Infrastructure equipment, communications device and methods

A method of communicating messages from an infrastructure equipment for a mobile communications network, the method comprising,

• transmitting signals to one or more communications devices via a wireless access interface comprising a plurality of communications resource elements, the wireless access interface comprising a down-link communications channel in which each of a plurality of time divided units comprises communications resource elements in time and frequency for allocation to transmit messages to the communications devices,
• identifying, for each of a plurality of time units, communications resource elements of the communications channel which cannot be allocated to transmit messages to one of the communications devices,
• determining, with respect to one of the plurality of time units as a reference time unit, a number of the communications resource elements of the communications channel for repeatedly transmitting one or more message units to the communications device a plurality of times in the reference time unit, identifying, for each of the plurality of time units, a pattern of the communications resource elements for the repeated transmission of the one or more message units, within each time unit, determined with respect to the reference time unit, the pattern of the communications resource elements for each of the plurality of time units excluding the communications resource elements of the communications channel which cannot be allocated to the communications devices, and
• transmitting the one or more message units to the communications device via the identified pattern of the communications resource elements in the plurality of time units of the wireless access interface.

A communications device for communicating via a mobile communications network, the communications device comprising,

• a transmitter configured to transmit signals to an infrastructure equipment of the mobile communications network via a wireless access interface comprising a plurality of communications resource elements, and
• a receiver configured to receive signals from the infrastructure equipment via the wireless access interface, and
• a controller configured to control the transmitter and the receiver to transmit the signals to the infrastructure equipment and to receive the signals from infrastructure equipment, wherein the wireless access interface comprises a down-link communications channel in which each of a plurality of time divided units comprises communications resource elements in time and frequency for allocation to receive messages from the infrastructure equipment, and the controller is configured
• to identify, for each of a plurality of time units, a pattern of the communications resource elements for repeated reception of one or more message units, the pattern of the communications resource elements excluding communications resource elements of the communications channel which cannot be allocated for receiving the one or more message units, and
• to control the receiver to receive the one or more message units from the infrastructure equipment via the identified pattern of the communications resource elements in the plurality of time units of the wireless access interface.