Long Term Evolution (LTE) Release 12 by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has designated a new set of “sidelink” physical channels and signaling framework to support Proximity Services (ProSe, also known as Device-to-Device or “D2D”) communications, including e.g. ProSe Discovery and ProSe Communication. Mobile terminals may utilize ProSe in order to directly exchange data using radio resources conventionally allocated for uplink communications by the mobile communication network. While the mobile communication network may assume a supervisory role, such as by allocating the radio resources that may mobile terminals may utilize for ProSe and other management operations, mobile terminals may exchange data between one another without transmitting the data to the mobile communication network.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds