Channel quality reporting in a mobile communications system

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

0001The invention relates methods for triggering and reporting on a downlink channel quality (channel quality feedback) experienced by a terminal (e.g. a mobile terminal or a user equipment) by means of channel quality information for at least one of plural component carriers of a communication system available for downlink transmission to the terminal. Furthermore, the invention also relates to an implementation of these methods in hardware and software.

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND

Long Term Evolution (LTE)

0002Third-generation mobile systems (3G) based on WCDMA radio-access technology are being deployed on a broad scale all around the world. A first step in enhancing or evolving this technology entails introducing High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and an enhanced uplink, also referred to as High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), giving a radio-access technology that is highly competitive.

0003In order to be prepared for further increasing user demands and to be competitive against new radio access technologies 3GPP introduced a new mobile communication system which is called Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is designed to meet the carrier needs for high speed data and media transport as well as high capacity voice support to the next decade. The ability to provide high bit rates is a key measure for LTE.

0004The work item (WI) specification on Long-Term Evolution (LTE) called Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) and UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) is to be finalized as Release 8 (LTE). The LTE system represents efficient packet-based radio access and radio access networks that provide full IP-based functionalities with low latency and low cost. The detailed system requirements are given in. In LTE, scalable multiple transmission bandwidths are specified such as 1.4, 3.0, 5.0, 10.0, 15.0, and 20.0 MHz, in order to achieve flexible system deployment using a given spectrum. In the downlink, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based radio access was adopted because of its inherent immunity to multipath interference (MPI) due to a low symbol rate, the use of a cyclic prefix (CP), and its affinity to different transmission bandwidth arrangements. Single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) based radio access was adopted in the uplink, since provisioning of wide area coverage was prioritized over improvement in the peak data rate considering the restricted transmission power of the user equipment (UE). Many key packet radio access techniques are employed including multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel transmission techniques, and a highly efficient control signaling structure is achieved in LTE (Release 8).

LTE architecture

0005The overall architecture is shown in <figref idref="f0001">Fig. 1</figref> and a more detailed representation of the E-UTRAN architecture is given in <figref idref="f0002">Fig. 2</figref>. The E-UTRAN consists of eNodeB, providing the E-UTRA user plane (PDCP/RLC/MAC/PHY) and control plane (RRC) protocol terminations towards the user equipment (UE). The eNodeB (eNB) hosts the Physical (PHY), Medium Access Control (MAC), Radio Link Control (RLC), and Packet Data Control Protocol (PDCP) layers that include the functionality of user-plane header-compression and encryption. It also offers Radio Resource Control (RRC) functionality corresponding to the control plane. It performs many functions including radio resource management, admission control, scheduling, enforcement of negotiated uplink Quality of Service (QoS), cell information broadcast, ciphering/deciphering of user and control plane data, and compression/decompression of downlink/uplink user plane packet headers. The eNodeBs are interconnected with each other by means of the X2 interface.

0006The eNodeBs are also connected by means of the S1 interface to the EPC (Evolved Packet Core), more specifically to the MME (Mobility Management Entity) by means of the S1-MME and to the Serving Gateway (SGW) by means of the S1-U. The S1 interface supports a many-to-many relation between MMEs/Serving Gateways and eNodeBs. The SGW routes and forwards user data packets, while also acting as the mobility anchor for the user plane during inter-eNodeB handovers and as the anchor for mobility between LTE and other 3GPP technologies (terminating S4 interface and relaying the traffic between 2G/3G systems and PDN GW). For idle state user equipments, the SGW terminates the downlink data path and triggers paging when downlink data arrives for the user equipment. It manages and stores user equipment contexts, e.g. parameters of the IP bearer service, network internal routing information. It also performs replication of the user traffic in case of lawful interception.

0007The MME is the key control-node for the LTE access-network. It is responsible for idle mode user equipment tracking and paging procedure including retransmissions. It is involved in the bearer activation/deactivation process and is also responsible for choosing the SGW for a user equipment at the initial attach and at time of intra-LTE handover involving Core Network (CN) node relocation. It is responsible for authenticating the user (by interacting with the HSS). The Non-Access Stratum (NAS) signaling terminates at the MME and it is also responsible for generation and allocation of temporary identities to user equipments. It checks the authorization of the user equipment to camp on the service provider's Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) and enforces user equipment roaming restrictions. The MME is the termination point in the network for ciphering/integrity protection for NAS signaling and handles the security key management. Lawful interception of signaling is also supported by the MME. The MME also provides the control plane function for mobility between LTE and 2G/3G access networks with the S3 interface terminating at the MME from the SGSN. The MME also terminates the S6a interface towards the home HSS for roaming user equipments.

Channel Quality Report in LTE (Release 8)

0008Channel quality information is used in a multi-user communication system to determine the quality of channel resource(s) for one or more users. This information may be used to aid in a multi-user scheduler algorithm of the eNodeB (or other radio-access elements such as a relay node) to assign channel resources to different users, or to adapt link parameters (e.g. modulation scheme, coding rate, or transmit power) so as to exploit the assigned channel resource to its fullest potential.

0009Assuming a multi-carrier communication system, e.g. employing OFDM, as for example discussed in the "Long Term Evolution" work item of 3GPP, the smallest unit of resources that can be assigned/allocated by the scheduler is one "resource block". A physical resource block is defined as <maths id="math0001"><math display="inline"><msubsup><mi>N</mi><mi>symb</mi><mi>DL</mi></msubsup></math><img file="EP2282575A1_D0001.tif" /></maths> consecutive OFDM symbols in the time domain and <maths id="math0002"><math display="inline"><msubsup><mi>N</mi><mi>sc</mi><mi>RB</mi></msubsup></math><img file="EP2282575A1_D0002.tif" /></maths> consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain as exemplified in <figref idref="f0003">Fig. 3</figref>. In 3GPP LTE (Release 8), a physical resource block thus consists of <maths id="math0003"><math display="inline"><msubsup><mi>N</mi><mi>symb</mi><mi>DL</mi></msubsup><mo>×</mo><msubsup><mi>N</mi><mi>sc</mi><mi>RB</mi></msubsup></math><img file="EP2282575A1_D0003.tif" /></maths> resource elements, corresponding to one slot in the time domain and 180 kHz in the frequency domain (for further details on the downlink resource grid, see 3GPP TS 36.211, "Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical Channels and Modulation (Release 8)", version 8.7.0, section 6.2, available at http://www.3gpp.org and incorporated herein by reference). In the ideal case, channel quality information for all resource blocks for all users should be always available to the scheduler so as to take an optimum scheduling decision. However, due to constrained capacity of the feedback channel it is not possible/feasible to ensure this type of up-to-dateness of channel quality information. Therefore, reduction and/or compression techniques are required so as to transmit - for example - channel quality information only for a subset of resource blocks for a given user. In 3GPP LTE, the smallest unit for which channel quality is reported is called a sub-band, which consists of multiple (n) frequency-adjacent resource blocks (i.e. <maths id="math0004"><math display="inline"><mi>n</mi><mo>⋅</mo><msubsup><mi>N</mi><mi mathvariant="italic">BW</mi><mi mathvariant="italic">RB</mi></msubsup></math><img file="EP2282575A1_D0004.tif" /></maths> subcarriers).

Channel Quality Feedback Elements

0010In 3GPP LTE, there exist three basic elements which may or may not be given as feedback for the channel quality: <ul id="ul0001" list-style="dash"><li>Modulation and Coding Scheme Indicator (MCSI), which is also referred to as Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) in the 3GPP LTE specifications,</li><li>Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI) and</li><li>Rank Indicator (RI)</li></ul>

0011The MCSI suggests a modulation and coding scheme that should be employed for downlink transmission to a reporting user equipment, while the PMI points to a precoding matrix/vector that is to be employed for multi-antenna transmission (MIMO) using an assumed transmission matrix rank or a transmission matrix rank that is given by the RI. Details on channel quality reporting and transmission mechanisms are can be found in 3GPP TS 36.212, "Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Multiplexing and channel coding (Release 8)", version 8.7.0, sections 5.2 and 3GPP TS 36.213, "Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical layer procedures (Release 8)", version 8.7.0, section 7.2 (all documents available at http://www.3gpp.org and incorporated herein by reference).

0012All of these elements are summarized as under the term channel quality feedback herein. Hence, a channel quality feedback can contain any combination of or multiple MCSI, PMI, RI values. Channel quality feedback reports may further contain or consist of metrics such as a channel covariance matrix or elements, channel coefficients, or other suitable metrics as apparent to those skilled in the art.

Triggering and Transmission of Channel Quality Feedback

0013In 3GPP LTE (Release 8) there are different possibilities defined, how to trigger the user equipments to send channel quality feedback on the downlink channel quality. Besides periodic CQI reports (see section 7.2.2 in 3GPP TS 36.213, version 8.7.0), there is also the possibility to use L1/L2 control signaling to a user equipment to request the transmission of the so-called aperiodic CQI report (see section 7.2.1 in 3GPP TS 36.213, version 8.7.0). This L1/L2 control signaling can also be used in the random access procedure (see section 6 in 3GPP TS 36.213, version 8.7.0, incorporated herein by reference). In both these cases, a special CQI request field/bit/flag is included in the control message from the eNodeB/relay node.

0014The L1/L2 control signaling that conveys information about an Uplink assignment is sometimes called UL-DCI (Uplink Dedicated Control Information). <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4</figref> shows an example of the DCI format 0 for FDD operation as defined in 3GPP TS 36.212, section 5.3.3.1.1 which serves to convey uplink DCI (please note that the CRC field of DCI format 0 is not shown in <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4</figref> for simplicity. The CQI request flag contains information whether the receiver should transmit CQI within the allocated uplink resources or not. Whenever such a trigger is received, the user subsequently transmits the feedback generally together with uplink data on the assigned Physical Uplink Shared CHannel (PUSCH) resources (the detailed procedure is described in section 7.2 <i>et seq.</i> in 3GPP TS 36.213, version 8.7.0).

Further Advancements for LTE - LTE-Advanced (LTE-A)

0015The frequency spectrum for IMT-Advanced was decided at the World Radiocommunication Conference 2007 (WRC-07) in November 2008. Although the overall frequency spectrum for IMT-Advanced was decided, the actual available frequency bandwidth is different according to each region or country. Following the decision on the available frequency spectrum outline, however, standardization of a radio interface started in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). At the 3GPP TSG RAN #39 meeting, the Study Item description on "Further Advancements for E-UTRA (LTE-Advanced)" was approved which is also referred to as "Release 10". The study item covers technology components to be considered for the evolution of E-UTRA, e.g. to fulfill the requirements on IMT-Advanced. Two major technology components which are currently under consideration for LTE-A are described in the following.

0016In order to extend the overall system bandwidth, LTE-A (Release 10) uses carrier aggregation, where two or more component carriers are aggregated in order to support wider transmission bandwidths e.g. up to 100 MHz and for spectrum aggregation. It is commonly assumed that a single component carrier does not exceed a bandwidth of 20 MHz.

0017A terminal may simultaneously receive and/or transmit on one or multiple component carriers depending on its capabilities: <ul id="ul0002" list-style="dash"><li>An LTE-Advanced (Release 10) compatible mobile terminal with reception and/or transmission capabilities for carrier aggregation can simultaneously receive and/or transmit on multiple component carriers. There is one Transport Block (in absence of spatial multiplexing) and one HARQ entity per component carrier.</li><li>An LTE (Release 8) compatible mobile terminal can receive and transmit on a single component carrier only, provided that the structure of the component carrier follows the Release 8 specifications.</li></ul>

0018It is also envisioned to configure all component carriers LTE (Release 8)-compatible, at least when the aggregated numbers of component carriers in the uplink and the downlink are same. Consideration of non-backward-compatible configurations of LTE-A component carriers is not precluded.

Channel Quality Feedback in LTE-A (Release 10)

0019As there is only one component carrier defined in LTE (Release 8), there is no ambiguity at the user equipment on which portion of the system bandwidth CQI reporting is to be done. The CQI request flag (together with the current transmission mode) is unambiguously indicating to the user equipment how to provide CQI feedback to the eNodeB.

0020With the introduction of carrier aggregation in LTE-A (Release 10) and assuming that the LTE (Release 8) CQI reporting procedures should be reused, there are different possibilities how a CQI request can be interpreted by the user equipment. As shown in <figref idref="f0005">Fig. 5</figref>, it may be generally assumed that UL-DCI (containing the CQI request) for uplink transmission that is transmitted from a eNodeB or relay node to a user equipment is placed within a single downlink component carrier. A simple rule to handle the CQI request at the user equipment would be that whenever a UL-DCI requests a CQI transmission by the user equipment, same applies to the downlink component carrier where the corresponding UL-DCI is transmitted. I.e. the user equipment would only send aperiodic CQI feedback in a given UL transmission for those downlink component carriers that comprised a UL-DCI requesting a CQI report at the same time.

0021An alternative handling of UL-DCI comprising a CQI request is shown in <figref idref="f0005">Fig. 6</figref>. Whenever a UL-DCI requests a CQI transmission by the user equipment, the user equipment applies said request to all downlink component carriers available for downlink transmission to the user equipment.

0022When downlink transmission can occur on multiple component carriers, an efficient scheduling and link adaptation depends on the availability of accurate and up-to-date CQI. However, in order to make efficient use of the control signaling and CQI transmission resources, it should be possible to control for how many and which component carriers a CQI is to be requested (from the network side) and transmitted (from the terminal side).

0023According to the first solution discussed above with respect to <figref idref="f0005">Fig. 5</figref>, in order to request CQI for multiple component carriers the number of component carriers for which CQI is requested is identical to the number of required transmitted UL-DCI messages. In other words, to request CQI for five component carriers it is required to transmit five times more UL-DCI messages than for the case of requesting CQI for just a single component carrier. This solution is therefore not very efficient from a downlink control overhead point of view. According to the second solution above illustrated in <figref idref="f0005">Fig. 6</figref>, a single uplink DCI message requests CQI for all component carriers. Therefore the downlink control overhead is very small. However, the resulting uplink transmission always requires a large amount of resources to accommodate the transmission of CQI for all component carriers, even though the network knows that it currently requires CQI only for a single selected component carrier. Therefore this is not efficient for the usage of uplink resources, and does not offer any flexibility for the number of requested component carrier CQI.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

0024One object of the invention is to suggest a mechanism for triggering channel quality feedback from a mobile terminal where the downlink control signaling overhead for the selection of component carrier(s) to be reported on is minimized.

0025The object is solved by the subject matter of the independent claims. Advantageous embodiments of the invention are subject to the dependent claims.

0026One aspect of the invention is to suggest a new interpretation of a predetermined format for dedicated control information comprising a CQI request flag, which is depending on the status of the CQI request flag. In case the CQI request flag is set, i.e. is requesting the provision of channel quality feedback from the mobile terminal, at least one further bit of the dedicated control information is interpreted as information indicative of the one or more component carriers available for downlink transmission to the mobile terminal and the mobile terminal is providing channel quality feedback on the channel quality experienced on the indicated component carrier or component carriers. Furthermore, in an alternative implementation, the combination of the CQI request flag and the at least one further bit of the dedicated control information is used to indicate the one or more component carriers available for downlink transmission to the mobile terminal on which the mobile terminal is to provide channel quality feedback.

0027According to another, alternative aspect of the invention, the indication of the component carrier or component carriers the mobile terminal is requested to provide channel quality feedback on is indicated by the time and/or frequency resources on which the dedicated control information is received at the terminal and/or the transport format of the dedicated control information.

0028Both aspects may be combined, i.e. the indication of the component carrier(s) for which channel quality feedback is to be sent may be indicated to the mobile terminal by means of the resource (in the time and/or frequency domain) and/or transport format utilized for transmitting the dedicated control information, and in addition at least one further bit of the dedicated control information. In one example where the both aspects are combined, the at least one further bit of the dedicated control information may be the CQI request flag.

0029One embodiment of the invention is providing a method for reporting on a downlink channel quality (channel quality feedback) experienced by a terminal (e.g. a mobile terminal or a user equipment) by means of channel quality information for at least one of plural component carriers of a communication system available for downlink transmission to the terminal. According to this exemplary method the terminal receives dedicated control information having a predetermined format. The dedicated control information comprises a CQI request flag (first control information field) for requesting channel quality reporting by the terminal and at least one further, second control information field consisting of at least one bit. According to this embodiment of the invention, if the CQI request flag is set, the terminal is interpreting at least one bit of the second control information field as CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information, and transmits channel quality information for each indicated component carrier. Hence, in this exemplary embodiment, one or more control information fields of the dedicated control information can convey the CQI control information.

0030In one further exemplary embodiment, the terminal interprets the at least one second control information field according to the default specification of the predetermined format of the dedicated control channel information, if the CQI request flag is not set.

0031In alternative embodiment of the invention, the status of the CQI request flag is not decisive for the interpretation of the remaining fields within the dedicated control information. In this exemplary alternative embodiment of the invention a combination of at least one bit of the second control information field and the CQI request flag is unconditionally interpreted as the CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information.

0032Generally, the invention can be used in 3GPP-based communication systems, in particular in a 3GPP LTE-(Release 10) system. For example, in one implementation, the dedicated control information of the predetermined format is Dedicated Control Information of DCI format 0 defined in 3GPP LTE (Release 8).

0033The dedicated control information may be for example received via one of the plural component carriers of the communication system. In one further exemplary embodiment, the terminal is transmitting channel quality information for at least the component carrier on which the dedicated control information is received, if the CQI request flag is set within the dedicated control information. In a more specific example, the at least one bit of the second control information field interpreted as CQI control information indicates at least one further component carrier of the plural component carriers other than the component carrier on which the dedicated control information has been received.

0034There are different possibilities which fields of the dedicated control information' predetermined format are used to indicate the CQI control information. In an embodiment of the invention, the at least one bit of the at least one second control information field interpreted as the CQI control information is one of or a combination of: <ul id="ul0003" list-style="dash"><li>a hopping flag defined for the predetermined format of the dedicated control channel information indicating whether or not the terminal should employ uplink resource hopping,</li><li>at least one padding bit defined for the predetermined format of the dedicated control channel information for aligning the size of the dedicated control information to a predetermined number of bits,</li><li>at least one bit of a resource assignment field defined for the predetermined format of the dedicated control channel information for assigning resources to the terminal,</li><li>at least one bit of a DMRS field defined for the predetermined format of the dedicated control channel information for configuring the cyclic shift between the terminal and another terminal for uplink transmission on at least partly overlapping uplink resources, and</li><li>at least one bit of an uplink carrier indicator field defined for the predetermined format of the dedicated control channel information for indicating to the terminal for which component carrier or component carriers the dedicated control information is valid.</li></ul>

0035In another embodiment of invention, it is assured that the CQI control information indicate at least a first channel quality feedback option, where the terminal provides cannel quality feedback for one available component carrier and a second channel quality feedback option, where the terminal provides channel quality feedback on all available component carriers. Accordingly, in an exemplary implementation, a first value of the at least one bit of the at least one second control information field interpreted by the terminal as CQI control information is requesting the terminal to provide channel quality information for one available downlink component carrier of the plurality of component carriers and a second value of the at least one bit of the at least one second control information field interpreted by the terminal as CQI control information is requesting the terminal to provide channel quality indices for all downlink component carriers of the plurality of component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal.

0036Furthermore, the dedicated control information can be provided to the terminal using different messages and channels. In one exemplary embodiment, the dedicated control information is received by the terminal via a Physical Downlink Control CHannel (PDCCH). In another exemplary embodiment of the invention, the dedicated control information is comprised in a random access response grant message during non-contention based random access.

0037In accordance with the second aspect mentioned above, the invention is also providing another embodiment related to another method for reporting on a downlink channel quality (channel quality feedback) experienced by a terminal by means of channel quality information for at least one of plural component carriers of a communication system available for downlink transmission to the terminal. In this method, the terminal receives dedicated control information having a predetermined format, wherein the dedicated control information comprises a CQI request flag for requesting channel quality reporting by the terminal. In this exemplary embodiment, if the CQI request flag is set, the terminal interprets time and/or frequency resources on which the dedicated control information is received at the terminal and/or the transport format of the dedicated control information as CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information, and transmits channel quality information for each indicated component carriers.

0038It should be noted that this solution is also applicable to situations, where the status of the CQI request flag is having no influence on the interpretation of the content of the dedicated control information. For example, in another embodiment, the dedicated control information are interpreted by the terminal according to the predetermined format, and the terminal interprets time and/or frequency resources on which the dedicated control information is received at the terminal and/or the transport format of the dedicated control information as CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information, and transmits channel quality information for each indicated component carriers

0039In another embodiment of the invention in line with the second aspect of the invention mentioned above, the dedicated control information comprises at least one further, second control information field consisting of at least one bit, and in the step of interpreting interprets: <ul id="ul0004" list-style="dash"><li>at least one bit of the at least one further, second control information field and</li><li>the time and/or frequency resources on which the dedicated control information is received at the terminal and/or the transport format of the dedicated control information as CQI control</li></ul> as the CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information. Hence, the different embodiments of the invention in line with the two aspects of the invention discussed above can be readily combined.

0040The invention according to another embodiment is also providing a mobile terminal for reporting on a downlink channel quality experienced by the terminal by means of channel quality information for at least one of plural component carriers of a communication system available for downlink transmission to the mobile terminal. The mobile terminal comprises a receiver for receiving dedicated control information having a predetermined format. The dedicated control information comprises a CQI request flag for requesting channel quality reporting by the terminal and at least one further, second control information field consisting of at least one bit.

0041Furthermore, the mobile terminal further comprises a processing unit for interpreting, if the CQI request flag is set, at least one bit of the second control information field as CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information, and a transmitter for transmitting channel quality information for each indicated component carrier.

0042Another alternative embodiment of the invention is related to a mobile terminal for reporting on a downlink channel quality experienced by the terminal by means of channel quality information for at least one of plural component carriers of a communication system available for downlink transmission to the mobile terminal. This mobile terminal comprises a receiver for receiving dedicated control information having a predetermined format, wherein the dedicated control information comprises a CQI request flag for requesting channel quality reporting by the terminal, a processing unit for interpreting, if the CQI request flag is set, time and/or frequency resources on which the dedicated control information is received at the terminal and/or the transport format of the dedicated control information as CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information, and a transmitted for transmitting channel quality information for each indicated component carrier.

0043The mobile terminal according to another embodiment of the invention, is further adapted (e.g. by comprising respective operational units or means) to perform the steps of the methods for terminal for reporting on a downlink channel quality experienced by the terminal according to one the different embodiments and aspects of the invention discussed herein.

0044Further, according to another embodiment, the invention also provides a computer readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by the processor of a terminal, cause the terminal to report on a downlink channel quality experienced by the a terminal by means of channel quality information for at least one of plural component carriers of a communication system available for downlink transmission to the terminal, by receiving dedicated control information having a predetermined format, wherein the dedicated control information comprises a CQI request flag for requesting channel quality reporting by the terminal and at least one further, second control information field consisting of at least one bit, interpreting at least one bit of the second control information field as CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information, if the CQI request flag is set, and transmitting channel quality information for each indicated component carrier.

0045A computer readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by the processor of a terminal, cause the terminal to report on a downlink channel quality experienced by the a terminal by means of channel quality information for at least one of plural component carriers of a communication system available for downlink transmission to the terminal, by receiving by the terminal dedicated control information having a predetermined format, wherein the dedicated control information comprises a CQI request flag for requesting channel quality reporting by the terminal, interpreting, if the CQI request flag is set, time and/or frequency resources on which the dedicated control information is received at the terminal and/or the transport format of the dedicated control information as CQI control information indicative of one or more of the component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality information, and transmitting channel quality information for each indicated component carrier.

0046The computer readable media according to another embodiment of the invention can further store instructions, that when executed by the processor of the mobile terminal, cause the mobile terminal to perform the steps of the methods for terminal for reporting on a downlink channel quality experienced by the terminal according to one the different embodiments and aspects of the invention discussed herein.

0047Further embodiments of this invention related to the operation of the network node in the access network of a communication system that is triggering the aperiodic channel quality feedback of the terminal on at least one component carrier available for downlink transmission to the terminal. Such node may be for example a base station, eNodeB or relay node. According to one of these exemplary embodiments the node in the access network of the communication system selects at least one component carrier available for downlink transmission to the mobile terminal out of a plurality of component carriers configured in the communication system, and transmits to the mobile terminal dedicated control information comprising a CQI request flag that is set by the node in order to trigger aperiodic channel quality feedback and at least one further, second control information field at least one bit of which is set to indicate the selected at least one component carrier. In response to this dedicated control information the node receives channel quality feedback on each selected component carrier from the mobile terminal.

0048In a further embodiment of the invention the node may be further equipped with a scheduler that is scheduling downlink transmissions to the mobile terminal on the based on the available component carrier or carriers based on the channel quality feedback received from the mobile terminal. Furthermore, in a more detailed exemplary implementation, the node in the access network may receive channel quality feedback from other mobile terminals than said mobile terminal and schedules the other mobile terminals and said mobile terminal based on the channel quality feedback received from the other mobile terminals and said mobile terminal.

0049Another embodiment of the invention relates to a computer readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor of a node in an access network of a communication system, cause the node to trigger aperiodic channel quality feedback of a terminal on at least one component carrier available for downlink transmission to the terminal in the communication system, by selecting at least one component carrier available for downlink transmission to the mobile terminal out of a plurality of component carriers configured in the communication system, transmitting to the mobile terminal dedicated control information comprising a CQI request flag that is set by the node in order to trigger aperiodic channel quality feedback and at least one further, second control information field at least one bit of which is set to indicate the selected at least one component carrier and receiving from the mobile terminal, in response to the dedicated control information, channel quality feedback on each selected component carrier.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

0050In the following the invention is described in more detail in reference to the attached figures and drawings. Similar or corresponding details in the figures are marked with the same reference numerals. <dl id="dl0001"><dt><b>Fig. 1</b></dt><dd>shows an exemplary architecture of a 3GPP LTE system,</dd><dt><b>Fig. 2</b></dt><dd>shows an exemplary overview of the overall E-UTRAN architecture of LTE,</dd><dt><b>Fig. 3</b></dt><dd>shows an exemplary downlink resource grid as defined for 3GPP LTE (Release 8),</dd><dt><b>Fig. 4</b></dt><dd>shows the format "DCI format 0" of dedicated control information (DCI) according to 3GPP LTE (Release 8) for FDD operation,</dd><dt><b>Figs. 5 &amp; 6</b></dt><dd>show exemplary solutions for triggering aperiodic CQI reporting from a user equipment in a 3GPP LTE-A (Release 10) system,</dd><dt><b>Fig. 7</b></dt><dd>shows the format "DCI format 0" of dedicated control information (DCI) according to 3GPP LTE (Release 8) for FDD operation, when frequency hopping is activated,</dd><dt><b>Figs. 8 to 12</b></dt><dd>show different interpretations of the content of dedicated control information (DCI) according to "DCI format 0" of 3GPP LTE (Release 8) for FDD operation, when reusing the format in 3GPP LTE-A (Release 10) system,</dd><dt><b>Figs. 13 to 17</b></dt><dd>show different formats of dedicated control information (DCI) according to different embodiments of the invention, when considering the interpretations of <figref idref="f0006 f0007 f0008">Figs. 8 to 12</figref> as individual formats of the dedicated control information,</dd><dt><b>Fig. 18</b></dt><dd>shows flow chart of an exemplary operation of a node in the access network and a terminal according to an embodiment of the invention</dd><dt><b>Fig. 19</b></dt><dd>shows an exemplary format for dedicated control information according to an embodiment of the invention,</dd><dt><b>Fig. 20</b></dt><dd>shows the maximum size of allocatable physical resource blocks depending on the overall system bandwidth, when using and not using hopping in the uplink, in a 3GPP LTE (Release 8) system, and</dd><dt><b>Fig. 21</b></dt><dd>shows the signaling messages of a contention free random access procedure in a 3GPP LTE (Release 8) system.</dd></dl>

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

0051The following paragraphs will describe various embodiments of the invention. For exemplary purposes only, most of the embodiments are outlined in relation to an orthogonal single-carrier uplink radio access scheme according to 3GPP LTE (Release 8) and LTE-A (Release 10) mobile communication systems discussed in the Technical Background section above. It should be noted that the invention may be advantageously used for example in connection with a mobile communication system such as 3GPP LTE (Release 8) and LTE-A (Release 10) communication systems previously described, but the invention is not limited to its use in this particular exemplary communication network.

0052The explanations given in the Technical Background section above are intended to better understand the mostly 3GPP LTE (Release 8) and LTE-A (Release 10) specific exemplary embodiments described herein and should not be understood as limiting the invention to the described specific implementations of processes and functions in the mobile communication network. Nevertheless, the improvements to the random access procedure proposed herein may be readily applied in the architectures/systems described in the Technical Background section and may in some embodiments of the invention also make use of standard and improved procedures of theses architectures/systems.

0053As indicated in the Summary of Invention section, one aspect of this invention is to suggest a new interpretation of a predetermined format for dedicated control information comprising a CQI request flag. The CQI request flag is a flag (e.g. 1 bit) that is used to request a terminal receiving the dedicated control information to provide channel quality feedback. The interpretation of the content of the dedicated control information may or may not depend on the status of the CQI request flag, depending on the implementation. In one exemplary implementation, the predetermined format of the dedicated control information is the "DCI format 0" as defined for 3GPP LTE (Release 8) that is interpreted in a different manner depending on the status of at least the CQI request flag comprised therein. <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4</figref> exemplarily shows the "DCI format 0" as defined for 3GPP LTE (Release 8) for the FDD operation.

0054As indicated above, in some exemplary embodiment of the invention that will be outlined in the following in more detail, the status of the CQI request flag comprised in the dedicated control information according the predetermined dedicated control information format is determining how the remaining content of the dedicated control information is interpreted by the terminal. The terminal may be for example a mobile terminal, a user equipment or a relay node. To put this differently, in these examples, the CQI request flag could also be considered a format identification: In case the CQI request flag is not set, the content of the dedicated control information is interpreted as defined for the predetermined format. In case the CQI request flag is set, the dedicated control information is not interpreted as defined for the predetermined format, i.e. has a different format than the predetermined format.

0055In case the CQI request flag is set, at least one further bit of the dedicated control information for uplink transmission is interpreted by a terminal receiving the dedicated control information as information indicative of the one or more component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal and the terminal is providing channel quality feedback on the channel quality experienced on the indicated component carrier or component carriers. This at least one further bit that can be considered as CQI control information could correspond to <ul id="ul0005" list-style="dash"><li>a part or parts of one or more control information fields comprised in the dedicated control information according to the definition of the predetermined format, or</li><li>one or more control information fields comprised in the dedicated control information according to the definition of the predetermined format, or</li><li>a mixture between a part or parts of and entire control information fields comprised in the dedicated control information according to the definition of the predetermined format.</li></ul>

0056In one example, the control information field or fields (part or parts of which are) interpreted as CQI control information include a hopping flag, a resource assignment field, a DMRS field, an uplink carrier indicator field and padding bits. When implementing the invention in an LTE-A (Release 10) system, the number of padding bits within the dedicated control information may depend on the system's bandwidth. In typical scenarios, one can expect that there are 0, 1 or 2 padding bits (depending on the system bandwidth).

0057In another alternative exemplary implementation, the combination of the CQI request flag and the at least one further bit of the dedicated control information is used to indicate the one or more component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to report channel quality feedback. Hence, in this example, the interpretation of the dedicated control information may not depend on the status of the CQI request flag. Instead, a combination of the CQI request flag and at least a part of at least one further control information field indicates the one or more component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal and the terminal is providing channel quality feedback on the channel quality experienced on the indicated component carrier or component carriers

0058According to another, alternative aspect of the invention, the indication of the component carrier or component carriers the terminal is requested to provide channel quality feedback on is indicated by the time and/or frequency resources on which the dedicated control information is received at the terminal and/or the transport format of the dedicated control information. For example, it can be assumed that the one or more control channel elements onto which the dedicated control information for a terminal is mapped is/are themselves mapped to the physical resources of one or more component carriers for downlink transmission according to different patterns. Each pattern could thereby indicate a combination of component carriers (at least one) available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which the terminal is to provide channel quality feedback.

0059Generally, it should be noted that "available" in formulations like "component carriers available for downlink transmission" or "available component carriers" should refer to the fact that there may be more component carriers configured or existing in the system than at a given point of time used for downlink transmission to the terminal. Available in this context refers to the component carriers actually used for downlink transmission to the terminal.

0060Available component carriers may therefore be one of: <ul id="ul0006" list-style="dash"><li>all component carriers that the base station (e.g. eNodeB or relay node) can use for conveying data on the downlink to the terminal (e.g. user equipment),</li><li>all component carriers that a terminal assumes for reception of data (e.g. this may be configured individually per terminal by the network/eNodeB/relay node using higher-layer signaling such as RRC signaling),</li><li>all component carriers where a terminal detects reception of data,</li><li>all component carriers that a terminal is configured to consider for channel quality feedback reporting (which may be a superset or subset of the component carriers in the preceding bullet point, and which can be configured using higher-layer signaling such as RRC signaling)</li><li>all component carriers that are within the reception capability of the receiver (this is mostly related to hardware restrictions or capabilities of the terminal, such as radio frequency circuitry complexity and power consumption)</li></ul>

0061Typically, terminals that are most suitable for a high data rate in the downlink are those that are close to the transmitter ("cell-centre") and that do not move fast, i.e. where the channel characteristics of the downlink barely fluctuate over a certain time. The reason is that for cell-centre terminals, the available transmission power can be very efficiently used for high code rates (close to rate r = 1) or high-order modulation schemes (such as 64-QAM), and for slowly moving terminals, the channel characteristics is nearly constant over time. This means that one can also assume that channel quality feedback of such slow-moving terminal that has been reported has a very long validity, allowing a very accurate and efficient link adaptation.

0062Accordingly, in order to exploit the capability of those slow-moving, cell-centre terminals, it is advantageous to configure same to use component carrier aggregation, i.e. to use multiple component carriers at least for downlink transmissions. Generally it can be assumed that higher layer configuration or semi-static configuration is available to the network, so that a node in the access network is able to configure a terminal to operate in a single or multiple component carrier transmission/reception mode. The terminal is thus aware of whether or not multiple component carriers are available in the downlink so that it can judge whether a dedicated control information for an uplink transmission where the CQI request flag is set must be interpreted as a request to provide channel quality feedback for a single downlink component carrier (only one component carrier is available) or as a request for channel quality feedback on one or more of the multiple downlink component carriers identified within the dedicated control information (multiple component carriers are available). Accordingly, depending on the number of downlink component carriers configured for a terminal, the terminal interprets the dedicated control information differently.

0063Similarly, the access network node (typically a base station, eNodeB or relay node) is also aware of the number of downlink component carriers that have been configured for the terminal and may therefore control the channel quality feedback reporting behavior of the terminal accordingly (e.g. by setting the CQI request flag, or by signaling the dedicated control information according to special pattern on time and/or frequency resources, as will be explained further down below). Hence, the access network node can request channel quality feedback from the terminals so as to properly schedule downlink transmissions to the respective terminals.

0064<figref idref="f0012">Fig. 18</figref> shows a flow chart of an exemplary operation of a node in the access network and a terminal according to an embodiment of the invention. The node of the access network (or access network node) is for example a base station in the access network of a mobile communication system. In a 3GPP-based communication system, such as LTE-A, a base station is also referred to as an eNodeB or relay node. Furthermore, the terminal may be for example a mobile terminal such as a user equipment in a 3GPP-based communication system. Please note that the terminal may also be a relay node as far as communication between an eNodeB and a relay node are concerned.

0065The terminal and the node may for example communicate with each other via an air interface. The system bandwidth available for communication may be considered to be divided into a plurality of component carriers. For example, the system bandwidth could be for example divided into 2, 3, 4 or 5 component carriers.

0066The operation of the node of the access network is shown on the left hand side of <figref idref="f0012">Fig. 18</figref>. The node first selects 1801 one or more component carriers available for downlink transmission to the terminal on which it desires to receive channel quality feedback. Based on the selection of component carrier(s) the node further transmits 1802 dedicated control information to the terminal that include an indication of the selected component carrier(s) on which the terminal is to provide channel quality feedback. As will be outlined in more detail below, there exist numerous possibilities how the selected component carrier(s) can be indicated to the terminal. The dedicated control information also comprises a resource allocation on the uplink for the terminal, on which the terminal is to send the channel quality feedback. Therefore the dedicated control information may also be referred to as an uplink grant.

0067It is assumed for exemplary purposes in <figref idref="f0012">Fig. 18</figref> that the dedicated control information has a predetermined format and comprises a CQI request flag being set in order to trigger aperiodic channel quality feedback from the terminal and CQI control information (CQI control info) that is indicating which component carrier(s) have been selected, respectively on which component carrier(s) the terminal is to report. As will be outlined in more detail below, there exist numerous possibilities how the selected component carrier(s) can be indicated to the terminal by means of the CQI control information comprised in the dedicated control information.

0068The terminal receives 1803 transmission of the dedicated control information from the node of the access network on downlink. The dedicated control information may be transmitted via a control channel to the terminal. In this example, the terminal checks whether the CQI request flag is set in the dedicated control information. If the CQI request flag is not set, the terminal would interpret the contents of the dedicated control information using the standard definition of the dedicated control channel information format used.

0069If the CQI report flag is set, i.e. is requesting channel quality feedback from the terminal, the terminal will interpret the content of the dedicated control information differently than in the case where the CQI request flag is not set. More specifically, if the CQI report flag is set, the terminal will interpret at least a part/one bit of at least one further field comprising control information (second control information field) within the dedicated control information as the CQI control information and will determine 1804 the CQI control information indicating the access network node selection of the component carrier(s) to provide channel quality feedback for. Next, the terminal generates 1805 a channel quality feedback message identifying the channel quality experienced by the terminal on the selected component carrier(s) indicated within the dedicated control information received from the access network node. This could for example involve that the terminal is performing some channel quality measurement on the selected component carrier(s). In a more detailed exemplary implementation, the terminal determines a SINR or channel covariance measurement, based on e.g. the reception of so-called reference symbols, for the selected component carrier(s) and may optionally further convert the measurement results into channel quality feedback, such as for example an MCSI or Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) as in an LTE or LTE-A specifications, a PMI or RI. Channel quality feedback may also be provided in form of directly measured or measurement-derived metrics such as a channel covariance matrix or elements, channel coefficients, or other suitable metrics.

0070The terminal transmits 1806 a message containing the channel quality feedback for the selected component carrier(s) to the node in the access network, which receives the message and extracts the channel quality feedback information. The terminal sends the channel quality feedback on the selected component carrier(s) indicated in the dedicated control information on the uplink resources that are also indicated in the dedicated control information. Optionally, the terminal may multiplex the channel quality feedback and further control or user data in this transmission. The node may store the obtained channel quality feedback and may make the channel quality feedback available to a scheduler (which could be located in the node) so that the downlink channel quality experienced by the terminal on the selected component carrier(s) can be considered in the scheduling of the terminal, i.e. in the process of deciding on the allocation of physical downlink or uplink resources to the terminal.

0071Although <figref idref="f0012">Fig. 18</figref> shows only the triggering and transmission of channel quality feedback from a single terminal, it should be noted that the access network node may of course serve multiple terminals. Accordingly, the access network node may request multiple terminals to provide (aperiodic) channel quality feedback on the downlink component carries available to the respective terminals. Furthermore, the access network node may schedule not only one terminal, but may schedule multiple terminals in a resource assignment process taking into account the channel quality experienced by the different terminals on the different component carriers of the system in its scheduling decision.

0072In a more detailed exemplary embodiment of the invention, it may be assumed that the procedure shown in <figref idref="f0012">Fig. 18</figref> is implemented in a 3GPP LTE-A (Release 10) communication system. In this exemplary embodiment, the node of the access network may be an eNodeB or a relay node. The terminal is a user equipment (UE). The eNodeB selects the component carrier(s) on which the user equipment is to report channel quality feedback and indicates its selection to the user equipment by means of L1/L2 control signaling on the PDCCH.

0073More specifically, the L1/L2 control signaling is comprising dedicated control information (DCI) that comprises a trigger of aperiodic channel quality feedback by the user equipment, e.g. by means of the CQI report flag, and an indication of the component carrier(s) for which channel quality feedback, e.g. by means of a so-called CQI report, is requested. This indication of the component carrier(s) is the CQI control information that may also be referred to as a CQI carrier indicator field (CQI-CI) of the uplink dedicated control information.

0074In one further more detailed exemplary implementation the employed dedicated control information has one of a plurality of predetermined formats, e.g. the DCI format 0 as defined for LTE (Release 8) and an exemplary structure of which is shown in <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4 and Fig. 7</figref> in case of operating the LTE-A (Release 10) communication system in FDD mode. In this case the COI-CL may be for example composed of part(s) of one or more control information fields that already exist in the DCI format 0 of Release 8.

0075As shown in <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4 and Fig. 7</figref>, the UL-DCI for FDD consists of: <ul id="ul0007" list-style="dash"><li>a format flag (Flag Format 0/1A) for distinguishing DCI Format 0 and DCI format 1 A, which are defined to have the same number of bits/size,</li><li>a hopping flag (Hopping Flag) indicating whether or not the user equipment should employ uplink resource hopping,</li><li>a resource block assignment field assigning uplink resources on the PUSCH to the user equipment (when triggering aperiodic channel quality feedback, the channel quality feedback and optionally further user data is multiplexed and transmitted on these assigned resources via that PUSCH),</li><li>a modulation and coding scheme field (MCS&amp;RV) that is indicating the modulation scheme, coding rate and the redundancy version for the transmission on the assigned resources on the PUSCH,</li><li>a new data indicator (NDI) to indicate whether the user equipment has to send new data or a retransmission,</li><li>a DMRS field (Cyclic Shift DMRS) for configuring the cyclic shift applied to the reference symbol sequence,</li><li>a CQI request flag for triggering an aperiodic channel quality feedback report from the user equipment, and</li><li>if required one or more padding bit(s) to align the size of the dedicated control information to a predetermined number of bits.</li></ul>

0076If the hopping flag is set, the first 1 or 2 bits of the resource block assignment field are used to indicate the hopping sequence or hopping configuration to the user equipment. This means that the resource block assignment field has 1 or 2 bits less, and may therefore only indicate a smaller resource block allocation size.

0077Another possibility according to another embodiment of the invention is to reuse the definition of DCI format 0 as defined for LTE (Release 8) and to extend same for the use in LTE-A (Release 10), i.e. to define a new DCI format 0 or the use in LTE-A (Release 10) based on DCI format 0 as defined for LTE (Release 8). Such an exemplary DCI format 0 for LTE-A (Release 10) according to one embodiment of the invention is shown in <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref>. In LTE (Release 8) there is only one component carrier defined, so that there is no question for which component carrier an uplink or downlink resource assignment is pertaining to.

0078When using multiple component carriers, the association between the resource assignment and the component carrier(s) for which it should be valid is not self evident. When reusing the DCI format 0 as defined for LTE (Release 8) in a multiple-component carrier system like LTE-A (Release 10), the user equipment may for example assume that the resource allocation in the dedicated control information is pertaining to the downlink component carrier on which the dedicated control information is received (for downlink resource assignment), respectively, an uplink component carrier associated to the downlink component carrier on which the dedicated control information is received (for uplink resource assignments). Alternatively, in this embodiment and as shown in <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref>, the DCI format 0 as defined for LTE (Release 8) can be extended by an uplink carrier indicator field (UCI) for indicating to the user equipment for which component carrier or component carriers the dedicated control information is valid. It should be noted that the uplink carrier indicator field (UCI) can be placed also on other locations within the exemplary DCI format 0 for LTE-A (Release 10). Assuming that only one component carrier can be indicated by the uplink carrier indicator field (UCI) and the system may be configured with up to five component carriers, the uplink carrier indicator field (UCI) should have a size of 1, 2 or 3 bits, depending on the number of available or existing component carriers. If the uplink carrier indicator field (UCI) should be able to indicate arbitrary combinations of the valid or existing component carriers for which the dedicated control information is valid, the number of bits required for the uplink carrier indicator field is upper-bounded by [log₂<i>NoC</i>], where <i>NoC</i> is the number of different combinations of component carriers being possible.

0079It should be also noted that the invention may also be implemented in a LTE-A (Release 10) communication system operating in TDD mode. In this case the dedicated control information for the uplink (UL-DCI) according to DCI format 0 as defined for LTE (Release 8) or LTE-A (Release 10) - according to the exemplary embodiment in the paragraphs above - further comprises an uplink index field (UL index) or a Downlink Assignment Index (DAI) field (see 3GPP TS 36.212, version 8.7.0, section 5.3.3.1.1 and 3GPP TS 36.213, version 8.7.0, sections 5.1.1.1, 7.3 and 8 incorporated herein by reference).

0080In the following several exemplary embodiments of the invention are described with respect to <figref idref="f0006 f0007 f0008 f0009 f0010 f0011">Figs. 8 to 17</figref> that are intended to exemplify how the CQI control information may be comprised into the dedicated control channel information. Please note that for exemplary purposes, the different examples are based on a reuse of DCI format 0 defined for dedicated control information in LTE (Release 8) that has been discussed previously. Nevertheless, the exemplary embodiments may equally make use - for example - of the format for dedicated control information as shown in <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref> or of other dedicated control information formats. In all embodiments, it may be assumed that the user equipment has already been configured to use component carrier aggregation, i.e. there are plural component carriers available for downlink transmission to a particular user equipment.

0081In one embodiment of the invention, the dedicated control information comprises a CQI request flag and at least a hopping flag. The "hopping" flag (typically 1 bit) is included to determine whether a user equipment should employ uplink resource hopping for transmission. The main merit of employing hopping is to obtain frequency diversity, i.e. to exploit different channel and/or interference characteristics to be more robust against instantaneous and limited Signal to Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) fluctuations in time or frequency. Such fluctuations can for example occur if the user equipment is moving at a high speed, or when it is in a radio channel scenario where the impulse response results in a very frequency-selective transmission characteristic, or when it is close to a radio cell boundary where generally the interference experienced from other user equipments in the same or adjacent cell can be relatively high compared to the received signal power from the target user equipment.

0082In general, a downlink transmission using multiple component carriers at the same time is interesting to increase the instantaneous data rate for a user equipment. Traditionally, the user equipments which are most suitable for a high data rate are those that are close to the transmitter ("cell-centre") and that do not move fast, i.e. where the channel characteristics barely fluctuate over a certain time. The reason is that for cell-centre user equipments, the available transmission power can be very efficiently used for high code rates (close to rate r = 1) or high-order modulation schemes (such as 64-QAM), and for slowly moving user equipments, the channel is nearly constant over time, such that a CQI that is reported has a very long validity, allowing a very accurate and efficient link adaptation. It should be understood that even though the terms "cell-centre" and "cell boundary" are originating from the geographical position of the terminal with respect to the position of the radio network element (such as an eNodeB or relay node), the term "cell centre"/"cell boundary" also refers to a terminal that faces generally/on average good/bad radio conditions, respectively. This is not only a function of the geographical distance but also of e.g. the existence of obstacles that block a line-of-sight connection between the two ends of the radio communication. Therefore, even a terminal that has a very small Euclidean distance to an eNodeB or relay node could be considered to be in a cell boundary environment, if the transmission path(s) are blocked by obstacles such as walls, buildings, vegetation, metal shields, and the like.

0083Consequently, slow moving cell-centre user equipments are traditionally not associated with conditions where uplink hopping is required. Therefore the Hopping flag (and consequently the Hopping configuration bits - see <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4 and Fig. 7</figref>) are rarely activated/employed, if ever, when CQI for multiple component carriers is requested. Generally, higher layer or semi-static configuration can be used to configure a user equipment to operate in a single or multiple component carrier transmission/reception mode. Therefore a user equipment can know whether a CQI request flag being set in an uplink dedicated control information (UL-DCI) should be used for single or multiple component carrier channel quality feedback request. Accordingly, in case there are multiple component carriers available for a user equipment for downlink transmission the user equipment can interpret the hopping flag as CQI control information that is indicating the component carrier(s) on which the user equipment is to report.

0084A further reason why hopping should not be applied for a slow-moving, cell-centre user equipment, or why not being able to employ hopping does not jeopardize the system operation significantly, is that for downlink as well as for uplink these user equipments can convey large packets per allocated transmission due to their generally advantageous radio channel conditions. Generally, this means that the user equipment should be able to transmit over a large portion of the available spectrum, i.e. the number of allocated resource blocks should be large. However, as can be seen in <figref idref="f0013">Fig. 20</figref>, the maximum resource allocation size in case hopping is activated (Hopping Flag = 1 - see also <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 7</figref>) is employed is radically smaller than without hopping. Additionally, the number of bits taken from the Resource Block Allocation field depends on the system bandwidth in terms of available resource blocks in the cell (or component carrier). <figref idref="f0013">Fig. 20</figref> shows on the y-Axis, the effect on the maximum allocatable number of resource blocks and on the x-Axis the bandwidth of the system. It can be seen that only a limited fraction of the available resources can be allocated to a single user equipment in the uplink when employing hopping, which will have a negative effect on the system and cell throughput. Therefore, it is preferable that cell-centre slow-moving user equipments do not use hopping.

0085In a typical implementation of the LTE-A (Release 10) communication system, it can be assumed that the dedicated control channel information according to the formats (such as DCI format 0) exemplified in <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4</figref> and <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref> will have at least one padding bit to match the size of the dedicated control information to that of DCI format 1A - generally to match the size of a first DCI format to the size of a second DCI format. Accordingly, if the payload for DCI format 0 is smaller than the payload for DCI format 1A (including any padding bits appended to DCI format 1 A), zeros are appended to DCI format 0 until the payload size equals that of DCI format 1 A. Even though the value of these padding bits is fixed, they are not defined for any particular purpose other than to adjust the payload size. Consequently, in one embodiment of the invention, the padding bit(s) within the dedicated control information are used to signal the CQI control information to indicate the component carrier(s) on which the user equipment should report. In this embodiment of the invention, the dedicated control information transmitted to the user equipment comprises the CQI request flag and at least one padding bit.

0086<figref idref="f0006">Fig. 9</figref> shows an exemplary interpretation of the content of dedicated control information (DCI) according to DCI format 0 of 3GPP LTE (Release 8) for FDD operation (see <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4</figref>), when reusing the format in 3GPP LTE-A (Release 10) system, to exemplify this embodiment of the invention. Of course this example could be likewise realized using a DCI format 0 as of <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref> or on DCI format 0 for TDD operation, since it can be assumed that the fields available for FDD operation are also available for TDD operation. The user equipment that is receiving the dedicated control information according to <figref idref="f0006">Fig. 9</figref> is checking whether or not the CQI request bit is set (=1) to trigger aperiodic channel quality feedback from the user equipment. Assuming that this is the case, the user equipment will interpret the padding bit(s) of the dedicated control information as the CQI control information, i.e. an indication of the downlink component carrier(s) to be reported and will send channel quality feedback for the indicated component carrier(s).

0087The interpretation of the padding bits as CQI control information as exemplified above may also be viewed as a new DCI format 0 for cases where the CQI request bit is set (=1). <figref idref="f0009">Fig. 14</figref> exemplary shows this new dedicated control channel format. Hence, similar to the case of using the hopping flag for signaling the CQI control information as described with respect to <figref idref="f0006">Fig. 8</figref> and <figref idref="f0009">Fig. 13</figref> above, the CQI request flag may also be viewed as a format indicator that is indicating whether the dedicated control information has a first format (CQI request flag is not set (=0)) - that is the dedicated control information is interpreted by the user equipment according to the default definition of the DCI format - or has a second format (CQI request flag is set (=1)) - that is a format where the portion of the dedicated control information that is carrying padding bit(s) according to the default definition of the DCI format is carrying the CQI control information as exemplified in <figref idref="f0009">Fig. 14</figref>.

0088According to a further embodiment of the invention, the bits used to determine a cyclic shift applied to the transmission of demodulation reference symbols (DMRS) at the terminal ("Cyclic Shift DMRS bits") are used to indicate on which and how many of the available component carrier(s) a user equipment is to report channel quality feedback. Accordingly, in this exemplary embodiment of the invention the uplink dedicated control information provided to the user equipment comprises a CQI request flag and at least some Cyclic Shift DMRS bits. In one exemplary implementation, there are Cyclic Shift DMRS bits foreseen in the predetermined format of the dedicated control information.

0089The cyclic shift for the DMRS is typically employed in a 3GPP-based communication system to enable transmission from two different terminals using the same or at least partly overlapping time-frequency resources in the uplink. By means of a cyclic shift of the DMRS between the two transmitting terminals, it is possible for the eNodeB to distinguish/decompose the two interfering signals received from the terminals again and to decode both successfully. This is sometimes referred to as employing a multi-user MIMO uplink scheme (UL MU-MIMO).

0090A fundamental requirement of a multi-user MIMO uplink scheme is that the radio channels on which the two terminals send their uplink data should be statistically independent as possible, otherwise the decomposition and decoding will be suboptimal and may result in a lot of decoding errors. Looking at the case of slow-moving cell-centre terminals, it is however highly likely that the radio channels are highly correlated, particularly if looking at line-of-sight scenarios. Therefore it is unlikely that two such terminals will be assigned to transmit on the same frequency resource. Consequently, the Cyclic Shift DMRS field in the uplink dedicated control information is commonly not used for such terminals and can be re-used for indicating the component carrier(s) for which a user equipment should send channel quality feedback.

0091Even if the Cyclic Shift DMRS bits are reused as for example in DCI format 0 exemplified in <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4</figref> and <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref>, employing a multi-user MIMO uplink transmission from two (or more) terminals is still possible. The only constraint for such a scenario would be then that the two (or more) terminals which share part or all uplink time/frequency resources at the same time should not receive a CQI trigger at the same time. If this is ensured by the access network node (e.g. the eNodeB or relay node), the terminal receiving a trigger for reporting channel quality feedback would employ a predefined cyclic shift of which both sides - the network (eNodeB) and the reporting terminal - are aware (e.g. by specification or control signaling). The eNodeB or relay node can therefore determine another orthogonal cyclic shift(s) for the other terminal(s) and signal same using the Cyclic Shift DMRS field for the other terminal(s) not receiving the CQI trigger (if the CQI request flag is not set, the cyclic shift signaled in the Cyclic Shift DMRS field is applied by the terminal as usual). Therefore effectively the eNodeB or relay node can ensure that the DMRS transmitted by these terminals are mutually orthogonal, even if one of the terminals is triggered to send channel quality feedback. This method can further be extended such that multiple terminals can be triggered to send channel quality feedback, under the condition that the mentioned predefined cyclic shift for each such terminal is different, resulting in mutually orthogonal employed DMRS sequences.

0092<figref idref="f0007">Fig. 11</figref> shows an exemplary interpretation of the content of dedicated control information (DCI) according to DCI format 0 of 3GPP LTE (Release 8) for FDD operation (see <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4</figref>), when reusing the format in 3GPP LTE-A (Release 10) system, to exemplify this embodiment of the invention. Of course this example could be likewise realized using a DCI format 0 as of <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref> or on DCI format 0 for TDD operation. An eNodeB or relay node that is requiring a user equipment to send channel quality feedback on one or more component carriers available for downlink transmission to this user equipment can signal dedicated control information for an uplink transmission to the user equipment in which the CQI request flag is set. The eNodeB or relay node includes an indicator of the component carrier(s) to be reported into the Cyclic Shift DMRS field which would be commonly used to signal the cyclic shift to be applied by the user equipment for the uplink transmission. The user equipment that receives the dedicated control information recognizes the CQI request flag being set and interprets the content of the Cyclic Shift DMRS field within the dedicated control information as CQI control information indicating the component carrier(s) for which the user equipment is to provide channel quality feedback.

0093In case the user equipment recognizes the CQI request flag set, the user equipment may apply a cyclic shift to the DMRS that has been previously configured by higher-layer control signaling or a default cyclic shift for the uplink transmission, and transmit the channel quality feedback for the indicated component carrier(s) and optionally further uplink data.

0094In one further embodiment of the invention, not all of the bits of the Cyclic Shift DMRS field are used for indicating the CQI control information. For example, assuming that there are 3 bits foreseen for the Cyclic Shift DMRS field, 2 bits thereof could be used to indicate to the user equipment for which component carrier(s) available for downlink transmission to the user equipment, the user equipment should report, while the remaining 1 bit could be used to signal the application or non-application of a cyclic shift to the DMRS sequence for the uplink transmission. Hence, in case this 1 bit is set, the user equipment applies a configured or predetermined cyclic shift to the uplink transmission, while it does not do so, if this 1 bit is not set.

0095Again, the interpretation of the Cyclic Shift DMRS bits of the dedicated control information as CQI control information as exemplified above may also be viewed as a new DCI format 0 for cases where the CQI request bit is set (=1). <figref idref="f0010">Fig. 16</figref> exemplary shows this new dedicated control channel format. Again, the CQI request flag can be viewed as a format indicator that is indicating whether the dedicated control information has a first format (CQI request flag is not set (=0)) - that is the dedicated control information is interpreted by the user equipment according to the default definition of the DCI format - or has a second format (CQI request flag is set (=1)) - that is a format where (a portion of) the Cyclic Shift DMRS bits in the dedicated control information is carrying the CQI control information as exemplified in <figref idref="f0010">Fig. 16</figref>.

0096In the examples that have been discussed in the preceding paragraphs, there has been a further, second control information field (in addition to the CQI request flag) that has been used to indicate the component carrier(s) for which a terminal (e.g. user equipment) is to report channel quality feedback. It should be noted that it is also possible to interpret more than one further second field as indicative of the component carrier(s) for which channel quality feedback is to be provided by the terminal.

0097For example, in a further embodiment of the invention, the hopping configuration bits that are foreseen to signal the hopping configuration in a conventional dedicated control information format as exemplified in <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 7</figref> are used to signal the CQI control information to the user equipment in an LTE-A (Release 10) communication system. As explained before, hopping may be generally undesirable for slow-moving cell-centre user equipments, so that the 1-2 bits that indicate the hopping configuration would rarely if ever be used. However, the interpretation of the Resource Block Assignment (RBA) field in case hopping is activated (see <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 7</figref>) can be re-used for the case that channel quality feedback for one or more of multiple component carriers is requested, such that the 1-2 bits originally used as Hopping Configuration Bits are used as CQI control information (COI-CI). The advantage of this solution is that the use of hopping in the uplink would still be possible, as the Hopping Flag retains its original function and meaning. The hopping configuration may be for example configured in advance by higher layer signaling (e.g. RRC signaling). The potential drawback of this solution is that the maximum allocatable uplink resource size is quite strictly limited (see <figref idref="f0013">Fig. 20</figref>), which may not be in the interest for the operator. Therefore, in a variant of this embodiment it may be a good trade-off to "steal" only one bit from the Resource Block Assignment field for CQI control information, so that the CQI control information space is extended by 1 bit but the limitation on the maximum allocatable uplink resource size is less severe than shown in <figref idref="f0013">Fig. 20</figref>.

0098In another exemplary embodiment, a combination of the Hopping Flag and (one bit of) the Hopping Configuration Bits are used as CQI control information. As exemplified in <figref idref="f0007">Fig. 10</figref>, in case the CQI request flag is set (=1) in the dedicated control information, the user equipment is interpreting a combination of the hopping flag and hopping configuration bit(s) that span into the resource block Assignment field as the CQI control information. In this example, as the Hopping Flag is also used for the CQI control information signaling, it is not possible to utilize hopping for the uplink transmission by the user equipment any longer. However, this solution may be advantageous as for example only one bit of the Hopping Configuration Bits could be used in combination with the Hopping Flag for indicating the CQI control information, so that this solution imposes fewer restrictions to the maximum allocatable uplink resource size. As further illustrated in <figref idref="f0010">Fig. 15</figref>, this exemplary solution may be again considered a new dedicated control information format for cases where the CQI request flag is set.

0099Another exemplary implementation and embodiment of the invention is the use of a combination of the Hopping flag and (at least a part of) the Cyclic Shift DMRS bits for the signaling of the component carrier(s) for which the user equipment is to provide channel quality feedback. This is exemplified in <figref idref="f0008">Fig. 12</figref>, where - in case the CQI request flag is set (=1) - the user equipment will combine the bit of the Hopping flag and (at least a part of) the Cyclic Shift DMRS bits and will interpret this combination as CQI control information indicating the component carrier(s) for which it should report. This way, there is up to a total number of 4 bits that is available to signal different combinations of one or more component carriers for which the user equipment is to provide channel quality feedback. Again this exemplary implementation may be considered a definition of a new format for the dedicated control information in case the CQI request flag is set. <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 17</figref> is illustrating the new dedicated control information format that is corresponding to the interpretation of a combination of the Hopping flag and (at least a part of) the Cyclic Shift DMRS bits as the CQI control information as discussed above.

0100In one further embodiment of the invention, a combination of the Hopping flag, the padding bit(s) and (at least a part of) the Cyclic Shift DMRS bits is used for signaling the combination of one or more component carriers for which channel quality feedback is to be reported. If the CQI request flag is set in the dedicated control information, the user equipment will combine the bits of all three fields in a predetermined fashion and will interpret the resulting combined bit combination as the CQI control information that indicates the component carrier(s) for which channel quality feedback is to be reported. This exemplary embodiment would allow to use up to 5 bits (or even more, depending on the number of the padding bits) for signaling combinations of component carrier(s) for which channel quality feedback is to be reported, so that any arbitrary combination of component carriers can be indicated, assuming that there is a maximum aggregation of five component carriers for downlink transmission.

0101In another exemplary embodiment of the invention, there are uplink carrier indicator bits foreseen in the format of the dedicated control information in order to indicate the component carrier(s) for which the uplink dedicated control information is valid, specifically on which uplink component carrier(s) the subsequent UL transmission is to occur. An exemplary dedicated control information format comprising an uplink carrier indicator is illustrated in <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref>.

0102For multiple component carrier downlink/uplink transmission, one possibility to identify the component carrier on downlink/uplink to which the downlink/uplink dedicated control information is pertaining to is that the component carrier where the dedicated control information is transmitted determines for which component carrier in downlink/uplink the resource assignment is valid. For uplink dedicated control information (UL-DCI), this is known as the "paired DL-UL component carrier" relation. However, there may be case a UL-DCI is transmitted on a downlink component carrier but the corresponding assignment should be valid for another but not the corresponding paired uplink component carrier. In such a case, one solution is to include an uplink carrier indicator field (UCI) to the dedicated control information to determine the target uplink component carrier(s). In case channel quality feedback for multiple component carrier is requested, in one embodiment of the invention, the uplink carrier indicator is fully or partly used for signaling the CQI control information. This will restrict the UL-DCI to be valid for the paired uplink component carrier(s) only. Alternatively, the pairing may be alternatively configured by control signaling or be predetermined for cases where the CQI request flag is set in the dedicated control information.

0103Depending on how the CQI control information is included in the dedicated control information, respectively, which control information field or fields thereof are used, different numbers of bits are available for indicating on which component carrier(s) the user equipment is to report channel quality feedback. In the examples given above, the number of bits containing the CQI control information can range from 1 to 4 or even more bits. Therefore, the flexibility how the CQI control information (CQI-CI field) indicates for which downlink component carriers the user equipment should provide channel quality feedback can be quite different, depending also on the actual number of downlink component carriers that are available. it can be generally assumed that the i^th CQI control information value denotes an i^th combination of component carrier(s) for which channel quality feedback is requested. In the following paragraphs, different examples are discussed how to use the different possible numbers of bits available for CQI control information.

COI-CI field: 1 bit

0104In case of only 1 bit is available for the CQI control information (see for example <figref idref="f0006">Fig. 8 or Fig. 9</figref>), according to one exemplary embodiment of the invention, this bit is used to switch between two possible states: Requesting channel quality feedback for a first combination of component carrier(s), or for a second combination of component carrier(s). The two combinations of component carrier(s) to be reported may be for example predefined (e.g. determined by the user equipment based on a predetermined rule or procedure) or could be configured by higher-layer control signaling (e.g. RRC signaling). In one exemplary implementation, the first combination corresponds to only the single downlink component carrier where the UL-DCI carrying the set CQI request flag is transmitted, and the second combination corresponds to all available downlink component carriers.

0105This exemplary implementation is summarized in the table below: <tables id="tabl0001" num="0001"><table frame="all"><title><b>Table 1</b></title><tgroup cols="2"><colspec colnum="1" colname="col1" colwidth="25mm" /><colspec colnum="2" colname="col2" colwidth="87mm" /><thead><row><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>CQI-CI Value</b></entry><entry valign="top"><b>Requested channel quality feedback</b></entry></row></thead><tbody><row><entry align="center">0</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n</entry></row><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for all available component carriers</entry></row></tbody></tgroup></table></tables>

0106In one exemplary implementation, component carrier #n would be identified with the component carrier number that carries the UL-DCI carrying the set CQI request flag.

CQI-CI field: 2 bits

0107In cases where there are 2 bits available to signal the CQI control information (e.g. when using a combination of Hopping flag and one Hopping Configuration bit), this could be seen as an extension to the one-bit case discussed above, where an additional third and fourth combination of downlink component carrier(s) can be indicated. Assuming that the downlink component carrier where the requesting UL-DCI is transmitted can be identified by index #n, in one exemplary embodiment of the invention, the third combination of component carrier(s) corresponds to the downlink component carrier with index #n+m, and the fourth combination of component carrier(s) corresponds to the downlink component carrier with index #n+k.

0108This exemplary implementation is summarized in the table below: <tables id="tabl0002" num="0002"><table frame="all"><title><b>Table 2</b></title><tgroup cols="3"><colspec colnum="1" colname="col1" colwidth="63mm" /><colspec colnum="2" colname="col2" colwidth="37mm" /><colspec colnum="3" colname="col3" colwidth="67mm" /><thead><row><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>i^th combination of component carrier(s)</b></entry><entry align="center"><b>CQI-CI Value (binary)</b></entry><entry valign="top"><b>Requested channel quality feedback</b></entry></row></thead><tbody><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">00</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n</entry></row><row><entry align="center">3</entry><entry align="center">01</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n+m</entry></row><row><entry align="center">4</entry><entry align="center">10</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n+k</entry></row><row><entry align="center">2</entry><entry align="center">11</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for all available component carriers</entry></row></tbody></tgroup></table></tables>

0109The integer numbers k and m can be generally any integer number. Advantageously, k should not be equal to m, and k and m are both non-zero, for improved efficiency. It may be further preferable to set k=+1 and m=-1, which can be beneficially employed to "probe" the channel quality for component carriers adjacent to component carrier #n.

0110In another alternative and exemplary embodiment of the invention, the third combination of component carrier(s) corresponds to downlink component carrier #n and #n+m, while the fourth combination of component carrier(s) corresponds to #n and #n+k (see Table 3). <tables id="tabl0003" num="0003"><table frame="all"><title><b>Table 3</b></title><tgroup cols="3"><colspec colnum="1" colname="col1" colwidth="63mm" /><colspec colnum="2" colname="col2" colwidth="37mm" /><colspec colnum="3" colname="col3" colwidth="67mm" /><thead><row><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>i^th combination of component carrier(s)</b></entry><entry align="center"><b>CQI-CI Value (binary)</b></entry><entry valign="top"><b>Requested channel quality feedback</b></entry></row></thead><tbody><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">00</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n</entry></row><row><entry align="center">3</entry><entry align="center">01</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n and #n+m</entry></row><row><entry align="center">4</entry><entry align="center">10</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n and #n+k</entry></row><row><entry align="center">2</entry><entry align="center">11</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for all available component carriers</entry></row></tbody></tgroup></table></tables>

0111Again, k and m can be generally any integer number. Advantageously, k should not be equal to m, and k and m are both non-zero, for improved efficiency.

0112In a further alternative and exemplary embodiment of the invention, the third combination of component carrier(s) corresponds to downlink component carrier #n to #n+m, while the fourth combination of component carrier(s) corresponds to #n to #n+k. The number m may be for example a positive integer and the number k may be a negative integer (see Table 4). <tables id="tabl0004" num="0004"><table frame="all"><title><b>Table 4</b></title><tgroup cols="3"><colspec colnum="1" colname="col1" colwidth="63mm" /><colspec colnum="2" colname="col2" colwidth="37mm" /><colspec colnum="3" colname="col3" colwidth="67mm" /><thead><row><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>i^th combination of component carrier(s)</b></entry><entry align="center"><b>CQI-CI Value (binary)</b></entry><entry valign="top"><b>Requested channel quality feedback</b></entry></row></thead><tbody><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">00</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n</entry></row><row><entry align="center">3</entry><entry align="center">01</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n to #n+m</entry></row><row><entry align="center">4</entry><entry align="center">10</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n to #n+k</entry></row><row><entry align="center">2</entry><entry align="center">11</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for all available component carriers</entry></row></tbody></tgroup></table></tables>

0113In a further extension to this embodiment, in case that #n+k or #n+m overflows or underflows the available component carrier indices, a "cyclic wrap-around" is employed as for example given by the modulo function to generate only numbers within the available index range.

0114In all the embodiments discussed above where there are 2 bits available for signaling the combination of component carrier(s) channel quality feedback for which is to be reported, it may further be beneficial to set k=-m to achieve a kind of symmetric behavior.

CQI-CI field: 3 bits

0115In cases where there are 3 bits available to signal the CQI control information (e.g. when using the cyclic shift DMRS field), this could be seen as an extension to the two-bit case discussed above, where an additional fifth to eighth combination of downlink component carrier(s) can be indicated. The exemplary embodiments for the two-bit case can be extended to the three-bit case <i>mutatis mutandis,</i> e.g. to request channel quality feedback for component carrier(s) #n, #n+m1, #n+m2, #n+m3, #n+k1, #n+k2, #n+k3, or for all available component carriers, respectively. The same holds to extend requesting channel quality feedback for multiple component carriers or ranges of component carriers <i>mutatis mutandis.</i>

0116This exemplary implementation is summarized in the table below: <tables id="tabl0005" num="0005"><table frame="all"><title><b>Table 2a</b></title><tgroup cols="3"><colspec colnum="1" colname="col1" colwidth="63mm" /><colspec colnum="2" colname="col2" colwidth="37mm" /><colspec colnum="3" colname="col3" colwidth="67mm" /><thead><row><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>i^th combination of component carrier(s)</b></entry><entry align="center"><b>CQI-CI Value (binary)</b></entry><entry valign="top"><b>Requested channel quality feedback</b></entry></row></thead><tbody><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">000</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n</entry></row><row><entry align="center">3</entry><entry align="center">001</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n+m1</entry></row><row><entry align="center">4</entry><entry align="center">010</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n+m2</entry></row><row><entry align="center">5</entry><entry align="center">011</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n+m3</entry></row><row><entry align="center">6</entry><entry align="center">100</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n+k1</entry></row><row><entry align="center">7</entry><entry align="center">101</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n+k2</entry></row><row><entry align="center">8</entry><entry align="center">110</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n+k3</entry></row><row><entry align="center">2</entry><entry align="center">111</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for all available component carriers</entry></row></tbody></tgroup></table></tables>

0117Another exemplary implementation would be to extend the implementation exemplified above with respect to Table 3 to the 3-bit case: <tables id="tabl0006" num="0006"><table frame="all"><title><b>Table 3a</b></title><tgroup cols="3"><colspec colnum="1" colname="col1" colwidth="63mm" /><colspec colnum="2" colname="col2" colwidth="37mm" /><colspec colnum="3" colname="col3" colwidth="67mm" /><thead><row><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>i^th combination of component carrier(s)</b></entry><entry align="center"><b>CQI-CI Value (binary)</b></entry><entry valign="top"><b>Requested channel quality feedback</b></entry></row></thead><tbody><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">000</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carrier #n</entry></row><row><entry align="center">3</entry><entry align="center">001</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n to #n+m1</entry></row><row><entry align="center">4</entry><entry align="center">010</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n to #n+m2</entry></row><row><entry align="center">5</entry><entry align="center">011</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n to #n+m3</entry></row><row><entry align="center">6</entry><entry align="center">100</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n to #n+k1</entry></row><row><entry align="center">7</entry><entry align="center">101</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n to #n+k2</entry></row><row><entry align="center">8</entry><entry align="center">110</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for component carriers #n to #n+k3</entry></row><row><entry align="center">2</entry><entry align="center">111</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for all available component carriers</entry></row></tbody></tgroup></table></tables>

CQI-CI field: 4 bits when 5 downlink component carriers are available

0118In case there are 4 bits available, it is possible to address 16 combinations of component carriers. Assuming that there are 5 downlink component carriers configured (numbered 0 to 4) and usable by a user equipment, there is a total number of 32 possible combinations of available component carriers. Hence, using 4 bits, not all 32 possible combinations of component carriers can be signaled. It can be assumed that it is more interesting to represent the cases of requesting channel quality feedback for few component carriers than for many component carriers, because then it is more applicable to user equipments that are operating in the grey zone between cell-centre and cell-edge, where it would be interesting to probe the channel quality for one or two component carriers to check where the radio conditions are generally favorable. Therefore, according to one embodiment of the invention, one of the following two correspondences of CQI-CI value and combinations of component carrier(s) is suggested: <tables id="tabl0007" num="0007"><table frame="topbot"><title><b>Table 5</b></title><tgroup cols="3"><colspec colnum="1" colname="col1" colwidth="39mm" /><colspec colnum="2" colname="col2" colwidth="63mm" /><colspec colnum="3" colname="col3" colwidth="64mm" /><thead><row><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>CQI-CI Value (decimal)</b></entry><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>Correspondence 1: Requested channel quality feedback for component carrier index # (0-4)</b></entry><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>Correspondence 2: Requested channel quality feedback for component carrier index # (0-4)</b></entry></row></thead><tbody><row><entry align="center">0</entry><entry align="center">0</entry><entry align="center">0</entry></row><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">1</entry></row><row><entry align="center">2</entry><entry align="center">2</entry><entry align="center">2</entry></row><row><entry align="center">3</entry><entry align="center">3</entry><entry align="center">3</entry></row><row><entry align="center">4</entry><entry align="center">4</entry><entry align="center">4</entry></row><row><entry align="center">5</entry><entry align="center">0,1</entry><entry align="center">0,1,2</entry></row><row><entry align="center">6</entry><entry align="center">0,2</entry><entry align="center">0,1,3</entry></row><row><entry align="center">7</entry><entry align="center">0,3</entry><entry align="center">0,1,4</entry></row><row><entry align="center">8</entry><entry align="center">0,4</entry><entry align="center">0,2,3</entry></row><row><entry align="center">9</entry><entry align="center">1,2</entry><entry align="center">0,2,4</entry></row><row><entry align="center">10</entry><entry align="center">1,3</entry><entry align="center">0,3,4</entry></row><row><entry align="center">11</entry><entry align="center">1,4</entry><entry align="center">1,2,3</entry></row><row><entry align="center">12</entry><entry align="center">2,3</entry><entry align="center">1,2,4</entry></row><row><entry align="center">13</entry><entry align="center">2,4</entry><entry align="center">1,3,4</entry></row><row><entry align="center">14</entry><entry align="center">3,4</entry><entry align="center">2,3,4</entry></row><row><entry align="center">15</entry><entry align="center">0,1,2,3,4</entry><entry align="center">0,1,2,3,4</entry></row></tbody></tgroup></table></tables>

Inclusion of Component Carrier containing the UL-DCI

/

CQI request

0119in the examples on how to establish a correspondence between the logical value signaled in the CQI control information in Table 1 to Table 5, it has been assumed that the indication of the component carrier(s) on which the user equipment is to provide channel quality feedback is indicated by the bits of the dedicated control information interpreted as CQI control information. For the examples in Tables 2 to 4, the index #n of the component carrier on which the dedicated control information (UL-DCI) is received is considered in the determination of the combination of combination carrier(s) on which is to be reported in that it is the reference index for determining the component carrier(s) to report for the first, third and fourth combination.

0120In one further embodiment of the invention, the component carrier on which the dedicated control information (UL-DCI) including a request for channel quality feedback (CQI request flag is set) is always to be reported for. In one exemplary variant of this embodiment, the network configures whether to include the channel quality experienced by the user equipment on the component carrier on which a dedicated control information (UL-DCI) including a request for channel quality feedback (CQI request flag is set) is received, to the channel quality feedback in addition to that of another or other component carriers. For example, the eNodeB or relay node may use control signaling (such as RRC signaling) to configure the user equipment to include or not include by default a measure of the channel quality of the downlink component carrier on which the a dedicated control information (UL-DCI) including a request for channel quality feedback (CQI request flag is set) is received to the channel quality feedback. In such a way, there is one component carrier less for which CQI control information is required.

0121With such a strategy, the correspondence Tables 3 and 4 for scenarios where there are 2 bits available for the CQI control information can be considered as an alternative embodiment also making use of the component carrier on which the dedicated control information is received. If the component carrier on which a dedicated control information (UL-DCI) including a request for channel quality feedback (CQI request flag is set) is received, and is further configured to be always included as a requested component carrier, then component carrier #n can be identified with any of the other available component carriers. For scenarios, where there are more than 2 bits available for signaling the CQI control information, this exemplary implementation can be particularly advantageous. For example, employing this implementation in a scenario where 4 bits are available for the CQI control information (CQI-CI) and where there are 5 component carriers available, the default inclusion of the component carrier on which the UL-DCI triggering channel quality feedback is received to the channel quality feedback effectively reduces the number of component carriers that have to be addressed by the CQI control information from five to four. Hence, the 4 bits of CQI control information (CQI-CI) can now address the full range of combinations of four component carriers in the finest possible granularity. For example, in one implementation a CQI-CI value of 0 could indicate that channel quality feedback for only the component carrier conveying the corresponding UL-DCI is requested, while a CQI-CI value of 15 could indicate a CQI request for all available (i.e. five) component carriers.

0122In most of the embodiments discussed in further detail so far, the CQI request bit has been a trigger for determining how to interpret other control information field(s) contained in the dedicated control information. In an alternative embodiment of the invention, the CQI control information also includes the CQI request flag so that the CQI request flag essentially loses its original meaning of triggering a channel quality feedback report from the user equipment. For example in one exemplary implementation of this embodiment, the CQI request flag can be combined with the e.g. Hopping flag and the combination of the two flags is the CQI control information. Essentially, the combination of the CQI request flag and the Hopping flag would result into two bits that can be used to configure the channel quality feedback from the user equipment. An exemplary interpretation of the two flags could look like as in Table 6. <tables id="tabl0008" num="0008"><table frame="topbot"><title><b>Table 6</b></title><tgroup cols="3"><colspec colnum="1" colname="col1" colwidth="28mm" /><colspec colnum="2" colname="col2" colwidth="27mm" /><colspec colnum="3" colname="col3" colwidth="102mm" /><thead><row><entry namest="col1" nameend="col2" align="center" valign="top"><b>CQI control information (CQI-CI)</b></entry><entry morerows="1"><b>Interpretation</b></entry></row><row><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>CQI request bit</b></entry><entry align="center" valign="top"><b>Hopping Flag</b></entry></row></thead><tbody><row><entry align="center">0</entry><entry align="center">0</entry><entry>No CQI request</entry></row><row><entry align="center">0</entry><entry align="center">1</entry><entry>channel quality feedback request for all component carriers</entry></row><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">0</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for the component carrier carrying this UL-DCI</entry></row><row><entry align="center">1</entry><entry align="center">1</entry><entry>channel quality feedback for a single configured component carrier</entry></row></tbody></tgroup></table></tables>

0123When interpreting certain fields of the dedicated control information in a different fashion as defined original format, some functionality may be "lost". For example, when using the Hopping Flag for signaling the CQI control information, this effectively means that the dedicated control information cannot be longer used for activating/deactivating hopping in the uplink. Similar, considering the example, where the Hopping Configuration Bits are used for the CQI control information, hopping may be still activated/deactivated by means of the Hopping flag; however, there is no longer the possibility to configure the hopping configuration in the dedicated control information. A similar observation can also be made for using the Cyclic Shift DMRS field for signaling the CQI control information. In all these examples where certain information can no longer be signed in the dedicated control information, according to one further embodiment, the "lost" functionality may be maintained by using dynamic to higher layer/semi-static signaling.

0124For example, as already indicated previously, the hopping configuration could be for example signaled by RRC signaling. Similarly, a default cyclic shift to be applied to the uplink transmission could also be configured by RRC signaling or semi-static configuration, so that the user equipment would use this default cyclic shift for uplink transmission, if the Cyclic Shift DMRS field is reused for signaling the CQI control information.

0125Furthermore, in most of the examples above, the component carrier(s) on which the terminal is to provide channel quality feedback has been (at least to some extent) explicitly indicated by the CQI control information. In a further exemplary embodiment of the invention, the component carrier(s) on which the terminal is to provide channel quality feedback may also be signaled implicitly or by combining explicit and implicit signaling. For example, Tables 3 and 4 above show an example, where implicit (downlink component carrier used for the UL-DCI defines the index #n) and explicit (the two bits of the UL-DCI containing the CQI control information indicates one of the four options shown in the tables) signaling. Similarly, in the example where the component carrier on which the dedicated control information (UL-DCI) including a request for channel quality feedback (CQI request flag is set) is always to be reported on can be also considered using a combination of implicit and explicit signaling for indicating for which component carrier(s) the terminal is to provide channel quality feedback.

0126In general, it can be assumed that the UL-DCI, or the corresponding PDCCH, is transmitted to a receiver using one of multiple time/frequency resource combinations. For example, in LTE (Release 8), there is a choice by the eNodeB on what resources and with which parameters any dedicated control information (DCI) is transmitted. This encompasses such parameters as the modulation scheme, coding rate, aggregation level, and the mapping onto time/frequency resources corresponding to a common or user equipment-specific search space. Details of these characteristics can be found e.g. in <nplcit id="ncit0001" npl-type="b"><text>St. Sesia, I. Toufik, M. Backer, "LTE The UMTS Long Term Evolution", Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2009 (ISBN: 978-0-470-69716-0</text></nplcit>), sections 9.3.2.2, 9.3.2.3, 9.3.3.2, 9.3.4, incorporated herein by reference.

0127Consequently, it is further possible to link the requested component carrier CQI not only to the CQI-CL as mentioned above, but also to the format or location of the corresponding UL-DCI. For example, a UL-DCI which is transmitted with a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) offering a high spectral efficiency (e.g. above a certain threshold) is most applicable for cell-centre user equipments. Therefore, in one further embodiment of the invention a CQI trigger (in form of a CQI request flag being set) in UL-DCI employing a highly-efficient MCS (e.g. above a certain threshold value) for the transmission of UL-DCI transmission triggers a channel quality feedback for all available component carriers.

0128Conversely, a CQI trigger using a poorly-efficient modulation and coding scheme (e.g. below or equal to the certain threshold value) for the transmission of the UL-DCI triggers channel quality feedback from the terminal for a single component carrier. This single component carrier is for example the component carrier conveying that UL-DCI message or a pre-configured set of component carriers. Alternatively, the desired channel quality feedback content could also be signaled by means of the code rate or modulation scheme of the modulation and coding scheme instead of modulation and coding scheme.

0129Please note that in this exemplary embodiment, no further control information fields in the UL-DCI need to be interpreted in fashion different of their default meaning. It is however also possible to use this alternative implementation of indicating the desired content of the channel quality feedback by a certain modulation and coding scheme in combination with the other solutions that are discussed herein, so that more conditions can generate more flexibility. For example, a code rate criterion as mentioned above can be combined with the Hopping flag to form the CQI control information, resulting in a total of four combinations that can be used along the lines of the examples outlined above.

0130Furthermore, it is to be noted that not only the modulation and coding scheme or the code rate or modulation scheme thereof, but also transmission parameters like the PDCCH transmit power, mapping pattern to physical resource elements, transmission on certain resource blocks or transmission on certain component carriers, or combinations of these with the other methods applied to the UL-DCI message can be employed to deliver information to expand the flexibility of the requested channel quality feedback (i.e. the indication of different (combinations of) available component carriers for which channel quality feedback should be provided). Furthermore, different RNTIs for masking the CRC sequence (see e.g. Sesia et al., section 9.3.2.3 "CRC attachment") for a UL-DCI can be employed, such that e.g. the choice of a first RNTI indicates that channel quality feedback is triggered for one component carrier (e.g. the one on which the UL-DCI is received by the user equipment) and the choice on a second RNTI indiactes channel quality feedback is triggered for all component carriers.

0131The concepts outlined above are also applicable for random access of terminals the access network. <figref idref="f0014">Fig. 21</figref> is illustrating the contention-free random access procedure of LTE (see also 3GPP TS 36.213, version 8.7.0, section 6.2 incorporated herein by reference). The eNodeB provides 2101 the user equipment with the preamble to use for random access so that there is no risk of collisions, i.e. multiple user equipment transmitting the same preamble. Accordingly, the user equipment is sending 2102 the preamble which was signaled by eNodeB in the uplink on a PRACH resource. After eNodeB has detected a RACH preamble, it sends 2103 a Random Access Response (RAR) on the PDSCH (Physical Downlink Shared Channel) addressed on the PDCCH with the (Random Access) RA-RNTI identifying the time-frequency slot in which the preamble was detected (Please note that the Random Access Response is sometimes also referred to as the Random Access Response Grant). The Random Access Response itself conveys the detected RACH preamble, a timing alignment command (TA command) for synchronization of subsequent uplink transmissions, an initial uplink resource assignment (grant) for the transmission of the first scheduled transmission by the user equipment and an assignment of a Temporary Cell Radio Network Temporary Identifier (T-CRNTI). This T-CRNTI is used by eNodeB in order to address the mobile(s) whose RACH preamble were detected until RACH procedure is finished, since the "real" identity of the mobile is at this point not yet known by eNodeB.

0132Although the Random Access Response also contains initial uplink resource assignment for the first uplink transmission by a user equipment, same is not identical to the UL-DCI formats discussed previously herein, such as for example the formats shown in <figref idref="f0004">Fig. 4</figref> or <figref idref="f0011">Fig. 19</figref>. The initial uplink resource assignment however also contains <i>inter alia</i> a CQI request flag and the Hopping flag, as well as a 10-bit "Fixed size resource block assignment". Hence, also during random access the user equipment can be requested by the eNodeB or relay node to provide channel quality feedback within the allocated resources for the initial transmission (i.e. setting the CQI request flag in the Random Access Response). When reusing the random access procedure as outlined with respect to <figref idref="f0014">Fig. 21</figref> above in a communication system using component carrier aggregation, e.g. in LTE-A (Release 10), again the Hopping flag and/or (one or more bits of) the "Fixed size resource block assignment" could be used for indicating to the user equipment, on which of the available downlink component carriers the user equipment should provide channel quality feedback in the initial uplink transmission. For example, an implementation as discussed with respect to <figref idref="f0006">Fig. 8</figref> and <figref idref="f0007">Fig. 10</figref> can be directly applied to the interpretation of the contents of the Random Access Response message by the user equipment.

0133Another embodiment of the invention relates to the implementation of the above described various embodiments using hardware and software. It is recognized that the various embodiments of the invention may be implemented or performed using computing devices (processors). A computing device or processor may for example be general purpose processors, digital signal processors (DSP), application specific integrated circuits (ASIC), field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) or other programmable logic devices, etc. The various embodiments of the invention may also be performed or embodied by a combination of these devices.

0134Further, the various embodiments of the invention may also be implemented by means of software modules, which are executed by a processor or directly in hardware. Also a combination of software modules and a hardware implementation may be possible. The software modules may be stored on any kind of computer readable storage media, for example RAM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash memory, registers, hard disks, CD-ROM, DVD, etc.

0135It should be further noted that the individual features of the different embodiments of the invention may individually or in arbitrary combination be subject matter to another invention.

0136It would be appreciated by a person skilled in the art that numerous variations and/or modifications may be made to the present invention as shown in the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention as broadly described. The present embodiments are, therefore, to be considered in all respects to be illustrative and not restrictive.