Methods of bearer mapping and quality of service configuration for layer 2 ue-to-ue relay

A relay user equipment (relay-UE), comprising:

• a transceiver;
• and
• a processor configured to:
• establish a PC5 link with a remote user equipment (UE) in response to discovery of the remote UE by the relay-UE;
• transmit, to the remote UE, and over the PC5 link, a configuration corresponding to transport of traffic of at least one end-to-end (E2E) sidelink data radio bearer (SL-DRB);
• and
• transmit to the remote UE, or receive from the remote UE, via the transceiver, the traffic of the at least one E2E SL-DRB.

A method, comprising:

• receiving, by a user equipment (UE), a configuration of a radio link control (RLC) channel of a PC5 interface (PC5 RLC channel), the configuration of the PC5 RLC channel corresponds with end-to-end signaling using at least one sidelink signaling radio bearer (SL-SRB);
• transmitting, from the UE to a relay user equipment (relay-UE), a request for a configuration corresponding to at least one sidelink data radio bearer (SL-DRB), the at least one SL-DRB configured to provide end-to-end (E2E) user plane traffic to a remote UE according to a quality of service (QoS) for the E2E user plane traffic requested by the UE;
• in response to receiving the configuration corresponding to the at least one SL-DRB, initiating a radio resource control procedure for reconfiguration of a sidelink (RRCReconfigurationSidelink) to configure a logical channel identification (LCID) and a RLC sequence number size for the at least one SL-DRB of a first hop between the UE and the relay-UE;
• and
• transmitting, from the UE to the relay-UE and via the at least one SL-DRB, the E2E user plane traffic that is destined to the remote UE.