Apparatus and methods for transmission of timing information

Abstract

A method of operating a communications device in a wireless communications network is provided, the method comprising transmitting to an infrastructure equipment of the wireless communications network a time source indication, the time source indication indicating to the infrastructure equipment that the communications device is a source of timing information. The timing information may be in accordance with a non-3GPP protocol, may be generated outside of the wireless communications network, and/or may be used by entities (including logical protocol entities, applications and the like) which are outside of the scope of 3GPP specifications. An example of such timing information is time information which is compliant with the IEEE 802.1AS specification. According to the present methods, a wireless communications network can support time sensitive networking based on timing information which may have its origin and/or destination(s) outside the scope of the wireless communications network.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.