Estimating sounding reference signals for secondary radio-frequency channels

摘要

A method, system, and medium are provided for approximating an uplink sounding reference signal for a secondary radio-frequency channel associated with an eNodeB in a long-term-evolution (LTE) network deploying carrier aggregation. This is useful when the eNodeB does not have an uplink channel associated with the secondary RF channel. The approximated uplink sounding reference signal is utilized by the eNodeB to determine downlink beamforming weights for the secondary RF channel.

主权项

1. One or more nontransitory computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method of estimating an uplink (UL) sounding reference signal (SRS) for a secondary radio-frequency (RF) channel associated with an eNodeB in a carrier-aggregation (CA) long-term evolution (LTE) network (the “network”), wherein the eNodeB has at least a primary RF channel having a primary downlink (DL) channel and an associated primary UL channel and the secondary RF channel which only has a secondary DL channel and not an associated secondary UL channel, the method comprising:
at the eNodeB
receiving on the primary UL channel a first UL SRS from a user equipment (UE) associated with the network;extracting a first channel impulse response (CR) from the first UL SRS, the first CIR associated with the primary RF channel;using the first CIR to determine DL beamforming (BF) weights for the primary RF channel; andusing at least one of the first CR or a long-term-average CIR associated with the primary RF channel to determine DL BF weights for the secondary RF channel, wherein a selection between using the first CIR or the long-term-average CR is based on a difference in channel quality between the primary DL channel and the secondary DL channel.