Telecommunications apparatus and methods

摘要

A method of communicating data between a base station and a plurality of terminal devices in a wireless telecommunications system. The method comprises transmitting data from the base station to the plurality of terminal devices in a multicast transmission and transmitting response signals from the terminal devices to the base station to indicate whether the respective terminal devices have successfully received the multicast transmission. The use of a multicast transmission provides an efficient mechanism for communicating the same data to a plurality of terminal device, for example as might be desired in a machine-type communication network. In combination with this, the use of individual response signals, such as ACK/NACK signalling, from the terminal devices allows the base station, or other entity, such as a machine-type communications server, to track which terminal devices have indicated successful receipt of the multicast transmission, and to instigate an appropriate re-transmission protocol accordingly.

主权项

1. A method of communicating data in a wireless telecommunications system, the method comprising:
transmitting data from a base station to a plurality of terminal devices in a multicast transmission; and transmitting response signals from respective ones of the terminal devices to the base station in response to the multicast transmission to indicate whether the respective terminal devices have successfully received the multicast transmission, wherein at least one of said transmitting data from the base station and said transmitting response signals from respective ones of the terminal devices is performed via a virtual carrier having a bandwidth less than a bandwidth of a host carrier carrying the virtual carrier, wherein an amount of processing associated with the virtual carrier is less than an amount of processing associated with the host carrier, and wherein a virtual carrier control region is provided in at least two consecutive final symbols of the virtual carrier.