from a base station, an indication of a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB); and identifying, by the UE based on the indication, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on the plurality of subcarriers. 
     Example 93 includes the method of example 92, wherein the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     Example 94 includes the method of examples 92 or 93, wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     Example 95 includes the method of examples 92 or 93, wherein the transmission includes a further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) that is based on aggregation, by the base station, of two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs). 
     Example 96 includes the method of examples 92 or 93, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     Example 97 includes the method of examples 92 or 93, further comprising identifying, by the UE in a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE), a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH). 
     Example 98 includes an apparatus to be used in a user equipment (UE) in a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises: means to identify a transmission received from a base station; means to identify, within the transmission, a number of resource block (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs), wherein the number of resource blocks (RBs) is based on whether the UE is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol; and means to identify the eNCCEs within the identified RBs. 
     Example 99 includes the apparatus of example 98, wherein the WB protocol and the NB protocol relate to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within a cellular network. 
     Example 100 includes the apparatus of example 98, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol, the number of RBs is greater than 1. 
     Example 101 includes the apparatus of example 100, wherein a first group of subcarriers of a first RB include a first eNCCE, a second group of subcarriers of the first RB include a second eNCCE, and a third group of subcarriers of a second RB include a third eNCCE. 
     Example 102 includes the apparatus of example 100, wherein the number of RBs is 6. 
     Example 103 includes the apparatus of any of examples 98-102, further comprising means to identify a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 104 includes the apparatus of any of examples 98-102, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 105 includes the apparatus of example 104, further comprising means to identify, from the base station, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on subcarriers of a single physical resource block (PRB), wherein the transmission is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     Example 106 includes the apparatus of example 105, further comprising means to identify, within a single further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) of the ePDCCH, two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) that were aggregated together to form the feCCE. 
     Example 107 includes the apparatus of any of examples 98-102, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of one RB. 
     Example 108 includes the apparatus of any of examples 98-102, wherein the WB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of greater than one RB. 
     Example 109 includes an apparatus to be used in a user equipment (UE) that is to operate in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol within a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises: means to identify, based on a transmission received from a base station, an indication of a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB); and means to identify, based on the indication, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on the plurality of subcarriers. 
     Example 110 includes the apparatus of example 109, wherein the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     Example 111 includes the apparatus of examples 109 or 110, wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     Example 112 includes the apparatus of examples 109 or 110, wherein the transmission includes a further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) that is based on aggregation, by the base station, of two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs). 
     Example 113 includes the apparatus of examples 109 or 110, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     Example 114 includes the apparatus of examples 109 or 110, further comprising means to identify, in a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE), a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH). 
     Example 115 includes one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, upon execution of the instructions by a processor of a user equipment (UE) in a cellular network, are to cause the UE to: identify a transmission received from a base station; identify, within the transmission, a number of resource block (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs), wherein the number of resource blocks (RBs) is based on whether the UE is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol; and identify the eNCCEs within the identified RBs. 
     Example 116 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 115, wherein the WB protocol and the NB protocol relate to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within a cellular network. 
     Example 117 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 115, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol, the number of RBs is greater than 1. 
     Example 118 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 117, wherein a first group of subcarriers of a first RB include a first eNCCE, a second group of subcarriers of the first RB include a second eNCCE, and a third group of subcarriers of a second RB include a third eNCCE. 
     Example 119 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 117, wherein the number of RBs is 6. 
     Example 120 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 115-119, wherein the instructions are further to identify a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 121 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 115-119, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 122 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 121, wherein the instructions are further to identify, from the base station, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on subcarriers of a single physical resource block (PRB), wherein the transmission is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     Example 123 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 122, wherein the instructions are further to identify, within a single further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) of the ePDCCH, two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) that were aggregated together to form the feCCE. 
     Example 124 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 115-119, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of one RB. 
     Example 125 includes the one or more computer-readable media of any of examples 115-119, wherein the WB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of greater than one RB. 
     Example 126 includes one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions that, upon execution of the instructions by a processor of a user equipment (UE) that is to operate in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol within a cellular network, are to cause the UE to: identify, based on a transmission received from a base station, an indication of a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB); and identify, based on the indication, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on the plurality of subcarriers. 
     Example 127 includes the one or more computer-readable media of example 126, wherein the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     Example 128 includes the one or more computer-readable media of examples 126 or 127, wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     Example 129 includes the one or more computer-readable media of examples 126 or 127, wherein the transmission includes a further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) that is based on aggregation, by the base station, of two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs). 
     Example 130 includes the one or more computer-readable media of examples 126 or 127, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     Example 131 includes the one or more computer-readable media of examples 126 or 127, wherein the instructions are further to identify, in a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE), a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH). 
     Example 132 includes an apparatus to be used in a user equipment (UE) in a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises: a radio frequency (RF) interface to receive a transmission received from a base station; and a processor coupled with the RF interface, the processor to: identify, within the transmission, a number of resource block (RBs) that include subcarriers occupied by enhanced narrowband control channel elements (eNCCEs), wherein the number of resource blocks (RBs) is based on whether the UE is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with a wideband (WB) protocol or a narrowband (NB) protocol; and identify the eNCCEs within the identified RBs. 
     Example 133 includes the apparatus of example 132, wherein the WB protocol and the NB protocol relate to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within a cellular network. 
     Example 134 includes the apparatus of example 132, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the WB protocol, the number of RBs is greater than 1. 
     Example 135 includes the apparatus of example 134, wherein a first group of subcarriers of a first RB include a first eNCCE, a second group of subcarriers of the first RB include a second eNCCE, and a third group of subcarriers of a second RB include a third eNCCE. 
     Example 136 includes the apparatus of example 134, wherein the number of RBs is 6. 
     Example 137 includes the apparatus of any of examples 132-136, wherein the RF interface is further to receive a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) on a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE). 
     Example 138 includes the apparatus of any of examples 132-136, wherein if the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol, the number of RBs is 1. 
     Example 139 includes the apparatus of example 138, wherein the RF interface is further to receive a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on subcarriers of a single physical resource block (PRB), wherein the transmission is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate within the cellular network in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     Example 140 includes the apparatus of example 139, wherein the processor is further to identify, within a single further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) of the ePDCCH, two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs) that were aggregated together to form the feCCE. 
     Example 141 includes the apparatus of any of examples 132-136, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of one RB. 
     Example 142 includes the apparatus of any of examples 132-136, wherein the WB protocol relates to cellular communication with a frequency bandwidth of greater than one RB. 
     Example 143 includes an apparatus to be used in a user equipment (UE) that is to operate in accordance with a narrowband (NB) protocol within a cellular network, wherein the apparatus comprises: a radio frequency (RF) interface to receive a transmission from a base station; and a processor coupled with the RF interface, wherein the processor is to: identify, based on the transmission, an indication of a plurality of subcarriers within a single physical resource block (PRB); and identify, based on the indication, a transmission related to an enhanced physical downlink control channel (ePDCCH) on the plurality of subcarriers. 
     Example 144 includes the apparatus of example 143, wherein the plurality of subcarriers within the single PRB is based on an identification, by the base station, that the UE is to operate in accordance with the NB protocol. 
     Example 145 includes the apparatus of examples 143 or 144, wherein the NB protocol relates to NB Internet of Things (NB-IoT) operation within the cellular network. 
     Example 146 includes the apparatus of examples 143 or 144, wherein the transmission includes a further enhanced control channel element (feCCE) that is based on aggregation, by the base station, of two enhanced control channel elements (eCCEs). 
     Example 147 includes the apparatus of examples 143 or 144, wherein the NB protocol relates to cellular communication using a single resource block (RB). 
     Example 148 includes the apparatus of examples 143 or 144, wherein the RF interface is further to receive, from the base station, a narrowband reference signal (NRS) resource element (RE); and the processor is further to identify, in the NRS RE, a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) related to a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH). 
     Example 149 includes a NB-IoT system to utilize a downlink control channel structure wherein the downlink control channel structure comprises one or more NCCEs. 
     Example 150 includes the NB-IoT system of example 149 and/or any other examples herein, wherein the one or more NCCEs are within one resource block (RB). 
     Example 151 includes a DCI design and corresponding search space design for NB-IoT operating in unlicensed spectrum (“NB-IoT unlicensed”). 
     Example 152 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein unlicensed NB-IoT reuse the legacy DCI format NI, and the corresponding search space. 
     Example 153 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the maximum DCI repetition times Rmax for Unicasted PDSCH scheduling is reduced to: r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64; r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128; r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256; or r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256, r512. 
     Example 154 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the legacy larger repetition times is not needed, such as: r128, r256, r512, r1024, r2048. 
     Example 155 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the unlicensed NB-IOT reuse the legacy DCI format N2 for Type 1 CSS, and the corresponding search space. 
     Example 156 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the maximum DCI repetition times Rmax for paging scheduling, pdcchNumRepetitionPaging is reduced to: r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64; r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128; r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256; or r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256, r512. 
     Example 157 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the legacy larger repetition times is not needed, such as: r128, r256, r512, r1024, r2048. 
     Example 158 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the search space of Type I CSS is as illustrated in Table 3. 
     Example 159 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the search space of Type 1 CSS is as illustrated in Table 4. 
     Example 160 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein unlicensed NB-IOT reuse the legacy DCI format N2 for Type1 CSS, and the corresponding search space. 
     Example 161 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the maximum DCI repetition times Rmax for RA, npdcch-NumRepetitions-RA is reduced to: r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64; r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128; r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256; or r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256, r512. 
     Example 162 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the legacy larger repetition times is not needed, such as: r128, r256, r512, r1024, r2048. 
     Example 163 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein reuse the legacy DCI format NO for PUSCH scheduling, and corresponding search space. 
     Example 164 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the reserved subcarrier indication can be interpreted as the explicit ACK of PUSCH. After receiving this explicit HARQ, UE will flush the buffer. 
     Example 165 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein additional reserved subcarrier indication can be interpreted as explicit ACK for early termination of PUSCH transmission. After UE receives the explicit ACK, it will flush the buffer. 
     Example 166 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the larger repetition times of PUSCH is reserved, e.g. 64, 128. While the reserved states of repetition number can be utilized as the explicit ACK indication for early termination of MDCCH and/or early termination of PUSCH transmission. 
     Example 167 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein the reserved stat of modulation and coding schemes can be utilized as the explicit ACK indication for early termination of MDCCH and/or early termination of PUSCH transmission. 
     Example 168 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein if one HARQ is supported by UE, then one state is needed. 
     Example 169 includes the subject matter of example 151 and/or some other examples herein, wherein if two HARQ-ProcessesConfig is configured, three states is needed comprising: a first state for ACK of HARQ 1; a second state for ACK of HARQ 2; and a third state for ACK of both HARQ 1 and HARQ 2. 
     Example 170 includes an apparatus comprising means to perform one or more elements of a method or process described in or related to any of examples 1-169, or portions or parts thereof. 
     Example 171 may include one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions to cause an electronic device, upon execution of the instructions by one or more processors of the electronic device, to perform one or more elements of a method or process described in or related to any of examples 1-169, or portions or parts thereof. 
     Example 172 may include an apparatus comprising logic, modules, or circuitry to perform one or more elements of a method or process described in or related to any of examples 1-169, or portions or parts thereof. 
     Example 173 may include a method, technique, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-169, or portions or parts thereof. 
     Example 174 may include an apparatus comprising: one or more processors and one or more computer readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to one or more elements of a method or process described in or related to any of examples 1-169, or portions or parts thereof. 
     Example 175 may include a signal as described in or related to any of examples 1-169, or portions or parts thereof. 
     Example 176 may include a signal in a wireless network as shown and described herein. 
     Example 177 may include a method of communicating in a wireless network as shown and described herein. 
     Example 178 may include a system for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein. 
     Example 179 may include a device for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein. 
     Various embodiments may include any suitable combination of the above-described embodiments including alternative (or) embodiments of embodiments that are described in conjunctive form (and) above (e.g., the “and” may be “and/or”). Furthermore, some embodiments may include one or more articles of manufacture (e.g., non-transitory computer-readable media) having instructions, stored thereon, that when executed result in actions of any of the above-described embodiments. Moreover, some embodiments may include apparatuses or systems having any suitable means for carrying out the various operations of the above-described embodiments. 
     The above description of illustrated implementations of the various embodiments, including what is described in the Abstract, is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. While specific implementations of, and examples for, various embodiments are described herein for illustrative purposes, various equivalent modifications are possible within the scope of the invention, as those skilled in the relevant art will recognize. These modifications may be made in light of the above detailed description. The terms used in the following claims should not be construed to limit this disclosure to the specific embodiments disclosed in the specification and the claims.

Metadata:
Filing Date: 20180808
Publication Date: 20220614
Grant Date: 20220614
Priority Date: 20170811
Inventors: NIU, HUANING
CHANG, Wenting
LEE, Anthony Sautung
SUN, Rongrong
TALARICO, Salvatore
YE, QIAOYANG
Assignee: APPLE INC
CPC Classifications: [{"code": "H04W72/53", "inventive": true, "first": true, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W72/23", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04L5/0055", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W72/0446", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W4/80", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04L5/0053", "inventive": true, "first": true, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04L5/0051", "inventive": false, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04L5/0007", "inventive": false, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04L5/0048", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W72/0453", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04L5/0055", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04L5/0048", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W4/80", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W72/042", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W72/0493", "inventive": true, "first": true, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W72/0453", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}, {"code": "H04W72/0446", "inventive": true, "first": false, "tree": "[]"}]
Family ID: 65271505