Methods, communications device and base station for a non-terrestrial network

A terminal comprising:

• control circuitry configured to:
• control a receiver of the terminal to receive, via an air interface provided by infrastructure equipment of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NIN), a downlink transmission from a base station of the NTN;
• in response to the downlink transmission, transmit via a transmitter of the terminal an uplink transmission to the base station;
• and
• based on the uplink transmission and on a round trip time, determine whether the terminal will enter a reduced power mode during a time period,
• wherein the round trip time is a time for a signal to travel back and forth between the terminal and the base station,
• wherein, in the reduced power mode the terminal is configured to reduce a power consumption of the receiver of the terminal for communicating via the air interface, and
• wherein the time period has a duration corresponding to half of the round trip time.

A non-transitory computer product containing instructions for a method of operating a terminal, the method comprising:

• receiving via a receiver of the terminal, via an air interface provided by infrastructure equipment of a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN), a downlink transmission from a base station of the NTN:
• in response to the downlink transmission, transmitting via a transmitter of the terminal an uplink transmission to the base station;
• and
• based on the uplink transmission and on a round trip time, determining whether the terminal will enter a reduced power mode during a time period,
• wherein the round trip time is a time for a signal to travel back and forth between the terminal and the base station,
• wherein, in the reduced power mode the terminal is configured to reduce a power consumption of the receiver of the terminal for communicating via the air interface, and
• wherein the time period has a duration corresponding to half of the round trip time.