Abstract: A link-budget-limited wireless communication device (UE) may implement improved radio link monitoring procedures for enhancing the link-budget of the UE. The UE may monitor the radio link and may determine whether the radio link can support a lowest acceptable link quality according to a hysteresis-based comparison that uses threshold values to determine error rates associated with a physical control channel. The UE may also identify itself to the network as a link-budget-limited device, and the network may enable special link-budget enhancing features for the UE, including boosting the power of the resource elements (REs) carrying physical channel signaling/data to the UE. The UE may detect the presence of power boost and may estimate/determine the power boost level.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to providing system information for cell access to link budget limited devices. According to some embodiments, a base station may transmit an announcement information block (AIB) in a downlink shared data channel (e.g., PDSCH), wherein the AIB contains information useable by a UE in determining the location of system information in the downlink shared data channel. The UE can thus determine the location of and decode system information without having to decode a downlink control channel (e.g., PDCCH). This may be important for certain classes of devices, such as link budget limited devices, which have issues in decoding the downlink control channel. Improved paging scheduling techniques are also disclosed which more efficiently use PDCCH paging resources.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to providing negative stopping criteria for turbo decoding for a wireless device. A device may wirelessly receive turbo coded data. Turbo decoding may be performed on the turbo coded data. Performing turbo decoding may use one or more negative stopping criteria for early termination of the turbo decoding for each code block of the turbo coded data. The negative stopping criteria may be selected to terminate the turbo decoding of a code block early under poor wireless medium conditions. Turbo decoding of a code block may be terminated early if the one or more negative stopping criteria for the code block are met.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to accommodating link budget constrained wireless devices performing random access procedures. A base station may detect a preamble message from a wireless device. It may be determined that the preamble message is received from a link budget constrained wireless device. Characteristics of a response message may be selected based at least in part on determining that the preamble message is received from a link budget constrained wireless device. The response message may be transmitted to the link budget constrained wireless device using the selected characteristics.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to techniques for a link budget limited UE to improve communications performance with a cellular network. The UE may perform signal to interference noise ratio (SINR) measurements and use these measurements to adjust a received signal power value that is provided to the cellular network as a received signal power measurement. The UE may generate the received signal power value based at least in part on the SINR measurement in order to reduce the likelihood of handover when the UE has good SINR but poor received signal power. The UE may also provide preferred configuration information to the base station which enhances the performance of the UE when link budget limited. The configuration information may specify one or more parameter values designed to provide improved performance for a link budget limited device.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to techniques for transmitting and receiving control information in the common search space on an enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH). According to some embodiments, a cellular base station may allocate some resource blocks of a subframe as the EPDCCH. The cellular base station may provide control information on a common search space in the EPDCCH for wireless user equipment (UE) devices in the cell provided by the cellular base station during a subframe. A UE device may monitor the EPDCCH to determine whether any indication on the common search space decodable by the UE device is contained in the EPDCCH, and may decode such information if present.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to providing system information for cell access to link budget limited devices. According to some embodiments, a base station may transmit a master information block (MIB), a first system information block (SIB), and second SIBs. The first SIB and the second SIBs may be configured for different device categories, and may accordingly have different characteristics. For example, the first SIB may be configured for link budget limited devices, and may include information specific to such devices and/or may exclude information not relevant to such devices or not critical to accessing the cell. In some instances, the first SIB may also include information from the MIB, such that at least some devices may be able to decode the first SIB and gain cell access without decoding the MIB.

Abstract: Techniques are disclosed relating to broadcasting and receiving system information in a radio access network (RAN). In one embodiment, a base station includes at least one antenna, at least one radio, configured to perform cellular communication using a radio access technology (RAT), and one or more processors coupled to the radio. In this embodiment, the base station is configured to broadcast first system information blocks (SIBs) encoded using a first coding rate and a first identifier. In this embodiment, the base station is also configured to broadcast second SIBs encoded using a second coding rate that is lower than the first coding rate and a second identifier. In this embodiment, the second SIBs include only a portion of the information included in the first SIBs and the second SIBs are usable by user equipment devices (UEs) having a limited link budget to determine access parameters for the base station.

Abstract: In some embodiments, a user equipment device (UE) may be configured to transmit an indication to a base station that the UE is link budget limited and receive control information encoded in a downlink control information (DCI) format. The DCI format may be determined based on the indication. The UE may decode the control information according to the DCI format. The DCI format may specify the number of bits for various parameters and may combine these parameters. Parameters may include format flag, hopping flag, modulation and coding scheme (MCS), redundancy version (RV), uplink index, downlink assignment index (DAI), carrier indicator, channel state information (CSI) request, sounding reference symbol (SRS) request, resource allocation type, localized/distributed indication, code-word swap, and so forth. Additionally, the DCI format may specify a bit length when using a particular number of resource blocks.