CN117676665A

CN117676665A - Method for signal forwarding and related device

Info

Publication number: CN117676665A
Application number: CN202210961953.9A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 颜矛; 宋兴华; 刘凤威
Original assignee: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Current assignee: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Priority date: 2022-08-11
Filing date: 2022-08-11
Publication date: 2024-03-08
Also published as: WO2024032514A1

Abstract

The application provides a method and a related device for signal forwarding, wherein the method comprises the following steps: the relay device receives first indication information from the network device, wherein the first indication information is used for indicating a threshold value of signal quality, and the threshold value is used for determining a signal of which a measurement result needs to be reported; the relay device performs measurement based on the received signals, and reports a measurement report corresponding to the signal with the receiving quality reaching the threshold value to the network device, so that the network device can conveniently determine the wave beam of the return link according to the measurement report. Because the measurement report is generated based on the signal of which the signal quality reaches the threshold, the beam of the determined backhaul link can enable the relay device to obtain better receiving quality for the signal sent by the network device, so that the relay device can multiplex the signal sent by the network device for the direct connection terminal in a larger proportion to meet the coverage requirement of the relay device, and the number of the signal additionally sent by the network device for the relay device can be reduced, thereby saving the cost.

Description

Method for signal forwarding and related device

Technical Field

The present disclosure relates to the field of wireless communications, and more particularly, to a method and related apparatus for signal forwarding.

Background

With the development of wireless communication technology, beamforming technology is widely used. The beam forming technology is used for limiting the energy of the transmission signal in a certain beam direction, so that the signal receiving efficiency is increased, the transmission range of the wireless signal is enlarged, the signal interference is reduced, the higher communication efficiency is achieved, and the higher network capacity is obtained. When the beam forming technology is adopted, one of the network equipment and the terminal equipment can send a reference signal for the other to measure, so that a beam with better quality is obtained.

In some scenarios, the distance between the network device and the terminal device is relatively long, and the corresponding path loss is relatively high, which results in a decrease in communication quality, or even a failure of the terminal device to directly communicate with the network device. One known approach is to use relay devices to facilitate communication between the network device and the terminal device. For example, in downlink transmission, the relay device may amplify a signal received from the network device and forward the amplified signal to the terminal device; in uplink transmission, the relay device may amplify a signal received from the terminal device and forward the amplified signal to the network device.

In a communication system in which a relay device is introduced, the relay device needs to determine a beam with better quality from the transmission beams, and then amplify and forward the beam. This requires receiving a sufficient number of reference signals from the transmitting end for beam measurement. In order to meet the coverage requirement of the relay device, the transmitting end may need to additionally transmit the reference signal for the relay device, which increases the overhead of the reference signal with the increase of the number of relay devices.

Disclosure of Invention

The application provides a method and a related device for signal forwarding, aiming at reducing the overhead of network equipment.

In a first aspect, a method for signal forwarding is provided, where the method may be applied to a relay device, and may be performed by the relay device, or may also be performed by a component (such as a chip, a system on a chip, etc.) configured in the relay device, or may also be implemented by a logic module or software capable of implementing all or part of the functions of the relay device, where the application is not limited.

Illustratively, the method includes: receiving first indication information from network equipment, wherein the first indication information is used for indicating a threshold value of signal receiving quality, and the threshold value is used for determining a signal of which a measurement result needs to be reported; measuring based on the received signals, generating at least one measurement result of at least one signal, wherein the at least one signal is a signal of which the receiving quality reaches the threshold value in the received signals, and the measurement result of a first signal in the at least one signal comprises one or more of the following: the method comprises the steps of identifying a first signal, identifying a network equipment side wave beam used for sending the first signal, identifying a relay backhaul side wave beam used for receiving the first signal, information of the receiving quality of the first signal and identifying a relay access side wave beam used for forwarding the first signal; wherein the first signal is any one of the at least one signal; transmitting a measurement of the at least one signal, the measurement of the at least one signal being used to determine a beam of a backhaul link, the beam of the backhaul link comprising: and relaying the backhaul side beam and/or the network device side beam.

Wherein the threshold value is a threshold value of signal quality, which is a signal available for forwarding by the relay device or a signal proposed for forwarding by the relay device, which may be referred to as a forwarding signal. The signal quality may refer to the quality of the forwarded signal. The quality of the forwarded signal may be the receiving quality of the signal by the relay device when the relay device receives, amplifies and/or otherwise processes and forwards the signal on the forwarding link, for example, the signal-to-noise ratio of the baseband received signal of the relay controller; as another example, the power spectral density of the received signal of the relay forwarding link; for another example, the total power of the received signal of the relay forwarding link; as another example, the amplification gain required by the relay forwarding link, and so on.

Based on the threshold value of the signal quality, the relay device may determine a signal for which a measurement result needs to be reported. The measurement result of at least one signal reported by the relay device may be the measurement result of all signals with the receiving quality reaching the threshold value in the signals received by the relay device, or may be the measurement result of a part of signals with the receiving quality reaching the threshold value in the signals received by the relay device, which is not limited in this application.

The measurement of the at least one signal may be used to determine a beam of the backhaul link. Here, the backhaul link is a link between the network device and the relay device. The beams of the backhaul link include a relay backhaul side beam and a network device side beam. In downlink transmission, the network device may transmit signals via a beam of the backhaul link, and the relay device may receive signals via a beam of the backhaul link. At this time, the network device side beam is a transmission beam, and the relay backhaul side beam is a reception beam.

Since the network device may determine the network device side beam and/or the relay backhaul side beam for the next signal transmission according to the measurement result of the at least one signal reported by the relay device, the measurement result of the at least one signal determined by the threshold may affect the signal or the beam transmitted by the network device next time. For example, if the at least one signal includes a first signal, the network device may continue to transmit the first signal the next time it is transmitted, or transmit signals based on a beam direction using the first signal, or transmit signals using a beam that is closer to the beam direction of the first signal, and so on.

Therefore, in the embodiment of the application, by configuring the threshold value, the relay device can report the measurement result of the signal with the signal quality reaching the threshold value in the received signal, and the network device can adjust the beam direction of the signal transmitted next time according to the received measurement result, so that more signals can be transmitted by the network device to meet the forwarding requirement of the relay device. In this way, the number of signals configured by the network device for the relay device can be reduced, and the additional overhead caused by introducing the relay device is reduced, thereby being beneficial to improving the network efficiency. In addition, because more wave beams can be used for communication with the terminal below the relay device and the terminal of the direct network device in the signals sent by the network device, the space freedom degree of the network device in scheduling is improved.

Illustratively, since the signal quality may be measured by the received power, the threshold value of the signal quality may be specifically a threshold value of the reference signal received power (reference signal reception power, RSRP). Correspondingly, reaching a threshold value may mean that the RSRP is greater than or equal to the threshold value.

The reference signals may include, but are not limited to, synchronization signal blocks (synchronization signal block, SSB), channel state information reference signals (channel state information reference signal, CSI-RS), sounding reference signals (sounding reference signal, SRS), and the like.

Optionally, the measurement result of the first signal further includes: a transmission configuration indication (transmission configuration indicator, TCI) (or TCI state) for configuring a quasi co-location (QCL) relationship of the first signal and/or QCL information of the first signal.

Since the transmission beam of the network device can be deduced by the identity of the first signal, the TCI state or QCL information, the identity of the beam at the network device for transmitting the first signal can also be replaced with at least one of the identity of the first signal, the TCI (or TCI state) for configuring the QCL relationship of the first signal, and the QCL information of the first signal.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain possible implementation manners of the first aspect, the at least one signal includes all signals of which the reception quality reaches the threshold value.

The relay device can report the measurement results of all signals with the receiving quality reaching the threshold value in the received signals to the network device, thereby being convenient for the network device to obtain comprehensive wave beam information and further determining the wave beam of the return link more reasonably.

With reference to the first aspect, in some possible implementation manners of the first aspect, the first indication information is further used to indicate a maximum value of a number of signals that need to report the measurement result and/or a number of signals that need to report the measurement result.

By indicating the number of signals of which the measurement results need to be reported, the relay device can report the receiving condition of a part of signals to the network device, so that the network device can adjust the beam direction of the signals sent next time according to the receiving condition of the relay device on the signals.

In the signals received by the relay device, there may be some signals whose reception quality is not good, and the measurement reports of these signals are of little reference value to the beam direction of the next transmitted signal by the network device, and thus are not necessarily reported. By indicating the maximum value of the number of signals of which the measurement results need to be reported, unnecessary transmission quantity possibly brought by the relay equipment for reporting all the measurement reports of all the received signals can be avoided, so that resources are reasonably utilized.

One possible implementation is that the transmission resources of the received signal correspond to a plurality of component carriers (component carrier, CC).

In other words, the plurality of signals received by the relay device may be transmitted on different frequency domain resources.

Since the signal received by the relay device is a part or all of the signals transmitted by the network device, transmission resources of the signals transmitted by the network device also correspond to a plurality of different CCs. That is, signals transmitted by the network device may be carried on different frequency domain resources.

Further, the method further comprises: receiving resource configuration information from a network device, wherein the resource configuration information indicates CCs respectively corresponding to transmission resources of a plurality of signals sent by the network device; the measurement report of the first signal further includes an identification of a CC corresponding to the transmission resource of the first signal.

It should be appreciated that the first signal is any one of the at least one signal for which the signal quality reaches a threshold value. Thus, the measurement report for each of the at least one individual signal may include an identification of the CC for which the transmission resource corresponds.

The network device may instruct the relay device to send the CCs corresponding to the transmission resources for carrying the signals respectively through the resource configuration information, so that the relay device may report the CCs corresponding to the transmission resources of the signals respectively when reporting the measurement result. Therefore, the network equipment can be conveniently and reasonably configured for the subsequently transmitted signals.

Another possible implementation is that the received signal is from a plurality of sets of transmission reception point (transmission reception point, TRP) resources.

In other words, the plurality of signals received by the relay device may be transmitted on different spatial resources. Since different TRPs may be associated with different sets of resources (e.g., reference signal resource sets), one possible implementation of the received signal from multiple TRPs is that the transmission resources of the received signal are from multiple resource sets.

Since the signal received by the relay device is part or all of the signal sent by the network device, the transmission resources of the signal sent by the network device are also from multiple different resource sets, or the network device may control multiple different TRP sent signals. That is, signals sent by the network device may be carried on different spatial resources.

Further, the method further comprises: receiving resource configuration information from the network device, where the resource configuration information is used to instruct TRPs (or resource sets) corresponding to transmission resources of a plurality of signals sent by the network device; the measurement report of the first signal further includes an identification of a TRP (or resource set) corresponding to a transmission resource of the first signal.

It should be appreciated that the first signal is any one of the at least one signal for which the signal quality reaches a threshold value. Thus, the measurement report for each of the at least one signal may include an identification of the TRP (or set of resources) to which its transmission resource corresponds.

The network device may instruct the relay device to the TRP (or the resource set) corresponding to the transmission resources for carrying each signal through the resource configuration information, so that the relay device also reports the TRP (or the resource set) corresponding to the transmission resources of each signal when reporting the measurement result. Therefore, the network equipment can be conveniently and reasonably configured for the subsequently transmitted signals.

It should be understood that the two possible implementations described above may be implemented alone or in combination, and are not limited in this application.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain possible implementation manners of the first aspect, after the sending the measurement result of the at least one signal, the method further includes: receiving second indication information from the network device, the second indication information being used to indicate a beam of the backhaul link; receiving M signals from a network device based on the beam of the backhaul link; and forwarding the M signals to terminal equipment.

The M signals are configured based on measurements of the at least one signal.

After the network device receives the measurement result from the relay device, the network device may determine the beam of the backhaul link, and notify the relay device of the determined beam of the backhaul link through the second indication information. The network device may also configure the next transmitted signal based on the determined beam of the backhaul link. By analogy, the network device may send M signals for forwarding by the relay device based on the measurement results reported by the relay device one or more times.

It should be understood that the M signals may also be received by a direct connection terminal of the network device, which is not limited in this application. It should also be understood that the network device may also transmit signals other than the above-mentioned M signals, and the number of signals transmitted by the network device is not limited in this application.

With reference to the first aspect, in some possible implementation manners of the first aspect, the M signals include a second signal and a third signal, the resource for transmitting the second signal corresponds to a first CC and a first time, the resource for transmitting the third signal corresponds to a second CC and a second time, and the relay access side beam for forwarding the second signal on the first CC is different from the relay access side beam for forwarding the third signal on the second CC.

In other words, the resources for transmitting the M signals include resources corresponding to the first CC and resources corresponding to the second CC, the relay access side beam for forwarding the signal on the first CC is different from the relay access side beam for forwarding the signal on the second CC, and the time for forwarding the signal on the first CC is different from the time for forwarding the signal on the second CC.

The transmission resources of the M signals received by the relay device may correspond to different CCs and different times, that is, the M signals received by the relay device may occupy different frequency domain resources and time domain resources. The relay device may forward to different beam directions based on signals received on different frequency domain resources and frequency domain resources.

Since the number of terminal devices connected to the relay device may not be large in practical applications, it is not necessary to allocate excessive resources to the relay device. If the signal forwarded by the relay device is all frequency domain or space domain resources, the coverage area of the relay device is traversed, and relatively large overhead is brought. Therefore, in order to further reduce the overhead of the network device, M signals configured for the relay device for forwarding may be respectively carried and transmitted on different time domain resources and different frequency domain resources.

For example, the second signal and the third signal of the M signals may be transmitted on different time-frequency resources, i.e. the second signal and the third signal may be transmitted staggered in time domain and in frequency domain.

As already mentioned, the relay device may report the measurement result of the signal with the reception quality reaching the threshold value to the network device. To obtain better reception quality, the network device may transmit signals carried on different time domain resources and different frequency domain resources using beams corresponding to the signals that have been measured and have better reception quality. In other words, these beams may be reused for transmitting the above-mentioned M signals.

Further, the relay backhaul side beam for receiving the second signal and the third signal is the same, or the relay backhaul side beam for receiving the second signal and the third signal is different.

In other words, the relay device may receive signals on different CCs and different times by using the same backhaul beam, or may receive signals on different backhaul beams. For example, the relay device may receive the second signal and the third signal using the same backhaul beam, or may also receive the second signal and the third signal using different backhaul beams. The present application is not limited in this regard. The backhaul side beam used by the relay device to receive the second signal and the third signal may be configured by the network device with the second indication information.

With reference to the first aspect, in some possible implementation manners of the first aspect, the M signals include a second signal and a third signal, the resource for transmitting the second signal corresponds to a first TRP and a first time, the resource for transmitting the third signal corresponds to a second TRP and a second time, and the relay access side beam for forwarding the second signal is different from the relay access side beam for forwarding the third signal, and the relay backhaul side beam for receiving the second signal is different from the relay backhaul side beam for receiving the third signal.

The transmission resources of the second signal and the third signal correspond to different TRPs, i.e. the second signal and the third signal may also occupy different spatial resources. Since the set of resources may be associated with TRP, one possible implementation is that the transmission resources of the second signal and the transmission resources of the third signal are from different sets of resources. By corresponding the transmission resources of the M signals to different CCs or different TRPs, the signals of the different CCs or the different TRPs are forwarded by different relay access side beams, so that coverage is provided for different coverage areas.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain possible implementation manners of the first aspect, the second indication information is further used to indicate at least one of the following: the CC corresponding to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, the time corresponding to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, the TRP (or resource set) corresponding to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, and the access side beam for forwarding each of the M signals.

As mentioned above, the network device may indicate the beam of the backhaul link, i.e., the network device side beam for transmitting each of the M signals and/or the relay backhaul side beam for receiving each of the M signals, by the second indication information. The network device may further additionally indicate, through the second indication information, one or more of CCs, time, TRP (or resource set), and access side beams corresponding to transmission resources of the M signals, respectively. Because all the above items can be determined by the network device according to the measurement result reported by the relay device, the relay device can obtain better receiving performance by sending the second indication information before sending the M signals.

Wherein, the CC may correspond to frequency domain resources, the time may correspond to time domain resources, and the TRP (or set of resources) may correspond to spatial domain resources. By indicating at least one of the three items, transmission resources of M signals may be indicated in at least one dimension, thereby facilitating reception of the M signals by the relay device.

In addition, the network device may also instruct the access side beam, so that the relay device may receive the signal by using an appropriate beam, and obtain better receiving quality. The network device may also instruct the backhaul side beam so that the relay device selects an appropriate backhaul side beam to forward the signal, with higher efficiency of forwarding the signal.

By indicating the beams of the access side and the return link, the relay device has more accurate beam pairs and better performance when receiving signals and forwarding signals.

In a second aspect, a method for signal forwarding is provided, where the method may be applied to a network device, and may be performed by the network device, or may also be performed by a component (such as a chip, a system on a chip, etc.) configured in the network device, or may also be implemented by a logic module or software that can implement all or part of the functions of the network device, where the application is not limited.

Illustratively, the method includes: transmitting first indication information to a relay device, wherein the first indication information is used for indicating a threshold value of signal quality, and the threshold value is used for determining a signal or a wave beam for forwarding by the relay device; receiving, from the relay device, a measurement result of at least one signal, where the at least one signal is a signal, of signals received by the relay device, for which a reception quality reaches the threshold value, and the measurement result of a first signal of the at least one signal includes one or more of: the method comprises the steps of identifying a first signal, identifying a network equipment side beam used for sending the first signal, identifying a relay backhaul side beam used for receiving the first signal, information of the receiving quality of the first signal and identifying a relay access side beam used for forwarding the first signal; wherein the first signal is any one of the at least one signal.

The description of the signal, the threshold value and the measurement result may refer to the description of the first aspect, which is not repeated herein.

By configuring the threshold value, the relay device can report the measurement result of the signal with the signal quality reaching the threshold value in the received signals, and the network device can adjust the beam direction of the signal transmitted next time according to the received measurement result, so that more signals in the signals transmitted by the network device can meet the forwarding requirement of the relay device. In this way, the number of signals configured by the network device for the relay device can be reduced, and the additional overhead caused by introducing the relay device is reduced, thereby being beneficial to improving the network efficiency. In addition, because more wave beams can be used for communication with the terminal below the relay device and the terminal of the direct network device in the signals sent by the network device, the space freedom degree of the network device in scheduling is improved. Optionally, the method further comprises: determining a beam of a backhaul link based on a measurement of the at least one signal, the beam of the backhaul link comprising: and relaying the backhaul side beam and/or the network device side beam.

Here, the backhaul link is a link between the network device and the relay device. The beams of the backhaul link include a relay backhaul side beam and a network device side beam. In downlink transmission, the network device may transmit signals via a beam of the backhaul link, and the relay device may receive signals via a beam of the backhaul link. At this time, the network device side beam is a transmission beam, and the relay backhaul side beam is a reception beam.

Since the network device may be based on the measurement of the at least one signal reported by the relay device. The network device side beam and/or the relay backhaul side beam for the next transmitted signal are determined, and therefore, the measurement result of at least one signal determined by the threshold value may have an influence on the signal or beam transmitted next by the network device.

By way of example and not limitation, the threshold value is the threshold value of RSRP. Reaching a threshold value may mean that RSRP is greater than or equal to the threshold value.

Optionally, the measurement result of the first signal further includes: TCI (or TCI state) for configuring the QCL relation of the first signal and/or QCL information of the first signal.

With reference to the second aspect, in some possible implementations of the second aspect, the at least one signal includes all signals of the received signals for which a reception quality reaches the threshold value.

With reference to the second aspect, in some possible implementations of the second aspect, the first indication information is further used to indicate a maximum value of a number of signals that need to report the measurement result and/or a number of signals that need to report the measurement result.

With reference to the second aspect, in certain possible implementations of the second aspect, before the receiving, from the relay device, a measurement result of at least one signal, the method further includes: and transmitting P signals, wherein at least one signal is a signal with signal quality reaching the threshold value in the P signals, and P is a positive integer.

For the relay device, the P signals may include a portion of signals with better reception quality and a portion of signals with poorer reception quality. Therefore, the number of signals corresponding to the measurement result reported by the relay device may be less than or equal to P.

One possible implementation is that the transmission resources of the P signals correspond to a plurality of CCs.

In other words, the P signals sent by the network device may be carried on different frequency domain resources.

Further, the method further comprises: transmitting resource configuration information to the relay device, wherein the resource configuration information indicates CCs respectively corresponding to transmission resources of a plurality of signals transmitted by the network device; the measurement report of the first signal further includes an identification of a CC corresponding to the transmission resource of the first signal.

It should be appreciated that the first signal is any one of the at least one signal for which the signal quality reaches a threshold value. Thus, the measurement report for each of the at least one signal may include an identification of the CC for which the transmission resource corresponds.

Another possible implementation is that the P signals are sent through multiple TRPs. Is from multiple resource sets.

In other words, the P signals sent by the network device may be carried on different spatial resources. Since different TRPs may be associated with different sets of resources (e.g., reference signal resource sets), one possible implementation of the P signals transmitted over multiple TRPs is that the transmission resources of the P signals are from multiple different sets of resources.

Further, the method further comprises: transmitting resource configuration information to the relay device, where the resource configuration information is used to instruct TRPs (or resource sets) corresponding to transmission resources of a plurality of signals transmitted by the network device, respectively; the measurement report of the first signal further includes an identification of a TRP (or resource set) corresponding to a transmission resource of the first signal.

With reference to the second aspect, in certain possible implementation manners of the second aspect, after the receiving a measurement result of at least one signal from the relay device, the method further includes: transmitting second indication information to the relay device, wherein the second indication information is used for indicating the wave beam of the return link; based on the beam of the backhaul link, M signals are transmitted, the M signals being signals for the relay device to forward.

It is understood that the M signals are configured based on the measurement result of the at least one signal.

The network device may configure the next transmitted signal after receiving the measurement result of the at least one signal from the relay device. By analogy, the network device may send M signals for forwarding by the relay device based on the measurement results reported by the relay device one or more times. The M signals may also be received by a direct connection terminal, which is not limited in this application.

The network device may also send other signals, and the number of signals sent by the network device is not limited in this application.

With reference to the second aspect, in some possible implementations of the second aspect, the M signals include a second signal and a third signal, resources for transmitting the second signal correspond to a first CC and a first time, and resources for transmitting the third signal correspond to a second CC and a second time; and carrying a fourth signal sent by the network equipment on the resources corresponding to the second CC and the first time and the resources corresponding to the first CC and the second time, wherein the fourth signal does not belong to the M signals.

The transmission resources of the M signals may correspond to different CCs and different times, that is, the M signals received by the relay device may occupy different frequency domain resources and time domain resources.

In addition, since one or more direct connection terminals are also located under the network device, the network device may send signals to the direct connection terminals in addition to the signals sent to the relay device, such as the fourth signal described above. The transmission resource of the fourth signal may be transmitted with a time domain or a frequency domain offset from the second signal and the third signal. For example, the fourth signal may be transmitted using another beam at the first CC corresponding to the second signal and the second time corresponding to the third signal, and may be transmitted using another beam at the second CC corresponding to the third signal and the first time corresponding to the second signal.

With reference to the second aspect, in some possible implementations of the second aspect, the M signals include a second signal and a third signal, resources for transmitting the second signal correspond to a first transmission receiving point TRP and a first time, and resources for transmitting the third signal correspond to a second TRP and a second time; and carrying a fourth signal sent by the network equipment on the resources corresponding to the second TRP and the first time and the resources corresponding to the first TRP and the second time, wherein the fourth signal does not belong to the M signals.

Since signals from different TRPs occupy different spatial resources, the second signal and the third signal may also occupy different spatial resources. Since the set of resources may be associated with TRP, one possible implementation is that the transmission resources of the second signal and the transmission resources of the third signal are from different sets of resources.

It should be appreciated that different transmit beams correspond to different spatial angles, thereby resulting in signals transmitted by different transmit beams may correspond to different coverage areas. By corresponding the transmission resources of the M signals to different CCs or different TRPs, the signals of the different CCs or the different TRPs are forwarded by different relay access side beams, so that coverage is provided for different coverage areas.

Optionally, the beams used to transmit the second signal and the fourth signal are different, and/or the beams used to transmit the third signal and the fourth signal are different.

Further, the beams used for transmitting the second signal and the third signal are the same, or the beams used for transmitting the second signal and the third signal are different.

The network device may transmit the second signal and the third signal using the same transmit beam (or antenna panel), or may transmit the second signal and the third signal using different transmit beams (or antenna panels). Wherein the transmit beams from the same antenna panel may be considered to be the same transmit beam, or transmit beams having a quasi co-sited relationship, or transmit beams having the same quasi co-sited information, or transmit beams having the same TCI state. The transmit beams from different antenna panels may be considered different transmit beams.

With reference to the second aspect, in some possible implementations of the second aspect, the second indication information is further used to indicate at least one of: the CC corresponding to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, the time corresponding to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, the TRP (or resource set) corresponding to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, and the access side beam for forwarding each of the M signals.

With reference to the first aspect or the second aspect, in some possible implementations, the relay device is configured to receive one or more beams of each of the at least one signal.

That is, the backhaul side beam used by the relay device to receive each of the at least one signal may be one or more. The relay device may report one or more backhaul side beams for receiving each of the at least one signal to the network device, so that the network device obtains beam information of the relay device more comprehensively, thereby making efficiency of the network device in scheduling the relay device to forward the signal higher.

Further, the relay device is configured to receive one or more access side beams corresponding to the backhaul side beam of each signal in the at least one signal.

In other words, for each of the forwarded signals, the access side beam for forwarding by the relay device is one or more. The relay device may select one from among them to forward the signal.

By reporting the backhaul side beam and the access side beam of the relay device for each signal, the network device can obtain more comprehensive beam information of the relay device, so that the efficiency of the network device in scheduling the relay device to forward the signal is higher. For example, the network device can flexibly allocate the beam sent to the relay device, the backhaul side beam and the access side beam of the relay device according to the isolation information (or the maximum amplification factor/gain/power, the actual configurable amplification factor/gain/power, etc.) of different backhaul sides and access sides of the relay device, so that the signals of the network device can be multiplexed to a greater extent, even support more efficient frequency division and space division scheduling, and the network efficiency is improved.

Optionally, the maximum value of the number of signals required to report the measurement report does not exceed one of the following: the number of access side beams of the relay device, or the minimum value of the number of access side beams and the number of signals for measurement transmitted by the network device.

That is, the maximum value of the number of signals required to report the measurement report is less than or equal to the number of access side beams of the relay device; or the maximum value of the number of signals required to report the measurement report is less than or equal to the minimum value of the following two items: the number of access side beams of the relay device and the number of signals transmitted by the network device for measurement.

It will be appreciated that the maximum value of the number of signals required to report a measurement report is configured by the network device, and the maximum value configured by the network device does not exceed the number of signals sent by the network device for measurement.

In a third aspect, a communication device is provided comprising means for implementing the method of the first aspect or any possible implementation of the first aspect.

In a fourth aspect, there is provided a communication device comprising means for implementing the method of the foregoing second aspect or any possible implementation of the second aspect.

In a fifth aspect, there is provided a communication device comprising a processor and interface circuitry for receiving signals from or transmitting signals to the processor from or to other communication devices than the communication device, the processor being operable to implement the method of the first aspect or any of the possible implementations of the first aspect by logic circuitry or executing code instructions.

In a sixth aspect, there is provided a communication device comprising a processor and interface circuitry for receiving signals from or transmitting signals to the processor from or to other communication devices than the communication device, the processor being operable to implement the method of the second aspect or any of the possible implementations of the second aspect by logic circuitry or execution of code instructions.

In a seventh aspect, a communication system is provided, including the foregoing relay device and network device.

In an eighth aspect, a computer readable storage medium is provided, in which a computer program or instructions is stored which, when executed, implement the method of the first aspect or any possible implementation of the first aspect.

A ninth aspect provides a computer readable storage medium having stored therein a computer program or instructions which when executed, implement the method of the second aspect or any possible implementation of the second aspect.

In a tenth aspect, there is provided a computer program product comprising instructions which, when executed, implement the method of the first aspect or any of the possible implementations of the first aspect.

In an eleventh aspect, there is provided a computer program product comprising instructions which, when executed, implement the method of the second aspect or any of the possible implementations of the second aspect.

It should be understood that the third aspect to the eighth aspect of the present application correspond to the technical solutions of the first aspect and the second aspect of the present application, and the advantages obtained by each aspect and the corresponding possible embodiments are similar, and are not repeated.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a system architecture suitable for use in the methods provided in embodiments of the present application;

fig. 2A is a schematic structural diagram of a network device;

fig. 2B is a schematic structural diagram of the relay device;

fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of a relay device forwarding signals from a network device;

FIG. 4 is a schematic flow chart of a method for signal forwarding provided by an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 5 is a schematic diagram of a network device adjusting a beam direction according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 6 is a schematic diagram of a backhaul side beam and an access side beam of a relay device according to an embodiment of the present application;

Fig. 7 to fig. 10 are schematic diagrams of a network device sending a signal, a relay device receiving and forwarding the signal according to the embodiments of the present application;

FIGS. 11 and 12 are schematic block diagrams of a communication device provided by an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 13 is a schematic block diagram of a base station provided in an embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

The technical solutions provided in the present application will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

The technical scheme provided by the application can be applied to various communication systems, such as: long term evolution (long term evolution, LTE) system, LTE frequency division duplex (frequency division duplex, FDD) system, LTE time division duplex (time division duplex, TDD), side-chain (SL) communication system, universal mobile telecommunication system (universal mobile telecommunication system, UMTS), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (worldwide interoperability for microwave access, wiMAX) communication system, fifth generation (5th generation,5G) mobile communication system, or new radio access technology (new radio access technology, NR). The 5G mobile communication system may include a non-independent Networking (NSA) and/or an independent networking (SA), among others.

The technical scheme provided by the application can also be applied to future communication systems, such as a sixth generation (6th Generation,6G) mobile communication system and the like. The present application is not limited in this regard.

The network device in the present application may be a device for communicating with a terminal, or may be a device for accessing a terminal to a wireless network. The network device may be a node in a radio access network. The network device may be a base station (base station), an evolved NodeB (eNodeB), a transmission and reception point (transmission reception point, TRP), a home base station (e.g., home evolved NodeB, or home Node B, HNB), a Wi-Fi Access Point (AP), a mobile switching center, a next generation NodeB (gNB) in a 5G mobile communication system, a next generation base station in a sixth generation (6th generation,6G) mobile communication system, or a base station in a future mobile communication system, etc. The network device may also be a module or unit that performs part of the function of the base station, for example, a Centralized Unit (CU), a Distributed Unit (DU), an RRU, or a baseband unit (BBU), etc. The network device may also be a device in the D2D communication system, the V2X communication system, the M2M communication system, the IoT communication system that assumes the functionality of a base station, etc. The network device may also be a network device in a non-terrestrial network (non terrestrial network, NTN), i.e. the network device may be deployed on an aerial platform or satellite. The network device may be a macro base station, a micro base station, an indoor station, a relay node, a donor node, or the like. Of course, the network device may also be a node in the core network.

The network device provides services for the cell, and the terminal device communicates with the cell through transmission resources (e.g., frequency domain resources, or spectrum resources) allocated by the network device, where the cell may belong to a macro base station (e.g., macro eNB or macro gNB, etc.), or may belong to a base station corresponding to a small cell (small cell), where the small cell may include: urban cells (metro cells), micro cells (micro cells), pico cells (pico cells), femto cells (femto cells) and the like, and the small cells have the characteristics of small coverage area and low transmitting power and are suitable for providing high-rate data transmission services.

A terminal device in the present application may also be referred to as a User Equipment (UE), an access terminal, a subscriber unit, a subscriber station, a mobile station, a remote terminal, a mobile device, a user terminal, a wireless communication device, a user agent, or a user equipment.

The terminal device may be a device providing voice/data connectivity to a user, e.g., a handheld device with wireless connectivity, an in-vehicle device, etc. Currently, some examples of terminal devices may be: a mobile phone (mobile phone), a tablet (pad), a computer with wireless transceiver function (e.g., a notebook, a palm, etc.), a mobile internet device (mobile internet device, MID), a Virtual Reality (VR) device, an augmented reality (augmented reality, AR) device, a wireless terminal in an industrial control (industrial control), a wireless terminal in an unmanned (self-driving) device, an unmanned aerial vehicle, a wireless terminal in a remote medical (remote medium), a wireless terminal in a smart grid (smart grid), a wireless terminal in a transportation security (transportation safety), a wireless terminal in a smart city (smart city), a wireless terminal in a smart home (smart home), a cellular phone, a cordless phone, a session initiation protocol (session initiation protocol, SIP) phone, a wireless local loop (wireless local loop, WLL) station, a personal digital assistant (personal digital assistant, PDA), a handheld device with wireless communication function, a computing device or other processing device connected to a wireless modem, a wireless terminal in a vehicle-mounted device, a future evolution land-based terminal (PLMN) device, a mobile terminal in a mobile phone (35G) or a future-developed network (public land mobile network) device, etc.

The wearable device can also be called as a wearable intelligent device, and is a generic name for intelligently designing daily wearing and developing wearable devices by applying a wearable technology, such as glasses, gloves, watches, clothes, shoes and the like. The wearable device is a portable device that is worn directly on the body or integrated into the clothing or accessories of the user. The wearable device is not only a hardware device, but also can realize a powerful function through software support, data interaction and cloud interaction. The generalized wearable intelligent device includes full functionality, large size, and may not rely on the smart phone to implement complete or partial functionality, such as: smart watches or smart glasses, etc., and focus on only certain types of application functions, and need to be used in combination with other devices, such as smart phones, for example, various smart bracelets, smart jewelry, etc. for physical sign monitoring.

Furthermore, the terminal device may also be a terminal device in an internet of things (internet of things, ioT) system. IoT is an important component of future information technology development, and its main technical feature is to connect an item with a network through a communication technology, so as to implement man-machine interconnection and an intelligent network for object interconnection. IoT technology may enable massive connectivity, deep coverage, and terminal power saving through, for example, narrowband (NB) technology.

In addition, the terminal device may further include sensors such as an intelligent printer, a train detector, and a gas station, and the main functions include collecting data (part of the terminal device), receiving control information and downlink data of the network device, and transmitting electromagnetic waves to transmit uplink data to the network device.

In the embodiment of the present application, the relay device has a signal forwarding (or reflecting) function, and may amplify a signal, which may be simply referred to as a relay. In addition, the relay device may also shift the carrier frequency of the signal, or may also demodulate the signal and then re-modulate and then forward, or may also reduce the noise of the signal and then forward. The relay device may therefore forward the received signal after any one or more of the following: amplifying, demodulating, frequency shifting and noise reduction.

In addition, the relay has another form, called a reflector, or a reflecting surface, or other possible designation: smart reflective surface (intelligent reflecting surface), reflective array, configurable reflective surface (Reconfigurable reflecting surface, RIS), smart reflective array (intelligent reflecting array), reflector, smart reflector, reflective device (backscatter device), passive device (passive device), semi-active device (semi-passive device), scattered signal device (ambient signal device).

The relay device may also be regarded as a special form of terminal device. If the control capability of the relay equipment at the network side is considered, the relay equipment can be classified into non-intelligent relay and intelligent relay; or may be classified as a non-network controlled relay device (uncontrolled repeater), a network controlled relay device (network controlled repeater, netConrepeat, or NCR). The network device may control the intelligent relay to perform functions of further enhancing performance, for example, at least one of relay transmit power control, relay amplification gain control, relay beam scanning control, relay precoding control, on-off control, and uplink/downlink forwarding control.

A typical relay device has two antenna panels, one of which is used to communicate with the network device, which may be referred to as the backhaul side; the other for communication with the terminal device may be referred to as an access side. In general, only one antenna panel is used for receiving signals, and the received signals are amplified and then forwarded or transmitted by the other antenna panel.

Each panel of the relay may be composed of a plurality of antennas, and a beam may be formed on a single panel, thereby achieving better relay transmission performance. The beam capability of the access side is considered to be further classified into single beam forwarding and multi-beam forwarding. If the relay access side has the capability of multiple beams, the beams on the relay access side need to be aligned to the terminal equipment when the relay forwards the signal, so as to obtain better transmission performance.

In the application, the relay device can be used in a communication network of multi-hop relay cascade, that is, the relay node can establish connection with the network device through at least one upper-level relay node and receive control of the network device, and at this time, the upper-level relay node can be regarded as a special network device; or the relay node may establish a connection with the terminal device through at least one next-stage relay node, where the next-stage relay node may be regarded as a special terminal device.

Herein, relay devices, relays, relay nodes alternate, the meaning expressed by which is the same.

It should be understood that the specific forms of the network device, the relay device and the terminal device are not limited in this application.

For a better understanding of the methods provided by the embodiments of the present application, the terms referred to in the present application will be briefly described below.

1. Reference Signal (RS): the transmitting end and the receiving end can negotiate or determine the time and frequency position of the reference signal according to a preset rule. The reference signal may be used to obtain a known signal that the signal is subject to in transmission (e.g., spatial channel, transmit or receive side device non-idealities), and is typically used for channel estimation, channel measurement, secondary signal demodulation, beam quality monitoring, etc.

The reference signals may be classified into SSB, CSI-RS, SRS, demodulation reference signals (demodulation reference signal, DMRS), phase tracking reference signals (phase tracking reference signal, PTRS), and the like according to functions. For example, DMRS and CSI-RS are used to acquire channel information, and PTRS is used to acquire phase change information.

2. Reference signal resources: may be used to configure transmission properties of the reference signal, such as time-frequency resource locations, port mapping relationships, power factors, scrambling codes, etc. The transmitting end device may transmit reference signals based on the reference signal resources, and the receiving end device may receive reference signals based on the reference signal resources.

The reference signal resources may be divided into SSB resources, CSI-RS resources, SRS resources, DMRS resources, PTRS resources, etc. according to the functions of the reference signal.

3. Measurement configuration: including resource configuration and reporting configuration.

The network device may send measurement configuration information to the terminal device, which may include resource configuration information and reporting configuration information, for example, through higher layer signaling, such as radio resource control (radio resource control, RRC) signaling.

The resource configuration information is information related to measurement resources. For example, in the NR protocol, resource configuration information can be configured by a three-level structure including a resource configuration (resource config), a resource set (resource set), and a resource (resource). The network device may configure the terminal device with one or more resource configurations, each of which may include one or more resource sets, each of which may include one or more resources. Each resource configuration/resource set/resource may include an own index. In addition, some other parameters are included, such as the period of the resource, the signal type corresponding to the resource, etc.

Reporting configuration information is information related to reporting of measurement results. For example, in the NR protocol, the network device may configure one or more reporting configurations (reportConfig) for the terminal device, where each reporting configuration includes a reporting index, a reporting time and period, and reporting format equal to reporting related information. In addition, the reporting configuration further includes an index of the resource configuration, which is used to indicate what measurement configuration the reporting result is measured.

The resource configuration and reporting configuration in this application are just names used for convenience of distinguishing description, and other names may also be used. As long as the same or similar functions as the resource configuration and the reporting configuration, respectively, can be achieved, all shall fall within the protection scope of the present application.

4. Beam (beam): the main lobe of the antenna or antenna array radiation pattern is formed by the superposition of the radiation signals of each antenna module. The beam may be understood as a spatial filter (spatial filter) or a spatial parameter (spatial parameters). The beam used to transmit the signal may be referred to as a transmit beam (transmission beam, tx beam), may be a spatial transmit filter (spatial domain transmit filter) or spatial transmit parameters (spatial transmit parameters, spatial Tx parameters). The transmit beam may refer to a distribution of signal strengths formed in spatially different directions after a signal is transmitted through an antenna. The beam used to receive the signal may be referred to as a receive beam (Rx beam), and may be a spatial receive filter (spatial domain receive filter) or spatial receive parameters (spatial receive parameters, spatial Rx parameters). A receive beam may refer to a signal strength distribution of a wireless signal received from an antenna in spatially diverse directions.

The technique of forming the beam may be a beam forming technique or other technique. For example, the beamforming technique may specifically be a digital beamforming technique, an analog beamforming technique, or a hybrid digital/analog beamforming technique, etc. The present application is not limited in this regard.

Beams, spatial filters, spatial parameters, etc. are just a few of the possible designations listed herein, and this application does not exclude the possibility of defining other terms in future protocols to represent the same or similar meanings.

The beam may be characterized by one or more of the following directivity parameters:

beam index;

a beam width;

a reference beam direction, which may include a reference peak beam direction and a reference beam center direction; and

the maximum equivalent omni-directional radiation power (effective isotropic radiated power, EIRP) achieved by the beam peak direction.

5. Quasi co-location (QCL): the signal corresponding to the antenna port having the QCL relationship has the same parameter, or the parameter of one antenna port may be used to determine the parameter of the other antenna port having the QCL relationship with the antenna port, or the two antenna ports have the same parameter, or the parameter difference between the two antenna ports is less than a certain threshold. Wherein the parameters may include one or more of the following: delay spread (delay spread), doppler spread (doppler spread), doppler shift (doppler shift), average delay (average delay), average gain, spatial reception parameters. Wherein the spatial reception parameters may include one or more of: angle of arrival (AOA), average AOA, AOA spread, angle of departure (angle of departure, AOD), average angle of departure (AOD), AOD spread, receive antenna spatial correlation parameter, transmit beam (or transmit beam), receive beam, and resource identification.

In the NR protocol, the above-described relationship with QCL can be classified into the following four types based on different parameters:

type a (type a): doppler shift, doppler spread, average delay, delay spread;

type B (type B): doppler shift, doppler spread;

type C (type C): doppler shift, average delay;

type D (type D): the parameters are received spatially.

The QCL referred to in the embodiments of the present application is a QCL of type D. Hereinafter, QCL may be understood as QCL of type D, i.e., QCL defined based on spatial reception parameters, unless otherwise specified.

When the QCL relationship refers to the QCL relationship of type D: the QCL relationship between a port for a downstream signal and a port for a downstream signal, or between a port for an upstream signal and a port for an upstream signal, may be that both signals have the same AOA or AOD for indicating that they have the same receive or transmit beam. For example, for the QCL relationship between the ports of the downlink signal and the uplink signal or between the ports of the uplink signal and the downlink signal, the AOA and the AOD of the two signals may have a correspondence relationship, or the AOD and the AOA of the two signals may have a correspondence relationship, that is, the beam reciprocity may be utilized to determine the uplink transmission beam according to the downlink reception beam, or determine the downlink reception beam according to the uplink transmission beam.

The signals transmitted on the ports having the QCL relationship may also have corresponding beams including at least one of: the same reception beam, the same transmission beam, a transmission beam corresponding to the reception beam (corresponding to a scene with reciprocity), and a reception beam corresponding to the transmission beam (corresponding to a scene with reciprocity).

The signals transmitted on ports having QCL relations can also be understood as receiving or transmitting signals using the same spatial filter. The spatial filter may be at least one of: precoding, weight of antenna port, phase deflection of antenna port, amplitude gain of antenna port.

The signals transmitted on ports having a QCL relationship can also be understood as having corresponding Beam Pair Links (BPLs) including at least one of: the same downstream BPL, the same upstream BPL, the upstream BPL corresponding to the downstream BPL, and the downstream BPL corresponding to the upstream BPL.

Thus, the spatial reception parameter (i.e., QCL of type D) can be understood as a parameter for indicating direction information of the reception beam.

6. Transmission Configuration Indication (TCI) state (TCI state): may be used to indicate the QCL relationship between the two reference signals. The network device may configure the TCI state list for the terminal device through higher layer signaling (e.g., RRC message), and may activate or indicate one or more of the TCI states through higher layer signaling (e.g., media access control element (MAC-CE)) or physical layer signaling (e.g., downlink control information (downlink control information, DCI)).

The configuration information for one TCI state may include an identification of one or both reference signal resources, and an associated QCL type. When the QCL relationship is configured as one of the types a, B, or C, the terminal device may demodulate the physical downlink control channel (physical downlink control channel, PDCCH) or the physical downlink shared channel (physical downlink shared channel, PDSCH) according to the indication of the TCI state.

For example, when the QCL relationship is configured as type D, the terminal device may know which transmit beam the network device uses to transmit signals, and may in turn determine which receive beam to use to receive signals based on the beam pairing relationship determined by the channel measurements.

Referring to fig. 1, fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a system architecture suitable for use in the methods provided in embodiments of the present application. The system 100 shown in fig. 1 includes: network device 110, relay device 120, and terminal devices 131 to 133. Wherein network device 110 may provide network coverage for a particular geographic area and may communicate wirelessly with terminal devices, such as terminal device 131, located within the coverage area (cell). The terminal devices 131 to 133 may be mobile or fixed, which is not limited in this application.

As described above, in the case where the network device 110 is distant from the terminal devices 132, 133, the communication quality is degraded, and thus the relay device 120 is introduced to assist the communication between the network device 110 and the terminal devices 132, 133.

In the embodiment of the present application, a terminal device that can directly communicate with a network device without auxiliary communication by means of a relay device is referred to as a direct-connection terminal, such as the terminal device 131 in fig. 1; terminal devices that are not directly connected to the network device and that need to communicate with the network device with the aid of the relay device are called non-direct terminals, such as terminal devices 132, 133 in fig. 1.

For a better understanding of the embodiments of the present application, the following description will first be given with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which the structures of the network device and the relay device and related concepts are briefly described.

Fig. 2A is a schematic structural diagram of a network device according to an embodiment of the present application. The network device 200 shown in fig. 2A includes: a processor 201, a memory 202, and a transceiver 203. Wherein the transceiver 203 comprises a transmitter 2031, a receiver 2032, and an antenna 2033. A transmitter 2031 may be used to transmit signals via an antenna 2033 and a receiver 2032 may be used to receive signals via the antenna 2033.

It should be appreciated that the structure of the terminal device is similar to that shown in fig. 2A and can be understood with reference to the description above in connection with fig. 2A, and for brevity, will not be described in further detail herein.

Fig. 2B is a schematic structural diagram of a relay device according to an embodiment of the present application. The relay apparatus 300 shown in fig. 2B includes: one or more of a controller 301, a signal amplifier 302, signal transceiving units 303 and 304, and the like. The relay device 200 may be used to implement communication and signaling interactions, signal amplification, etc. with network devices and terminal devices. The relay control (e.g., the controller 301) is also called a mobile terminal (MT or NCR-MT), and the other parts (e.g., the signal amplifier 302, the signal transceiving units 303 and 304) may form a forwarding module (forwarding, fwd or NCR-Fwd) (may also be called a Radio Unit (RU), or a Distributed Unit (DU), or a distributed radio unit (distributed radio unit, DRU), etc.).

The link between the network device and the forwarding module of the relay device connected with the network device is a backhaul link, and the link between the forwarding module of the relay device and the terminal device connected with the relay device is an access link. The forwarding links may include backhaul links and access links. In the embodiment of the application, the relay device may receive a signal from the network device through the backhaul link, and forward the received signal to the terminal device through the access link. The signal received by the relay device using the backhaul link and forwarded through the access link may be a reference signal, such as SSB, CSI-RS, etc., or may also be a data signal, which is not limited in this application. The relay device may also receive signals from the terminal device over the access link and forward the received signals to the network device over the backhaul link. The signal received by the relay device using the access link and forwarded through the backhaul link may be a reference signal, such as SRS, or may also be a data signal, which is not limited in this application. In the backhaul link, the relay device may receive signals from the network device via the backhaul-side antenna and/or transmit signals to the network device. The beam used by the relay device to receive signals or transmit signals through the backhaul-side antenna is an access-side beam. In the access link, the relay device may transmit signals to and/or receive signals from the terminal device through the access side antenna. The beam used by the relay device to transmit or receive signals through the access side antenna is a backhaul side beam.

It should be understood that the signal transceiving unit 303 may include a transmitter 3031, a receiver 3032 and an antenna 3033, and the signal transceiving unit 304 may include a transmitter 3041, a receiver 3042 and an antenna 3043. A transmitter 3031 or 3041 may be used to transmit signals via an antenna 3033 or 3043 and a receiver 3032 or 3042 may be used to receive signals via an antenna 3033 or 3043.

In addition, when signals are transmitted between the relay device and the network device, the relay controller and the backhaul link may have the same information such as beams, for example, both share an antenna. In particular, considering that the controller (MT) and the forwarding module (Fwd) transmit and receive signals simultaneously (e.g., the control signal and the forwarding signal may be frequency division multiplexed), the controller and the backhaul link have the same reception beam. If there is only a forward signal (no signal-to-transmit relationship between the controller and the base station) on a certain forwarding opportunity (forwarding occasion), the network device indicates beam information on the backhaul side. Alternatively, the receive beams in which the MT and Fwd backhaul sides (facing the primary node or network device) may have QCL relationships (e.g., QCL typeA and QCL typeD).

The present application discusses based on this assumption: i.e. the default Fwd backhaul side beam is the same as the MT beam or has a preset QCL relationship. For simplicity of discussion, it may be collectively referred to as the return side beam. For example, in downlink communication, one signal transceiver unit (e.g., signal transceiver unit 303) of the relay device is configured to receive signals from the network device, and the other signal transceiver unit (e.g., signal transceiver unit 304) is configured to forward amplified received signals to the terminal device. In addition, the controller 301 may also communicate with a network device or a terminal device via the signal transceiving unit 303 or 304. For example, the controller 304 communicates with the network device through the signal transceiving unit 303, and is used for establishing a communication link between the relay and the network device, beam alignment, and the like; the method can also be used for receiving configuration or indication information of the network equipment, so that the network equipment can conveniently control the working time, working state, working mode or the like of the repeater; or is used for receiving the trigger signal of the terminal equipment, so that the relay equipment enters a corresponding working mode according to the requirement. For another example, the controller 301 can also determine the operation state (e.g., amplification factor, phase) of the signal amplifier 302 according to the indication information of the network device or the own measurement information.

It should be understood that the individual units in fig. 2B may be one or more. For example, the signal amplifier may be plural, and corresponds to different polarization directions or relay radio frequency channels, respectively.

In order to ensure the relay transmission performance, the relay device can determine a beam with better quality from the transmitting beams, amplify and forward the beam.

Taking downlink transmission as an example, the network device sends a signal, and the relay device amplifies and/or otherwise processes the received signal of the backhaul antenna and forwards the amplified signal through the access antenna. If the access side of the relay device has the capability of multiple beams, when the relay device forwards signals, the beams on the access side need to be aligned to the terminal device, so as to obtain better transmission performance.

If a relay device is introduced in the communication system, the relay device has a large demand for the number of beams in order to meet the coverage demand. For example, when there are M transmitting beams on the access side of the relay device, a simple way is that the network device sends M downlink reference signals, and the relay device sequentially forwards the M downlink reference signals to the terminal device through the M access side beams after receiving the M downlink reference signals on the backhaul side; or the terminal equipment sends M uplink reference signals, and the relay equipment sequentially forwards the M uplink reference signals to the network equipment through M back-pass side wave beams after receiving the M uplink reference signals at the access side.

This method, although simple, increases the overhead of the reference signal with the number of relay devices. If the resources are limited, the M transmit beams of the relay device cannot be traversed, so that the transmission performance of the relay device is reduced.

In some cases, the transmitting end of the reference signal, such as the network device or the terminal device, may need to additionally transmit the reference signal to the relay device, so as to ensure the coverage requirement of the relay device.

For ease of understanding, fig. 3 shows an example in which a relay device forwards a signal from a network device. In the example shown in fig. 3, it is assumed that the relay device needs to forward M beams in order to meet the downlink coverage requirement; the network device would otherwise need to transmit N signals, rs#0 to rs#n-1 as shown in fig. 3. However, since only K signals among the N signals received by the relay device are of good quality, the waves are used separately as shown in FIG. 3Bundle #B ₀ To #B _K-1 The Reference Signals (RS) #0 to rs#k-1 are transmitted, so the relay device may directly forward by using K signals among N signals transmitted by the network device. The return side beams of the relay device for receiving the K signals are #BH respectively ₀ To #BH _K-1 Amplified and then passed through the access side beam #AC ₀ To #AC _K-1 And (5) forwarding. Another N-K signals transmitted by the network device, as shown in fig. 3, respectively using beam #b _K To #B _N-1 The transmitted reference signals rs#n to rs#n-1 are not received by the relay device. In addition, the network device needs to additionally transmit M-K signals to the relay device in order to meet the downlink coverage requirement of the relay device, such as rs#n to rs#n+m-K-1 shown in fig. 3. Illustratively, the network device may use beam #b ₀ To #B _K-1 The M-K signals are transmitted using any one or more of the beams, FIG. 3 shows the use of beam #B ₀ An example of transmitting the M-K signals is not limited in this application. The network device can select the beam with the best signal receiving quality (such as the beam with the strongest RSRP) to send the M-K signals, or can select the beam #b according to the terminal device ₀ To #B _K-1 One or more beams in which to multiplex are selected to transmit the M-K signals.

As can be seen from the example of fig. 3, in order to satisfy the downlink coverage of the relay device, the network device needs to additionally transmit M-K signals. As the number of relay devices increases, the number of signals that the network devices need to additionally transmit increases, and the overhead ratio increases.

Aiming at the problems, the method is provided, the relay device can measure according to the received signals, report the signals with better signal quality to the network device, and further facilitate the network device to adjust the beam directions of the signals according to the reported results, so that the beams of more signals face the relay device, and further, the more beams meet the forwarding requirements of the relay device, namely, the signals sent by the network device can be multiplexed by the relay device to a greater extent. It is understood that in combination with M and K as shown above, that is, increasing the value of K as much as possible, the value of M-K can be reduced. In this way, the number of signals that the network device additionally increases for the relay device is reduced, which is beneficial to saving the overhead of the network device.

It should be understood that the present application is discussed primarily on a downlink basis, and that the methods herein may also be used on an uplink. At this time, an entity transmitting a signal (e.g., physical random access channel (physical random access channel, PRACH), SRS, etc.) may be replaced with a relay device, and an entity measuring signal quality may be replaced with a network device. Further, the relay device may report the information of the transmission power information and the backhaul beam (i.e. the transmission beam) to the network device, so as to determine the link loss, thereby facilitating the network device to determine the beam on the network device side, relay forwarding the link beam information, relay forwarding the signal information, and so on.

The method provided by the embodiment of the present application will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

For easy understanding, the following description is first made:

first, the parameters involved in the embodiments of the present application are described:

m: the number of beams required by the relay device to meet the coverage requirement, M, is an integer greater than 1. In downlink transmission, M may be understood as the number of access side beams required by the relay device; in uplink transmission, M may be understood as the number of backhaul side beams required by the relay device.

In the embodiment of the present application, M may be the number of access side beams of the relay device configured by the network device when the relay device forwards the signal; m may also be the number of access side beams that the relay device determines based on its own capabilities or needs, e.g. the number of access side beams that the relay device needs to cover a predefined range. The present application is not limited in this regard. Furthermore, M may be related to the type of the retransmission signal, e.g., the number of beams the relay device needs to retransmit the SSB and the number of beams the relay device needs to retransmit the CSI-RS may be different.

In further implementations, M may also be a value determined from network device configuration information. For example, when the network device comprehensively considers at least one performance index such as overhead, capacity, coverage, etc., the number of beams allocated to the relay device for forwarding. The configuration information may be about at least one of: time and/or frequency resources of relay on-forwarding, beam of relay on-forwarding, gain of relay on-forwarding. The beam of the relay on forwarding may refer to a backhaul side beam of the relay forwarding link, an access side beam of the relay forwarding link, or a backhaul side beam and an access side beam of the relay forwarding link.

In further implementations, M may also be a preconfigured value. For example, preconfigured values when planning to deploy or maintain relay devices.

K: the number of beams (i.e., the number of signals) that can be forwarded by the relay device and directly connected to the terminal device in the signal that was last transmitted by the network device (or, first time; or, last/last signal transmission time period; or, last/last signal transmission time window). In other words, any one of the K beams can communicate with the non-direct terminal by forwarding a signal through the relay device.

Optionally, K is less than or equal to M, and K is an integer. For example, in fig. 1, terminal device 131 communicates directly with (is directly connected to) network device 110; terminal device 133 or terminal device 132 establishes a connection with network device 110 through relay device 120, wherein relay device 120 forwards the signal such that terminal device 133 or terminal device 132 can establish a connection with network device 110, or such that terminal device 133 or terminal device 132 can have better connection performance (e.g., better communication performance) with network device 110.

Second, in order to clearly describe the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present application, in the embodiments of the present application, the words "first", "second", and the like are used to distinguish identical items or similar items having substantially identical functions and actions. For example, the first configuration information and the second configuration information are merely for distinguishing different indication information, and are not limited in order. It will be appreciated by those of skill in the art that the words "first," "second," and the like do not limit the amount and order of execution, and that the words "first," "second," and the like do not necessarily differ.

Third, in the embodiment of the present application, terms and english abbreviations, such as Synchronization Signal Block (SSB), channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS), physical Random Access Channel (PRACH), sounding Reference Signal (SRS), synchronization Signal Block (SSB), transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI), etc., are given as exemplary examples for convenience of description, and should not constitute any limitation to the present application. This application does not exclude the possibility of defining other terms in existing or future protocols that perform the same or similar functions.

Fourth, the method provided by the embodiments of the present application will be described below with SSB as an example of a signal, but this should not constitute any limitation to the present application. The SSB may also be replaced with CSI-RS, physical downlink control channel (physical downlink control channel, PDCCH), physical downlink shared channel (physical downlink share channel, PDSCH), etc.

Fifth, in the embodiments of the present application, a plurality of beams are referred to, for convenience of distinction and explanation, as a beam used by a network device side to transmit signals. The backhaul beam of the relay device is denoted as a relay backhaul beam, which may also be abbreviated as backhaul beam. The access side of the relay device is denoted as a relay access side, and the access side beam of the relay device is denoted as a relay access side beam, or may be simply denoted as an access side beam.

In downlink transmission, the network device side beam is used for transmitting signals, so the network device side beam is a transmitting beam or a transmitting beam. The relay backhaul beam is used to receive signals, so the relay backhaul beam is the receive beam used to receive signals. That is, in downlink transmission, the beams in the backhaul link include a network device side beam for transmitting signals and a relay backhaul side beam for receiving signals. In the following, when describing the network device side beam, the transmission beam, and the transmission beam are used alternately, and the meanings expressed by the three are the same. When describing the relay device side beam, the backhaul side beam and the receiving beam are used alternately, and the meaning expressed by the backhaul side beam and the receiving beam is the same.

Sixth, "at least one" means one or more, and "a plurality" means two or more. "and/or", describes an association relationship of an association object, and indicates that there may be three relationships, for example, a and/or B, and may indicate: a alone, a and B together, and B alone, wherein a, B may be singular or plural. The character "/" generally indicates that the context-dependent object is an "or" relationship. "at least one of" or the like means any combination of these items, including any combination of single item(s) or plural items(s). For example, at least one (one) of a, b, and c may represent: a, b, or c, or a and b, or a and c, or b and c, or a, b and c, wherein a, b and c can be single or multiple.

Seventh, each table in the embodiments of the present application is merely an example. The values of the information in each table are merely examples, and may be configured as other values, which are not limited in this application. The tables do not limit the scope of the present application. For example, appropriate modification adjustments, e.g., splitting, merging, etc., may be made based on the tables described above. For example, the parameter names indicated by the titles in the tables may be other names that are understood by the communication device, and the values or expressions of the parameters may be other values or expressions that are understood by the communication device. For another example, when the tables are implemented, other data structures may be used, such as an array, a queue, a container, a stack, a linear table, a pointer, a linked list, a tree, a graph, a structure, a class, a heap, a hash table, or a hash table.

Fig. 4 is a schematic flow chart of a method for signal forwarding according to an embodiment of the present application. Fig. 4 illustrates this approach from the perspective of relay device and network device interaction. It will be understood that the relay device in the method may be replaced by a component in the relay device, such as a chip, a system-on-chip, or other modules that may be used to implement some or all of the functions of the relay device, and the network device in the method may be replaced by a component in the network device, such as a chip, a system-on-chip, or other modules that may be used to implement some or all of the functions of the network device. The present application is not limited in this regard.

It should be understood that the size of the serial numbers of the steps in fig. 4 does not mean that the execution sequence of the steps is determined by the functions and the internal logic of the steps, and should not limit the implementation process of the embodiments of the present application. Further, the various steps in the flow shown in FIG. 4 are merely examples and not necessarily representative of each step. Those skilled in the art may implement the methods provided herein based on the same conception, and may make simple changes based on the flow shown in fig. 4, for example, make adjustments to the execution sequence of some steps, or add other steps or reduce steps therein. Such variations are intended to fall within the scope of the present application.

The method 400 shown in fig. 4 includes steps 410 through 480. The various steps in method 400 are described in detail below.

In step 410, the network device transmits first indication information indicating a threshold value of signal quality. Accordingly, the relay device receives the first indication information.

Wherein the threshold value is related to the quality of the forwarded signal. In other words, the threshold value may be used to determine a signal or beam for relay device forwarding. That is, the magnitude relationship of the quality of the signal to the threshold value may be used to determine whether the signal is being forwarded or is being proposed for forwarding. Parameters for measuring signal quality (or link quality, beam quality) include a received signal strength indication (received signal strength indicator, RSSI), RSRP, reference signal received quality (reference signal receiving quality, RSRQ), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (signal to interference plus noise ratio, SINR, abbreviated signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio), precoding matrix indication (precoding matrix indicator, PMI), transmission precoding matrix indication (transmitted precoding matrix indicator, TPMI), rank Indication (RI), transmission rank indication (transmitted rank indicator, TRI), layer Indication (LI), timing Advance (TA), path loss (path), etc. Any of the above parameters may be used in this application to measure the quality of the retransmitted signal, or other parameters may be defined additionally for measuring the quality of the retransmitted signal. For example, the threshold is the RSRP threshold of the forwarded signal.

The quality of the forwarded signal may be the receiving quality of the signal by the relay device when the relay device receives, amplifies and/or otherwise processes and forwards the signal on the forwarding link, for example, the signal-to-noise ratio of the baseband received signal of the relay controller; as another example, the power spectral density of the received signal of the relay forwarding link; for another example, the total power of the received signal of the relay forwarding link; as another example, the amplification gain required by the relay forwarding link, further, the amplification gain may be such that the relay forwards signals at a target forwarding power (or power spectral density, or effective omni-directional radiated power (effective isotropic radiated power, EIRP)).

Further, the quality of the forwarded signal may also be related to at least one of: base station transmit power (for downlink forwarding), relay backhaul side beam (for downlink forwarding), terminal transmit power (for uplink forwarding), relay access side beam (for uplink forwarding), isolation between relay access side beam and backhaul side beam, relay amplification gain, relay reflection loss, relay downlink output power (or EIRP) (for downlink forwarding), relay uplink output power (or EIRP) (for uplink forwarding). For example, in downlink forwarding, the quality of the forwarded signal is related to the base station transmit beam, the relay backhaul side beam, and the base station transmit power; in the uplink transfer, the quality of the transfer signal is related to the terminal transmission beam, the relay access side beam, and the terminal transmission power.

The relay device may select a signal (or beam) for forwarding based on the threshold value, or may suggest a signal (or beam) for forwarding based on the threshold value. For example, the signals (or beams) may be (or suggested for) forwarding when their reception quality meets a threshold value. It should be appreciated that the signals described herein correspond to the network device side beams (i.e., transmit beams) and the relay backhaul side beams (i.e., receive beams) in the backhaul link; or the signals here correspond to the terminal device side beam (i.e. the transmit beam) and the relay access side beam (i.e. the receive beam) in the access link. The relay device may also determine a signal to report the measurement result based on the threshold value. The relay device may generate a corresponding measurement result for the signal whose reception quality reaches the threshold value, and report the measurement result to the network device.

Wherein the signals include, but are not limited to, one or more of SSB, CSI-RS, TRS, DMRS, PTRS, control signals or data signals, etc. The control signal is, for example, a physical downlink control channel (physical downlink control channel, PDCCH), and the data signal is, for example, a physical downlink shared channel (physical downlink share channel, PDSCH).

Alternatively, the signals include, but are not limited to, one or more of SRS, PRACH (physical random access channel ), DMRS, PTRS, control signals or data signals, etc. The control signal is, for example, a physical control channel (physical uplink control channel, PUCCH), and the data signal is, for example, a physical downlink shared channel (physical uplink share channel, PUSCH).

Illustratively, the threshold value corresponds to a threshold value of RSRP. The relay device may select reference signals (or beams) received by the backhaul side beams based on the threshold value, the reference signals (or beams) may be used for forwarding, and the RSRP of the reference signals (or beams) reaches the threshold value of RSRP.

In addition to the threshold value, the network device may also indicate the range of values for the threshold value. The range of values may be used for measurements and for determining the value of the threshold value. For measurements, the corresponding measurements for the range of values may be referenced to table 10.1.6.1-1 in technical specification (technical specification, TS) 38.331; for the threshold value, its actual value may be obtained from the value in the IE minus 156 in decibel milliwatts (decibel relative to one milliwatt, dBm).

For one example, the network device may indicate an RSRP Range (RSRP-Range) of 0 to 127. Then for the threshold value it can actually be taken from the value in this IE minus 156 in dBm. Where a value of 127 in the IE indicates an actual value of infinity.

The network device indicates, through the first indication information, one possible form of the threshold value and the value range in the protocol as follows:

the reference signal may be, for example, SSB. Accordingly, the threshold value is the threshold value of RSRP of SSB. The relay device may select SSBs (or beams) received by the backhaul side beams based on the threshold, the SSBs (or beams) may be used for forwarding, and the RSRP of the SSBs (or beams) reach the threshold of RSRP. Alternatively, the relay device may report SSBs (or beams) received by the backhaul side beams based on the forwarding threshold, where the SSBs (or beams) satisfy the forwarding threshold, and the RSRP of the SSBs (or beams) reach the threshold of RSRP.

In the case that the threshold is an RSRP threshold for forwarding SSB signal quality, the network device indicates, through the first indication information, one possible form of the threshold and the value range in the protocol is as follows:

the reference signal may also be, for example, a CSI-RS. Accordingly, the threshold is a threshold of RSRP of the CSI-RS. The relay device may select CSI-RSs (or beams) received by the backhaul side beams based on the threshold, the CSI-RSs (or beams) may be used for forwarding, and the RSRP of the CSI-RSs (or beams) reaches the threshold of RSRP. Alternatively, the relay device may report CSI-RSs (or beams) received by the backhaul side beams based on the forwarding threshold, where the SSBs (or beams) satisfy the forwarding threshold, and the RSRP of the CSI-RSs (or beams) reach the threshold of RSRP.

In the case that the threshold is an RSRP threshold for forwarding CSI-RS signal quality, the network device indicates, through the first indication information, one possible form of the threshold and the value range in the protocol is as follows:

optionally, the first indication information may be included in the reporting configuration information, for example, be a cell in the reporting configuration information. That is, when the network device configures the measurement result for the relay device to report the related information, the network device may carry the threshold value in the report configuration information. Of course, the first indication information may also be carried in other signaling, which is not limited in this application.

As mentioned above, the threshold value is related to the quality of the forwarded signal, and may be, for example, an RSRP threshold value of the forwarded signal. Wherein, the signal may refer to one or more of SSB, CSI-RS, TRS, DMRS, PTRS, SRS, etc. that may be used for uplink and/or downlink forwarding; or may also refer to control signals or data signals, such as PDCCH, PDSCH, which may be used for downlink forwarding, or PUCCH, PUSCH, which may be used for uplink forwarding.

For ease of understanding and description, the following steps describe the method provided in the embodiments of the present application by taking a signal for downstream forwarding as an example.

In step 420, the network device transmits a signal. Accordingly, the relay device receives the signal.

The network device may send signals through a transmission resource configured in advance for the relay device, on which the relay device may receive signals. Illustratively, the signals transmitted by the network device are reference signals, such as CSI-RS, SSB. Correspondingly, the resources configured by the network equipment for the relay equipment are reference signal resources, such as CSI-RS resources and SSB resources. The relay device may receive the reference signal based on a pre-configured reference signal resource.

Illustratively, the resources of the P signals may be indicated by resource configuration information. The resource allocation information for each type of signal is referred to in the prior art and will not be described in detail here.

In this embodiment, for convenience of description, it is assumed that the number of signals transmitted by the network device is P, the number of signals received by the relay device is also P, or less than P, and P is a natural number greater than 1. It will be appreciated that the P signals may include a portion of the better received signal and a portion of the worse received signal. In addition, the P signals are determined by the network device according to the current network requirement, for example, determined according to the number of connected terminal devices, and the number of signals sent by the network device is not limited in the application.

It should be appreciated that after the relay device receives the signal from the network device, the received signal may be amplified and/or otherwise processed and forwarded according to prior art processing procedures. The present application is not limited in this regard. In other words, in the scheme provided by the application, the relay device may perform measurement based on the received signal, send the measurement result to the network device, and forward the signal meeting the forwarding requirement, for example, forward the signal with the received quality reaching the threshold value. Alternatively, the schemes provided herein may be such that, at the time of relaying the retransmitted signal, the signal for retransmission is transmitted or received based on a specific network device side beam and a relay side beam (e.g., backhaul side beam), and these beams are capable of enabling the relayed received and/or transmitted (or retransmitted) signal to meet the retransmission requirements.

In step 430, the relay device performs measurement based on the received signals, resulting in measurement results of at least one signal.

It can be appreciated that, among the P signals sent by the network device, some signals may not be received by the relay device, or may be received by the relay device, but the signal has poor receiving quality. The relay device may determine, from the received signals, a signal with better reception quality according to the threshold value indicated in the first indication information. Taking the threshold value of RSRP as an example, the relay device may report, to the network device, a signal with an RSRP greater than or equal to the threshold value among the received signals.

It will be appreciated that different threshold values are used in different ways to measure the signal reception quality. For example, a larger value indicates a better signal reception quality for parameters such as RSRP and RSRQ. In this case, the signal quality reaching the threshold value may mean that the measured value is greater than or equal to the threshold value. But for other parameters, such as path loss, a smaller value indicates a better signal reception quality. In this case, the signal quality reaching the threshold may mean that the measured value is less than or equal to the threshold value. The specific definition that the signal quality reaches the threshold value should be determined according to the parameter corresponding to the threshold value.

For convenience of distinguishing and explanation, the number of signals with the receiving quality reaching the threshold value is denoted as R, the number of signals reporting the measurement result is denoted as L, R is more than or equal to 0 and less than or equal to P, L is more than or equal to 1, and R is more than or equal to L and L, R are integers under the condition that R is more than or equal to 1. That is, among the signals received by the relay device, the reception quality of L signals reaches the threshold value. The relay device may thus generate corresponding measurement results for the L signals of the R signals, respectively.

Wherein R may be 0, that is, none of the signals received by the relay device at this time has a receiving quality reaching a threshold value. In this case, steps 420 and 430 of this embodiment may be repeated until it is able to determine, from the received signals, one or more signals whose reception quality reaches a threshold value, so as to report the measurement result thereof.

R may also be P, that is, all of P signals sent by the network device are received by the relay device, and the receiving quality of the P signals on the relay device side reaches a threshold value. In this case, the relay device may report the measurement results of all signals reaching the threshold value. I.e., l=r=p. The relay device may also select a portion of the reports from among them. For example, the relay device may randomly select L signals from the L signals and report the corresponding measurement results, or may report the measurement results of the L signals according to a predefined rule, where L may be a predefined value. I.e., L < r=p.

In an example, the relay device may order the reception quality of the P signals according to a predefined rule, and report the measurement results corresponding to the signals ranked in the first L bits in order from good to bad.

R may be smaller than P, that is, at least one signal of the signals received by the relay device at this time has a receiving quality reaching a threshold value. The relay device may report all the measurement results of the signals reaching the threshold value, or may report some of the measurement results of the signals reaching the threshold value. For example, the receiving quality of P signals received by the relay device reaches a threshold value, but the relay device selects a part of the P signals to report. That is, L.ltoreq.R < P. The specific implementation of the relay device to select a part of the signals to report the measurement result may be as described above, and will not be described again.

That is, the measurement report of the L signals generated by the relay device may include measurement reports of R signals whose reception quality reaches a threshold value, or may include measurement reports of a part of the R signals whose reception quality reaches a threshold value.

The relay device reports the measurement results of the L signals, so that the network device can conveniently determine that a plurality of signals or the beam directions of the signals in the P signals face the relay device, the forwarding requirement of the relay device can be met, and the network device can conveniently adjust the beam directions of the signals transmitted next time, so that more signals can be multiplexed by the relay device.

Taking a first signal of the L signals as an example, without loss of generality, the measurement result of the first signal may include one or more of the following: the method comprises the steps of identifying a first signal, identifying a network device side beam used for transmitting the first signal, identifying a relay backhaul side beam used for receiving the first signal, information of the receiving quality of the first signal, and identifying a relay access side beam used for forwarding the first signal. The first signal is any one of the L signals.

Wherein the identification of a signal may be used to identify a signal, different signals may be distinguished by different identifications. The identification of the signal may be, for example, an index (index) of the signal. The index of the signal may be, for example, an index of transmission resources of the signal indicated in the resource configuration, such as an index of reference signal resources.

The identification of the network device side beam used to transmit the first signal may be used to indicate the transmit beam of the network device. Since the transmission beam of the network device can be deduced by the identity of the first signal, the TCI state or QCL information, the identity of the beam at the network device for transmitting the first signal can also be replaced with at least one of the identity of the first signal, the TCI (or TCI state) for configuring the QCL relationship of the first signal, and the QCL information of the first signal.

Wherein the TCI may be used to indicate a TCI state, which may be used to configure QCL relationships between the plurality of signals. The signal with QCL relationship may be configured by a TCI state. In the current protocol, the TCI state may be used to configure QCL relationships between multiple reference signals, and specifically, reference signal resources corresponding to reference signals with QCL relationships may be indicated in the same TCI, so that signals may also be indicated by the TCI state. For example, reference signal resource indexes of a plurality of reference signals having a QCL relationship with the first signal are indicated in TCI for configuring the QCL relationship of the first signal.

The different TCI states may be distinguished by different TCI state identifications (TCI-stateids), and the network device may indicate the TCI state by TCI, e.g., the TCI field in the downlink control information (downlink control information, DCI) indicates the TCI state. Thus, the L signals may be indicated by L TCIs (or TCI states), respectively, where if there is a partial signal with a QCL relationship, the TCIs (or TCI states) used to indicate the partial signal may be the same TCI (or TCI state).

Herein, QCL relationships specifically refer to any one or more types of QCL relationships. The QCL information of the signal may be used in particular to indicate spatial reception parameters of the signal, such as AOA, DOA, etc. The network device can obtain richer measurement results by indicating the QCL information of each signal, and then the beam direction of the signal transmitted next time is adjusted more reasonably.

In downlink transmission, one or more measurements may be performed on each signal transmitted by the network device using the relay device, and one receive beam may be used for each measurement, so that the number of beams used by the relay device to receive each signal may be one or more. In the case where there are a plurality of beams for receiving each signal, the relay device may select one or more beams in which the reception quality is good for reporting.

In downlink transmission, the relay device may also configure one or more access side beams for each backhaul side beam to forward. The relay device may report the corresponding access side beam configured for each backhaul side beam to the network device.

The information of the reception quality of each signal may be used to indicate the reception quality of the signal by the relay device. For example, if the threshold is a threshold of RSRP, the information of the reception quality of each signal may be specifically RSRP, or a relative amount of RSRP with respect to the threshold, or a relative amount of RSRP with respect to the maximum value of RSRP of all the received signals, or the like. The present application is not limited in this regard.

Several possible forms of measurement results of the L signals generated by the relay device are exemplarily given below by tables 1 to 4.

TABLE 1

Identification of reference signals	Identification of backhaul side beams	Information of reception quality
			RS0	#0	RSRP0
RS1	#1	RSRP1
			……	……

TABLE 2

TABLE 3 Table 3

TABLE 4 Table 4

It should be understood that the measurement results of the L signals generated by the relay device are not limited to those shown in tables 1 to 4 above, and the measurement results of the L signals may include one or more columns shown in any one of tables 1 to 4, or may be combined to obtain a measurement result containing more information.

For example, the information of the reception quality may be reported in a differential manner (or relative value), i.e. only one absolute measurement value is reported, the other reported values being relative values. Taking RSPP as an example of the information of the reception quality, the measurement results of the L signals may include: an absolute value RSRP0 (which may be quantized absolute value), and L-1 relative values in decibel milliwatts (decibel relative to one milliwatt, dBm).

Further, the absolute value is quantized when reported, the step size of quantization can be less than 2 (decibel (dB)), for example, the corresponding compensation of RSRP0 can be 0.5; for another example, the corresponding offset for RSRP0 may be 1. Or, the step length of the report value may be determined according to the indication of the network device, or the step length of the report value may be determined according to the information to be reported by the relay device. Other L-1 relative values may also have different designs, for example, if RSRP is ordered in a preset order (e.g., from high to low; e.g., from low to high; e.g., non-decreasing; e.g., non-increasing), the first reference signal indicates the corresponding information of the received quality as the absolute value RSPP0 (e.g., the quantized absolute value is reported), the second reference signal indicates the corresponding information of the received quality as the relative value RSRP1, and the relative value RSRP1 may be the difference value of the second reference signal indicates the corresponding RSRP relative to RSRP 0; the information of the receiving quality corresponding to the third reference signal identifier is a relative value RSRP2, and the relative value RSRP2 can be the difference value of the RSRP corresponding to the second reference signal identifier relative to RSRP0, and so on; or, if RSRP is ordered according to a preset sequence (e.g., from high to low, from low to high, from non-decreasing, from non-increasing, for example), the information of the reception quality corresponding to the first reference signal identifier is the absolute value RSPP0, the information of the reception quality corresponding to the second reference signal identifier is the relative value RSRP1, and the relative value RSRP1 is the difference value of the RSRP corresponding to the second reference signal identifier relative to RSRP 0; the information of the corresponding reception quality of the third reference signal is a relative value RSRP2, and the relative value RSRP2 may be the difference value of the corresponding RSRP of the third reference signal with respect to RSRP1, and so on. In this way, the information bits required to report the measurement result can be further reduced, and a relatively high accuracy is maintained. Alternatively, the quantization step size of the relative value may be smaller than 2, for example, the quantization step size of the relative value is 0.5, and further, for example, the quantization step size of the relative value is 1.

It should be appreciated that the absolute value RSRP reported and the RSRP used to obtain the relative value may be different. For example, the relative value may be determined by differentiating based on the measured absolute value and then quantifying the difference into the reported relative value. I.e. the absolute or relative value after quantization is reported. In all embodiments of the present application, the absolute values and relative values reported may be defined in a similar manner. For brevity, the description of the same or similar cases will be omitted hereinafter.

In further implementations, the quantization step sizes for RSRP0 and the relative values are not the same. For example, the quantization step size corresponding to RSRP0 is 1, and the quantization step size corresponding to the relative value is 0.5.

In other implementations, the quantization step sizes corresponding to different relative values are different. For example, the relative value quantization step size corresponding to RSRP1 is 1, and the relative value quantization step size corresponding to RSRP2 is 0.5.

In the present application, the quantization step length refers to an interval or deviation of values corresponding to adjacent reported information when the reception quality is converted into the reported information. For example, if the quantization step size is 1 and the value range corresponding to the report information a0 is [ a, a+1 ], the value range corresponding to the report information a0+1 is [ a+1, a+2 ]. The similar may correspond to other quantization steps. In this embodiment, the reported information is information of signal receiving quality, or a quantized value of signal receiving quality; the corresponding value of the reported information is the receiving quality. For example, the value corresponding to the report information is RSRP, and the report information is quantization information for indicating RSRP.

In addition, the relative value quantization step length and/or the absolute value quantization step length can be determined by the relay device and reported to the network device; or a predefined value; or determined from the indication information of the network device. The relay equipment determines and reports the accurate signal quality to the network equipment according to the actual relay capacity and the signal receiving condition, and the forwarding performance is improved.

As described above, the measurement results of the L signals reported by the relay device may be measurement results of all signals whose reception quality reaches the threshold value, or may be measurement results of some of the signals. In one possible implementation, the network device may indicate the number of signals that the relay device needs to report the measurement result, or the maximum or minimum of the number of signals that the measurement result needs to report.

Optionally, the first indication information is further used to indicate at least one of the following: the number of signals for which measurement results need to be reported, the maximum value of the number of signals for which measurement results need to be reported, or the minimum value of the number of signals for which measurement results need to be reported.

For example, the first indication information is used to indicate the number of signals for which the measurement result needs to be reported. The relay device may generate a corresponding number of measurement results according to the number indicated by the first indication information. If the first indication information indicates that the number of signals for reporting the measurement results is L, the relay device generates measurement results of the L signals.

For another example, the first indication information is used for indicating the maximum value L of the number of signals needing to report the measurement result _max . The relay device can respond to the maximum value L indicated by the first indication information _max Generates no more than L _max Measurement of individual signals, i.e. L.ltoreq.L _max 。

One possible design is that the maximum value L _max Not exceeding the number of access side beams required by the relay device.

In this embodiment, if the number of access side beams required by the relay device is M, the maximum value L _max The method meets the following conditions: l (L) _max ≤M。

Another possible design is that the maximum value L _max Not exceeding a minimum of both: the number of access side beams required by the relay device and the number of signals transmitted by the network device for measurement.

In this embodiment, the number of access side beams required by the relay device is M, and the number of signals for measurement transmitted by the network device is P, the maximum value L _max The method meets the following conditions: l (L) _max ≤min(M，P)。

For another example, the first indication information is used for indicating the minimum value L of the number of signals needing to report the measurement result _min . The relay device can indicate the minimum value L according to the first indication information _min Generating at least L _min Measurement of individual signals, i.e. L.gtoreq.L _min 。

One possibility is that the relay device performs measurement based on the received P signals to find that the number of signals whose reception quality reaches the threshold value is smaller than the above-mentioned minimum value L _min . One possible solution is that the relay device can rank the reception quality of the P signals in order of good to bad, and for the L ranked first _min The signals generate corresponding measurement results. At this time, the L _min The measurement results of the individual signals do not necessarily completely satisfy the requirement that the reception quality reaches the threshold value.

In step 440, the relay device transmits the measurement results of the L signals to the network device. Accordingly, the network device receives the measurement of the at least one signal from the relay device.

The relay device may report the measurement results of the L signals through a pre-configured reporting resource. The reporting resource may be determined, for example, by the reporting configuration described above, or may be determined by other manners, which is not limited in this application.

The specific implementation manner of reporting the measurement results of the L signals to the network device by the relay device through the reporting resource may be the same as the current reporting manner, which is not described in detail herein.

The measurement results of the L signals reported by the relay device to the network device may be used to determine the beam of the backhaul link. In embodiments of the present application, the beam of the backhaul link may include a network device side beam and/or a relay device backhaul side beam. Since the beams of the backhaul link are determined for signal forwarding, the network device side beam of the beams of the backhaul link can be used to transmit signals for forwarding and the relay device side backhaul side beam can be used to receive signals for forwarding.

In step 450, the network device determines a beam of the backhaul link based on the measurement of the at least one signal.

The network device may determine a network device side beam for the next signal transmission and/or a relay backhaul side beam for the received signal based on the measurement results of the L signals reported by the relay device, that is, determine a beam of a backhaul link for the next signal transmission. The network device can adjust the beam direction of the signal transmitted by the network device next time and/or the beam direction of the signal received by the relay device next time based on the beam of the return link determined by the measurement results of the L signals reported by the relay device, so that more signals face the relay device, and better receiving quality is obtained at the relay device side. In one implementation, the network device configures the relay to use at least one beam information of the backhaul link, which may be the same as the beam information corresponding to the L signals reported by the relay device, or have the same QCL relationship. For example, the backhaul link network device side beam used for forwarding is a network device side beam relaying a certain signal reported; for another example, the backhaul link used for forwarding relays a backhaul side beam, and relays a backhaul side receive beam for relaying a signal.

Fig. 5 shows an example in which the network device adjusts the beam direction of the next transmitted signal based on the measurement results of the L signals. As shown in fig. 5, it is assumed that 2 signals transmitted by the network device include rs#0 and rs#1, as shown by solid beams in the figure. And if the receiving quality of the RS #1 reaches the threshold value and the receiving quality of the RS #0 does not reach the threshold value, the measuring results of the L signals reported by the relay equipment comprise measuring results of 1 signal (such as the RS # 1). The network device may adjust the directions of rs#0 and rs#1 (as shown by the dotted beam in the figure) or adjust the beam directions of rs#0 when transmitting the signal next time, so that the beam directions of rs#0 and RS1 are closer to the beam direction of rs#1 transmitted last time.

In the example shown in fig. 5, the relay device is originally available for the forwarded signal rs#1, and the signal that the relay device is available for forwarding is changed from rs#1 to rs#0 and rs#1 due to the adjustment of the beam direction of the signal that the network device next transmits. That is, the network device originally needs to additionally allocate M-1 beams to transmit signals, so that the forwarding requirement of the relay device can be met; after adjustment, M-2 wave beams are required to be additionally allocated to transmit signals, so that the forwarding requirement of the relay equipment can be met.

In step 460, the network device sends second indication information, which is used to indicate the beam of the backhaul link. Accordingly, the relay device receives the second indication information.

The next time the network device transmits a signal, it may transmit a signal based on the last determined beam of the backhaul link. For example, if the beam of the backhaul link that was last determined by the network device includes a network device side beam, the network device may send a signal using the network device side beam that was determined at this time; if the last determined beam of the backhaul link by the network device includes a relay backhaul side beam, the network device may send a signal using the network device side beam of the relay backhaul side beam pair determined this time. Here, the network device side beam paired with the relay backhaul side beam may be determined by beam scanning, or may be determined based on previous measurements, which is not limited in this application.

Optionally, the second indication information may further be used to indicate a transmission resource of the signal to be transmitted next, so that the relay device receives the signal based on the transmission resource. The relay device may forward the signal meeting the forwarding requirement after receiving the signal from the network device, so the second indication information may also be regarded as resource configuration information of the signal configured by the network device for the relay device for forwarding.

After the network device receives the measurement result from the relay device, the network device may determine the subsequent steps according to the magnitude relation between the number of signals corresponding to the received measurement result and the preset number by executing the foregoing steps 420 to 450.

For example, as shown in the figure, in the case that the number of signals corresponding to the measurement result received by the network device is less than the preset number, steps 420 to 450 may be repeatedly performed until the number of signals corresponding to the received measurement result is greater than or equal to the preset number. Step 460 may be executed when the number of signals corresponding to the measurement result received by the network device is greater than or equal to the preset number, where the network device sends second indication information to the relay device to indicate the beam of the backhaul link; and step 470, the network device sends the M signals for forwarding.

In another implementation manner, when the number of signals L corresponding to the measurement result received by the network device is less than the preset number, steps 420 to 460 may be repeatedly performed until the number of signals corresponding to the received measurement result is greater than or equal to the preset number. In case that the number of signals corresponding to the measurement result received by the network device is greater than or equal to the preset number, step 470 may be executed, where the network device sends M signals for forwarding.

It will be appreciated that in repeatedly performing steps 420 to 460, each time the network device transmits a signal, the network device may transmit a signal based on the beam of the backhaul link determined by the previous measurement, and each time the relay device receives a signal, the relay device may receive a signal based on the beam of the backhaul link indicated by the second indication information received last time.

For example, if the beam of the backhaul link indicated by the second indication information received by the relay device last time includes a relay backhaul side beam, the relay device may use the relay backhaul side beam received signal indicated by the second indication information; if the last received beam of the backhaul link indicated by the second indication information includes a network device side beam, the relay device may use the relay backhaul side beam paired with the network device side beam indicated by the second indication information to receive. Here, the relay backhaul side beam paired with the network device side beam may be determined by beam scanning, or may be determined based on previous measurements, which is not limited in this application.

The network device may adjust the beam direction of the signal transmitted next according to the measurement result received each time, so that more beams face the relay device, and further, the receiving quality of more signals reaches a threshold value. Therefore, the measurement result determined by the relay device based on the received signal each time may be different from the measurement result determined based on the signal received last time, and the number of signals corresponding to the measurement result may be different, for example, the number of signals obtained by measuring the received signal based on the signal received first time and having the reception quality reaching the threshold value is denoted as R ₁ The number of signals reaching the threshold value based on the received measurement received for the second time is R ₂ ，R ₁ And R is R ₂ May be the same or different. It will be appreciated that as the number of measurements increases, the number of signals for which the reception quality can reach the threshold value increases. In this way, the signal base for forwarding in the signal sent by the network device can be made to be the signal base for forwarding in the time of forwarding the signal by the relay deviceThe relay device may also receive the signals transmitted in a particular beam direction using a particular backhaul beam that enables the signals received and/or forwarded by the relay device to meet the forwarding requirements.

Based on the above process, after the number of signals of the measurement result reported by the relay device reaches the preset number, the network device may configure M signals for forwarding for the relay device, and may specifically include: the network device configures M, K and/or M-K values for the relay device and indicates to the relay device transmission resources for transmitting the M signals based on the determined values, so that the relay device receives the M signals on the corresponding resources.

The second indication information transmitted by the network device based on the M signals configured for the relay device may be used to indicate transmission resources of the M signals, an access side beam, and the like, in addition to the beam of the backhaul link. Thus, the second indication information may be regarded as configuration information of the network device configuring the relay device with M signals for forwarding.

Illustratively, the second indication information may be carried in one of the following: physical broadcast channel (physical broadcast channel, PBCH), remaining minimum system information (remaining minimum system information, RMSI), system information block (system information block, SIB) 1, SIB2, SIB3, medium access control (medium access control, MAC) -Control Element (CE), downlink control information (downlink control information, DCI), radio resource control (radio resource control, RRC) signaling, or system information.

In step 470, the network device sends M signals for forwarding. Accordingly, the relay device receives the M signals.

The M signals can be understood as signals with better signal quality received by the relay device in the signals sent by the network device, so as to meet the forwarding requirement of the relay device, and the M signals can be used for forwarding of the relay device. However, the application is not limited to the role of the M signals, and some or all of the M signals may be received by the direct connection terminal.

It can be appreciated that, the network device may send and receive M signals and the relay device may receive the M signals based on the beam of the last determined backhaul link, and the specific process may refer to the related description above, which is not repeated herein.

It should be noted that the network device transmits M signals for forwarding, and does not transmit only the M signals on behalf of the network device. The network device may also send signals to other terminal devices connected to the network device according to network requirements. The present application does not limit the number of signals transmitted by the network device.

In step 480, the relay device transmits the received M signals to the terminal device.

The relay device may forward the received M signals. Illustratively, the relay device may amplify and/or otherwise process the received M signals and forward the signals to the terminal device. Since the specific implementation of the relay device for forwarding signals can be seen in the prior art, details will not be described here.

The M signals received by the relay device may be received at different times, and thus the M signals forwarded by the relay device may also be forwarded at different times. For example, as shown in fig. 4, signal 1 for forwarding is received in step 4701, and received signal 1 is forwarded in step 4801, and so on, until signal M for forwarding is received in step 470M, and received signal M is forwarded in step 480M. The receiving step and the forwarding step may be performed simultaneously for the same signal, or the relay device may perform a small amount of delay (or called group delay) on the received signal and then forward the signal. For example, signal 1 is retransmitted while signal 1 is received. The present application is not limited in this regard.

In another implementation manner, the relay device may further forward the received signal after performing a small delay according to the indication information of the network device (or the report information of the terminal device, which is not limited). The delay of the received signal by the relay device may be referred to as a forwarding delay of the relay device, where the forwarding delay may be determined according to the indication information of the network device. Still further, the forwarding delay of the relay device may be much smaller than the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, OFDM) symbol length; alternatively, the forwarding delay of the relay device is much smaller than the cyclic prefix length.

In further implementations, the relay device may also report its own forwarding delay capability to the network device (or terminal device). For example, at least one of the following is reported: whether the relay device supports delay forwarding or not, and a specific delay value supported by the relay device. If the relay device supports multiple delay values, the relay may choose to report one or more delay values. Based on the reported information, the network device may instruct the relay to forward with a suitable delay.

Based on the control delay information, the method is beneficial to avoiding the too large or too small delay of the relay forwarding signal, so that the delay of the signal at the receiving end is extended beyond the cyclic prefix, namely, the inter-symbol interference is avoided.

It has been mentioned that the beams used by the relay device for receiving the M signals (i.e. the backhaul beams) and the beams used for forwarding the M signals (i.e. the access side beams) may be pre-bonded, such as one backhaul beam corresponding to one access side beam as shown in table 3 above, or one backhaul beam corresponding to a plurality of access side beams as shown in table 4 above. The relay device may determine a beam for forwarding the M signals based on the beam used to receive the M signals, and further forward the corresponding signals using a different access side beam.

One possible design is that the relay device may sequentially correspond the reception quality of the M signals to the access side beams in order from high to low (or non-increasing), and the coverage capability of the access side beams from low to high (or non-decreasing). Fig. 6 shows an example of correspondence of a backhaul side beam and an access side beam of a relay device. As shown in fig. 6, the backhaul side beam #bh of the relay device _k With access side beam #ac _k One-to-one, k=0, 1, … …, K-1. Optionally, the access side beam of the relay device satisfies the following correspondence: beam #ac _k Is less than or equal to the gain ofEqual to beam #AC _k+1 And the measurement results satisfy: the reception quality of rs#k is superior to that of rs#k+1, for example, the RSRP of rs#k is greater than or equal to that of rs#k+1.

By binding the backhaul side beam and the access side beam in the above manner, the coverage capability of the access side beam corresponding to the backhaul side beam with better signal receiving quality is lower, and the coverage capability of the access side beam corresponding to the backhaul side beam with worse signal receiving quality is higher. Therefore, the power output capacity of different beams can be leveled, the relay coverage capacity is improved, and more beams of the network equipment meet the forwarding requirement, so that the cost of the network equipment is reduced.

For ease of understanding, several examples of the network device configuring the relay device to forward signals are given below.

Assuming that the network device generates and reports the corresponding measurement result when the measurement result is generated and reported each time, the signal with the receiving quality reaching the threshold value in the received signals is generated and reported, namely, l=r, and the number of signals corresponding to the last received measurement result is recorded as L _n N represents the nth time, n, L _n Are all positive integers. M represents the number of access side beams configured by the network device for the relay device. K represents the number of beams (i.e., the number of signals) that can be multiplexed by the relay device and the directly connected terminal device among signals transmitted by the network device.

An example, if L _n And M is not more than, and the network equipment configures the value of K for the relay equipment. Network device configurable relay device forwarding k=l _n A signal.

Further, if L _n <M, the network device can also configure the value of M or M-K for the relay device. Network devices except for configuring relay forwarding k=l _n Besides the signals, the relay device is also configured to forward signals at other M-K times.

Another example, if L _n The network device may configure the relay device with values of K and/or M. The network device may configure the relay device to forward k=m signals.

Still another example, a network device configures a relay deviceM can be set to be L _n Related to the following. For example, the network device may configure the number of access side beams of the relay device to be equal to the number of backhaul side beams. The network device may configure the relay device to forward m=l _n A signal.

As yet another example, if K<L _n And K is<M, the network device may configure values for at least two of the relay device M, K and M-K. The network device configures the relay device to forward K signals, and also configures the relay device to forward signals at other M-K times.

It should be understood that the several examples listed above are shown for ease of understanding only and should not be construed as limiting the present application in any way. The specific implementation of the network device configuring the M signals for forwarding for the relay device is not limited in this application.

Therefore, based on the scheme, the relay device can report the measurement result according to the threshold value indicated by the network device, so that the network device can adjust the beam direction of the signal transmitted next time according to the measurement result, and more signals in the signal transmitted by the network device can meet the forwarding requirement of the relay device. In this way, the additional overhead caused by the introduction of the relay device is reduced, thereby being beneficial to improving the network efficiency. In addition, because more wave beams can be used for communication with the terminal below the relay device and the terminal of the direct network device in the signals sent by the network device, the space freedom degree of the network device in scheduling is improved.

Since the number of terminal devices connected to the relay device may not be large in practical applications, it is not necessary to allocate excessive resources to the relay device. If the signal forwarded by the relay device is all frequency domain or space domain resources, the coverage area of the relay device is traversed, and relatively large overhead is brought. Therefore, in order to further reduce the overhead of the network device, the M signals configured for the relay device for forwarding may be respectively carried and transmitted on different time domain resources and different frequency/space domain resources. In order to obtain a better reception quality, the signals carried on the different time domain resources and the different frequency/space domain resources may be transmitted using beams corresponding to the signals that have been measured and have a better reception quality, in other words, the beams may be reused for transmitting the M signals.

That is, the M signals received by the relay device for forwarding may be carried on different time domain resources, different frequency domain resources, or may be carried on different time domain resources, different space domain resources. Optionally, among the M signals, there are part of the signals from the transmit beam direction of the same network device (and/or from the same backhaul beam direction of the relay device). In this way, the relay device may also use the same backhaul beam to receive multiple signals on different time domain resources and different frequency domain resources, or use the same backhaul beam to receive multiple signals on different time domain resources and different space domain resources.

Illustratively, the M signals include a second signal and a third signal. For the network device, the second signal and the third signal are signals sent by the same network device through a transmitting beam on time-frequency resources corresponding to different CCs at different time points. For example, the transmission resource of the second signal corresponds to the first CC and the first time, and the transmission resource of the third signal corresponds to the second CC and the second time.

That is, the M signals received by the relay device for forwarding may be signals carried on different time domain resources and different frequency domain resources, and transmitted from the same network device in the beam direction. In this way, the relay device may also receive multiple signals on different time domain resources and different frequency domain resources.

For the relay device, the backhaul beam for receiving the second signal and the backhaul beam for receiving the third signal may be the same or different; but the access side beam for forwarding the second signal is different from the access side beam for forwarding the third signal. In other words, different CCs may correspond to different relay access side beams.

Assuming that the transmission resources of the second signal correspond to the first CC and the first time, and the transmission resources of the third signal correspond to the second CC and the second time, the access side beam for forwarding the signal on the first CC and the access side beam for forwarding the signal on the second CC may be different for the relay device, and the time for forwarding the signal of the first CC and the time for forwarding the signal on the second CC may also be different. That is, the access side beam for forwarding the second signal is different from the access side beam for forwarding the third signal, and the time for forwarding the second signal is different from the time for forwarding the third signal.

Fig. 7 and 8 show examples of the second signal and the third signal. In fig. 7 and 8, the signal rs#k is an example of the second signal, and the signal rs#j is an example of the third signal. It should be appreciated that the RSs shown in fig. 7 and 8 may be SSBs, CSI-RSs, etc., which are included but not limited to.

Fig. 7 shows the communication connection between the gNB and the NCR, and between UE1, UE 2. The ellipses in fig. 7 represent beam directions. Of the two beam directions on the NCR access side, the beam direction shown with a broken line indicates the beam direction not used at that time, and the beam direction shown with a solid line indicates the beam direction used at that time. Similarly, the beam directions on the gNB side are each shown in solid lines, representing a plurality of (e.g., two) beam directions that are simultaneously struck at that time.

A) in FIG. 7 shows that gNB corresponds to time t _k And the signal rs#k sent on the resource of CC0, b) in fig. 7 corresponds to time t _j And a signal rs#j transmitted on a resource of CC 1. Both signals rs#k and rs#j are transmitted via the same transmit beam, as shown in the figure, with no change in beam direction for rs#j compared to rs#k. It will be appreciated that gNB corresponds to a time t except _k And CC0, other signals may be transmitted in addition to the rs#k signal transmitted on the resource of CC0, such as beams in other directions as shown in a) of fig. 7; gNB except at the time t _j And the resource of CC1 may transmit the signal rs#j, or may transmit other signals, such as beams in other directions shown in b) in fig. 7, and the directions of these signals are not limited in this application.

NCR can use the same backhaul beam to receive RS #k and RS #j, but thenThe times and frequencies of reception of RS#k and RS#j are different, specifically, at a time corresponding to time t _k And CC0, receives signal RS#k on the resource corresponding to time t _j And the resource of CC1 receives signal rs#j.

The NCR is also different for the beam used to transmit the RS #k and RS #j. As shown in the figure, the NCR is configured to forward the access side beam of rs#k toward UE1, and the access side beam of rs#j is configured to forward the access side beam toward UE2, and in order to facilitate distinguishing between the two access side beams, the beam corresponding to the signal transmitted by the NCR is shown by a solid line, and the beam corresponding to the signal not transmitted by the NCR is shown by a broken line.

It should be noted that at time t _k The gNB may also transmit other signals on other CCs (i.e., CC1, among others). At this time, the signal transmitted by the gcb in the other CC is different from the signal transmitted in the CC 0. At time t _j The gNB may also transmit other signals on other CCs (i.e., CC0, among others). At this time, the signal transmitted by the gcb in the other CC is different from the signal transmitted in the CC 1.

Illustratively, assume that gNB is at time t _k And time t _j The signals transmitted on CC0 and CC1 are SSB, respectively, rs#k in fig. 7 may be ssb#k, and rs#j may be ssb#j. If time t _k The signal ssb#k is transmitted on the resource of CC0 (i.e., the target CC), and other data signals or reference signals may also be transmitted on other CCs (e.g., CC 1) at that time. Similarly, if time t _j The signal ssb#j transmitted on the resource corresponding to CC1 (i.e., the target CC) may also transmit other data signals or reference signals on other CCs (e.g., CC 0) at that time.

For convenience of distinction and explanation, other data signals or reference signals transmitted by the network device are referred to herein as fourth signals. The fourth signal does not belong to the M signals described above, that is, the fourth signal is not a signal for relay device to forward. In the present embodiment, the beam for transmitting the second signal and the beam for transmitting the fourth signal are different, and/or the beam for transmitting the third signal and the beam for transmitting the fourth signal are different. For example, the transmit beam of rs#k in fig. 7 is different from the transmit beam of the other signal 1 and/or the transmit beam of rs#j is different from the transmit beam of the other signal 2.

It should be appreciated that different transmit beams correspond to different spatial angles, thereby resulting in signals transmitted by different transmit beams may correspond to different coverage areas. By the method provided by the application, the signals of different CCs or TRPs are forwarded by different relay access side beams, so that coverage is provided for different coverage areas. In the conventional amplification and forwarding scheme, each relay access side beam forwards a signal of an entire frequency band (band), or pass band (passband), or a signal of a plurality of TRPs. This forwarding scheme may cause waste when there is little user resource demand under the relay. With the scheme of the present application, when there is little need for resources of users (e.g., terminal devices 132 and 133 in fig. 1) in the relay coverage area, the network device allocates only a small number of time/frequency resources of CCs or TRPs for relaying the forwarded signals to these users, thereby meeting the communication needs thereof. Meanwhile, the network device may allocate other resources (CCs or TRPs) to the user of the direct network device (e.g., in fig. 1, the terminal device 131 is a direct terminal). Thereby making the resource utilization efficiency higher.

Fig. 8 shows a schematic diagram of the gcb transmit signal and the NCR receive and forward signal. Fig. 8 is only an example, and is intended to illustrate transmission, reception, and retransmission of the signals rs#k and rs#j, and is not limited to the transmission beam of other signals on the gNB side, and the backhaul side beam and the access side beam of the NCR, so that all signals transmitted by the gNB are not shown in the figure.

As shown in fig. 8, at time t _k gNB uses beam #B on resource corresponding to CC0 _k The transmission signal ssb#k, NCR uses the return side beam #bh _k Receives signal ssb#k and uses access side beam #ac _k The signal rs#k is forwarded. At this time, the transmission resource of the signal ssb#k forwarded by the NCR corresponds to time t in time domain _k Corresponding to CC0 in the frequency domain. At time t _j gNB uses beam #B on the resource corresponding to CC1 _k The transmission signal ssb#j, NCR uses the return side beam #bh _k Receives signal ssb#j and uses access side beam #ac _j And forwarding the signal SSB#j. At this time, the transmission resource of the signal ssb#j forwarded by the NCR is inCorresponding to time t in time domain _j Corresponds to CC1 in the frequency domain.

In the examples shown in fig. 7 and 8, the M signals received by the relay device for forwarding are carried on different time domain resources and different frequency domain resources. In another implementation, the M signals for forwarding may also be carried in different frequency domain resources, different time domain resources, and different spatial domain resources.

For example, gNB at time t _k And time t _j The signals of the respective CCs (i.e., CC0 and CC1, among others) may also be transmitted in different beams, respectively. At this time, signals of different CCs may be transmitted by different beams.

Fig. 9 shows another schematic diagram of the gcb transmit signal and the NCR receive and forward signal. Fig. 8 is only an example, and is intended to illustrate transmission, reception, and retransmission of the signals rs#k and rs#j, and is not limited to the transmission beam of other signals on the gNB side, and the backhaul side beam and the access side beam of the NCR, so that all signals transmitted by the gNB are not shown in the figure.

As shown in fig. 9, assume that gNB is at time t _k And time t _j The signals transmitted on CC0 and CC1 are SSBs, and include ssb#k (i.e., an example of rs#k) and ssb#j (i.e., an example of rs#j), for example. If time t _k The signal transmitted on the CC0 resource is ssb#k, and the gcb beam (or antenna panel) B is adopted _0,k At this time beam (or antenna panel) B may be taken over CC1 _1,k Ssb#k on CC1 is transmitted. Similarly, if time t _j The signal transmitted on the resources of CC1 is ssb#j, taking the gNB beam (or antenna panel) B _1,j Beam B may be taken on CC0 at this time _0,j Ssb#j on CC0 is transmitted. It can be appreciated that gNB at time t _k SSB#k transmitted on resource corresponding to CC0 and at time t _j SSB#j transmitted on the resource corresponding to CC1 is a signal for forwarding transmitted to the relay device, at time t _k SSB#k transmitted on the resource corresponding to CC1 and at time t _j Ssb#j transmitted on the resource corresponding to CC0 is another signal. For easy distinction, the figure is for the relay device to sendThe retransmitted signal, and the backhaul side beam for receiving the signal and the access side beam for retransmitting the signal by the relay device are identified with a thick wire frame.

In one implementation, time t _k gNB beam (or antenna panel) B _0,k And time t _j gNB beam (or antenna panel) B _1,j May be the same or may have the same quasi co-location information or may also have the same TCI state.

In addition, time t _k gNB beam (or antenna panel) B _0,k And time t _k gNB beam (or antenna panel) B _1,k Can be different, time t _j gNB beam B of (2) _0,j And time t _j gNB beam B of (2) _1,j May be different.

In one implementation, the NCR is at time t _k And time t _j The corresponding backhaul reception beams may be the same or different.

In some cases, the gNB may configure multiple TRPs to send signals to the same relay at different geographic locations. The plurality of TRPs may be understood as antenna panels where the gNB is deployed in different geographical locations, which may be used to transmit signals in different directions. The above-mentioned resource transmission of loading the second signal and the third signal in different time domains and different frequency domains, but the mode of receiving the second signal and the third signal through the same backhaul side beam and forwarding the second signal through different access side beams on the relay device side may also be applied to this scenario. In other words, the second signal and the third signal are from different TRPs. For example, the second signal is from the first TRP and the third signal is from the second TRP.

That is, the M signals received by the relay device for forwarding may be signals from different TRP's of transmit beam directions carried on different time domain resources, different frequency domain resources, and different spatial domain resources. In this way, the relay device may also receive a plurality of signals on different time domain resources, different frequency domain resources, and different spatial domain resources.

The backhaul side beam for receiving the second signal and the backhaul side beam for receiving the third signal may be the same or different for the relay device; the access side beam for forwarding the second signal is different from the access side beam for forwarding the third signal. In other words, different TRPs may correspond to different relay access side beams.

Assuming that the transmission resources of the second signal correspond to the first TRP and the first time and the transmission resources of the third signal correspond to the second TRP and the second time, the access side beam for forwarding the signal from the first TRP and the access side beam for forwarding the signal from the second TRP may be different for the relay device, and the time for forwarding the signal from the first TRP and the time for forwarding the signal from the second TRP may also be different. That is, the access side beam for forwarding the second signal is different from the access side beam for forwarding the third signal, and the time for forwarding the second signal is different from the time for forwarding the third signal.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the set of resources allocated by the gNB to different TRPs is different, and thus different TRPs may be associated with different sets of resources. Thus, one possible implementation of the second signal and the third signal from different TRPs is that the transmission resources of the second signal and the transmission resources of the third signal belong to different sets of resources. For example, TRP1 is associated with a first set of resources, TRP2 is associated with a second set of resources, transmission resources of the second signal are from the first set of resources, transmission resources of the third signal are from the second set of resources, and the first set of resources is different from the second set of resources. Different TRPs may transmit signals to the same relay device through resources in different resource sets, and the relay device may receive signals from different TRPs using the same backhaul side beam and forward using different access side beams.

Fig. 10 still uses the signal rs#k as an example of the second signal and the signal rs#j as an example of the third signal to describe the communication connection between the devices in this scenario.

Fig. 10 is a schematic diagram of TRP1, TRP2 transmit signals, and NCR receive and forward signals. Fig. 10 shows the communication connections between TRP1, TRP2 and NCR, and between UE1, UE 2. Wherein, although not shown in the figure, it is understood that TRP1 and TRP2 may be controlled by the gNB, signaling NCR. As shown in fig. 10, TRP1 corresponds to time t _k And CC0 transmits signal RS#k on the resource of TRP2 at a time corresponding to time t _j And CC1 transmits a signal rs#j on the resource of CC 1. Signals rs#k and rs#j may be received at the NCR over the same backhaul beam. Similar to fig. 7, the ellipses in fig. 10 represent beam directions. Both the gNB-fired beam direction and the NCR-access side beam direction are shown in solid lines, indicating that multiple (e.g., two) beam directions are fired simultaneously at that time.

The NCR may forward the signal rs#k using the access side beam after receiving the signal rs#k; after receiving the signal rs#j, another access side beam-forwarding signal rs#j may be used, as shown in the figure, the NCR-forwarding signals rs#k and rs#j having access side beams facing in different directions, the former towards UE1 and the latter towards UE2.

As mentioned before, different TRPs are associated with different sets of resources. That is, the resources of TRP1 transmission signal rs#k belong to one resource set and the resources of TRP2 transmission signal rs#j belong to another resource set in the example of fig. 10.

It should be appreciated that the second signal and the third signal are two examples of signals of the M signals described above. The M signals sent by the network device may include more signals, and although the transmissions are transmitted in different time domain resources and different frequency domain resources, the relay device may receive the signals through the same backhaul side beam and forward the signals through different access side beams.

It should be noted that at time t _k And time t _j TRP1 may also transmit other signals on other CCs (i.e., CC1, among others), where the signal transmitted by TRP1 on the other CCs is different from the signal transmitted on CC 0. TRP2 may also transmit signals on other CCs (i.e., CC0, among others), where TRP2 transmits signals on other CCs that are different from signals transmitted on CC 1.

Specifically, assume that TRP1 is at time t _k Transmitting signal ssb#k on the resource corresponding to CC0, TRP1 at this time t _k Other data signals or reference signals may also be sent on resources corresponding to other CCs (e.g., CC 1). Similarly, assume TRP2 is at time t _j Resources corresponding to CC1Up-transmit signal ssb#j, TRP2 at time t _j Other data signals or reference signals may also be sent on resources corresponding to other CCs (e.g., CC 0).

In another implementation, at time t _k And time t _j Different TRPs may be employed to transmit signals of the respective CCs (i.e., CC0 and CC1, among others) respectively. At this time, signals of different CCs are transmitted by different TRPs. Specifically, at time t _k And time t _j The signals transmitted on CC0 and CC1 are SSB examples. If time t _k The signal sent on the resource of CC0 is ssb#k, TRP1 is assumed, TRP2 can be assumed on CC1 at this time, and ssb#k on CC1 is sent. Similarly, if time t _j The signal sent on the resource of CC1 is ssb#j, TRP2 is assumed, TRP1 can be assumed on CC0 at this time, and ssb#j on CC0 is sent.

In one implementation, TRP1 is at time t _k Beam transmitting ssb#k on CC0 resource and TRP2 at time t _j The beams transmitting ssb#j on the resources of CC1 may have the same quasi co-sited information or may also have the same TCI state.

In one implementation, the NCR is at time t _k And time t _j The corresponding backhaul reception beams may be different.

Optionally, in step 460, when configuring the relay device with M signals for forwarding, the network device may be specifically configured to indicate component carriers and time corresponding to transmission resources of each of the M signals, may also be configured to indicate a relay access side beam of each of the M signals, and may even be configured to indicate a relay backhaul side beam and/or a network device side beam of each of the M signals. By indicating the relay access side beam and the relay return side beam, the relay device has more accurate beam pairs and better performance when receiving signals and forwarding signals.

In other words, the second indication information may be used to indicate (or, in other words, determine) at least one of: CC. Access side beam, beam of backhaul link, time, TRP and resource set.

Tables 5 and 6 below show several possible forms of the second indication information.

TABLE 5

TABLE 6

It should be understood that the second indication information sent by the network device is not limited to those shown in table 5 and table 6 above, and the second indication information may also include more or less information than those shown in table 5 or table 6. The present application is not limited in this regard.

As mentioned above, the M signals sent by the network device for forwarding are configured based on the measurement results reported by the relay device. In other words, the second indication information is determined based on the measurement result reported by the relay device. And if the network device wishes to transmit a different signal over the same transmit beam, it may determine whether the signal transmitted over the transmit beam meets the forwarding requirement based on measurements of signals previously transmitted over the transmit beam.

Optionally, the transmission resources of the P signals sent by the network device in step 420 correspond to multiple CCs, or multiple resource sets. The network device may further indicate the plurality of CCs or the plurality of resource sets, or indicate QCL relationships between different CCs or QCL relationships between different resource sets when indicating transmission resources of the P signals for the plurality of CCs or the plurality of resource sets. The QCL relationship between different CCs may be used to indicate CCs having a QCL relationship with CCs corresponding to transmission resources of each of the P signals. The QCL relationship between the different resource sets may be used to indicate the resource set having the QCL relationship with the resource set to which the transmission resource of each of the P signals belongs.

By indicating a plurality of CCs or a plurality of resource sets, the relay device can conveniently report the CCs or the resource sets corresponding to the signals corresponding to the measurement results to the network device together when reporting the measurement results, thereby being convenient for the network device to reasonably configure the subsequently transmitted signals.

By indicating the QCL relationship between different CCs or the QCL relationship between different resource sets, the relay device can conveniently determine the backhaul side beam and/or the access side beam, so that the QCL assumption of the relay device by the network device and the QCL assumption of the relay device themselves are agreed, thereby being beneficial to the receiving end to obtain better signal demodulation performance for the forwarded signal.

One possible design is that the network device may include the identifiers of the multiple CCs or the QCL relationship between different CCs in the resource configuration information for indicating the transmission resources of the P signals, or include the identifiers of the multiple resource sets or the QCL relationship between different resource sets in the resource configuration information.

In response to this, when the relay device generates measurement results of L signals in step 430 and reports the measurement results of L signals in step 440, the measurement results of each signal may include the identification of the CC corresponding to the transmission resource or the identification of the resource set to which each signal belongs.

In this way, after the network device is based on the measurement results of the received L signals, M signals for forwarding may be configured for the relay device according to CCs or resource sets corresponding to each signal. For example, as exemplified above in connection with fig. 7-10, the transmit beams corresponding to different CCs or resource sets and directed to the same backhaul side beam of the relay device are configured to transmit signals at different times, i.e., such that the transmission resources corresponding to the signals transmitted by the transmit beams directed to the same backhaul side beam of the relay device are staggered in time and frequency domain, or staggered in time and space domain.

Based on the scheme, the network equipment configures a plurality of signals for the same transmitting wave beam according to the measurement result reported by the relay equipment, and the signals are transmitted in a staggered manner in the time domain and the frequency domain or in the time domain and the space domain, so that the coverage requirement of the relay equipment can be met, different signals are transmitted in different directions on the access side of the relay equipment, resources can be saved, and resource waste is avoided.

It will be appreciated that, in order to implement the functions in the above embodiments, the network device and the relay device include corresponding hardware structures and/or software modules that perform the respective functions. Those of skill in the art will readily appreciate that the elements and method steps of the examples described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented as hardware or a combination of hardware and computer software. Whether a function is implemented as hardware or computer software driven hardware depends upon the particular application scenario and design constraints imposed on the solution.

The following describes in detail the apparatus provided in the embodiment of the present application with reference to fig. 11 and 12. Fig. 11 and 12 are schematic structural diagrams of possible communication devices according to embodiments of the present application. These communication apparatuses may be used to implement the functions of the relay device or the network device in the above method embodiments, so that the beneficial effects of the above method embodiments can also be implemented. In the embodiment of the present application, the communication apparatus may be the relay device 120 or the network device 110 shown in fig. 1, the relay device 300 shown in fig. 2B or the network device 200 shown in fig. 2A, or a module (such as a chip) applied to the relay device or the network device.

As shown in fig. 11, the communication apparatus 1100 includes a transceiving unit 1110 and a processing unit 1120. The communications apparatus 1300 is configured to implement the functionality of the relay device or the network device in the method embodiment illustrated in fig. 4 described above.

When the communication apparatus 1100 is used to implement the functionality of the relay device in the method embodiment shown in fig. 4: the transceiver 1110 is configured to receive the first indication information, receive a signal, and transmit a measurement result of at least one signal; the processing unit 1120 is configured to generate a measurement result of at least one signal based on the received P signals.

Alternatively, the transceiving unit 1110 may include a transmitting unit and a receiving unit. The transmitting unit may be configured to perform the transmitting operation of the relay device in the method embodiment shown in fig. 4 and the receiving unit may be configured to perform the receiving operation of the relay device in the method embodiment shown in fig. 4.

When the communication apparatus 1100 is used to implement the functionality of the network device in the method embodiment shown in fig. 4: the transceiver 1110 is configured to transmit first indication information, transmit a signal, and receive a measurement result of at least one signal; the processing unit 1120 is configured to determine a beam of the backhaul link based on the measurement result of the at least one signal.

Alternatively, the transceiving unit 1110 may include a transmitting unit and a receiving unit. The transmitting unit may be configured to perform the transmitting operation of the network device in the method embodiment shown in fig. 4, and the receiving unit may be configured to perform the receiving operation of the network device in the method embodiment shown in fig. 4.

Note that the communication apparatus 1100 may include a transmitting unit instead of a receiving unit. Alternatively, the communication apparatus 1100 may include a receiving unit instead of the transmitting unit. Specifically, it may be determined whether or not the above scheme executed by the communication apparatus 1100 includes a transmission action and a reception action.

The more detailed description about the transceiver 1110 and the processing 1120 may be directly obtained by referring to the related description in the method embodiment shown in fig. 4, which is not repeated herein.

As shown in fig. 12, the communication device 1200 includes a processor 1210 and an interface circuit 1220. Processor 1210 and interface circuit 1220 are coupled to each other. It is understood that the interface circuit 1220 may be a transceiver or an input-output interface. Optionally, the communication device 1200 may further comprise a memory 1230 for storing instructions to be executed by the processor 1410 or for storing input data required by the processor 1410 to execute instructions or for storing data generated after the processor 1210 executes instructions.

When the communication apparatus 1200 is used to implement the method shown in fig. 4, the processor 1210 is configured to perform the functions of the processing unit 1120, and the interface circuit 1220 is configured to perform the functions of the transceiver unit 1110.

When the communication device is a chip applied to the relay device, the relay device chip realizes the function of the relay device in the embodiment of the method. The chip of the relay device receives signals from other modules (such as a radio frequency module or an antenna) in the relay device, and the signals can be sent to the relay device by the network device; alternatively, the chip of the relay device sends signals to other modules (e.g., radio frequency modules or antennas) in the relay device, which may be sent by the relay device to the network device.

When the communication device is a chip applied to the network device, the chip of the network device realizes the functions of the network device in the method embodiment. The chip of the network device receives signals from other modules (such as a radio frequency module or an antenna) in the network device, and the signals can be sent to the network device by the relay device; alternatively, the network device chip sends signals to other modules in the network device (e.g., radio frequency modules or antennas), which may be sent by the network device to the relay device.

Fig. 13 is a schematic structural diagram of a base station. The base station 3000 shown in fig. 13 may be applied to the system shown in fig. 1, and perform the functions of the network device in the above method embodiment, or may be considered as an example of the network device shown in fig. 2. As shown, the base station 3000 may include one or more radio frequency units, such as a remote radio frequency unit (remote radio unit, RRU) 3100 and one or more baseband units (BBUs) (also referred to as Distributed Units (DUs)) 3200.

The RRU 3100 may be referred to as a transceiver unit, and corresponds to the transceiver unit 1110 in fig. 11. Alternatively, the transceiver unit 3100 may also be referred to as a transceiver, a transceiver circuit, or a transceiver, etc., which may include at least one antenna 3101 and a radio frequency unit 3102. Alternatively, the transceiving unit 3100 may include a receiving unit, which may correspond to a receiver (or receiver, receiving circuit), and a transmitting unit, which may correspond to a transmitter (or transmitter, transmitting circuit). The RRU 3100 is mainly configured to receive and transmit radio frequency signals and convert radio frequency signals to baseband signals, for example, to send indication information, send signals, and the like to a relay device.

The BBU3200 portion is mainly used for performing baseband processing, controlling a base station, and the like. The RRU 3100 and BBU3200 may be physically disposed together, or may be physically disposed separately, i.e. a distributed base station.

The BBU3200 is a control center of the base station, and may also be referred to as a processing unit, and may correspond to the processing unit 1120 in fig. 11, and is mainly used for performing baseband processing functions, such as channel coding, multiplexing, modulation, spreading, and so on. For example, the BBU (processing unit) may be configured to control the base station to perform the operation procedures, e.g. configuration signals, etc., of the network device in the above-described method embodiments.

In one example, the BBU3200 may be configured by one or more single boards, where the multiple single boards may support a single access radio access network (such as an LTE network) together, or may support radio access networks of different access systems (such as an LTE network, a 5G network, or other networks) respectively. The BBU3200 also includes a memory 3201 and a processor 3202. The memory 3201 is used to store necessary instructions and data. The processor 3202 is configured to control the base station to perform necessary actions, for example, to control the base station to perform the operation procedure related to the network device in the above method embodiment. The memory 3201 and processor 3202 may serve one or more boards. That is, the memory and the processor may be separately provided on each board. It is also possible that multiple boards share the same memory and processor. In addition, each single board can be provided with necessary circuits.

It should be understood that the base station 3000 shown in fig. 13 is capable of implementing various processes involving network devices in the method embodiment shown in fig. 4. The operations and/or functions of the respective modules in the base station 3000 are respectively for implementing the corresponding flows in the above-described method embodiments. Reference is specifically made to the description in the above method embodiments, and detailed descriptions are omitted here as appropriate to avoid repetition.

The BBU 3200 described above may be used to perform the actions described in the foregoing method embodiments as being implemented internally by the network device, while the RRU 3100 may be used to perform the actions described in the foregoing method embodiments as being sent to or received from the relay device by the network device. Please refer to the description of the foregoing method embodiments, and details are not repeated herein.

It is to be appreciated that the processor in embodiments of the present application may be a central processing unit (central processing unit, CPU), but may also be other general purpose processors, digital signal processors (digital signal processor, DSP), application specific integrated circuits (application specific integrated circuit, ASIC), field programmable gate arrays (field programmable gate array, FPGA) or other programmable logic devices, transistor logic devices, hardware components, or any combination thereof. The general purpose processor may be a microprocessor, but in the alternative, it may be any conventional processor.

The memory in embodiments of the present application may be either volatile memory or nonvolatile memory, or may include both volatile and nonvolatile memory. The nonvolatile memory may be a read-only memory (ROM), a Programmable ROM (PROM), an Erasable PROM (EPROM), an electrically Erasable EPROM (EEPROM), or a flash memory. The volatile memory may be random access memory (random access memory, RAM) which acts as an external cache. By way of example, and not limitation, many forms of RAM are available, such as Static RAM (SRAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), double data rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM), enhanced SDRAM (ESDRAM), synchronous DRAM (SLDRAM), and direct memory bus RAM (DR RAM). It should be noted that the memory of the systems and methods described herein is intended to comprise, without being limited to, these and any other suitable types of memory.

The application also provides a communication system which comprises the network equipment, the relay equipment and the terminal equipment.

The present application also provides a computer program product comprising: a computer program (which may also be referred to as code, or instructions), which when executed, causes a computer to perform a method performed by a relay device or a method performed by a network device as in the embodiment shown in fig. 4.

The present application also provides a computer-readable storage medium storing a computer program (which may also be referred to as code, or instructions). The computer program, when executed, causes the computer to perform the method performed by the relay device or the method performed by the network device in the embodiment shown in fig. 4.

The terms "unit," "module," and the like as used in this specification may be used to refer to a computer-related entity, either hardware, firmware, a combination of hardware and software, or software in execution.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the various illustrative logical blocks (illustrative logical block) and steps (steps) described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein can be implemented as electronic hardware, or combinations of computer software and electronic hardware. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware or software depends upon the particular application and design constraints imposed on the solution. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality in varying ways for each particular application, but such implementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from the scope of the present application. In the several embodiments provided in this application, it should be understood that the disclosed apparatus, device, and method may be implemented in other manners. For example, the apparatus embodiments described above are merely illustrative, e.g., the division of the units is merely a logical function division, and there may be additional divisions when actually implemented, e.g., multiple units or components may be combined or integrated into another system, or some features may be omitted or not performed. Alternatively, the coupling or direct coupling or communication connection shown or discussed with each other may be an indirect coupling or communication connection via some interfaces, devices or units, which may be in electrical, mechanical or other form.

The units described as separate units may or may not be physically separate, and units shown as units may or may not be physical units, may be located in one place, or may be distributed over a plurality of network units. Some or all of the units may be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the solution of this embodiment.

In addition, each functional unit in each embodiment of the present application may be integrated in one processing unit, or each unit may exist alone physically, or two or more units may be integrated in one unit.

In the above-described embodiments, the functions of the respective functional units may be implemented in whole or in part by software, hardware, firmware, or any combination thereof. When implemented in software, may be implemented in whole or in part in the form of a computer program product. The computer program product includes one or more computer instructions (programs). When the computer program instructions (program) are loaded and executed on a computer, the processes or functions according to the embodiments of the present application are fully or partially produced. The computer may be a general purpose computer, a special purpose computer, a computer network, or other programmable apparatus. The computer instructions may be stored in a computer-readable storage medium or transmitted from one computer-readable storage medium to another computer-readable storage medium, for example, the computer instructions may be transmitted from one website, computer, server, or data center to another website, computer, server, or data center by a wired (e.g., coaxial cable, fiber optic, digital subscriber line (digital subscriber line, DSL)) or wireless (e.g., infrared, wireless, microwave, etc.). The computer readable storage medium may be any available medium that can be accessed by a computer or a data storage device such as a server, data center, etc. that contains an integration of one or more available media. The usable medium may be a magnetic medium (e.g., a floppy disk, a hard disk, a magnetic tape), an optical medium (e.g., a digital video disc (digital video disc, DVD)), or a semiconductor medium (e.g., a Solid State Disk (SSD)), or the like.

The functions, if implemented in the form of software functional units and sold or used as a stand-alone product, may be stored in a computer readable storage medium. Based on such understanding, the technical solution of the present application may be embodied essentially or in a part contributing to the prior art or in a part of the technical solution, in the form of a software product stored in a storage medium, including several instructions for causing a computer device (which may be a personal computer, a server, or a network device, etc.) to perform all or part of the steps of the methods of the embodiments of the present application. And the aforementioned storage medium includes: a usb disk, a removable hard disk, a ROM, a RAM, a magnetic disk, or an optical disk, etc.

The foregoing is merely specific embodiments of the present application, but the scope of the present application is not limited thereto, and any person skilled in the art can easily think about changes or substitutions within the technical scope of the present application, and the changes and substitutions are intended to be covered by the scope of the present application. Therefore, the protection scope of the present application shall be subject to the protection scope of the claims.

Claims

1. A method for signal forwarding, applied to a relay device, the method comprising:

receiving first indication information from network equipment, wherein the first indication information is used for indicating a threshold value of signal quality, and the threshold value is used for determining a signal of which a measurement result needs to be reported;

measuring based on the received signals, generating at least one measurement result of at least one signal, wherein the at least one signal is a signal of which the receiving quality reaches the threshold value in the received signals, and the measurement result of a first signal in the at least one signal comprises one or more of the following: the method comprises the steps of identifying a first signal, identifying a network equipment side beam used for sending the first signal, identifying a relay backhaul side beam used for receiving the first signal, information of the receiving quality of the first signal and identifying a relay access side beam used for forwarding the first signal; wherein the first signal is any one of the at least one signal;

transmitting a measurement of the at least one signal, the measurement of the at least one signal being used to determine a beam of a backhaul link, the beam of the backhaul link comprising: and relaying the backhaul side beam and/or the network device side beam.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one signal comprises: and among the received signals, all signals with the receiving quality reaching the threshold value are received.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first indication information is further used for indicating a maximum value of the number of signals for which measurement results need to be reported and/or the number of signals for which measurement results need to be reported.

4. A method as claimed in claim 3, characterized in that the maximum value of the number of signals for which a measurement report needs to be reported does not exceed one of the following: the number of relay access side beams, or the minimum value of the number of relay access side beams and the number of signals for measurement transmitted by the network device.

5. A method according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the threshold value is a threshold value of reference signal received power.

6. The method of any of claims 1 to 5, wherein after the transmitting the measurement of the at least one signal, the method further comprises:

receiving second indication information from the network device, wherein the second indication information is used for indicating the beam of the backhaul link;

Receiving M signals from the network device based on the beam of the backhaul link;

and forwarding the M signals to terminal equipment.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the M signals comprise a second signal and a third signal, wherein resources for transmitting the second signal correspond to a first component carrier CC and a first time, wherein resources for transmitting the third signal correspond to a second CC and a second time, and wherein a relay access side beam for forwarding the second signal is different from a relay access side beam for forwarding the third signal.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein a relay backhaul side beam for receiving the second signal is the same as a relay backhaul side beam for receiving the third signal.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein the M signals comprise a second signal and a third signal, wherein resources for transmitting the second signal correspond to a first transmission reception point TRP and a first time, wherein resources for transmitting the third signal correspond to a second TRP and a second time, wherein a relay access side beam for forwarding the second signal is different from a relay access side beam for forwarding the third signal, and wherein a relay backhaul side beam for receiving the second signal is different from a relay backhaul side beam for receiving the third signal.

10. The method of any of claims 6 to 9, wherein the second indication information is further used to indicate at least one of: the method comprises the steps of receiving a transmission resource of each of M signals, receiving a relay access side beam of each of the M signals, wherein the CC corresponds to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, the time corresponds to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, the TRP corresponds to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, and the relay access side beam is used for forwarding each of the M signals.

11. A method for signal forwarding, applied to a network device, the method comprising:

transmitting first indication information to the relay equipment, wherein the first indication information is used for indicating a threshold value of signal quality, and the threshold value is used for determining a signal of which a measurement result needs to be reported;

receiving, from the relay device, a measurement result of at least one signal, where the at least one signal is a signal, of signals received by the relay device, for which a reception quality reaches the threshold value, and the measurement result of a first signal of the at least one signal includes one or more of: the method comprises the steps of identifying a first signal, identifying a network equipment side beam used for sending the first signal, identifying a relay backhaul side beam used for receiving the first signal, information of the receiving quality of the first signal and identifying a relay access side beam used for forwarding the first signal; wherein the first signal is any one of the at least one signal;

Determining a beam of a backhaul link based on a measurement of the at least one signal, the beam of the backhaul link comprising: and relaying the backhaul side beam and/or the network device side beam.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the at least one signal comprises: and receiving all signals with the quality reaching the threshold value from the signals received by the relay equipment.

13. The method according to claim 11, wherein the first indication information is further used for indicating a maximum value of the number of signals for which measurement results need to be reported and/or the number of signals for which measurement results need to be reported.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein a maximum value of a number of signals required to report the measurement report does not exceed one of: the number of relay access side beams, or the minimum value of the number of relay access side beams and the number of signals for measurement transmitted by the network device.

15. A method according to any one of claims 11 to 14, wherein the threshold value is a threshold value of reference signal received power.

16. The method of any of claims 11 to 15, wherein after receiving a measurement of at least one signal from the relay device, the method further comprises:

Transmitting second indication information to the relay device, wherein the second indication information is used for indicating the wave beam of the return link;

m signals are sent based on the beam of the backhaul link, and the M signals are signals for forwarding by the relay device.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the M signals comprise a second signal and a third signal, resources for transmitting the second signal correspond to a first component carrier CC and a first time, and resources for transmitting the third signal correspond to a second CC and a second time; and carrying a fourth signal sent by the network equipment on the resources corresponding to the second CC and the first time and the resources corresponding to the first CC and the second time, wherein the fourth signal does not belong to the M signals.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the M signals comprise a second signal and a third signal, resources for transmitting the second signal correspond to a first transmission reception point TRP and a first time, and resources for transmitting the third signal correspond to a second TRP and a second time; and carrying a fourth signal sent by the network equipment on the resources corresponding to the second TRP and the first time and the resources corresponding to the first TRP and the second time, wherein the fourth signal does not belong to the M signals.

19. Method according to claim 17 or 18, wherein the beams used for transmitting the second signal and the fourth signal are different and/or the beams used for transmitting the third signal and the fourth signal are different.

20. The method of any of claims 16 to 19, wherein the second indication information is further used to indicate at least one of: the method comprises the steps of receiving a CC corresponding to a transmission resource of each of the M signals, time corresponding to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, a TRP corresponding to the transmission resource of each of the M signals, and an access side beam for forwarding each of the M signals.

21. A communication device comprising means for performing the method of any of claims 1 to 10 or comprising means for performing the method of any of claims 11 to 20.

22. A communication device comprising a processor and interface circuitry for receiving signals from other communication devices than the communication device and transmitting to the processor or sending signals from the processor to other communication devices than the communication device, the processor being configured to implement the method of any one of claims 1 to 10 or to implement the method of any one of claims 11 to 20 by logic circuitry or execution of code instructions.

23. A computer readable storage medium, characterized in that the storage medium has stored therein a computer program or instructions which, when executed by a communication device, implements the method of any of claims 1 to 10 or implements the method of any of claims 11 to 20.