Subband Random Sensing Grant Free Uplink for URLLC in Unlicensed Spectrum

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel scheme called subband random sensing (SRS) grant free uplink for ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) in unlicensed spectrum. The SRS grant free uplink creatively combines the subband sensing, user grouping and random access, which allows a user sensing the unlicensed spectrum to use available sub-resources in a wideband and reduce collisions with other users. The new scheme overcomes the severe spectrum wastage problem of the semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) uplink adopted by new radio (NR) release 16 in applications with sporadic traffic. Compared with the contention based grant free uplink, the new scheme achieves much lower collision probability, which directly leads to higher reliability. Analysis and simulations are provided to prove the exceptional performances.