Methods and apparatus for providing soft and blind combining for pusch acknowledgement (ack) processing

An apparatus for providing acknowledgement (ACK) bits, comprising:

• a user equipment (“UE”) coupled to a wireless network and configured to send an uplink transmission containing ACK information via a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH);
• an uplink frond end (ULFE) of a receiver coupled to the UE and configured to receive the uplink transmission containing the ACK information;
• and
• an ACK hypothesis generator (AHG) coupled to the ULFE and operable to process scrambling sequences and a network parameter, wherein the AHG is configured to generate a plurality of possible ACK scrambling sequences via soft-combining independent from identifying value of the network parameter.

An apparatus configured to generate acknowledgement (ACK) bits, comprising:

• means for receiving an uplink transmission containing ACK information via a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) from a user equipment (“UE”) by an uplink frond end (ULFE);
• means for processing scrambling sequences and a network parameter, the processing scrambling sequences including means for soft-combining possible ACK scrambling sequences independent from identifying value of the network parameter;
• and
• means for generating an ACK value decoded via one hypothetical soft-combined ACK bit stream from the possible ACK scrambling sequences in response to the network parameter.

A method for determining acknowledgement (ACK) bits, comprising:

• receiving an uplink transmission containing ACK information via a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) from one or more user equipment (“UE”);
• recovering subframes of symbols containing ACK log-likelihood ratio (LLR) bits from the uplink transmission;
• descrambling and soft-combining of the ACK LLR bits to generate a hypothetical soft-combined ACK bit stream for each possible scrambling sequence;
• and
• storing the hypothetical soft-combined ACK bit stream in a local memory.

An apparatus for determining acknowledgement (ACK) bits, comprising:

• means for receiving an uplink transmission containing ACK information via a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) from one or more user equipment (“UE”);
• means for recovering subframes of symbols containing ACK log-likelihood ratio (LLR) bits from the uplink transmission;
• means for descrambling and soft-combining of the ACK LLR bits to generate a hypothetical soft-combined ACK bit stream for each possible scrambling sequence;
• and
• means for storing the hypothetical soft-combined ACK bit stream in a local memory.