HARQ memory space management for LTE carrier aggregation

摘要

A user equipment (UE) receives and decodes a first erroneous transport block (TB) from a base station in a mobile communication network. The UE allocates a first soft buffer having a first buffer size. The first soft buffer is associated with a first HARQ process for storing the first TB. The UE then receives and decodes a second erroneous TB from the base station. The UE allocates a second soft buffer having a second buffer size. The second soft buffer is associated with a second HARQ process for storing the second TB. The UE releases a portion of the first soft buffer to be allocated as part of the second soft buffer. The dynamic buffer allocation method reduces mismatch between rate matching and soft buffer storing when the total number of HARQ processes is small. In addition, more HARQ processes can be supported when the corresponding TB size is small.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
configuring one or more common buffer pools for a number of Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) processes, wherein the number of HARQ processes is greater than one and is predefined; receiving and decoding a first erroneous transport block (TB) from a base station by a user equipment (UE) in a multi-carrier mobile communication network; allocating a first soft buffer having a first buffer size from a first common buffer pool, wherein the first soft buffer is associated with a first HARQ process for storing the first TB and wherein the first soft buffer is a circular buffer, and wherein the UE first releases received bits of the first TB with a highest buffer index; receiving and decoding a second erroneous TB from the base station; and allocating a second soft buffer having a second buffer size, wherein the second soft buffer is associated with a second HARQ process for storing the second TB, and wherein a portion of the second soft buffer is allocated from the first common buffer pool and at least a portion of the first soft buffer is released to be allocated as part of the second soft buffer.