US 9,699,800 B2 · Systems, methods, and appartatuses for bearer splitting in multi-radio HetNet

Abstract

Systems and methods for bearer splitting among multiple radio links are disclosed herein. User equipment (UE) may be communicatively coupled to an Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) Node B (eNB) by multiple radio links (e.g., an LTE link and a WLAN link). A transmitter may dynamically determine a splitting policy for how to split traffic among each link (e.g., what proportion to send over each link). In some embodiments, the transmitter may determine the splitting policy explicitly based on lower layer metrics. Alternatively, or in addition, each radio access interface may request data when a transmission opportunity becomes available, and the splitting policy may be determined implicitly from the data requests. For a UE, the splitting policy may be determined with network assistance, which may include a resource allocation for an LTE link, a probability of successful transmission over a WLAN link, and/or the like.

Claims25

Dependent claims

An evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN) Node B (eNB) operating in a radio access network (RAN) anchored multi-radio heterogeneous network, the eNB comprising:

a link aggregation scheduler configured to:
determine a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) proportion of the data traffic to be transmitted over an LTE link and a WLAN proportion of the data traffic to be transmitted over a wireless local area network (WLAN) link;
provide instructions, to a push-based link aggregation transmitter, that includes a proportion comprising the LTE proportion or the WLAN proportion;
a push-based link aggregation transmitter forming a protocol layer within an enhanced LTE protocol stack, the push-based link aggregation transmitter configured to:
receive data traffic transmitted over a LTE bearer into a traffic packet buffer;
receive the instructions, from the link aggregation scheduler, that includes the proportion;
retrieve data from the traffic packet buffer;
provide a portion of the data to a WLAN packet buffer for transmission using a WLAN protocol stack based at least in part on the proportion;
and
provide a portion of the data to a LTE packet buffer for transmission using a LTE protocol stack based at least in part on the proportion.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Systems, methods, and appartatuses for bearer splitting in multi-radio HetNet

Life of this patent

Systems, methods, and appartatuses for bearer splitting in multi-radio HetNet

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims25