Systems, methods, and appartatuses for bearer splitting in multi-radio HetNet

US9699800B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Intel IP Corporation · US

Inventors

• Nageen Himayat · Fremont, US
• Jing Zhu · Portland, US
• Penny Efraim-Sagi · Kfar Sava, IL
• Jerome Parron · Ergolding, DE
• Shu-Ping Yeh · Campbell, US
• Martin Kolde · Munich, DE
• Alexander Sirotkin · Nahf, IL
• Mo-Han Fong · L'Original, CA

Key dates

• Filing date: May 6, 2015
• Grant date: Jul 4, 2017
• Expiry date: Jun 6, 2035

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04W88/08
• WIPO field: Digital communication
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Systems and methods for bearer splitting among multiple radio links are disclosed herein. User equipment (UE) may be communicatively coupled to an Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) Node B (eNB) by multiple radio links (e.g., an LTE link and a WLAN link). A transmitter may dynamically determine a splitting policy for how to split traffic among each link (e.g., what proportion to send over each link). In some embodiments, the transmitter may determine the splitting policy explicitly based on lower layer metrics. Alternatively, or in addition, each radio access interface may request data when a transmission opportunity becomes available, and the splitting policy may be determined implicitly from the data requests. For a UE, the splitting policy may be determined with network assistance, which may include a resource allocation for an LTE link, a probability of successful transmission over a WLAN link, and/or the like.