CN112055991A

CN112055991A - Repetitive transmission method, apparatus and non-transitory computer readable medium

Info

Publication number: CN112055991A
Application number: CN201980018294.1A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 柳光; 奥利维尔·马克; 哈伊姆·泰彻
Original assignee: Jiekai Communications Shenzhen Co Ltd
Current assignee: Jiekai Communications Shenzhen Co Ltd
Priority date: 2018-04-04
Filing date: 2019-03-21
Publication date: 2020-12-08
Anticipated expiration: 2039-03-21
Also published as: WO2019192330A1; CN112055991B; GB2572586A; GB201805524D0

Abstract

A method for retransmission enabling a wireless communication device to access services provided by a radio access network between a base station BS and a user equipment UE, wherein packet transmission occasions span resources of a plurality of control signaling procedures, comprises at least one of the following steps. The transmission block is repeated before buffering a transmission block, and the transmission of the buffered transmission block is repeated for a predetermined number of times until a packet is successfully decoded.

Description

Repetitive transmission method, apparatus and non-transitory computer readable medium

Technical Field

Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to wireless communication systems and in particular to apparatus and methods for a wireless communication device such as a User Equipment (UE) or mobile device to access a Radio Access Technology (RAT) or Radio Access Network (RAN), in particular, but not exclusively, to multi-tasking of UL transmissions with different reliabilities.

Background

Standards and techniques for wireless communication systems, such as third generation (3G) mobile telephones, are well known. Such 3G standards and techniques were developed by the third generation partnership project (3 GPP). Third generation mobile phones supporting mobile communications have been developed. Communication systems and networks have evolved towards broadband and mobile systems.

The 3GPP has developed a so-called Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, evolved universal mobile telecommunications system area radio access network (E-UTRAN), for mobile access networks, where one or more macro cells are supported by base stations called evolved nodes eNodeB or enb (evolved nodeb). Recently, LTE is being developed further towards so-called 5G or NR (new radio) systems, where one or more cells are supported by a base station called a gNB.

Ultra-reliable low-delay communications (URLLC) and some MTC (machine type communication) traffic require small data packets with very short delays (less than 1 ms). URLLC is likely to be used for plant control and requires very high reliability (packet loss rate less than 10)^-5). Data packets are typically delivered in a low frequency and sporadic manner.

To meet the short delay requirements of URLLC type traffic, the NR uses a grant-free (also called no-grant) uplink transmission.

Typically Uplink (UL) transmissions are scheduled by the base station, which uses the UL grant message to indicate to the UE which resources (time and frequency domain) can be used for the next UL transmission. This option is referred to as grant based UL transmission. For an unlicensed UL transmission, a set of resources is pre-allocated to the UE for a period of time, and the UE may begin its transmission without waiting for a downlink scheduling message. Figure 1 illustrates both (left: authorized; right: authorization-exempt).

For grant based UL transmission, there is at least one Round Trip Time (RTT) delay (scheduling request SR + UL grant) before the initial transmission. For unlicensed transmissions, the delay time for initial transmissions may be very short if the frequency with which reserved resources are idle is high enough.

In order to meet the high reliability requirement of URLLC type traffic, NR employs a retransmission mechanism, i.e. a packet can be repeatedly transmitted K times with the same or different Redundancy Versions (RVs), where K is configurable by higher layers.

The existing solution is shown in figure 2. The resources are grouped with a time period P configured by the higher layer, and the UE can start transmission from any one of the starting transmission occasions marked with arrows in the figure, but it must stop at the end of the time period P. The starting transmission timing may be different for different RV sequences, again depending on the configuration of the higher layers. The start occasion needs to be associated with an RV value of 0, e.g., the UE can start from any occasion with RV sequence { 0000 }, or from any odd occasion with { 0303 }, or from only the initial occasion with RV sequence { 0231 }.

If the configured resources are not shared by any other UE, the resources themselves may be used to identify the UE, and if two or more UEs are configured to share the same set of resources, different UEs may be distinguished by the demodulation reference signal (DMRS) sequence used. DMRS sequences are similarly configured by higher layers.

Multiple hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) processes may support UL grant-less transmission, and the HARQ process ID may be obtained from the protocols of RAN1# 91.

For UL transmissions without UL grant, the HARQ ID associated with K repetitions of a Transport Block (TB) is derived by the following equation:

HARQ Process ID＝floor(X/UL-TWG-periodicity)mod UL-TWG-numbHARQproc

wherein X is (SFN Slot Perframe SymbolPerSlot + Slot _ Index _ In _ SF < SymbolPerSlot + Symbol _ Index _ Slot)

X is the symbol index of the first transmission opportunity of the occurring batch Repetition (Bundle Repetition). SFN is the system frame number, Slot PerFrame is the number of time slots per frame, symbol Perslot is the number of symbols per time slot, and other indexes are various Index values.

The above formula can be explained with reference to fig. 3 as follows. UL-TWG-periodicity is the period P in the OS (number of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbols), UL-TWG-numbharq proc is the total number of configured HARQ processes, X is basically an absolute symbol index, and each HARQ process has fixed resources in the time domain.

Fig. 3 illustrates yet another problem. When a Packet #1 is received from an upper layer, only one (or any small number) of 2-symbol mini-slots remain in the current time period P after a processing time, and thus the UE can transmit a Packet using only the mini-slots. Assuming that another HARQ process has another Packet #2, the Packet #2 may be transmitted with all 3 mini-slots of 6 symbols. It is apparent that Packet #2 is more reliable than Packet # 1. If Packet #1 cannot be decoded, the gNB can switch the UE to grant mode by scheduling dedicated resources and a Negative Acknowledgement (NACK) indication. This has two disadvantages:

1) the delay of Packet #1 increases, the probability of exceeding the 1ms limit increases significantly, especially in Time Division Duplex (TDD) mode, the NACK indication needs to be delayed to the next Downlink (DL) symbol;

2) since the reliability of Packet #1 is low, it increases the reliability requirement of the Downlink Control Information (DCI), which results in higher control signaling overhead. It should be noted that the product of the reliability of the initial transmission batch (including the number of repetitions) multiplied by the DCI reliability should ideally be well below 10^-5。

One remaining problem is uplink channel efficiency. With the current solution as described above, when one configured resource is not used (all UEs have no data to transmit), it is wasted. A conflict may occur when two or more UEs want to access the resource simultaneously. It is known that channel waste and channel collision can be traded off, but cannot be achieved simultaneously, e.g. when the amount of channel resources is infinite, collisions can be avoided completely, but the amount of wasted channel resources is also infinite.

Fig. 4 shows a plot of collision probability versus channel usage. For URLLC type traffic, very high reliability requires very low collision probability, which in turn results in very low channel usage, e.g. 10^-3Corresponds to a channel usage of 4.5%, which means that 95.5% of the channel resources are not used, but wasted.

Several possible improvements are proposed below. For simplicity, URLLC is used as an example for short-time transmissions and eMBB is used as an example for long-time transmissions, but it is noted that the transmission duration is configurable for any traffic.

A first scheme (1) suggests a semi-static multiplexing, where resources are pre-allocated to URLLC UEs that access the resources without UL grants (i.e., no grants), and the eMBB UEs are dynamically scheduled by two possible designs: (a) resources not pre-allocated to URLLC UEs may be scheduled to eMBB UEs (e.g., FDD); and (b) all resources, including resources pre-allocated to URLLC UEs, may be scheduled to eMBB UEs, and in this design, URLLC UEs transmit at higher power than eMBB UEs.

The second proposal (2) proposes two types of dynamic multiplexing. Firstly: (a) the eMBB UEs performing the tasks and the resources are pre-allocated to URLLC UEs accessing these resources without UL grant, the eMBB UEs must avoid interfering with the URLLC UEs according to the indication of the gNB. As shown in fig. 5. (b) URLLC UEs and resources performing tasks are dynamically scheduled to URLLC UEs and eMBB UEs, i.e. support for UL multiplexing is provided in a way that does not distinguish UE types.

Technical problem

None of the proposed improvements described above solves the pending problem for a number of reasons. Thus, the problem addressed by the present invention is generally to seek solutions to some or all of the problems in the art. In particular, the present invention seeks to address at least one of the following problems: increasing eMB UE power consumption; increasing control signaling overhead; when the corresponding transmission is not repeated enough because the arrival time of the packets is random, the reliability of some packets is influenced; when URLLC UEs are located in cell edge areas, the inter-cell interference increases when URLLC UEs use enhanced output power.

In view of the above, the present specification seeks to address at least some of the main problems in the art.

Disclosure of Invention

This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the detailed description. This abstract is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.

A first aspect of the present invention proposes a method for enabling a wireless communication device to access a service provided by a Radio Access Network (RAN) between a base station BS and a user equipment UE, wherein a transmission occasion of a packet spans time domain resources of a plurality of control signaling procedures. The steps are as follows. A Transport Block (TB) is first repeated before it is cached. The buffered transport block is then repeatedly transmitted a predetermined number of times until the packet is successfully decoded.

In a preferred embodiment, the step of repeating the transmission occurs during a transmission cycle of the transport block.

In a preferred embodiment, the step of repeating the transmission is performed in batches, each batch being a set of transmission conditions configured by an upper layer.

In a preferred embodiment, the step of repeating the transmission includes at least one of: configuring repetitions at a Base Station (BS); configuring, at a User Equipment (UE), repetitions; and configuring repetitions based on a power control level.

In a preferred embodiment, further comprising marking the start, end or repeat with a flag.

In a preferred embodiment, different ones of the signatures use different ones of the demodulation reference signal sequences.

In a preferred embodiment, there is a correspondence between the value of the flag and the demodulation reference signal sequence.

In a preferred embodiment, the correspondence is configured by the BS.

In a preferred embodiment, a different one of the flags is indicated by a separately coded indicator.

In a preferred embodiment, the separately encoded indicator is communicated with each transmission.

In a preferred embodiment, the step of repeating the transport block includes at least one of: configuring a repetition at the BS; configuring a repetition at the UE; and configuring repetition according to the number of the remaining opportunities in a batch; wherein the batch is a set of transmission opportunities configured by upper layers.

In a preferred embodiment, the radio access network is a new type of wireless/5G network.

A second aspect of the present invention proposes an apparatus, operating the functionality of a UE or a BS, comprising a processor, a memory unit and a communication interface, wherein the processor, the memory unit and the communication interface are configured to perform the method of the first aspect.

A third aspect of the invention proposes a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon computer readable instructions for execution by a processor to perform the method of the first aspect.

Drawings

Further details, aspects and embodiments of the invention will be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings. Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, reference numerals have been added to the corresponding figures only to facilitate understanding, and have no other purpose.

Fig. 1 is a simplified diagram showing grant-based and non-grant based transmissions.

Fig. 2 is a simplified diagram showing transmission repetition.

Fig. 3 is a simplified diagram showing packets in a number of HARQ processes.

Fig. 4 is a graph of collision probability versus channel usage.

Fig. 5 is a simplified diagram showing possible reinforced portions.

FIG. 6 is a simplified diagram of resource overlap according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 7 is a simplified diagram of transmitting a packet interleaving resource according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a simplified diagram of a start flag according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 9 is a simplified diagram of a transport block TB repetition according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 10 is a simplified diagram of the effect of TB repetition according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

Those skilled in the art will recognize and appreciate that the specifics of the described examples are merely illustrative of some embodiments and that the teachings described herein are applicable in a variety of alternative settings.

The present invention relates to a wireless communication system, and more particularly, to a method and system for supporting UL multiplexing through packet repetition and additional power control.

The invention discloses a UL multiplexing method supporting different transmission duration. For short duration transmissions, a set of resources is pre-allocated, the UE accesses the resources without UL grant, and the transmission may be repeated K times, where K is upper layer configurable. The long duration transmission may be scheduled on a portion that overlaps fully or partially with the resources previously allocated to the short duration transmission. Short duration transmissions may be transmitted by batch repetition (burst repetition) and/or power control. One or more parameters for batch repetition may be indicated by the gNB or selected by the UE.

As shown in fig. 6, the resource configurations of URLLC UEs and eMBB UEs may overlap each other. The transmission of the eMBB UE is thus likely to fail, but can still be recovered by the HARQ retransmission mechanism, whereas the transmission of the URLLC UE is expected to have a very high reliability and at least one of the following two enhancements, e.g. enhanced power and more repetition times, can be considered.

It is well known that power increase may cause severe inter-cell interference and therefore can only be used when the UE is close to the gNB. When the boosted power cannot be used, further repeat transmissions may be considered. The relevant parameters, i.e. how many batches to repeat, can be obtained in two possible ways, one decided by the UE from DL measurements and the other indicated by the gNB from UL measurements and/or DL measurement reports.

For the decision of the UE, at least two parameters may be considered, one being the signal strength of the serving cell, which may be used to estimate the distance from the UE to the gNB. This is not guaranteed to be accurate because the signal strength may be weak when the UE is close to the gNB but inside the building, or strong when the UE is far away from the gNB but has a line-of-sight propagation path with the gNB. Another parameter is the signal strength difference between the serving cell and any neighboring cells. Generally, when the UE is close to the cell edge area, the signal strength difference is small. Combining these two parameters, the following may occur.

TABLE 1

In the case of the bulk repetition (bundle repetition), the Transport Block (TB) may be repeatedly transmitted a plurality of times in each short period P, and furthermore, all transmission opportunities in the period P may be further integrated to be repeatedly performed in a bulk manner, so as to improve reliability. Referring to table 1, in zone a, the boost power and one batch repeat may achieve the required reliability. In the B region, enhancing power collocation bulk repetition helps to achieve required reliability, and when the configured bulk repetition number is insufficient, the UE may consider the repeated configuration bulk repetition. In areas C and D, power cannot be increased and the UE can only use batch repetition. The threshold between different regions may be configured by the gNB.

For the gNB indication, the gNB may make a determination based at least on DL measurements and UL measurements of Sounding Reference Signals (SRS) transmitted by the UE as reported by the UE. The boost power may be indicated in a normal power control procedure and the number of batch repetitions may be indicated by a Radio Resource Control (RRC) reconfiguration procedure. Alternatively, the number of batch repetitions may also be associated with the indicated power control level, and the UE may obtain the number of batch repetitions from the indicated output power level. In principle, when higher power is indicated, a greater number of batch repetitions is required. Alternatively, the number of batch repetitions may be indicated in the DCI. As mentioned previously, two types of unlicensed transmission are supported, the first type being that all parameters are pre-configured and cannot be changed until the next configuration; the second type is that all parameters are pre-configured, but some parameters may be modified by DCI. The number of repetitions may be included in the second type of unlicensed transmission.

For the problem shown in fig. 3, the present invention provides the configuration shown in fig. 7. The batch size (i.e., period P) is reduced to 2 OFDM symbols, but may be repeated 3 times in a batch, and thus a packet may be transmitted up to 3 times in total, as in the best case of the solution. The invention shown in fig. 7 has a higher reliability for Packet #1 than the solution shown in fig. 3. As described above, the number of batch repetitions may be indicated by the gNB or may be determined by the UE.

As shown in fig. 7, the transmission of one packet spans the time domain resources of multiple HARQ processes, which confuses the gNB when determining the HARQ process for each received packet. Furthermore, there is a risk that the gNB combines the transmissions of different packets in the same soft combining. The HARQ process is essentially a control signaling procedure that is a combination of high speed forward error correction coding and ARQ error control.

A "stop flag" may be introduced for transmission with the URLLC packet and may be obtained prior to channel decoding. A "1" indicates that this is not the final batch, and a "0" indicates that this is the final batch. Upon receiving the flag, the gNB may combine the first three received transmissions, including the transmission with a flag value of "0". Assuming that in case of the gNB configuration, the gNB knows the number of batch repetitions (3 in this example), otherwise the gNB can combine all received transmissions backwards in time until the last batch (not included) has a flag value of "0" or no DMRS is detected (whichever is the last). In addition, the gNB may obtain the HARQ process ID from the bulk with flag value "0" in the same manner as specified, i.e. the HARQ process ID is decided by the bulk time domain position with flag value "0". It should be appreciated that this approach is similar to obtaining HARQ process IDs from the first bulk of the same packet, since the total number of repetitions of the bulk is known to the gNB.

Alternatively, a "start flag" may be used, which, unlike the example in fig. 7, may be performed as shown in fig. 8. A "1" indicates that this is the first batch, and a "0" indicates that this is not the first batch. The gNB will attempt to detect the lot using "flag-1" and may also attempt to decode the lot, and if it fails, the gNB may make another attempt by merging the next lot with "flag-0"; this process may be repeated until either:

1. the packet is successfully decoded

DMRS detection no bulk detected (i.e. no signal received);

3. detecting a batch of identical UEs, including "flag ═ 1" (i.e., new packet)

As with the existing standard, the HARQ process ID may be obtained from a start batch (flag ═ 1) time domain position, e.g., as shown in fig. 7, the start batch of Packet #1 is sent at the timing associated with HARQ process #0, so Packet #1 belongs to HARQ process # 0.

One approach to the indicator is to use different demodulation reference signal (DMRS) sequences, one for indicating value "1" and the other for indicating value "0", as shown in fig. 8, and blindly detect the DMRS sequences on the gbb side. This means that when establishing a connection using a URLLC UE, the gNB can configure two sequences for the UE, and either sequence can be used as the UE identity.

In addition to using the DMRS sequence to indicate the flag, it may be represented by a separately coded 1-bit indicator. This indicator is encoded separately and transmitted together with the URLLC data.

In an alternative embodiment, Transport Block (TB) repetition may or may not be used with bulk repetition, and fig. 9 illustrates TB repetition. When a packet is received, it is prepared as a transport block TB, and then repeated several times, and finally all TBs of all packets (including the repeated TBs) are stored in the buffers of the plurality of HARQ processes. The buffered TBs are transmitted in a specified manner when no bulk repeats are configured, or in the manner suggested above when bulk repeats are configured. The number of repetitions of the TB may be configured by the gNB or may be determined by the UE in the same manner as batch repetition.

The number of repetitions of different TBs does not exclude the possibility of being different, even related to individual cases. For example, a certain number of repetitions can only be triggered when a packet arrives, TB may be repeated if the number of remaining times from packet to the end of the time period P (excluding processing time) is less than a predefined threshold, otherwise no or reduced repetitions are performed.

Referring to fig. 10, if we assume that the TB repetition number is 2, the same result as the example of fig. 3 can be obtained. The delay is slightly increased compared to fig. 3, but the reliability problem is solved. When a packet is successfully received more than once, the recipient's L2 will retain a packet and discard all other packets that are repeated.

The results of the present invention have many advantages, including but not limited to the following. The eMBB UE does not need to monitor the DL at the small slot level, thereby avoiding increasing the power consumption of the UE. The eMBB UE may transmit at normal power, thereby improving spectral efficiency. This avoids the need to increase the output power in the cell edge area to prevent an increase in inter-cell interference. URLLC UEs may transmit repeatedly in batches to achieve the required reliability. Other advantages will be apparent and are provided only by way of example.

The present invention is applicable to other technical situations where the same or similar problems are encountered and the above-described solution will be applied, including for example UCI (uplink control information) with additional reliability requirements.

Although not shown in detail, any device or devices forming part of a network may include at least a processor, a memory unit, and a communication interface, wherein the processor unit, the memory unit, and the communication interface are configured to perform the methods of the various embodiments of the present invention, further options and alternatives of which are described below.

Embodiments of the present invention, and in particular the signal processing functions of the gNB and UE, may be implemented using computing systems or architectures known to those skilled in the relevant art. Such as a desktop, laptop or notebook computer, handheld computing device (PDA, cell phone, palmtop, etc.), mainframe, server, client, or any other type of special or general purpose computing device (as may be desirable or appropriate for a given application or environment) may be used. A computing system may include one or more processors, which may be implemented using a general-purpose or special-purpose processing engine such as a microprocessor, microcontroller or other control module.

The computing system may also include a main memory, such as a Random Access Memory (RAM) or other dynamic memory, for storing information and instructions to be executed by the processor. Such main memory may also be used for storing temporary variables or other intermediate information during execution of instructions to be executed by the processor. The computing system may also include a Read Only Memory (ROM) or other static storage device for storing static information and instructions for the processor.

The computing system may also include an information storage system that may include, for example, a media drive and a removable storage interface. The media drive may include a drive or other mechanism to support fixed or removable storage media, such as a hard disk drive, a floppy disk drive, a magnetic tape drive, an optical disk drive, a compact disk drive (CD) or Digital Video Drive (DVD) read-write drive (R or RW), or other removable or fixed media drive. The storage media may include, for example, a hard disk, floppy disk, magnetic tape, optical disk, CD or DVD, or other fixed or removable medium that is read by and written to by a media drive. The storage media may include a computer-readable storage medium having stored therein particular computer software or data.

In alternative embodiments, the information storage system may include other similar components for allowing computer programs or other instructions or data to be loaded into the computing system. Such components may include, for example, removable storage units and interfaces such as program cartridges and cartridge interfaces, removable storage (e.g., flash memory or other removable memory modules) and memory slots, and other removable storage units and interfaces that allow software and data to be transferred from the removable storage unit to the computing system.

The computing system may also include a communication interface. Such a communication interface may be used to allow software and data to be transferred between the computing system and external devices. Examples of a communication interface may include a modem, a network interface (e.g., an ethernet or other NIC card), a communication port (e.g., a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port), a PCMCIA slot and card, etc. Software and data transferred via the communications interface are in the form of electronic signals, electromagnetic, optical, or other signals capable of being received by the communications interface medium.

In this specification, the terms "computer program product," "computer-readable medium," and the like may be used generally to refer to tangible media, such as memory, storage devices, or storage units. These and other forms of computer-readable media may store one or more instructions for use by a processor comprising a computer system, to cause the processor to perform specified operations. These instructions, when executed, are generally referred to as "computer program code" (which may be grouped in the form of computer programs or other groupings), enable the computing system to perform functions of embodiments of the present invention. Note that the code may directly cause the processor to perform specified operations, be compiled to perform the specified operations, and/or be combined with other software, hardware, and/or firmware elements (e.g., libraries for performing standard functions) to perform the specified operations.

The non-transitory computer readable medium may comprise at least one of the group of: hard disk, CD-ROM, optical storage device, magnetic storage device, read-only memory, programmable read-only memory, erasable programmable read-only memory, EPROM, electrically erasable programmable read-only memory and flash memory

In embodiments where the components are implemented using software, the software may be stored in a computer-readable medium and loaded into the computing system using, for example, a removable storage drive. When executed by a processor in a computer system, the control module (in this example, software instructions or executable computer program code) causes the processor to perform the functions of the invention as described herein.

Furthermore, the inventive concept is applicable to any circuit that performs a signal processing function within a network component. It is further contemplated that a semiconductor manufacturer may use the inventive concept in the design of a stand-alone device such as a microcontroller or Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) of a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) and/or any other subsystem component, for example.

It will be appreciated that the above description, for clarity, describes embodiments of the invention with reference to a single processing logic. The inventive concept may, however, be equally implemented by a plurality of different functional units and processors to provide the signal processing functions. Hence, references to specific functional units are only to be seen as references to suitable means for providing the described functionality rather than indicative of a strict logical or physical structure or organization.

Aspects of the invention may be implemented in any suitable form including hardware, software, firmware or any combination of these. The invention may optionally be implemented at least partly as computer software running on one or more data processors and/or digital signal processors or configurable modular components such as FPGA devices. Thus, the components and elements of an embodiment of the invention may be physically, functionally and logically implemented in any suitable way. Indeed the functionality may be implemented in a single unit, in a plurality of units or as part of other functional units.

Although the present invention has been described in connection with some embodiments, it is not intended to be limited to the specific form set forth herein. Rather, the scope of the invention is limited only by the attached claims. Additionally, although a feature may appear to be described in connection with particular embodiments, one skilled in the art would recognize that various features of the described embodiments may be combined in accordance with the invention. In the claims, the term "comprising" does not exclude the presence of other elements or steps.

Furthermore, although individually listed, a plurality of means, elements or method steps may be implemented by e.g. a single unit or processor. Furthermore, although individual features may be included in different claims, these may possibly advantageously be combined, and the inclusion in different claims does not imply that a combination of features is not feasible and/or advantageous. Furthermore, the inclusion of a feature in one category of claims does not imply a limitation to this category but rather indicates that the feature is equally applicable to other claim categories as appropriate.

Furthermore, the order of features in the claims does not imply any specific order in which the features must be performed and in particular the order of individual steps in a method claim does not imply that the steps must be performed in this order. Rather, the steps may be performed in any suitable order. Furthermore, singular references do not exclude a plurality. Thus, references to "a", "an", "first", "second", etc. do not preclude a plurality.

Although the present invention has been described in connection with some embodiments, it is not intended to be limited to the specific form set forth herein. Rather, the scope of the invention is limited only by the attached claims. Additionally, although a feature may appear to be described in connection with particular embodiments, one skilled in the art would recognize that various features of the described embodiments may be combined in accordance with the invention. In the claims, the term "comprising" or "comprises" does not exclude the presence of other elements.

Claims

1. A retransmission method for enabling a wireless communication device to access services provided by a radio access network, RAN, between a base station, BS, and a user equipment, UE, wherein a packet is transmitted at a time spanning resources of a plurality of control signaling procedures, the method comprising:

repeating the transport block TB before buffering the transport block TB; and

and repeating the transmission of the buffered transmission block TB for a preset number of times until the packet is successfully decoded.

2. The repetitive transmission method of claim 1, wherein the step of repeating the transmission occurs in a transmission period of the transport block.

3. The repetitive transmission method of claim 1 or 2, wherein:

the step of repeatedly transmitting is performed in a batch manner; and

a batch is a set of transmission opportunities configured by upper layers.

4. A method of repeated transmission as claimed in any of claims 1 to 3, wherein the step of repeated transmission comprises at least one of:

configuring a repetition at a base station BS;

configuring a repetition at a user equipment, UE; and

configuring repetitions based on the power control level.

5. The repetitive transmission method of any one of claims 1-4, further comprising marking the beginning, end or repetition with a flag.

6. The repetitive transmission method of claim 5, wherein different demodulation reference signal sequences are used for different flags.

7. The repetitive transmission method according to claim 6, wherein there is a correspondence between the value of the flag and the demodulation reference signal sequence.

8. The repetitive transmission method according to claim 7, wherein the correspondence relationship is configured by the BS.

9. The repetitive transmission method of any one of claims 5-8, wherein different flags are indicated by separately coded indicators.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the separately coded indicator is carried by each transmission.

11. The repetitive transmission method of any one of claims 1-10, the step of repeating the transport block comprising at least one of:

configuring a repetition at the BS;

configuring a repetition at the UE; and

configuring repetition according to the number of the remaining opportunities in a batch; wherein the batch is a set of transmission opportunities configured by upper layers.

12. The repeat transmission method of any of claims 1-11 wherein the radio access network is a new type of radio/5G network.

13. An apparatus, operating the functionality of a base station or user equipment, comprising a processor, a memory unit and a communication interface, wherein the processor, the memory unit and the communication interface are configured to perform the repeat transmission method of any of claims 1-12.

14. A non-transitory computer readable medium having computer readable instructions stored thereon for execution by a processor to perform the repeat transmission method of any of claims 1-12.