Abstract: Forward Error Correction (FEC) is an essential component of most digital communication systems. The decoders for the FEC perform better when working in soft-decision mode using the Log Likelihood Ratios (LLRs) as the input. Spatial Multiplexing (SM) with Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) is used in many systems for providing high data rate. When SM-MIMO is used in conjunction with FEC, it is important for SM-MIMO decoders to provide soft channel bits to the FEC decoder. The complexity of the SM-MIMO decoders is generally very high, especially when LLRs need to be generated for each bit of the decoded symbol. Conventional methods for LLR generation in SM-MIMO decoders require the storage and sorting of partial and cumulative distance. A method and apparatus are disclosed that compute the LLRs on the fly without requiring extensive storage or sorting of partial and cumulative distance metrics.

Abstract: Sorting algorithms are generally used at different steps in data processing. In many situations, the efficiency of the sorting algorithm used determines the throughput/execution speed of the application. Methods for implementing high speed sorting in hardware are often based on Batcher's Odd/Even sort or Bitonic sort algorithms. These algorithms are computation intensive and involve high number of logic gates to implement and high power consumption. The higher the number of logic gates, the more silicon area may be required and may lead to higher cost. Insertion sort is a sorting algorithm that is relatively simpler and may require fewer logic gates to implement. However, throughput achieved using Insertion sort algorithm is much lower than the throughput achieved using high speed sorting algorithms. A method and apparatus enable an efficient hardware design capable of simultaneously sorting multiple data inputs for high throughput at reduced complexity.

Abstract: As the variety and number of wireless client devices have increased, often there may be multiple client devices in close proximity of each other. In addition to the connectivity to the wireless wide area network (WWAN), the client devices may have short range link to directly connect with each other. Two or more client devices in a given area may be camped on the same cell of the same WWAN, and the client devices may be decoding the same broadcast information. A method and apparatus are disclosed such that a client device may decode the broadcast information from the WWAN and relay the WWAN broadcast information to other client devices over the short range link. This may enable other client devices to avoid having to decode the broadcast information directly from the WWAN which may reduce their power consumption and at times it may help the client devices for faster WWAN connection setup.

Abstract: Turbo codes are used for high throughput and high performance communication systems. Turbo codes are a class of codes that can be decoded iteratively for high performance. The iterative decoding leads to increased processing requirements which in turn requires a higher clock speed. A turbo decoder that can support the worst case clock speed requirement may lead to high power consumption. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable high performance turbo decoding while keeping the required clock speed and the power consumption low.

Abstract: Modern mobile communication devices have a number of features that enable the users to stay connected with people in their contacts list. These mobile devices also keep the users informed about various events such as calls, text messages, emails, social media postings, etc. by providing various forms of notifications. The notifications may or may not be discreet. While the notifications of various events are useful, they may cause breach of privacy, may cause uncomfortable social situations, or may cause unsafe distraction under some conditions. These undesirable notifications in some scenarios may be controlled based on the awareness of the specific scenario in which the device user may be. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable a user to control the notifications from a mobile communication device when used inside an automobile.

Abstract: Modern mobile communication devices have a number of features that enable the users to stay connected with people in their contacts list. These mobile devices also keep the users informed about various events such as calls, text messages, emails, social media postings, etc. by providing various forms of notifications. The notifications may or may not be discreet. While the notifications of various events are useful, they may cause breach of privacy, may cause uncomfortable social situations, or may cause unsafe distraction under some conditions. These undesirable notifications in some scenarios may be controlled based on the awareness of the specific scenario in which the device user may be. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable a user to control the notifications from a mobile communication device when used inside an automobile.

Abstract: To handle different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, there may be a need for supporting multiple parallel data paths to exchange data between two or more peer entities of a data communication system. Each data path between the peer entities may be characterized by various QoS parameters such as priority, delay, jitter, data rate, etc. A communication system may allocate transmission resources for each data path based on the QoS parameters associated with them. Since the allocated transmission resources may not be always sufficient to send all the pending data from an application, the data packets may be segmented or packed depending on the available transmission resources. In such a case, doing segmentation may lead to inefficient usage of the transmission resources. A method and apparatus are disclosed that avoid such segmentation and allocates the transmission resources to the other active data paths which can better utilize the transmission resources.

Abstract: As the variety and number of wireless client devices have increased, often there may be multiple client devices in close proximity of each other. In addition to the connectivity to the wireless wide area network (WWAN), the client devices may have short range link to directly connect with each other. Two or more client devices in a given area may be camped on the same cell of the same WWAN, and the client devices may be decoding the same broadcast information. A method and apparatus are disclosed such that a client device may decode the broadcast information from the WWAN and relay the WWAN broadcast information to other client devices over the short range link. This may enable other client devices to avoid having to decode the broadcast information directly from the WWAN which may reduce their power consumption and at times it may help the client devices for faster WWAN connection setup.

Abstract: As the variety of client devices has increased and the demand for mobile broadband internet access has increased, a mobile Hotspot is commonly used. The mobile Hotspot device includes a modem for mobile broadband access and a Hotspot Access Point to distribute the internet to local devices. When accessing the internet through a mobile Hotspot, the client device may not have visibility on the status of the mobile network, the modem and the USIM/UICC. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable a client device to connect the mobile Hotpot as a virtual mobile broadband device over a local connection when a mobile Hotspot uses AT commands. This may be used to present more detailed information to the user about the status of mobile network connection, the modem, and the USIM/UICC. This enables the user to configure and control the modem functionality which may lead to improved user experience.

Abstract: In a wireless communication system, a client terminal may first establish time and frequency synchronization with the network. While establishing the time and frequency synchronization, a client terminal may need to detect additional parameters about the network, such as physical cell identity, before it can initiate communication with the wireless communication system. Detecting the network parameters in presence of time and frequency offsets increases the complexity of the initial cell search procedure that includes time and frequency synchronization as well as detection of network parameters. A method and apparatus are disclosed that achieve frequency synchronization earlier in the cell search procedure, which in turn reduces the complexity and improves the performance of the latter stages of cell search procedure and the overall performance of the client terminal.

Abstract: In any cellular communication the network transmits broadcast information with some periodicity which is defined by the network parameters. The client terminal must acquire this system information in order to access the services from the network. The time required by the client terminal to acquire all the necessary system information to initiate network access may depend on the scheduling of the system information broadcast by the network. In some cases the scheduling information about some of the system information may be described in another system information message whose schedule may be fixed or known a priori. Conventional method of decoding the complete system information may involve sequential steps which may increase the time required for accessing the services from the network. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable faster acquisition of the system information and reduce sequential dependency of system information message decoding.

Abstract: In some scenarios it may be useful for a client terminal to know the location of one or more base stations in a wireless communication network. While a network may know its location accurately, it may not provide that information to a client terminal. Furthermore, the location information for a base station may be required before a client terminal can communicate with a particular base station. Location determination is a commonly available and used capability in many client terminals in a wireless communication network for finding the client terminal's own location. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable a client terminal that is capable of determining its own location to be able to determine the location of any base station in a wireless communication network. A client terminal may use the base station location information for improved performance, improved user experience, and reduced power consumption.

Abstract: In a wireless communication system, a client terminal may be required to periodically receive the broadcast and multicast system information of the serving and neighbor base stations. In most scenarios the broadcast and multicast system information of base stations may not change frequently. A method and apparatus are disclosed to store, manage and use the broadcast and multicast system information of a set of latest serving and neighbor base stations. This may enable a client terminal to avoid receiving and processing all or most of the base station system information messages. This may significantly reduce the active states of a client terminal and may lead to significant reduction in power consumption, which may be a critical advantage for battery operated client terminals. The present invention may also reduce the time taken by a client terminal to get connected or reconnected to a base station, which may improve the user experience.

Abstract: In wireless communications systems, a client terminal performs cell search procedure to find a suitable cell and camp on it to receive service from the network. In 3GPP LTE wireless communication system, the initial cell search involves the decoding of the Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH) which may take a long time to decode which affects the time it takes to camp on an appropriate cell. One of the reasons for this is that conventional methods perform PBCH decoding sequentially to find a suitable cell. A method and apparatus are disclosed that perform the PBCH decoding in parallel for multiple cells. This method enables the client terminal to camp on a cell and receive service faster than conventional methods.

Abstract: In a wireless communication system, a client terminal may first establish time and frequency synchronization with the network. While establishing the time and frequency synchronization, a client terminal may need to detect additional parameters about the network, such as physical cell identity, before it can initiate communication with the wireless communication system. Detecting the network parameters in presence of time and frequency offsets increases the complexity of the initial cell search procedure that includes time and frequency synchronization as well as detection of network parameters. A method and apparatus are disclosed that achieve joint time and frequency synchronization by utilizing the relationship between frequency offset and the apparent timing shift. The joint time and frequency synchronization enables faster and more reliable synchronization with the wireless communication system.

Abstract: In a wireless communication system, by making measurements on the signal conditions of the serving cell and neighbor cells, a client terminal may make cell reselection according to the criteria specified in the system information of the serving cell. Upon reselection to a target cell, if the client terminal needs to establish connection with the network, then it may have to first receive the broadcast system information in its new serving cell. A method and apparatus are disclosed that reduce connection establishment delay, after a client terminal performs cell reselection, by acquiring the broadcast system information of the target cell before the cell reselection.

Abstract: The procedure of finding the remainder of a division is referred to as modulo operation. Modulo arithmetic is used in many applications. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable faster and less complex implementation of modulo arithmetic for a certain class of numbers.

Abstract: In a mobile wireless communication system a client terminal needs to continuously maintain its receive and transmit operations in time alignment with the serving base station timing. A client terminal may initially achieve the timing alignment with the serving base station through the cell search procedure. Subsequently, as a client terminal may move toward or away from a serving base station, it may need to continuously track its timing to remain time aligned with the serving base station. In Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems, one of the commonly used methods for time tracking may be the Cyclic Prefix (CP) correlation. When the length of the CP is small, the reliability of the CP correlation may be low, especially when the signal quality is poor. A method and apparatus are disclosed that use the initial synchronization signals for time tracking for improved performance and reduced complexity.

Abstract: Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) protocol is used in many modern telecommunication systems for improved link level reliability. Hybrid ARQ (HARQ) protocol takes advantage of the retransmissions in ARQ to enable the receiver to decode the currently received data by combining it with all the previously received transmissions that were not successfully decoded. Each successive retransmission improves the probability of correctly decoding the data. To support HARQ, the receiver is required to store the previously received unsuccessful transmissions for combining with future retransmissions. The storage of the previously received unsuccessful transmissions can be very large depending on type of the HARQ protocol used. A method and apparatus are disclosed that enable reduced memory storage requirements while maintaining the HARQ performance requirements. The reduced memory requirements result in reduced cost, reduced power consumption and lowered cost.

Abstract: In data communication systems, data packet processing for transmission and reception may go through different stages such as segmentation or packing of the data packets on the transmission side and duplicate detection, reordering, and reassembly on the reception side. For reliable data transmission between the peers, acknowledgement based retransmission protocol known as Automatic Repeat Request may be used where each retransmission can further segment the previously transmitted data packets. This type of data processing may lead to high memory requirements and high processing requirements. A method and apparatus are disclosed that maintain additional information about the data packets which enables virtual segmentation and packing on the transmitter side and on the receiver side, virtual duplicate detection, reordering and reassembly.