Management of carrier-aggregation based on predicted intermodulation distortion

摘要

A method and corresponding system to help manage carrier-aggregation service in view of possible intermodulation distortion between component carriers. When a base station is serving a UE with carrier aggregation service on at least two component carriers, the base station determines that uplink communication on the two component carriers is likely to combine to produce an intermodulation product that falls within the downlink channel of one of the component carriers, and that the power level of that intermodulation product is likely to be threshold high. In response, the base station then modifies the set of component carriers on which the base station provides the UE with carrier aggregation service, to help reduce or avoid associated intermodulation distortion.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
serving, by a base station, a user equipment device (UE) with carrier-aggregation service on a set of component carriers including a first component carrier and a second component carrier, wherein the component carriers of the set each have a respective uplink channel and a different respective downlink channel; while serving the UE, predicting by the base station that transmission by the UE concurrently on the uplink channel of the first component carrier and on the uplink channel of the second component carrier will produce an intermodulation product that will fall within the downlink channel of the first component carrier and that the intermodulation product will be threshold strong in relation to a receive power of the UE on the downlink channel of the first component carrier; and responsive to the predicting, transitioning by the base station from serving the UE with carrier-aggregation service on the set of component carriers to serving the UE with carrier-aggregation service on a different set of component carriers, wherein the different set of component carriers does not include at least the second component carrier, and wherein component carriers of the different set each have a respective uplink channel and a different respective downlink channel.