Tuning a subset of receive chains of a component carrier away from mimo communication to perform an inter-frequency positioning reference signal measurement

A user equipment (UE), comprising:

• means for performing multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication on a plurality of Component Carriers (CCs) in accordance with a Carrier Aggregation (CA) scheme with each CC having an associated rank number that indicates a respective number of receive chains for the CC;
• means for selecting at least one of the plurality of CCs for tuning away from the MIMO communication in order to perform an inter-frequency Positioning Reference Signal (PRS) measurement;
• means for selecting, from among a plurality of receive chains allocated to the selected at least one CC, a subset of receive chains that includes less than all of the plurality of receive chains to be tuned away from the MIMO communication to perform the inter-frequency PRS measurement;
• and
• means for tuning the selected subset of receive chains of the selected at least one CC away from the MIMO communication to perform the inter-frequency PRS measurement.

A user equipment (UE), comprising:

• at least one processor coupled to a transceiver and configured to:
• perform multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication on a plurality of Component Carriers (CCs) in accordance with a Carrier Aggregation (CA) scheme with each CC having an associated rank number that indicates a respective number of receive chains for the CC;
• select at least one of the plurality of CCs for tuning away from the MIMO communication in order to perform an inter-frequency Positioning Reference Signal (PRS) measurement;
• selecting, from among a plurality of receive chains allocated to the selected at least one CC, a subset of receive chains that includes less than all of the plurality of receive chains to be tuned away from the MIMO communication to perform the inter-frequency PRS measurement;
• and
• tune the selected subset of receive chains of the selected at least one CC away from the MIMO communication to perform the inter-frequency PRS measurement.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium containing instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a user equipment (UE) instruct the UE to perform operations, the instructions comprising:

• at least one instruction configured to cause the UE to perform multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication on a plurality of Component Carriers (CCs) in accordance with a Carrier Aggregation (CA) scheme with each CC having an associated rank number that indicates a respective number of receive chains for the CC;
• at least one instruction configured to cause the UE to select at least one of the plurality of CCs for tuning away from the MIMO communication in order to perform an inter-frequency Positioning Reference Signal (PRS) measurement;
• at least one instruction configured to cause the UE to select, from among a plurality of receive chains allocated to the selected at least one CC, a subset of receive chains that includes less than all of the plurality of receive chains to be tuned away from the MIMO communication to perform the inter-frequency PRS measurement;
• and
• at least one instruction configured to cause the UE to tune the selected subset of receive chains of the selected at least one CC away from the MIMO communication to perform the inter-frequency PRS measurement.