CN105635932A - Method and device used for transmission of bandwidth limited device - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method and a device for the transmission of a bandwidth-limited device in a wireless communication network, the method comprising receiving control information from a base station in said wireless communication network, said control information indicating a device for said bandwidth-limited At least two resource regions of the transmission of the device, wherein the at least two resource regions are in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth of the base station; determining that in the indicated at least two resource regions resources for the transmission; and performing the transmission using the determined resources, wherein the transmission uses resources in one of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe. The invention also proposes a method and corresponding equipment at the base station side.

Description

Method and apparatus for transmission of bandwidth constrained devices

technical field

The present invention relates to the transmission of bandwidth-limited devices in a wireless communication network, in particular to a method and device for realizing the transmission of bandwidth-limited devices.

Background technique

A machine type communication (MTC) device is a user terminal (UE) used by a machine for a specific purpose. In the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), in the process of developing Long Term Evolution (LTE) Release 12 (LTERel-12), the Working Group (WI) on Low Complexity MTC (LC-MTC) has concluded, according to its As a result, the complexity (cost) of MTCUE will drop by nearly 50%. In Release 13 of LTE, another working group has been agreed to be established to further reduce the complexity/cost of MTC, enhance the coverage of MTC, and improve the power consumption of MTC UEs. One technique to reduce complexity is to shrink the radio frequency (RF) bandwidth of the LC-MTC UE to 1.4 MHz (operating with 6 physical resource blocks (PRBs)). In the recent 3GPPRAN1 meeting (3GPPRAN1#78bis), bandwidth reduction was given the highest priority among all complexity reduction techniques. Therefore, in this paper, the LC-MTC UE operating at 1.4 MHz will be discussed as an example of a bandwidth-limited UE. However, it should be noted that the methods and devices disclosed in this specification are also applicable to other bandwidth-limited UEs. limited equipment.

It is desirable for a bandwidth-limited UE to be able to operate in any bandwidth communication system and coexist with normal UEs in the system. It is also expected that such bandwidth-limited UEs can adjust their operating frequency so that they can operate on any narrower sub-band in the larger system bandwidth to allow multiplexing between bandwidth-limited UEs and with normal UEs .

In the current LTE system, after receiving downlink data from the base station, the UE needs to feed back an acknowledgment (ACK) or a negative acknowledgment (NACK), and the feedback is transmitted in a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH). According to the current LTE standard, resources for PUCCH are located at both ends of the system bandwidth, as shown in FIG. 1 . In order to obtain frequency diversity gain, in a single PUCCH transmission, frequency hopping is performed in units of time slots, where a PUCCH transmission in a subframe is divided into two time slots, and each time slot occupies resources at different ends of the system bandwidth ,As shown in Figure 1. The resource used for PUCCH is implicitly indicated by the resource index of the control channel (for example, Physical Downlink Control Channel PDCCH or Enhanced Physical Downlink Control Channel EPDCCH) used to transmit downlink data scheduling information (possibly using some kind of offset). For bandwidth-constrained devices such as LC-MTC UEs, this current frequency hopping operation is very challenging. Because the frequency hopping performed between the two ends of the system bandwidth will cause the UE to change the transmission subband, thus requiring the UE to perform frequency readjustment, and the normal transmission will not be possible during the frequency readjustment. If the base station still receives according to normal transmission, it will lead to the decline of receiving and demodulation performance. Another straightforward solution is to limit the frequency hopping to the narrower operating bandwidth of the bandwidth-constrained device, as shown in Figure 2, but the result is that it is difficult to obtain any meaningful diversity gain. Not only that, but this scheme also brings other problems, for example, it occupies the transmission resources for the Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH), and the PUSCH transmission is usually only applicable to PRB blocks that are continuous in frequency; in addition, when allocated to When the subbands of two UEs overlap, as shown in Figure 2, allocating edge PRBs to PUCCH in one of the subbands will cause the remaining resources in the other subband to no longer be continuous, reducing the available PUSCH continuity. resource. Besides, another problem to be solved is how to inform the bandwidth-limited device of its available resources and the resources used for each PUCCH transmission.

Therefore, how to enable devices with limited bandwidth to benefit from diversity gain while avoiding the above-mentioned problems is a technical problem that needs to be solved. To address at least some of the above problems, the present disclosure provides methods and devices for transmission of bandwidth-constrained devices.

Contents of the invention

It is an object of embodiments of the present invention to facilitate the transmission of bandwidth-constrained devices so that the transmission can benefit from frequency diversity while avoiding or at least reducing the aforementioned problems.

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for transmission of a bandwidth-limited device in a wireless communication network, the method comprising receiving control information from a base station in the wireless communication network, the control information indicating a at least two resource regions for the transmission of the bandwidth-limited device, wherein the at least two resource regions are in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth of the base station; resources for the transmission in at least two resource regions; and performing the transmission using the determined resources, wherein the transmission uses resources in one of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe .

According to an embodiment of the present invention, determining the resources used for the transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions includes: determining the resources used for performing the transmission in the subframe based on the index of the subframe or determine the resource used for the transmission implicitly according to the index of the resource used by the control channel from the base station, or determine the subband configured for the control channel according to the index used for the The subband of the control channel and the mapping relationship between the at least two resource regions determine the resource region used for the transmission in the at least two resource regions, and further according to the control channel from the base station used The index of the resource implicitly determines the resource used for the transmission in the determined resource region, or, based on the set of control channels used by the control signaling from the base station, determines the resource in the indicated at least two The resource regions used for the transmission in the resource regions. According to another embodiment of the present invention, the index of the subframe is the absolute number of the subframe or the relative number of the subframe relative to a given subframe. In one embodiment of the present invention, the given subframe is the subframe in which the bandwidth-limited device performs the transmission for the first time. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the control channel from the base station is a physical downlink control channel or an enhanced physical downlink control channel.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, wherein the transmission is completed in more than one subframe, and wherein determining the resources used for the transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions comprises: based on the more than The resource used for the transmission is determined by the number of a subframe. According to yet another embodiment of the present invention, wherein the transmission is completed in more than one subframe includes performing repeated transmission in the more than one subframe, and determining the number of subframes used for The resource for the transmission includes determining the resource for the transmission based on a number of repetitions.

According to a further embodiment of the present invention, wherein the transmission is completed in more than one subframe, and the method further includes dividing the more than two subframes into at least two subframe sets in time sequence, and in different The transmission is performed using resources in different resource regions in the at least two resource regions in the set of subframes. In another embodiment of the present invention, the method further comprises determining a transmission gap for performing frequency switching between different said subframe sets; and not performing said transmission during said determined transmission gap. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the transmission gap includes a symbol length, half a subframe length, or a subframe length.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the resources available for the transmission in the at least two resource regions are consecutively indexed. According to another embodiment of the present invention, wherein the resources available for the transmission in each of the at least two resource regions are indexed separately.

According to a further embodiment of the present invention, wherein the transmission is a transmission of a Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) in a Long Term Evolution LTE system, and/or the bandwidth-limited device is a Machine Type Communication (MTC) device.

According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided a method for facilitating the transmission of a bandwidth limited device in a wireless communication network, which method may be performed eg at a base station. The method includes sending control information from a base station in the wireless communication network to the bandwidth-constrained device, the control information indicating at least two resource regions for the transmission of the bandwidth-constrained device, wherein the at least two resource regions in at least two different subbands of the base station's system bandwidth; determining resources in the indicated at least two resource regions for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-limited device and receiving the transmission from the bandwidth-constrained device on the determined resource, wherein the transmission uses resources in one of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a device for use in a wireless communication network with limited bandwidth, the device being capable of performing any method according to the first aspect of the present invention.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention there is provided an apparatus for facilitating the transmission of a bandwidth limited device in a wireless communication network, the apparatus may be a base station or a part of a base station. The device is capable of performing any of the methods according to the second aspect of the invention.

Description of drawings

Some embodiments of methods and/or apparatus according to embodiments of the invention are now described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

- FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of resource allocation for PUCCH in the prior art;

- Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of a possible frequency hopping scheme for bandwidth-constrained devices, which leads to several problems;

Figure 3 is a schematic diagram of a method system in which embodiments of the present invention may be applied;

- Figure 4a is a flowchart of an example method at the UE side according to an embodiment of the present invention;

- Figure 4b is a flowchart of another example method at the UE side according to an embodiment of the present invention;

- Figure 4c is a schematic diagram of resources used for PUCCH transmission according to an embodiment of the present invention;

- Figure 4d is another schematic diagram of resources used for PUCCH transmission according to an embodiment of the present invention;

- FIG. 4e is another schematic diagram of resources used for PUCCH transmission according to an embodiment of the present invention;

- Figure 5a is a flowchart of an example method at the base station side according to an embodiment of the present invention;

- Figure 5b is a flowchart of another exemplary method at the base station side according to an embodiment of the present invention;

- FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of the structure of a bandwidth-limited device according to an embodiment of the present invention; and

- Fig. 7 is a schematic diagram of a base station according to an embodiment of the invention.

detailed description

Some preferred embodiments will now be described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. However, the present disclosure can be implemented in various ways, and therefore should not be construed as being limited to the embodiments disclosed herein. Rather, these examples are provided merely to facilitate an understanding of the principles of the disclosure.

In the following description, numerous specific details of embodiments of the invention are set forth. However, it is understood that embodiments of the invention may be practiced without these specific details. In some instances, well-known circuits, structures and techniques have not been shown in detail in order not to obscure the understanding of this description.

References in this specification to "one embodiment," "an embodiment," "exemplary embodiment," etc., are intended to illustrate that the described embodiments may include a particular feature, structure, or characteristic, but that not every embodiment necessarily includes The specific feature, structure, or characteristic; and such phrases are not necessarily referring to the same embodiment. In addition, when a specific feature, structure or characteristic is described in conjunction with an embodiment, no matter whether it is explicitly described or not, it is believed that those skilled in the art can think of other embodiments to reflect such feature, structure or characteristic. It should be understood that the singular forms "a" and "an" also include plural referents unless the context clearly dictates otherwise.

It should also be noted that the word "comprising" does not necessarily exclude the presence of other elements or steps than those listed. It should also be noted that any reference signs do not limit the scope of the claims.

Although for ease of explanation, the transmission problem of bandwidth-limited devices is proposed in this paper in the context of LC-MTC devices in 3GPP LTE systems, as those skilled in the art can understand, the embodiments of the present invention are also applicable to solving other bandwidth-limited devices. The transmission problem of the limited equipment can be improved, and the diversity gain can be increased without significantly increasing the complexity of the equipment.

Referring now to FIG. 3, an exemplary wireless communication system to which the method and apparatus according to the embodiments of the present invention can be applied is briefly introduced. In the example of FIG. 3, the wireless communication network 300 is shown as a cellular structure for illustrative purposes only; however, those skilled in the art will understand that embodiments of the present invention are equally applicable to other network structures, such as, Networking (adhoc), as long as there are similar problems in it, such as the problem of transmit diversity gain for bandwidth-constrained devices. The wireless communication network includes one or more base stations 301 . As an example, the base station is shown as an enhanced Node B (eNB or eNodeB) in LTE. It can be understood that the base station may also take the form of base station subsystems (BSSs), relay nodes, remote radio heads (RRH) and the like. A base station 301 provides wireless connectivity to a plurality of user equipments (UEs) 302 within its coverage area (eg cell C1). The term "user equipment" is also known as a wireless communication terminal, mobile terminal, mobile station, machine type communication (MTC) device, etc., and includes mobile phones, smart meters, sensors, computers with wireless communication capabilities, etc. The UE may be a bandwidth limited device as discussed in this disclosure. The UE receives data (for example, through the physical downlink shared channel PDSCH) or control signaling (for example, through the physical downlink control channel PDCCH or enhanced PDCCH, that is, EPDCCH reception) from the base station through the downlink (DL), and can pass Uplink, such as PUCCH, feeds back to the base station. The feedback information may include ACK/NACK for hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ), channel state information (CSI) and the like. And the uplink data of the UE can be sent to the base station through, for example, a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH).

As mentioned above, for bandwidth-limited UEs, methods for obtaining diversity gain (for example, obtaining diversity gain in PUCCH transmission) in the prior art will face many problems. The method and device according to the embodiments of the present invention can at least partly solve the above problems, and provide diversity gain for devices with limited bandwidth. The method and device examples according to the embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

In the following description, some functions or structures well known to those skilled in the art will be omitted so as not to obscure the present invention in unnecessary detail.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate that although aspects of the invention will be described below with reference to specific non-limiting examples, the invention is not limited thereto and has wider applicability. Furthermore, it should be noted that the following description of the invention and its embodiments mainly refer to specific technical specifications as non-limiting examples. In particular, the invention and its embodiments mainly describe the 3GPP technical specifications as non-limiting examples. In particular, an LTE/LTE-A communication system is taken herein as an example of a non-limiting communication system to which the exemplary embodiments described herein are applied. Therefore, the description of the exemplary embodiments given herein mainly refers to terminology in LTE/LTE-A. These terms are used only in the context of the non-limiting examples presented herein and thus do not limit the invention thereto. Rather, any other network configuration and system deployment can be used as long as it is compatible with the features mentioned herein.

Hereinafter, various embodiments and implementation aspects of the invention will be described in several alternative ways. It is to be understood that all these alternatives may be provided individually or in any possible combination, depending on certain needs and constraints.

Reference is now made to Figure 4a, which is a flowchart of an example method at a bandwidth-constrained device end, according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in Figure 4a, the method includes step S401, for receiving control information from a base station in the wireless communication network, the control information indicating at least two resource regions for the transmission of the bandwidth-limited device , wherein the at least two resource regions are in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth of the base station; step S402, used to determine the transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions resources; and step S403, for performing the transmission using the determined resources, wherein the transmission uses resources in one resource region of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, in step S401, the control information may be received through radio resource control (RRC) signaling. The control information may directly and explicitly indicate the at least two resource areas, or indicate one of the resource areas, and obtain other resource areas through configuration or a predetermined offset.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the system bandwidth of the base station is pre-divided into several subbands, for example, each subband is not larger than the operating bandwidth of the bandwidth-limited device. These subbands may not overlap each other or partially overlap. In an embodiment of the present invention, the at least two resource regions indicated by the control information are respectively located in different subbands. According to another embodiment of the present invention, a part of the at least two resource regions is located in one sub-band, and another part of the areas is located in another sub-band. There is a certain interval between the two subbands in frequency.

According to one embodiment of the present invention, each of the at least two resource regions indicated by the control information is smaller than the size of the subband defined by the system; and in another embodiment of the present invention, each resource region may Equal to or greater than the system-defined subband size.

According to one embodiment of the present invention, the transmission to be performed using the at least two resource regions is a PUCCH transmission.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, in step S402, determining the resources used for transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions includes determining the resource used for performing the transmission in the subframe based on the index of the subframe the resource. For example, the bandwidth-limited device can determine the PUCCH subframe used for feedback according to the predetermined time relationship between downlink data transmission and PUCCH feedback and the subframe receiving the downlink data, and then based on the index of the PUCCH subframe to implicitly obtain the resource region used for the PUCCH transmission. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the index of the PUCCH subframe may be an absolute index of the subframe, such as a subframe number (SFN) in LTE. According to another embodiment of the present invention, the index of the PUCCH subframe may be the index of the subframe relative to a given subframe, for example, the relative offset value of the subframe relative to the subframe in which the device transmits the PUCCH for the first time .

According to another embodiment of the present invention, in step S402, determining the resources used for transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions includes according to the control channel from the base station (for example, the physical downlink control channel PDCCH or The index of the resource used by the Enhanced Physical Downlink Control Channel (EPDCCH) implicitly determines the resource used for the transmission. For example, a schematic diagram of resources used for PUCCH transmission according to an embodiment of the present invention is shown in FIG. 4c. In this example, it is assumed that the control information received in step S401 indicates two PUCCH resource regions in Fig. 4c. Note that the two resource regions do not have to be at the edge of the same bandwidth to obtain frequency diversity gain, as long as the distance between the two regions is large enough. As shown in the figure, when the PUCCH is transmitted in a subframe, frequency hopping does not occur at the boundary of two time slots, which is different from the current operation in LTE. And for simplicity, the PUCCH transmission occupies the same PRB in the subframe. In this example, it is assumed that each PUCCH resource region includes two PRBs, so that the resources used for PUCCH have a total of 4 PRBs. According to the current system configuration, each PUCCH PRB can support the transmission of 12 PUCCHs, where the 12 PUCCHs are multiplexed in a code division multiple access manner. Therefore, the 4 PRBs will provide 48 PUCCH resources. It is assumed that PUCCH resources in two PUCCH resource regions are consecutively indexed together as follows:

PUCCHPRB#1={1,5,9,13,17,21,25,29,33,37,41,45}

PUCCHPRB#2={2,6,10,14,18,22,26,30,34,38,42,46}

PUCCHPRB#3={3,7,11,15,19,23,27,31,35,39,43,47}

PUCCHPRB#4={4,8,12,16,20,24,28,32,36,40,44,48}

That is, the first PUCCH PRB includes PUCCH resources with indices {1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29, 33, 37, 41, 45}. It is assumed that according to a given mapping relationship, the resource index used by the EPDCCH used to send the downlink scheduling message to the device in the downlink (for example, the index of the first control resource element CCE used by the EPDCCH) implicitly Pointing to PUCCH index 7, it can be determined according to the above index that the PUCCH is located in the third PRB and belongs to the second PUCCH resource region. Thereby, the device is able to determine resources for PUCCH transmission.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the resources available for EPDCCH include more than 1 subband, and in step S402, determining the resources used for transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions includes determining the resources configured for EPDCCH The subband used for EPDCCH (that is, the subband used to transmit EPDCCH) and the mapping relationship between the at least two PUCCH resource regions determine the PUCCH transmission in the at least two PUCCH resource regions a resource region; and further implicitly determine the resource used for the PUCCH transmission in the determined resource region according to the index of the resource used by the EPDCCH from the base station. For example, it is still assumed that the control information received in step S401 indicates two PUCCH resource regions in Fig. 4c. In this example, further assume that two EPDCCH subbands, EPDCCH subband 1 and EPDCCH subband 2, are defined for the device. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the base station may use EPDCCH subband 1 in every odd subframe, and use EPDCCH subband 2 in even subframes for transmission to obtain hierarchical gain. In this example, it is assumed that PUCCH resources in two PUCCH resource regions are respectively indexed as follows:

PUCCH resource area 1:

PUCCHPRB#1={1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23}

PUCCHPRB#2={2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24}

PUCCH resource area 2:

PUCCHPRB#3={1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23}

PUCCHPRB#4={2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24}

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the PUCCH resource area to be used for PUCCH transmission depends on the subband of the EPDCCH used by the base station to send downlink scheduling information. In this example, it is assumed that there is a 1-to-1 mapping relationship between the subband used for EPDCCH (that is, the subband used to transmit EPDCCH) and two PUCCH resource regions, for example, if EPDCCH subband 1 is used, Then the corresponding PUCCH will use PUCCH resource region 1 for transmission; and if EPDCCH subband 2 is used, the corresponding PUCCH will use PUCCH resource region 2 for transmission. Assuming that the base station sends a PDSCH scheduling grant using EPDCCH subband 1, and the EPDCCH resource implicitly points to PUCCH index 9, the device can determine that the resource used for PUCCH transmission is PUCCH resource 9 in PUCCH resource region 1.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the device is configured with multiple control channel sets, such as multiple EPDCCH sets, and will detect downlink scheduling grants in the search spaces of the multiple EPDCCHs. In this embodiment, in step S402, determining the resources used for transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions includes, based on the control channel (such as EPDCCH) used by the control channel (such as EPDCCH) carrying scheduling information from the base station A channel set (for example, an EPDCCH set) is used to determine the resource region used for the transmission among the at least two indicated resource regions. In one embodiment, there is a mapping relationship similar to that in the previous embodiment between the EPDDCH set and multiple PUCCH resource regions, so that the device can determine resources used for transmission in at least two resource regions according to a similar method.

If the uplink control information (UCI) carried by the PUCCH is transmitted in a single subframe, the effect of diversity gain is reflected in that better average performance can be obtained for the transmission of multiple UCI messages. Since some UCIs are transmitted in one subband and others in other subbands, if multiple UCIs are associated with a single downlink data packet (e.g. each UCI message includes HARQ feedback for different retransmissions of the same data packet ), then the feedback for the group as a whole can obtain diversity gain. In another example, if the UCI message includes channel state information (CSI) feedback, then taking the CSI feedback as a whole, diversity gain can be obtained.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the transmission in step S403 is completed in more than one (for example, N>1) subframes, and wherein the at least two resource regions indicated by the control information in step S401 are determined to be used for transmission Resources include determining said resources for said transmission based on the number of more than one subframes (eg, the value of N). As an example, the transmission may be a PUCCH transmission carrying channel state information (CSI). It is assumed that the CSI information is transmitted within N>1 subframes. Then as an example, the PUCCH resources in the i-th PUCCH resource region can be used for transmission in the first N/2 subframes, and the j-th resource in the at least two resource regions can be used in the next N/2 subframes The resources of the region are transferred, where j is different from i. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the different resource regions i and j are located in different subbands with a certain frequency interval in the system bandwidth, so that a diversity gain can be obtained in the transmission of the CSI information through this transmission mode.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the transmission in step S403 is completed in more than one (for example, N>1) subframes, and repeated transmission is performed in the multiple subframes. In this case, according to an embodiment of the present invention Resources for the transmission may be determined based on the number of repetitions. An example is given below with reference to Figures 4c-4d. Assume that the PUCCH resource regions indicated by the control information received in S401 are as shown in Figure 4c, and the PUCCH resources in each PUCCH resource region are indexed as follows:

PUCCH resource area 1:

PUCCHPRB#1={1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23}

PUCCHPRB#2={2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24}

PUCCH resource area 2:

PUCCHPRB#3={1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23}

PUCCHPRB#4={2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24}

In this example, it is assumed that the bandwidth-limited device is an MTC device (CE-MTC) requiring coverage enhancement, and its PUCCH needs to be repeatedly transmitted N=8 times. According to the embodiment of the present invention, 8 transmissions may be divided by the number of indicated PUCCH resource regions (the number of resource regions is 2 in this example), to obtain the number of repeated transmissions performed in each resource region. Therefore, it can be obtained that 8/2=4 repetitions are performed in each resource region. Assuming that the used EPDCCH implicitly indicates PUCCH resource 9 in PUCCH resource region 1, the 1st to 4th repetitions can be performed by PUCCH resource 9 in PRB#1 in PUCCH resource region 1, and in PUCCH resource region 2 The PUCCH resource 9 in PRB#3 in , performs the 5th-8th repetition to obtain diversity gain. This repeated transmission is schematically shown in Fig. 4d. It can be seen that, in the embodiment of the present invention, the resource used for PUCCH transmission may be a function of the number of repetitions.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the transmission in step S403 is completed in more than one, for example, N>1 subframes, and the method 400 further includes step S411, which is used to divide the N subframes into at least two subframes in time sequence A frame set, and in step S403, in different subframe sets, resources in different resource areas of the at least two resource areas are used for transmission, as shown in FIG. 4b. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the division can be performed according to a predetermined rule, or according to configuration signaling from the base station. For example, N=16 subframes can be divided into 4 sets in time order, so that the first set includes subframes 1-4, and the second, third, and fourth sets include subframes 5-8, 9-12, 13- 16. Subframes in different subframe sets do not overlap in time, so that transmission is performed in the same resource area within the duration of one subframe set without frequency readjustment, which avoids frequent frequency readjustment The operation reduces the switching delay caused by it. This embodiment minimizes the need for frequency retune, which is beneficial for transmissions of bandwidth-constrained devices, since a PUCCH region change would require frequency retune, which would interrupt the normal transmission of the PUCCH . According to an embodiment of the present invention, the method 400 further includes step S412, which is used to determine a transmission gap for performing frequency switching between different subframe sets; and in step S403, during the determined transmission gap, the transmission. This transmission gap is used to allow the device to perform frequency retune. According to current device implementations, the time required for the retune will be less than one subframe length, for example, several Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbol times may be required. Once the transmission gap is defined, the base station can ignore the data samples corresponding to the transmission gap when receiving, and only combine the rest of the data. Although according to an embodiment of the present invention, transmission is not possible during transmission gaps, the loss will be much smaller than the diversity gain. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the transmission gap includes a symbol length, half a subframe length, or a subframe length. This transmission gap is shown in subframe 5 in Fig. 4d. Another example of a transmission gap is shown in Fig. 4e. Wherein in this example the transmission is done in N=2 subframes, and the length of the transmission gap is half a subframe (ie, 1 slot in LTE). And as a comparison, Fig. 4e also shows a schematic diagram of PUCCH frequency hopping of a normal UE. It can be seen from the figure that this embodiment can commonly use normal UE operations in half a subframe, thereby reducing the impact on UE implementation.

Referring now to Figs. 5a-5b, a method 500 corresponding to the strength method 400 and executed at the base station for implementing transmission of a bandwidth-limited device will be described. Fig. 5a is a flowchart of an example method at the base station side according to an embodiment of the present invention.

As shown in Figure 5a, the method 500 method includes step S501, for sending control information from the base station in the wireless communication network to the bandwidth-limited device, the control information indicating the transmission for the bandwidth-limited device At least two resource regions, wherein the at least two resource regions are in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth of the base station; step S502, for determining to use the at least two resource regions in the indicated at least two resource regions resources for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-limited device; and step S503, for receiving the transmission from the bandwidth-limited device on the determined resource, wherein the transmission is used in the same subframe resources in one of the at least two resource regions.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the control information sent in step S501 is the control information received by the bandwidth-limited device in step S401 introduced in conjunction with Figs. 4a-4b. Therefore, details about the control information and step S501 will not be repeated here.

Similarly, according to an embodiment of the present invention, step S502 corresponds to the operation of step S402 described with reference to FIGS. 4a-4b. Only when the base station and the user equipment can determine the same resources can it be ensured that the information transmitted by the UE can be correctly received by the base station. Determining resources for performing said transmission by said bandwidth-limited device means determining resources for performing reception operations by the base station for the bandwidth-limited device. Therefore, step S502 here can be performed in a similar manner to step S402 in the figure. Specifically, at step S502, the determining operation may be performed by at least one of the following:

The resources used to perform the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device in the subframe are determined based on a subframe index, where the subframe index is the absolute number of the subframe or the subframe relative to the relative number of a given subframe; the given subframe may be, for example, the subframe in which the bandwidth-constrained device first performs the transmission; or

Implicitly determined according to the index of the resource used by the base station to transmit a control channel (for example, a physical downlink control channel PDCCH or an enhanced physical downlink control channel EPDCCH) to the bandwidth limited device for use by the resources for the bandwidth-constrained device to perform said transmission, or

determining the subbands configured for the control channel, and determining the at least two resource regions used by the at least two resource regions according to the mapping relationship between the subbands used for the control channel and the at least two resource regions a resource region in which the bandwidth-limited device performs the transmission, and further implicitly determines according to an index of a resource used by the base station to transmit a control channel in the determined resource region for the bandwidth-limited device to perform the transmission. transferred resources, or,

Determine, based on a set of control channels (for example, an EPDCCH set) used to send control signaling (for example, scheduling signaling) to the bandwidth-limited device, the resources used for the transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions resource area. For an example of the resource determination operation, reference may be made to the corresponding description above with reference to FIGS. 4a-4b , which will not be repeated here.

Likewise, the receiving operation in step S503 corresponds to the transmitting operation S403 described with reference to Figs. 4a-4b. For example, when the transmission in step S403 is completed in a single subframe, at the base station, the reception of information will be completed in a single subframe in step S503; otherwise, if the transmission in step S403 is completed in multiple subframes , in step S503, the base station will also complete the receiving operation in multiple subframes. The methods for determining resources for PUCCH transmission described above with reference to FIGS. 4a-4e are also applicable to determining resources for PUCCH reception. For example, resources for reception by the base station may be determined based on the number of more than one subframe used for transmission. Further, when repeated transmissions are received in more than one subframe, the resource for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-limited device may be determined based on the number of repeated transmissions.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, when receiving is completed in more than one subframe, the method further includes step S511, for dividing the more than two subframes into at least two subframe sets in time order, and In step S503, resources in different resource regions of the at least two resource regions are used in different subframe sets to perform the receiving, as shown in FIG. 5b. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the division can be performed according to predetermined rules. In another embodiment, the method may further include sending configuration signaling to the bandwidth-limited device to indicate how to perform the division.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the method 500 further includes step S512, for determining a transmission gap for performing frequency switching between different subframe sets, and, in step S503, the determined The receiving is not performed during the transmission gap. The length of the transmission gap may be, for example, one symbol length, half the subframe length, or one subframe length.

In another embodiment, the transmission gap is not defined, and the base station discards some symbols from the received samples according to its estimated frequency retune time during reception to eliminate the impact.

Similarly, as described in conjunction with FIGS. 4a-4e, the resources available for the transmission by the bandwidth-limited device in at least two resource regions, that is, the resources for the reception by the base station for the device, can be consecutively coded. Alternatively, the resources in each of the at least two resource regions available for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device may be indexed separately.

Similarly, as mentioned above, the above-mentioned transmission and reception may be transmission and reception of PUCCH in the Long Term Evolution LTE system, and/or the bandwidth-limited device may be an LC-MTC device.

The following introduces a structural example of a UE-side device 600 according to an embodiment of the present invention with reference to FIG. 6 . The device 600 may be the UE in FIG. 3, and may be a bandwidth-limited device or a part thereof. The device 600 may perform any of the methods described with reference to Figures 4a-4e, but is not limited to these methods. In addition, as those skilled in the art can understand, in addition to the components shown in the figure, the device 600 may also include other devices to implement any other corresponding functions.

As shown in FIG. 6, the apparatus 600 may include a receiving unit 601 configured to receive control information from a base station in the wireless communication network, the control information indicating at least two resource regions used for the transmission of the device , wherein the at least two resource regions are in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth of the base station; the resource determining unit 602 is configured to determine the indicated at least two resource regions for the resources for the transmission; and a transmission unit 603 configured to perform the transmission using the determined resources, wherein the transmission uses resources in one resource region of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the receiving unit 601 may be configured to perform the receiving operation according to the method performed in step S401 described with reference to FIGS. 4a-4b; the resource determination unit 602 may be configured to perform the receiving operation according to The determining operation is performed by any method performed in step S402; the transmission unit 603 may be configured to perform the transmission operation according to any method performed in step S403 described with reference to FIGS. 4a-4b. Therefore, the operations of 601-603 will not be further described in detail here.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the device 600 further includes a division unit 611 configured to divide the more than two subframes into at least two subframe sets in time sequence, and the transmission unit 603 is configured to In different subframe sets, resources in different resource regions of the at least two resource regions are used to perform the transmission, and this operation may be performed according to the method performed in step S411 described in conjunction with FIG. 4b.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the device 600 further includes a transmission gap determining unit 612 configured to determine a transmission gap for performing frequency switching between different sets of subframes; and the transmission unit 603 is configured by The transmission is configured not to be performed during the determined transmission gap. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the transmission gap includes a symbol length, half a subframe length or a subframe length.

In another embodiment, the transmission gap is not defined, the device does not transmit during the time its frequency retune actually takes, and the base station discards a number of bits from the received samples when receiving based on its estimated frequency retune time. symbol to remove the effect.

Fig. 7 shows a schematic structural diagram of a device 700 for facilitating transmission of a bandwidth-limited device at the base station side. The device may be, for example, the base station in Fig. 3, or a part of the base station. The device 700 may perform any of the methods described with reference to Figures 5a-5b, but is not limited to these methods. In addition, as those skilled in the art can understand, in addition to the components shown in the figure, the device 700 may also include other devices to implement any other corresponding functions, such as scheduling and frequency control.

As shown in FIG. 7 , the apparatus 700 may include a sending unit 701 configured to send control information to a bandwidth-limited device, where the control information indicates at least two resource regions used for transmission by the bandwidth-limited device, wherein The at least two resource regions are in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth of the base station; the resource determining unit 702 is configured to determine the bandwidth used in the indicated at least two resource regions The resource on which the limited device performs the transmission, that is, the resource on which the device 700 or the base station including the device 700 performs reception for the bandwidth-limited device; and the receiving unit 703 is configured to receive the resource from The transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device, wherein the transmission uses resources in one resource region of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the sending unit 701 may be configured to perform the receiving operation according to the method performed in step S501 described with reference to FIGS. 5a-5b; the resource determination unit 702 may be configured to perform the receiving operation according to The determining operation is performed by any method performed in step S502; the receiving unit 703 may be configured to perform the transmission operation according to any method performed in step S503 described with reference to FIGS. 5a-5b. Therefore, the operations of 701-703 will not be further described in detail here.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the receiving unit 703 is configured to complete reception in more than one subframe, and the device 700 further includes a dividing unit 711 configured to divide the more than two subframes in time order into at least two subframe sets, and the receiving unit 703 is configured to be further configured to use resources of different resource regions in the at least two resource regions in different subframe sets to perform the receiving. This operation can be performed according to the method performed in step S511 described in conjunction with FIG. 5b.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the device 700 further includes a transmission gap determination unit 712 configured to determine a transmission gap for performing frequency switching between different subframe sets; and the receiving unit 703 is configured for not performing reception during the determined transmission gap. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the transmission gap includes a symbol length, half a subframe length or a subframe length.

In another embodiment, the transmission gap is not defined, the bandwidth-limited device does not perform transmission during the time actually occupied by its frequency retuning, and the device 700 or the base station including the device 700 receives it according to its estimated Frequency retiming is used to drop symbols from the received samples to eliminate the effect.

It should be understood that the structural block diagrams in FIGS. 6-7 are shown for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope of the disclosed subject matter. In some cases, certain components can be increased or decreased according to specific needs.

It should be noted that the methods and devices of the embodiments of the present invention may be implemented by hardware, software, or a combination of software and hardware. The hardware part can be implemented using dedicated logic; the software part can be stored in memory and executed by a suitable instruction execution system such as a microprocessor or specially designed hardware. Those of ordinary skill in the art can understand that the above-mentioned devices, devices and methods can be implemented using computer-executable instructions and/or included in processor control codes, for example, on a carrier medium such as a disk, CD or DVD-ROM, such as Such code is provided on a programmable memory of read-only memory (firmware) or on a data carrier such as an optical or electronic signal carrier. The equipment, apparatus and modules thereof of the present invention may be composed of hardware circuits such as very large scale integrated circuits or gate arrays, semiconductors such as logic chips, transistors, or programmable hardware devices such as field programmable gate arrays, programmable logic devices, etc. Realization can also be realized by software executed by various types of processors, or by a combination of the above hardware circuits and software such as firmware.

It should be noted that although reference has been made in the above detailed description to several means or sub-means of apparatus, such division is not mandatory. Actually, according to the embodiment of the present invention, the features and functions of two or more devices described above may be embodied in one device. Conversely, the features and functions of one device described above may be further divided to be embodied by a plurality of devices.

Additionally, although operations of example methods of embodiments of the invention are depicted in the figures in a particular order, this does not require or imply that the operations must be performed in that particular order, or that all illustrated operations must be performed to achieve achieve the desired result. Conversely, the steps depicted in the flowcharts may be performed in an altered order. Additionally or alternatively, certain steps may be omitted, multiple steps may be combined into one step for execution, and/or one step may be decomposed into multiple steps for execution.

It should be noted that although the embodiments of the present disclosure are described in the context of the 3GPP LTE system, the embodiments of the present invention are not limited thereto, but may also be applicable to other existing or future developed wireless communications systems, as long as similar problems exist in them and are compatible with the features of the embodiments of the present invention.

While the invention has been described with reference to several specific embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the specific embodiments disclosed. The present invention is intended to cover various modifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. The scope of the appended claims is to be accorded the broadest interpretation thereby encompassing all such modifications and equivalent structures and functions.

Claims (48)

CLAIMS 1. A method for transmission of a bandwidth-constrained device in a wireless communication network, the method comprising: receiving control information from a base station in the wireless communication network, the control information indicating at least two resource regions for the transmission of the bandwidth-constrained device, wherein the at least two resource regions are in the base station's in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth; determining resources for the transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions; and The transmission is performed using the determined resources, wherein the transmission uses resources in one of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining resources for the transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions comprises: determining the resources for performing the transmission in the subframe based on an index of the subframe; or determining resources used for said transmission implicitly from an index of resources used by a control channel from said base station, or determining the subband configured for the control channel, and determining the transmission in the at least two resource regions according to the mapping relationship between the subband used for the control channel and the at least two resource regions , and further implicitly determine the resource used for the transmission in the determined resource region according to the index of the resource used by the control channel from the base station, or, The resource region used for the transmission among the indicated at least two resource regions is determined based on a set of control channels used by control signaling from the base station. 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the index of the subframe is an absolute number of the subframe or a relative number of the subframe with respect to a given subframe. 4. The method of claim 3, wherein the given subframe is the subframe in which the bandwidth-constrained device first performs the transmission. 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmission is completed in more than one subframe, and wherein determining resources for the transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions comprises: The resources used for the transmission are determined based on the number of more than one subframe. 6. The method of claim 5, wherein the transmission is done in more than one subframe comprises performing repeated transmission in the more than one subframe, and determining based on the number of the more than one subframe The resources for the transmission include determining the resources for the transmission based on a number of repetitions. 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmission is done in more than one subframe, and the method further comprises: dividing the more than two subframes into at least two subframe sets in time order, The transmission is performed using resources of different resource regions in the at least two resource regions in different subframe sets. 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising: determining transmission gaps for performing frequency switching between different said sets of subframes; The transmission is not performed during the determined transmission gap. 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the transmission gap comprises a symbol length, half a subframe length, or a subframe length. 10. The method of any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the resources available for the transmission in the at least two resource regions are consecutively indexed. 11. The method of any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the resources available for the transmission in each of the at least two resource regions are indexed separately. 12. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the transmission is a transmission of a Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, and/or the bandwidth-limited device is a machine Type communication MTC device. 13. A method for transmission of a bandwidth-constrained device in a wireless communication network, the method comprising: Sending control information from a base station in the wireless communication network to the bandwidth-constrained device, the control information indicating at least two resource regions for the transmission of the bandwidth-constrained device, wherein the at least two resource regions are in at least two different subbands of the base station's system bandwidth; determining resources in the indicated at least two resource regions for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device; and The transmission from the bandwidth-constrained device is received on the determined resource, wherein the transmission uses resources in one of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe. 14. The method of claim 13, wherein determining resources in the indicated at least two resource regions for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device comprises: determining resources for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-limited device in the subframe based on an index of the subframe, or determining resources used to perform said transmission by said bandwidth-constrained device implicitly from an index of resources used by said base station to transmit a control channel to said bandwidth-constrained device, or determining the subbands configured for the control channel, and determining the at least two resource regions used by the at least two resource regions according to the mapping relationship between the subbands used for the control channel and the at least two resource regions a resource region in which the bandwidth-limited device performs the transmission, and further implicitly determines according to an index of a resource used by the base station to transmit a control channel in the determined resource region for the bandwidth-limited device to perform the transmission. transferred resources, or, The resource region used for the transmission among the indicated at least two resource regions is determined based on a set of control channels used to send control signaling to the bandwidth-limited device. 15. The method of claim 14, wherein the index of the subframe is an absolute number of the subframe or a relative number of the subframe with respect to a given subframe. 16. The method of claim 15, wherein the given subframe is the subframe in which the transmission is first performed by the bandwidth-constrained device. 17. The method of claim 13, wherein the receiving is done in more than one subframe, and wherein determining the resource regions indicated for performing the task by the bandwidth-constrained device The transferred resources include: The resources for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device are determined based on the number of more than one subframe. 18. The method of claim 17, wherein the receiving is done in more than one subframe comprises receiving repeated transmissions in the more than one subframe, and determining based on the number of the more than one subframe The resources for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device includes determining the resources for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device based on a number of repeated transmissions. 19. The method of claim 13, wherein the receiving is done in more than one subframe, and the method further comprises: dividing the more than two subframes into at least two subframe sets in time order, The receiving is performed using resources of different resource regions in the at least two resource regions in different subframe sets. 20. The method of claim 19, further comprising: determining transmission gaps for performing frequency switching between different said sets of subframes; The receiving is not performed during the determined transmission gap. 21. The method of claim 20, wherein the transmission gap comprises a symbol length, half a subframe length, or a subframe length. 22. The method of any one of claims 13 to 21, wherein resources in the at least two resource regions available for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device are consecutively indexed. 23. The method according to any one of claims 13 to 21, wherein the resources available for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device in each of the at least two resource regions are respectively indexed. 24. The method according to any one of claims 13 to 21, wherein the transmission is a transmission of a Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, and/or the bandwidth-limited device is a machine Type communication MTC device. 25. A bandwidth limited device for use in a wireless communication network, the device comprising: a receiving unit configured to receive control information from a base station in the wireless communication network, the control information indicating at least two resource regions used for the transmission of the device, wherein the at least two resource regions are located in the base station in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth; a resource determining unit configured to determine resources used for the transmission in the indicated at least two resource regions; and The transmission unit is configured to perform the transmission using the determined resources, wherein the transmission uses resources in one resource region of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe. 26. The device according to claim 25, wherein the resource determining unit is configured to: determining the resources for performing the transmission in the subframe based on an index of the subframe; or determining resources used for said transmission implicitly from an index of resources used by a control channel from said base station, or determining the subband configured for the control channel, and determining the transmission in the at least two resource regions according to the mapping relationship between the subband used for the control channel and the at least two resource regions , and further implicitly determine the resources used for the transmission in the determined resource region according to the index of the resource used by the control channel from the base station, or The resource region used for the transmission among the indicated at least two resource regions is determined based on a set of control channels used by control signaling from the base station. 27. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein the index of the subframe is an absolute number of the subframe or a relative number of the subframe with respect to a given subframe. 28. The apparatus of claim 27, wherein the given subframe is a subframe in which the apparatus first performs the transmission. 29. The device of claim 25, wherein the transmitting unit is configured to complete the transmission in more than one subframe, and wherein the resource determining unit is configured to: The resources used for the transmission are determined based on the number of more than one subframe. 30. The device of claim 29, wherein the transmitting unit is configured to perform repeated transmissions in more than one subframe, and the resource determining unit is configured to: The resource for the transmission is determined based on the number of repeated transmissions. 31. The device of claim 25, wherein the transmission unit is configured to complete the transmission in more than one subframe, and the device further comprises: a division unit configured to divide the more than two subframes into at least two subframe sets in time order, and The transmission unit is configured to use resources in different resource regions of the at least two resource regions in different sets of subframes to perform the transmission. 32. The apparatus of claim 31 , further comprising: a transmission gap determining unit configured to determine a transmission gap for performing frequency switching between different said subframe sets; and The transmission unit is configured not to perform the transmission during the determined transmission gap. 33. The apparatus of claim 32, wherein the transmission gap comprises a symbol length, half a subframe length, or a subframe length. 34. The apparatus of any one of claims 25 to 33, wherein resources available for the transmission in the at least two resource regions are indexed consecutively. 35. The apparatus of any one of claims 25 to 33, wherein resources available for the transmission in each of the at least two resource regions are indexed separately. 36. The device according to any one of claims 25 to 33, wherein the transmission is a transmission of a Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, and/or the bandwidth-limited device is a machine Type communication MTC device. 37. A base station for facilitating transmission of bandwidth constrained devices in a wireless communication network, the base station comprising: A sending unit configured to send control information to a bandwidth-limited device, where the control information indicates at least two resource regions used for transmission by the bandwidth-limited device, wherein the at least two resource regions are located in the base station in at least two different subbands of the system bandwidth; a resource determining unit configured to determine resources in the indicated at least two resource regions for performing the transmission by the bandwidth limited device; and a receiving unit configured to receive the transmission from the bandwidth-limited device on the determined resource, wherein the transmission uses resources in one of the at least two resource regions in the same subframe . 38. The base station according to claim 37, wherein the resource determination unit is configured to: determining resources for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-limited device in the subframe based on an index of the subframe, or determining resources used to perform said transmission by said bandwidth-constrained device implicitly from an index of resources used by said base station to transmit a control channel to said bandwidth-constrained device, or determining the subbands configured for the control channel, and determining the at least two resource regions used by the at least two resource regions according to the mapping relationship between the subbands used for the control channel and the at least two resource regions a resource region in which the bandwidth-limited device performs the transmission, and further implicitly determines according to an index of a resource used by the base station to transmit a control channel in the determined resource region for the bandwidth-limited device to perform the transmission. the transferred resource, or The resource region used for the transmission among the indicated at least two resource regions is determined based on a set of control channels used to send control signaling to the bandwidth-limited device. 39. The base station of claim 38, wherein the index of the subframe is an absolute number of the subframe or a relative number of the subframe with respect to a given subframe. 40. The base station of claim 39, wherein the given subframe is the subframe in which the bandwidth limited device first performs the transmission. 41. The base station according to claim 37, wherein the receiving unit is configured to complete receiving in more than one subframe, and wherein the resource determining unit is configured to: The resources for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device are determined based on the number of more than one subframe. 42. The base station according to claim 41 , wherein the receiving unit is configured to finish receiving repeated transmissions in more than one subframe, and the resource determining unit is configured to determine the resources used by The resources for the bandwidth-constrained device to perform the transmission. 43. The base station according to claim 37, wherein the receiving unit is configured to complete receiving in more than one subframe, and the base station further comprises: a division unit configured to divide the more than two subframes into at least two subframe sets in time order, The receiving unit is further configured to use resources in different resource regions of the at least two resource regions in different sets of subframes to perform the receiving. 44. The base station of claim 43, further comprising: a transmission gap determining unit configured to determine a transmission gap for performing frequency switching between different said subframe sets; and The receiving unit is configured not to perform the receiving during the determined transmission gap. 45. The base station of claim 44, wherein the transmission gap comprises a symbol length, half a subframe length, or a subframe length. 46. The base station according to any one of claims 37 to 45, wherein resources in said at least two resource regions available for performing said transmission by said bandwidth limited device are indexed consecutively. 47. The base station according to any one of claims 37 to 45, wherein the resources available for performing the transmission by the bandwidth-constrained device in each of the at least two resource regions are respectively indexed. 48. The base station according to any one of claims 37 to 45, wherein the transmission performed by the bandwidth-limited device is a transmission of a Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, and/ Or the bandwidth-limited device is a machine type communication (MTC) device.