Methods and apparatus for opportunistic scheduling of peer to peer links in wide area network

摘要

A method, a computer program product, and an apparatus are provided. The apparatus determines an availability of a wireless wide area network (WWAN) subframe, and utilizes the WWAN subframe for peer-to-peer communication when the WWAN subframe is available. Accordingly, peer mobile terminals or devices may establish direct peer-to-peer links for communicating small amounts of information without affecting the quality of existing WWAN communications. In the wireless wide area network (WWAN) scenario, communication between mobile terminals is facilitated through uplink/downlink channels between the mobile terminals and a base station (i.e., WWAN link). Therefore, for various types of applications, an efficient means of communicating a small amount of information frequently is provided that does not require large amounts of signaling overhead.

主权项

1. A method of wireless communication, comprising:
receiving, by a user equipment (UE), information indicating one or more time slots of one or more wireless wide area network (WWAN) subframes that are idle; determining, by the UE, an availability of at least one time slot of a WWAN resource based on the received information, wherein the WWAN resource is an idle WWAN subframe, the idle WWAN subframe being a subset of a plurality of WWAN subframes, wherein each of the plurality of WWAN subframes is designated for WWAN communication between UEs via an evolved Node B (eNB), wherein the determining the availability of the WWAN resource comprises determining an energy of a second WWAN resource, wherein the WWAN resource is one of a downlink subframe or an uplink subframe, the energy is determined from one of an uplink transmission of a second user equipment (UE) or a downlink transmission of the eNB, and determining whether use of the downlink subframe or the uplink subframe will cause interference is based on whether a peer-to-peer communication will cause interference to the UE or the eNB respectively; and utilizing, by the UE, the WWAN resource for the peer-to-peer communication based on the determining of the availability.