Resource sharing in relay operations within wireless communication systems

Abstract

A wireless communication relay terminal including a controller coupled to a transceiver wherein the controller is configured to cause the transceiver to transmit a first portion of a first sub-frame during a first time-frequency region to a wireless communication device, to cause the transceiver to receive, from a base station, a portion of a second sub-frame during a second time-frequency region wherein the first and second time-frequency regions are non-overlapping The controller is also configured to detect a control region within the portion of the second sub-frame received by attempting to decode information in a possible control region of the second sub-frame having at least one of several possible starting locations that are known a priori by the terminal.

1 . A wireless communication relay terminal comprising:
 a transceiver,   a controller coupled to the transceiver,   the controller configured to cause the transceiver to transmit a first portion of a first sub-frame during a first time-frequency region to a wireless communication device,   the controller configured to cause the transceiver to receive, from a base station, a portion of a second sub-frame during a second time-frequency region wherein the first and second time-frequency regions are non-overlapping,   the controller configured to detect a control region within the portion of the second sub-frame received by attempting to decode information in a possible control region of the second sub-frame having at least one of several possible starting locations that are known a priori by the terminal.   
     
     
         2 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the controller configured to cause the transceiver to receive, from the base station, the portion of the second sub-frame during the second time-frequency region wherein the first and second time-frequency regions are separated by a time interval. 
     
     
         3 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the time interval separation of the first and second time-frequency regions is an integer number of OFDM symbols. 
     
     
         4 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the time interval separation of the first and second time-frequency regions is an integer number of time units. 
     
     
         5 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the controller configured to detect the second control region within the portion of the sub-frame received by attempting to decode information in the possible control region having a dimension that is known a priori by the terminal. 
     
     
         6 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the first portion of the first sub-frame includes a physical downlink control channel. 
     
     
         7 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the first sub-frame is a non-unicast sub-frame. 
     
     
         8 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the first sub-frame is a multimedia broadcast multicast over a single frequency network sub-frame. 
     
     
         9 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the terminal decodes the possible second control region in a time interval non-overlapping a time interval corresponding to the first control region. 
     
     
         10 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the first and second sub-frames are separate from a sub-frame containing a paging channel transmitted by the terminal. 
     
     
         11 . The terminal of  claim 11 , the portion of the first sub-frame includes a first control region having scheduling messages. 
     
     
         12 . The terminal of  claim 1 , the portion of the second sub-frame includes a second control region corresponding to the possible control region having scheduling messages. 
     
     
         13 . The terminal of  claim 12 , the portion of the second sub-frame includes a data region that is distinct in time-frequency from the second control region. 
     
     
         14 . A wireless communication base station comprising:
 a transceiver;   a controller coupled to the transceiver,   the controller configured to generate a sub-frame having first control region for a first set of users and a second control region for a second set of users that do not receive the first control region,   the first control region having a fixed starting location within the sub-frame and the second control region having a starting location that is one of several possible starting locations within the sub-frame;   the controller configured to cause the transceiver to transmit the sub-frame to the first and second sets of users without signaling the actual starting location of the second control region in the sub-frame.   
     
     
         15 . The base station of  claim 14 , the controller configured to cause the transceiver to signal the several possible starting locations of the second control region without signaling the actual starting location of the second control region. 
     
     
         16 . The base station of  claim 14 , the controller configured to generate the second control region having a fixed size that is known to the second set of users. 
     
     
         17 . The base station of  claim 14 , the controller configured to generate the second control region having a size that corresponds to one of several possible sizes that are known to the second set of users. 
     
     
         18 . The base station of  claim 14 ,
 the controller configured to generate the first control region to convey information for resource allocations within a traffic region of the sub-frame to the first set of users, the first control region and the traffic region are multiplexed temporally,   the controller configured to generate the second control region to convey information for resource allocations within the traffic region of the sub-frame to the second set of users.   
     
     
         19 . The base station of  claim 18 , the controller configured to temporally multiplex the second control region and the traffic region. 
     
     
         20 . The base station of  claim 18 , the controller configured to frequency multiplex the second control region and the traffic region. 
     
     
         21 . The base station of  claim 18 , the controller configured to temporally multiplex the first and second control regions. 
     
     
         22 . A wireless communication relay terminal comprising:
 a transceiver,   the transceiver configured to receive a portion of a sub-frame transmitted by a network base station, the sub-frame transmitted by the base station having a first control region with a fixed starting location within the sub-frame and second control region, wherein a starting location of the second control region is at one of several possible starting locations within the sub-frame, the portion of the sub-frame received excludes at least a portion of the first control region;   a controller coupled to the transceiver,   the controller configured to detect the second control region within the portion of the sub-frame received by attempting to decode information in a possible control region having at least one of the several possible starting locations,   wherein the possible starting locations are known a priori by the terminal.   
     
     
         23 . The terminal of  claim 22 , the controller configured to detect the second control region within the portion of the sub-frame received by attempting to decode information in the possible control region having a known size. 
     
     
         24 . The terminal of  claim 22 , the terminal decodes the possible second control region in a time interval non-overlapping a time interval corresponding to the first control region.