Method and apparatus for hybrid automatic repeat request signaling

摘要

In one aspect, the teachings herein provide a system and method for reusing the PUCCH format 3 to address the new HARQ-ACK feedback cases encountered in Rel-11, where different UL/DL configurations are involved in the CA configuration of a UE, such as Rel-11 interband TDD CA with different UL/DL configurations on different bands. The various embodiments illustrated by way of example in this disclosure enable reliable and efficient HARQ-ACK feedback for Rel-11 TDD CA without a substantial increase in specification and implementation complexity.

主权项

1. A method at a User Equipment (UE) of generating Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) feedback for transmission in a wireless communication network, said method comprising:
receiving a Downlink Assignment Index (DAI) in an Uplink (UL) grant for the UE, where the UE is operating according to a Carrier Aggregation (CA) configuration that aggregates a number of Time Division Duplex (TDD) cells of the wireless communication network as serving cells for the UE; determining the number of HARQ feedback bits to generate for each serving cell based on a minimum one between the value of the DAI and the size of an association set for the serving cell, where the association set of each serving cell is defined by the Uplink/Downlink (UL/DL) configurations of the serving cells and indicates which DL subframes are associated with the HARQ feedback for the serving cell; and generating the HARQ feedback based on generating the determined number of HARQ feedback bits for each of the serving cells; wherein said steps of determining and generating are performed conditionally in dependence on subframe configuration values, so that HARQ feedback bits are not generated for any DL subframes having one or more defined special subframe configurations.