Selecting a component carrier to be tuned 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 based at least in part upon a per-rank throughput contribution by each of the plurality of CCs, a transmission mode of the selected at least one CC and/or a channel quality of the selected at least one CC;
• and
• means for tuning a set 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 based at least in part upon a per-rank throughput contribution by each of the plurality of CCs, a transmission mode of the selected at least one CC and/or a channel quality of the selected at least one CC;
• and
• tune a set 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) cause 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 based at least in part upon a per-rank throughput contribution by each of the plurality of CCs, a transmission mode of the selected at least one CC and/or a channel quality of the selected at least one CC;
• and
• at least one instruction configured to cause the UE to tune a set of receive chains of the selected at least one CC away from the MIMO communication to perform the inter-frequency PRS measurement.