COMMUNICATIONS DEVICE, INFRASTRUCTURE EQUIPMENT AND METHODS FOR LTE COMMUNICATION WITHIN UNUSED GSM CHANNELS

摘要

A communications device comprises a receiver, a transmitter and a controller. The receiver is configured to receive signals representing downlink data from an infrastructure equipment of a wireless communications network via a wireless access interface having a logical baseband frame structure. The transmitter is configured to transmit signals representing uplink data to the infrastructure equipment via the wireless access interface, the logical baseband frame structure being formed from one or more minimum frequency units and one or more time units to form communications resources for allocation by the infrastructure equipment to the communications device. The controller is configured to control the transmitter and the receiver to transmit and to receive signals representing the data to and from the infrastructure equipment using the wireless access interface. The controller is configured in combination with the transmitter and the receiver to receive a signal providing an indication of one or more frequency resources which are available within a host frequency band, to combine the one or more frequency resources within the host frequency band in time and/or frequency to form the one or more of the minimum frequency units of the logical baseband frame structure, and to transmit or to receive the signals representing the data to or from the infrastructure equipment using the communications resources provided by the one or more minimum frequency units formed within the host frequency band. The signal may be transmitted by the infrastructure equipment to provide the communications device with a facility to discover the one of more frequency resources within the host frequency band. The signal may be a discovery signal which is transmitted separately from the frequency resources or the signal may be transmitted within a first of the one or more frequency resources, from which one or more other of the frequency resources may be identified.