This application claims the benefit of Korean Application No. 10-2004-0001608 filed on Jan. 9, 2004, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an uplink packet transmission method in a mobile communication system, and more particularly, to a method of performing uplink packet transmission in a mobile station communicating with at least two base stations generating ACK/NACK signals according to a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) scheme.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) scheme applies channel coding to an automatic repeat request (ARQ) scheme. In ARQ scheme, a transmitting end transmits packet to a receiving end, and receives an acknowledgement (ACK) or negative acknowledgement (NACK) according to status of receiving and decoding in the receiving end.
Therefore, in a mobile communication system supporting a HARQ scheme, the receiving end, e.g., a base station, generates the ACK/NACK signal to indicate a packet transmission acknowledgment status based on the reception and decoding status of a corresponding packet, so that the transmitting end, e.g., a mobile station or user equipment (UE), is conditionally informed of the need to retransmit reverse traffic data. That is, the base station transmits an ACK signal if retransmission is unnecessary, i.e., when the transmitted signal is successfully received and decoded, and transmits a NACK signal if retransmission is necessary, i.e., when the transmitted signal is unsuccessfully received or decoded.
A HARQ system stores a previously received packet in which decoding has failed, combines the stored packet with a retransmission packet which is retransmitted in response to a NACK signal, and then performs an additional decoding operation on the combined resultant. In doing so, diversity gain and coding gain can be increased over a system. In addition, while the HARQ system uses physical layer signaling in transmitting an ACK/NACK signal and therefore exhibits minimal transmission delay, the ARQ system suffers from higher transmission delay times since ACK/NACK signals are transmitted by upper layer signaling.
HARQ is also applicable to a case of uplink packet transmission as well as downlink packet transmission. When a user equipment (UE) communicates with several base stations, such as in a soft handover condition, base station decides a presence or non-presence of error occurrence for a transmitted packet and then transmits a downlink ACK/NACK signal. In doing so, if each of the base stations transmits the ACK/NACK signal to the user equipment, the user equipment detects the ACK/NACK signal for each of the base stations.
The user equipment determines ACK or NACK for each of the base stations respectively, but uplink power control is performed with the combined power from all of the base stations. Therefore, each downlink reception power or signal to Interference ratio (SIR) may vary unstably, and the transmitting power for ACK/NACK signals needs high value excessively.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to an uplink packet transmission method in a mobile communication system that substantially obviates one or more problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method of performing packet transmission using a HARQ scheme, in which a mobile station communicating with at least two base stations receives feedback information indicating a decoding success or failure of an uplink packet, to determine an ACK or NACK condition for controlling further packet transmission.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method of performing packet transmission using a HARQ scheme, which minimizes the number or rate of false ACK signal detections when discontinuous transmission (DTX) is used to indicate a NACK condition, so that a threshold can be lowered to enable a reduction in ACK/NACK transmission signal power.
Additional advantages, objects, and features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will become apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned from practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention may be realized and attained by the structure particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof as well as the appended drawings.
To achieve these objects and other advantages in accordance with the purpose of the invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, there is provided a method of transmitting a packet from a mobile station. The method comprises receiving, from the N base stations, ACK/NACK signals indicating transmission acknowledgement status for an uplink packet; and transmitting a new packet or a retransmission packet according to the number of ACK signals.
Preferably, the number of ACK signals is less than a predetermined value, the retransmission packet is transmitted.
In another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of transmitting a packet from a mobile station. The method comprises receiving, from the N base stations, ACK/NACK signals indicating transmission acknowledgement status for an uplink packet; measuring an ACK/NACK reception level from each of the N base stations; selecting at least a base station among the N base stations according to the measured ACK/NACK reception level; and transmitting a new packet or a retransmission packet according to the number of the base station(s) transmitted ACK signal among the selected base stations.
In another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of transmitting a packet from a mobile station. The method comprises receiving, from the N base stations, ACK/NACK signals indicating transmission acknowledgement status for an uplink packet; measuring an ACK/NACK reception level from each of the N base stations; selecting at least a base station comparing the reception level of each N base station with a threshold; and transmitting a new packet or a retransmitting packet according to the number of the base stations transmitted ACK signal among the selected base stations.
In another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of transmitting a packet from a mobile station. The method comprises receiving, from the N base stations, ACK/NACK signals indicating transmission acknowledgement status for an uplink packet; measuring an ACK/NACK reception level from each of the N base stations; determining whether at least a base station from which the reception level is greater than or equal to a threshold; and transmitting a retransmitting packet when the reception level of all base stations below the threshold.
In another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of transmitting a packet from a mobile station. The method comprises determining ACK/NACK status of at least one base station for an uplink packet, based on reception level from each of at least one station; and transmitting a packet according to the number of ACK status.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description of the present invention are exemplary and explanatory and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed.
The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a further understanding of the invention and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this application, illustrate embodiment(s) of the invention and together with the description serve to explain the principle of the invention. In the drawings:
Reference will now be made in detail to the preferred embodiments of the present invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. Wherever possible, like reference numbers will be used throughout the drawings to refer to the same or similar parts.
When transmitting uplink packet data via an enhanced dedicated channel in a mobile communications 3GPP standard system using HARQ scheme, a UE in soft handover may, for a single uplink transmission packet, receive different ACK/NACK signals from a plurality of base stations. Meanwhile, it should be appreciated that in performing soft handover with a plurality of base stations, a single UE simultaneously transmits a specific uplink packet to base stations and receives a corresponding ACK or NACK signal from each base station, which generates the downlink ACK or NACK signal to the UE according to decoding results. That is, in transmitting an uplink packet to one of the base stations, an independent ACK or NACK signal is generated.
In a HARQ scheme, a reception error for the transmitted ACK/NACK signal may occur in either of two conditions. The UE may recognize an ACK signal as a NACK signal or recognize a NACK signal as an ACK signal. The first case results in an unnecessary retransmission but causes little problem other than a slight waste of radio resources. On the other hand, the UE may recognize a NACK signal as an ACK signal, which is a more serious problem since the UE would then delete from a buffer the previously transmitted packet and proceed directly with a transmission of the next (new) packet. Thus, while a false NACK results in a mere system redundancy, a false ACK results in packet loss. Though packet loss is recoverable, there are delays in transmission and reception since a higher layer of the network is required. Therefore, a stable reception of NACK signals is more important than that of ACK signals.
Referring to
Referring to
For output levels less than the threshold, the UE determines a NACK condition. The threshold is set according to NACK decision reliability requirements and is increased for higher reliability requirement, in which case ACK transmission power is also raised to meet the corresponding requirements for an ACK decision.
Referring to
Referring to
Assuming for instance that the value of L is set to “1” (L=1), if the UE determines that the receiving signal from any one of the bases stations is an ACK signal, it is determined that the transmitted packet has been successfully decoded, in which case the UE transmits a new packet. Conversely, if the UE determines that there is no ACK signal received from any of the bases stations, it is determined that the transmitted packet has been unsuccessfully decoded, in which case the UE retransmits the corresponding packet.
Referring to
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In the method of the present invention according to each of the first to third embodiments (
By adopting the above-described packet transmission method in a mobile station (UE) of a 3GPP standard communications system using a HARQ scheme, the UE communicating with a plurality of base stations transmitting an ACK/NACK feedback signal, can lower a threshold for determining a packet transmission acknowledgment status, that is, whether a received ACK/NACK feedback signal is an ACK signal or a NACK signal, to reduce status determination errors and thereby enable a decrease in transmission power for the ACK/NACK feedback signals. In particular, in performing a DTX operation upon a NACK condition as in
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made in the present invention. Thus, it is intended that the present invention covers the modifications and variations of this invention provided they come within the scope of the appended claims and their equivalents.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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10-2004-0001608 | Jan 2004 | KR | national |
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20030039217 | Seo et al. | Feb 2003 | A1 |
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Number | Date | Country |
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1 326 361 | Jul 2003 | EP |
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20050180328 A1 | Aug 2005 | US |