INTER-ACCESS TERMINAL UNBLOCKING AND ENHANCED CONTENTION FOR CO-EXISTENCE ON A SHARED COMMUNICATION MEDIUM

摘要

Techniques for managing access to a shared communication medium are disclosed. Scheduling grants may be sent to different access terminals for different sets of resources for uplink transmission on the communication medium. A series of re-contention gaps may be scheduled for access terminal contention within or between the different sets of resources. Uplink and downlink transmission on the communication medium may be silenced during each of the series of re-contention gaps. Moreover, an access terminal may receive a scheduling grant that allocates a set of resources to the access terminal for uplink transmission on a communication medium and contend for access to the communication medium based on the scheduling grant. The access terminal may then selectively transmit uplink traffic over the allocated set of resources based on the contending.

主权项

1. A communication method, comprising:
sending a first scheduling grant to a first access terminal for a first set of resources for uplink transmission on a communication medium; sending a second scheduling grant to a second access terminal for a second set of resources for uplink transmission on the communication medium; scheduling a series of re-contention gaps for access terminal contention within or between the first set of resources and the second set of resources, wherein a corresponding schedule of the re-contention gaps is included in at least one of the first or second scheduling grants; and silencing uplink and downlink transmission on the communication medium during each of the series of re-contention gaps.