TELECOMMUNICATIONS APPARATUS AND METHODS

摘要

A wireless telecommunications system comprises a base station and a terminal device. The system supports a virtual carrier mode of operation in which downlink communications are made by the base station using a radio interface that spans a system frequency bandwidth while the terminal device is configured to receive at least some communications from the base station within a restricted subset of transmission resources selected from within the system frequency bandwidth. When there is to be a change in system information the base station transmits to the terminal device an indication that updated system information is to be broadcast by the base station to a plurality of terminal devices and the terminal device seeks to acquire the updated system information using the restricted subset of transmission resources. The base station further conveys to the terminal device an allocation of uplink transmission resources for acknowledgement signalling for the updated system information and the terminal device responds by using the allocated uplink transmission resources to convey to the base station an indication of whether or not the terminal device has acquired the updated system information. Providing a mechanism for the terminal device to feedback on whether the updated system information has been acquired can help address issues associated with managing the communication of both system information and user-plane data using the restricted subset of transmission resources.