COMMUNICATIONS DEVICES, METHODS OF OPERATING COMMUNICATIONS DEVICES, INFRASTRUCTURE EQUIPMENT AND METHODS

摘要

A method of operating a communications device to transmit data to a wireless communications network comprises processing uplink data for transmission on grant free resources of a physical uplink shared channel of a wireless access interface provided by the wireless communications network to form one or more transport blocks of the uplink data for transmission. The grant free resources provide communications resources of the physical shared uplink channel in each of a plurality of time divided units of the wireless access interface for transmitting the uplink data. The method comprises selecting one of a plurality of configurations for transmitting the uplink data in the grant free resources, and transmitting the uplink data in the grant free resources according to the selected configuration. Each of the plurality of configurations includes grant free resources, a transmission period in which each of the encoded data units is to be transmitted in the grant free resources, and a temporal starting position of the transmission period in one of the time divided units of the wireless access interface for transmitting the uplink data in the grant free resources, the temporal starting position and the transmission period being independent for each of the plurality of configurations. The independent configurations can provide different temporal starting positions and transmission periods, which can be better matched to a time at which the uplink data is generated, and as a result the uplink data can be transmitted with a lower latency in the grant free resources.