FOR MTC UE

FIELD OF THE PRESENT INVENTION

Γ 11 The present disclosure generally relates to the field of wireless communication, and more specifically, to methods and apparatuses for uplink (UL) transmission feedback for an MTC UE.

BACKGROUND OF THE PRESENT INVENTION

Γ2] Machine to Machine (M2M) communication, or Machine Type Communication (MTC), is a communication mode for communications between machines, which has been widely used in intelligent transportation, remote billing, and remote monitoring, etc.. The machines (devices) involving in an M2M communication are also called as MTC User Equipments (UEs).

[31 In a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, according to its application domain, Physical Downlink Control Channels (PDCCHs) carry Downlink Control Information (DCI) for one or more UEs. The PDCCHs are time divisionally multiplexed with Physical Downlink Shared Channels (PDSCHs) for transmitting downlink (DL) data. A UE performs blind detection on the control region of the PDCCH to search for whether there is PDCCH transmitted for it. Blind detection means attempting to decode the PDCCH with a corresponding Radio Network Temporary Identity (RNTI) of the UE. If it is correctly decoded, DCI for the UE is received and then corresponding messages may be received in the PDSCH. Γ41 As a work item of 3 GPP, recently, 3 GPP tries to improve the coverage for low cost MTC UEs by 15dB to bring more business benefit to MTC vendors and operates. All the physical channels need to be enhanced based on the MCL calculation. In order to achieve such a goal, time domain repetition is considered as the most important method. According to the recent simulation results, hundreds of repetitions are required to meet the most critical demand. As a result, the spectrum efficiency of MTC UEs operated in a Coverage Extension (CE) manner should be concerned. To ensure the efficiency of MTC UEs, it is desired to keep the Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) functionality because sole Radio Link Control (RLC) layer ARQ is of very marginal help for MTC UEs in coverage hole.

Γ51 For DL transmission, Acknowledgements/Negative Acknowledgements (ACKs/NACKs) are still fed back through the Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH). However, HARQ mechanism for UL transmission is not agreed. SUMMARY OF THE PRESENT INVENTION

[6] For HARQ of UL transmission, one proposed method is to perform direct repetition of Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH). This method may cause eNB scheduler issues for the following reasons:

[7] 1) Resource collision exists between the feedback for normal UEs (without repetition) and that for MTC UEs (with repetition). This reduces eNB flexibility since the eNB scheduler nees to try to avoid such collision.

Γ8] 2) The PHICH index is tied to the lowest Resource Block (RB) index of the Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH), which imposes some constraints on the eNB scheduler and makes it difficult to avoid collision.

Γ 1 Therefore, these constraints on UL resource allocation reduce the scheduling flexibility and the spectrum efficiency will be adversely impacted because the multiuser diversity is reduced. Furthermore, eNB should perform very complex scheduling, i.e., the scheduling complexity of eNB is increased.

f 1011 n addition to the scheduling issues, the following are further problems with this solution:

Γ1 11 1) When frequency hopping is exploited for UL repetition of PUSCH for MTC UEs, the relationship between the PHICH index and the PUSCH RB index is still unclear.

|T2]2) To reduce complexity, 3GPP usually minimises the number of channels to be enhanced and repetition on PHICH would require additional specifications to enhance PHICH.

ill! Although some companies such as Media Tek and Intel Corp. believe that such a direct repetition of PHICH is favorable and efficient, most companies believe that this solution is not adorable for the above reasons.

f 14] Another alternative is to use UL grant as the feedback to indicate ACK/NACK.

However, this solution is not efficient because it requires about 10 times of resources of that of PHICH repetition solution.

115] herefore, considering the repetition times of UL grant for CE-MTC UEs and the limited capacity of PDCCH, it is worthwhile to investigate how to efficiently transmit

ACK/NACK feedbacks for UL transmissions with a compressed format.

||||ln view of the above, the present disclosure proposes an efficient solution for UL transmission feedback for MTC UEs.

[17] According to a first aspect of the present disclosure, a method for UL transmission feedback for a MTC UE is provided including constructing DCI information specific for the MTC UE, the DCI information including at least ACK or NACK information for the UL transmission of the MTC UE; and broadcasting the DCI information to all UEs served by the base station.

f l8| According to a second aspect of the present disclosure, an apparatus for UL transmission feedback for a MTC UE in a base station is provided including a DCI information constructing unit configured to construct DCI information specific for the MTC UE, the DCI information including at least ACK or NACK information for the UL transmission of the MTC UE; and a transmitting unit configured to broadcast the DCI information to all UEs served by the base station.

119] According to a third aspect of the present disclosure, a method for UL transmission feedback for a MTC UE in a base station is provided including constructing DCI information specific for the MTC UE including a first sequence or a second sequence different from the first sequence, wherein the first sequence is used to indicate ACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE and the second sequence is used to indicate NACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE; scrambling the DCI information with a RNTI of the MTC UE; and broadcasting the scrambled DCI information to all UEs served by the base station.

120] According to a fourth aspect of the present disclosure, an apparatus for UL transmission feedback for a MTC UE in a base station is provided including a DCI constructing unit configured to construct DCI information specific for the MTC UE including a first sequence or a second sequence different from the first sequence, wherein the first sequence is used to indicate ACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE and the second sequence is used to indicate NACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE; a scrambling unit configured to scramble the DCI information with a RNTI of the MTC UE; and a transmitting unit configured to broadcast the scrambled DCI information to all UEs served by the base station.

i!ll According to a fifth aspect of the present disclosure, a method for receiving UL transmission feedback from a base station in a MTC UE is provided including receiving a PDCCH broadcasted by the base station; descrambling the PDCCH with a RNTI of the MTC UE to obtain DCI information for the MTC UE; and correlating the DCI information with the first sequence and the second sequence to determine whether the DCI information includes ACK or NACK information for UL transmission of the MTC UE.

1221 According to a sixth aspect of the present disclosure, an apparatus for receiving UL transmission feedback from a base station in a MTC UE is provided including a receiving unit configured to receive a PDCCH broadcasted by the base station; a descrambling unit configured to descramble the PDCCH with a RNTI of the MTC UE to obtain DCI information for the MTC UE; and a correlating unit configured to correlate the DCI information with the first sequence and the second sequence to determine whether the DCI information includes ACK or NACK information for UL transmission of the MTC UE.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

123] The present disclosure will be understood better and other objectives, details, features and advantages of the present disclosure will become more evident from the description of specific embodiments of the disclosure given in conjunction with the following figures, wherein:

r24]Fig. 1 illustrates a schematic diagram of the exemplary network deployment for implementing the present disclosure;

125] Fig. 2 illustrates a schematic diagram of the DCI format according to embodiments of the present disclosure;

[26] Fig. 3 illustrates a flow chart of a method for UL transmission feedback for an MTC UE according to embodiments of the present disclosure;

[27] Fig. 4 illustrates a block diagram of an apparatus in the base station for UL transmission feedback for an MTC UE according to embodiments of the present disclosure;

illjFig. 5 illustrates a flow chart for PDCCH processing at the base station in the prior art;

|ll|Fig. 6 illustrates a flow chart of another method for UL transmission feedback for an MTC UE according to embodiments of the present disclosure;

[30] Fig. 7 illustrates a block diagram of an apparatus in the base station for UL transmission feedback for an MTC UE; and

[31] Fig. 8 illustrates a block diagram of an apparatus in an MTC UE for receiving UL transmission feedback from the base station. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[32] Preferred embodiments of the present disclosure will now be described in more details in conjunction with accompanying figures. Although preferred embodiments of the present disclosure are shown in the accompanying figures, it should be understood that the present disclosure can be embodied in various ways but not be limited to the embodiments depicted herein. Instead, the embodiments are provided herein to make the disclosure more throughout and complete and convey the scope of the present disclosure to those skilled in this art.

[331 Fig. 1 illustrates a schematic diagram of the exemplary network deployment for implementing the present disclosure. As shown in Fig. 1, the wireless communication network 100 includes one (or more) base station 110 and one or more UE 120, 122, 124, and 126 served by the base station 110. Hereinafter, the UEs 120 and 126 are described as MTC UEs and the UEs 122 and 24 are described as normal UEs (i.e. non-MTC UEs) by example. More particularly, the solution of the present disclosure will be described in detail with reference to MTC UE 120 in the following. However, those skilled in the art may appreciate that the present disclosure is not limited thereto and it is applicable to situations of arbitrary number of UEs as MTC UEs and is applicable to any MTC UE.

[34] Herein, the MTC UEs may be within buildings with poor wireless coverage and therefore it is desired to enhance their coverage. However, those skilled in the art may appreciate that the present disclosure is not limited thereto and it is applicable to MTC UEs at any locations.

[351 The basic idea of the present disclosure is to design a DCI format specific to the MTC UEs for their UL transmission feedback.

IliliUL-grant needs tens of original bits, most of which are scheduling information. However, MTC UEs do not require all the scheduling content and the DCI format for them can be compressed with only necessary information and optional other information remained.

[37] Under this idea, the following two design schemes are provided according to specific application situations.

Scheme 1; DCI information with retransmission scheduling and redundancy version (RV) control functionalities

[38] In this scheme, a DCI format specific for an MTC UE is constructed to carry feedbacks for UL transmission of the MTC UE.

[39] In one specific implementation, the newly constructed DCI format is different from any of existing DCI formats. The length of the DCI format is different from any of existing ones, and thus an MTC UE receiving such a DCI format may identify it as carrying ACK/NACK information. In this implementation, since number of the DCI formats is increased, the workload for blind detection at the UE is slightly increased.

[40] In another specific implementation, the newly constructed DCI format is one that was never used for MTC UEs previously. For example, the length of the newly constructed DCI format may be configured as any of that of DCI format ID, DCI format 2, DCI format 2A, DCI format 2B, DCI format 2C or DCI format 4. In this implementation, since an existing DCI format is reused, the workload for blind detection at the UE is not increased.

[41 ] The newly constructed DCI format contains only the fields necessary for the MTC UE, and the other unnecessary fields should be eliminated.

illi If required, the newly constructed DCI format may include all or a portion of the following fields without limiting thereto.

[431ACK/NACK information: It is used to indicate the ACK or NACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE. This field is mandatory and usually occupies 1 bit.

[44] Retransmission Scheduling information: It is used to notify the MTC UE of information on Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) and/or Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) used for UL retransmission when the ACK/NACK field includes NACK information.

[4 1 In some scenarios, the base station may want the UL retransmission to use different PRBs and/or MCS from that of the original transmission. In this case, the retransmission scheduling field is used to notify the UE of the PRBs and/or MCS for its retransmission. Its length is determined by the bandwidth and is usually about 10 bits. When the bandwidth is fixed, the length of this field is fixed. This field is optional.

[46] Redundancy Version (RV) information: In most cases, the RV information of the retransmission is predefined and no RV control is needed. However, in some cases, the eNB may want the MTC UE to retransmit with a specified RV. For example, when the base station considers the MTC UE has lost its original UL grant, it may want the MTC UE to retransmit the original data block rather than retransmitting in the original RV. In this case, the RV information field in the DCI information is used to notify the UE of the RV information for its UL retransmission. This field is optional, and usually occupies 2 bits.

[47] In this scheme, only the ACK/NACK information field is mandatory, and the other two fields are optional. The ACK/NACK information field and the potential retransmission scheduling filed and RV information field form the original information bits of the DCI, therefore, the length of the original information bits in such a DCI is not fixed, but the final DCI has a fixed length. To allow the MTC UE to get the original information bits, a complete DCI format as shown in Fig. 2 may be designed.

148] As shown in Fig. 2, the complete DCI format includes the following three portions.

[49] DCI Header: A bit map of n-1 bits may be used as the DCI header to indicate which fields exist in the original information bits, where n is the number of fields in the original information bits in different embodiments.

[50] I ^; or example, in one embodiment, the newly designed DCI format needs only the ACK/NACK information field and the retransmission scheduling filed, then n=2. In another embodiment, the newly designed DCI format needs to further include the RV information field, then n=3.

f51] Since the ACK/NACK information field always exists, it does not need indication, therefore, only n-1 bits are needed in the DCI header.

IlliFor example, when the newly designed DCI format needs to include three fields, i.e. n=3, 2 bits are needed in the DCI header to indicate whether there are a retransmission scheduling filed and a RV information field, where the first bit indicates whether there is a retransmission scheduling filed (whether PRBs are reallocated and whether a new MCS is specified, for example) and the second bit indicates whether there is a RV information field. For example, if the bit map is "00", it indicates that neither the retransmission scheduling filed nor the RV information field exists in the original information bits. If the bit map is "10", it indicates that the retransmission scheduling filed exists in the original information bits and the RV information field does not exist in the original information bits. If the bit map is "01", it indicates that the RV information field exists in the original information bits and the retransmission scheduling filed does not exist in the original information bits. If the bit map is "11", it indicates that both the retransmission scheduling filed and the RV information field exist in the original information bits.

[53| Information: This field is composed of some repeated groups of original information bits. As described above, when the information bits in the DCI header is definite, the content of the original information bits is fixed. For example, if the DCI header is "11", and the retransmission scheduling filed includes 12 bits according to the bandwidth, there are 15 bits included in the original information bits, where the first 1 bit is the ACK/NACK information field, the following 12 bits are the retransmission scheduling filed and the last 2 bits are the RV information field.

154] The original information bits may be repeated any times under the limitation of the length of the DCI format. Preferably, the original information bits should be repeated as much as possible.

[55] Tail: This portion includes padding bits to form a fixed length DCI format.

156] In this embodiment, in most cases where the eNB just want to send 1 bit ACK/NACK information, the entire DCI format contains only 3 bit information, including 2 bit header and 1 bit ACK/NACK. The original information portion of the DCI format is the repetition of the 1 bit ACK/NACK. Therefore, compared with normal UL-grant, the new DCI format is much more efficient and the required repetitions are much less. Furthermore, the new DCI format may also maintain scheduling flexibility with high efficiency.

[571 Fig. 3 illustrates a flow chart of a method 300 for UL transmission feedback for an MTC UE 120 according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

[581 As shown in Fig. 3, at step 310, the base station 110 constructs DCI information specific for the MTC UE 120. The DCI information includes at least ACK or NACK information for UL transmission of the MTC UE 120. The construction of the DCI information may refer to the scheme 1 described above in connection with Fig. 2.

159] At step 320, the base station 110 broadcasts the constructed DCI information to all its served UEs. In particular, the base station 110 attaches a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC), performs channel encoding, scrambles with the RNTI of the MTC UE 120 on the constructed DCI information, and transmits the DCI information through PDCCH. These processing procedures are almost the same as those in the prior art and thus detailed description for them is omitted.

f 601 At step 330, the MTC UE 120 descrambles the received PDCCH with its RNTI to obtain the DCI information for it.

|61 ) Herein, the MTC UE 120 also performs almost the same processing procedures as those in the prior art and the difference only lies in that if the MTC UE 120 determines that the format of the received DCI information is different from any known DCI formats or the format of the received DCI information is one never used for MTC UE before, it may determine that the DCI information carries feedback information for its UL transmission.

[621 Fig. 4 illustrates a block diagram of an apparatus 400 in the base station 110 for UL transmission feedback for the MTC UE 120 according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

T631As shown in Fig. 4, the apparatus 400 includes a DCI constructing unit 410 configured to construct DCI information specific for the MTC UE 120. The DCI information includes at least ACK or NACK information for UL transmission of the MTC UE 120. The construction of the DCI information may refer to the scheme 1 described above in connection with Fig. 2.

[64|The apparatus 400 further includes a transmitting unit 420 configured to broadcast the constructed DCI information to all its served UEs. In particular, the base station 110 attaches a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC), performs channel encoding, scrambles with the RNTI of the MTC UE 120 on the constructed DCI information, and transmits the DCI information through PDCCH. These processing procedures are almost the same as those in the prior art and thus detailed description for them is omitted.

[65] With the scheme 1, high efficiency is achieved and scheduling flexibility is maintained as needed.

Scheme 2: DCI information without flexible scheduling functionality

166] In this scheme, flexible scheduling functionality for the retransmission does not need to be considered and thus a more efficient DCI format may be designed.

|67) Similar to the above scheme 1, the constructed DCI format may be a new format different from any of existing DCI formats, or may be one existing format that was never used for MTC UEs before such as any one of DCI format ID, DCI format 2, DCI format 2A, DCI format 2B, DCI format 2C or DCI format 4.

1681 For the latter, two code words may be selected from the existing DCI formats and reinterpreted as ACK or NACK, respectively. By using the existing DCI formats, the UE does not need to be designed to decode another DCI, which may reduce the attempting amount for the blind detection.

169] 1 ^' or the HARQ operation of normal UEs, the time-frequency resources for the retransmission are predetermined and it is sufficient to use 1 bit of ACK/NACK information. If the base station does not support retransmission scheduling and RV control function for MTC UEs, 1 bit of ACK/NACK information is also enough for the MTC UE. In the following, a solution is provided for more efficiently transmitting 1 bit of original information in the PDCCH to indicate ACK/NACK for the MTC UE. |7 | 1 ig. 5 illustrates a flow chart for PDCCH processing at the base station in the prior art.

|!||lt can be seen that, in the existing PDCCH processing, attaching CRC to the original DCI information is not only used to check the correctness of the received data but also to enable the UE to blindly decode the PDCCH shared by all the UEs to receive its control information with the combined use of CRC and RNTI scrambling. |72] However, if it is desired to output PDCCHs with only two different meanings, the original information bits shown in Fig. 5 may be limited to two bit sequences called as original sequences. One original sequence indicates ACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE and the other original sequence indicates NACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE. The original sequences may be considered as a certain repetition code with a 1 bit input of 0 or 1. Thus, the attached CRC is not used for parity check but as also some kind of repetition code. lii ln this case, using CRC to ensure the correctness of the received data is very inefficient. An efficient way to achieve this is to use channel coding such as repetition. In this solution, the original sequence is originated with 1 bit information, and it is a kind of repetition. The calculated CRC also has only two candidates and it could be seen as another repetition code. The repetition gain can be obtained by using sequence detection.

[74] On the other hand, in this solution, sole RNTI scrambling is enough to ensure the MTC UE to blindly decode the entire PDCCH to find its control information. The MTC UE could make a three- state decision to get its control information from the shared PDCCH. Once the MTC UE blindly decodes a candidate PDCCH, it makes a decision on whether this PDCCH indicates sequence 0, sequence 1, or neither. If the DCI information included in the PDCCH is sequence 0 or 1, it is ACK/NACK for the MTC UE, else the PDCCH does not indicate ACK/NACK for the MTC UE.

|75| ll should be noted that the three-state decision is easy to perform and it will not increase the decoding complexity of the MTC UE. The MTC UE only has to measure the correlated value of the DCI information with the sequences 0 and 1. If the correlated value with sequence 0 or 1 exceeds a threshold, the MTC UE considers it as a sequence 0 or 1, i.e., it indicates ACK or NACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE. Else, it considers the PDCCH candidate is not for itself.

176] Since the sequence is very long, other sequences act like noise after correlation. IlIjTherefore, this format for ACK/NACK can be seen as with a very large aggregation level and it has very large coverage gain. For example, if the length of the original sequences is 44, the original 1 bit is repeated for 44 times within one ACK or NAK. As a result, only 1 or 2 repetitions of the new ACK/NACK format are enough to meet the most critical coverage extension demand.

[78] Fig. 6 illustrates a flow chart of another method 600 for UL transmission feedback for an MTC UE according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

179] As shown in Fig. 6, at step 610, the base station 110 constructs DCI information specific for the MTC UE 120. The DCI information includes a first sequence or a second sequence different from the first sequence for indicating ACK or NACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE 120, respectively.

[80] At step 620, the base station 110 scrambles the constructed DCI information with the RNTI of the MTC UE 120.

|81 ] Al step 630, the base station 110 broadcasts the scrambled DCI information to all its served UEs. Herein, the base station 110 broadcasts the scrambled DCI information to all UEs through the PDCCH. |82] ΛΙ step 640, the MTC UE 120 receives the PDCCH broadcasted by the base station 110.

1111 At step 650, the MTC UE 120 descrambles the received PDCCH with its RNTI to obtain the DCI information for it.

[841 At step 660, the MTC UE 120 correlates the obtained DCI information with the first sequence and the second sequence to determine whether the DCI information includes ACK or NACK information for its UL transmission.

|85] he step 660 further includes:

When the correlated value of the obtained DCI information with the first sequence is larger than a first threshold, determining that the DCI information includes ACK information for UL transmission of the MTC UE 120;

When the correlated value of the obtained DCI information with the second sequence is larger than a second threshold, determining that the DCI information includes NACK information for UL transmission of the MTC UE 120; and

When the correlated value of the obtained DCI information with the first sequence is not larger than the first threshold and the correlated value of the obtained

DCI information with the second sequence is not larger than the second threshold, determining that there is no DCI information for the MTC UE 120 in the received

PDCCH.

|86] l ^' ig. 7 illustrates a block diagram of an apparatus 700 in the base station 110 for UL transmission feedback for the MTC UE 120.

[87] As shown in Fig. 7, the apparatus 700 includes a DCI constructing unit configured to construct DCI information specific for the MTC UE 120 including a first sequence or a second sequence different from the first sequence, where the first sequence is used to indicate ACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE 120 and the second sequence is used to indicate NACK for UL transmission of the MTC UE 120; a scrambling unit 720 configured to scramble the constructed DCI information with the RNTI of the MTC UE 120; and a transmitting unit 730 configured to broadcast the scrambled DCI information to all UEs served by the base station 110.

[88] Fig. 8 illustrates a block diagram of an apparatus 800 in the MTC UE 120 for receiving UL transmission feedback from the base station 110.

[89] As shown in Fig. 8, the apparatus 800 includes a receiving unit 810 configured to receive the PDCCH broadcasted by the base station 110; a descrambling unit 820 configured to descramble the received PDCCH with the RNTI of the MTC UE 120 to obtain the DCI information specific for the MTC UE 120; and a correlating unit 830 configured to correlate the DCI information with the first sequence and the second sequence to determine whether the DCI information includes ACK or NACK information for the UL transmission of the MTC UE 120.

Performance Analysis

illi According to the analysis performed by Media Tek (see Reference [1]), PI I 1CI I requires 10.33dB coverage enhancement, i.e., 20-25 repetitions. PDCCH requires 9.6dB coverage enhancement, i.e., about 20 repetitions. As a result, two existing candidates using direct PHICH and UL grant (43 bits payload includes CRC) consume 240-300 resource elements (REs) and 5760 REs, respectively.

1 2 ) 1 ^' or the format which maintains the functionality of retransmission scheduling and RV control, if these two fields exist, about 20 bits payload including CRC is required, thus about 2800 REs are required. Compared with UL grant having the same capability, more than 50% resources could be saved. If only ACK/NACK field is required, the payload size including CRC is 11 bits and 1400 REs are enough, therefor about 75% resources could be saved. Hence the proposed solution uses less resources than the UL grant but more than that of PHICH, however reusing PDCCH to carry ACK/NACK does not add additional complexity to the bade station. For the format which is designed to indicate only ACK/NACK, the efficiency is much higher because it does not require CRC to determine whether the received sequence is correct, and about 300-500 REs are occupied.

Illilt can be seen that the solutions of the present disclosure incorporate both the benefits of PHICH repetition and UL grant with no adverse impact on normal UEs/base stations, and high flexibility of retransmission control and scheduling and high efficiency may be achieved.

[94) Herein, the term of "base station" may refer to the coverage area of the base station or the base station or the base station subsystem serving the coverage area according to its context. In the present disclosure, the term of "base station" may be interchangeably used with "cell," "Node B," or "eNodeB."

1 5 ) Here, the methods as disclosed have been described with reference to the accompanying drawings. However, it should be appreciated that the sequence of the steps as illustrated in the figures and described in the description are only illustrative, and without departing from the scope of the claims, these method steps and/or actions may be executed in a different sequence, without being limited to the specific sequences as shown in the drawings and described in the description.

[961 In one or more exemplary designs, the functions of the present application may be implemented using hardware, software, firmware, or any combinations thereof. In the case of implementation with software, the functions may be stored on a computer readable medium as one or more instructions or codes, or transmitted as one or more instructions or codes on the computer readable medium. The computer readable medium comprises a computer storage medium and a communication medium. The communication medium includes any medium that facilitates transmission of the computer program from one place to another. The storage medium may be any available medium accessible to a general or specific computer. The computer-readable medium may include, for example, but not limited to, RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disc storage devices, magnetic disk storage devices, or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium that carries or stores desired program code means in a manner of instructions or data structures accessible by a general or specific computer or a general or specific processor. Furthermore, any connection may also be considered as a computer-readable medium. For example, if software is transmitted from a website, server or other remote source using a co-axial cable, an optical cable, a twisted pair wire, a digital subscriber line (DSL), or radio technologies such as infrared, radio or microwave, then the co-axial cable, optical cable, twisted pair wire, digital subscriber line (DSL), or radio technologies such as infrared, radio or microwave are also covered by the definition of medium.

1 7) he various illustrative logical blocks, modules, and circuits described in connection with the disclosure herein may be implemented or performed with a general-purpose processor, a digital signal processor (DSP), an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a field programmable gate array (FPGA) or other programmable logic device, discrete gate or transistor logic, discrete hardware components, or any combination thereof designed to perform the functions described herein. A general-purpose processor may be a microprocessor, but in the alternative, the processor may be any normal processor, controller, microcontroller, or state machine. A processor may also be implemented as a combination of computing devices, e.g., a combination of a DSP and a microprocessor, a plurality of microprocessors, one or more microprocessors in conjunction with a DSP core, or any other such configuration.

[98] Those of skill would further appreciate that the various illustrative logical blocks, modules, circuits, and algorithm steps described in connection with the disclosure herein may be implemented as electronic hardware, computer software, or combinations of both. To clearly illustrate this interchangeability of hardware and software, various illustrative components, blocks, modules, circuits, and steps have been described above generally in terms of their functionality. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware or software depends upon the particular application and design constraints imposed on the overall system. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality in varying ways for each particular application, but such implementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from the scope of the present disclosure.

[99] The above depiction of the present disclosure is to enable any of those skilled in the art to implement or use the present disclosure. For those skilled in the art, various modifications of the present disclosure are obvious, and the general principle defined herein may also be applied to other transformations without departing from the spirit and protection scope of the present disclosure. Thus, the present disclosure is not limited to the examples and designs as described herein, but should be consistent with the broadest scope of the principle and novel characteristics of the present disclosure.

[1001 References:

[1011 [1] Rl- 134443 "Need of UL HARQ and PHICH enhancement", MediaTek Inc, 3 GPP RANI #74bis.