US 12,289,639 B2
Mutual anchoring and traffic distribution in a converged RAN integrating NR and Wi-Fi access
Binita Gupta, Cupertino, CA (US); Qian Li, Cupertino, CA (US); Jing Zhu, Cupertino, CA (US); Sangeetha L Bangolae, Cupertino, CA (US); Youn Hyoung Heo, Cupertino, CA (US); Puneet Jain, Cupertino, CA (US); Necati Canpolat, Cupertino, CA (US); Carlos Cordeiro, Cupertino, CA (US); and Alexander Sirotkin, Cupertino, CA (US)
Assigned to Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US)
Appl. No. 17/596,618
Filed by Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US)
PCT Filed Jun. 12, 2020, PCT No. PCT/US2020/037582
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Dec. 14, 2021,
PCT Pub. No. WO2020/252377, PCT Pub. Date Dec. 17, 2020.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/861,687, filed on Jun. 14, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2022/0345938 A1, Oct. 27, 2022
Int. Cl. H04W 28/06 (2009.01); H04W 28/086 (2023.01); H04W 84/12 (2009.01)
CPC H04W 28/065 (2013.01) [H04W 28/0865 (2023.05); H04W 84/12 (2013.01)] 17 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method, comprising:
at a next generation NodeB (gNB) implementing a radio access network (RAN) convergence functionality for new radio (NR) and wireless local area network (WLAN) access, the gNB further implementing a split architecture comprising a central unit (CU) and a distributed unit (DU) for each of the NR access and WLAN access:
receiving a data packet for transmission to a user equipment (UE) implementing the RAN convergence functionality, wherein the data packet is a control plane (CP) packet, a convergence layer is an NR Convergence-C layer
and the NR Convergence-C layer resides below a radio resource control (RRC) layer and above a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) layer on the NR CU, the receiving comprising:
generating, by the NR Convergence-C layer, a Convergence-C protocol data unit (PDU) for transmission to the NR PDCP and to the WLAN CU;
adding, by the NR Convergence-C layer, an NR Convergence-C header to the CP packet, the NR Convergence-C header including a SeqNum field and a signaling radio bearer (SRB) ID field;
splitting the data packet via a convergence layer residing on the NR CU; and
transmitting the split data packet over the NR access and the WLAN access.