Coordinating base station downlink transmissions in unlicensed frequency bands
AssigneeAlcatel Lucent
InventorsTeck Hu, Shin Horng Wong
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Base stations can exchange information indicating that the base stations are transmitting (or going to transmit) downlink signals over one or more unlicensed frequency bands. For example, a first indication that a first base station is reserving a first subset of a plurality of unlicensed frequency bands for downlink transmission can be transmitted over one or more interfaces between the first base station and one or more second base stations. The one or more second base stations can then refrain from transmitting potentially interfering downlink transmissions over the first subset of the plurality of unlicensed frequency bands. Information identifying the first subset may be stored by the one or more second base stations.
Claims20
A method comprising:
- transmitting, over at least one peer-to-peer interface between a first base station and at least one second base station, a first indication that the first base station is reserving a first subset of a plurality of unlicensed frequency bands for downlink transmission, wherein the first base station is a first endpoint of each of the at least one peer-to-peer interfaces and each of the at least one second base stations is a second endpoint of a corresponding one of the at least one peer-to-peer interfaces;
- and
- transmitting cell acquisition information to instruct user equipment to bypass performing measurements of signal strengths on the first subset and to perform measurements of signal strengths on a second subset of the plurality of unlicensed frequency bands.
A method comprising:
- receiving, over at least one peer-to-peer interface between at least one first base station and a second base station, at least one first indication that the at least one first base station is reserving a first subset of a plurality of unlicensed frequency bands for downlink transmissions, wherein each of the at least one first base stations is a first endpoint of a corresponding one of the at least one peer-to-peer interfaces and the second base station is a second endpoint of each of the at least one peer-to-peer interfaces;
- storing information identifying the first subset at the second base station;
- and
- transmitting cell acquisition information to instruct first user equipment to perform measurements of signal strengths on the first subset and to bypass performing measurements of signal strengths on a second subset of the plurality of unlicensed frequency bands.
An apparatus comprising:
- a first base station to transmit, over at least one peer-to-peer interface between the first base station and at least one second base station, a first indication that the first base station is reserving a first subset of a plurality of unlicensed frequency bands for downlink transmission, wherein the first base station is a first endpoint of each of the at least one peer-to-peer interfaces and each of the at least one second base stations is a second endpoint of a corresponding one of the at least one peer-to-peer interfaces, and wherein cell acquisition information is transmitted to instruct user equipment to bypass performing measurements of signal strengths on the first subset and to perform measurements of signal strengths on a second subset of the plurality of unlicensed frequency bands.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.