CPC H04W 40/34 (2013.01) [H04W 40/04 (2013.01); H04W 40/12 (2013.01); H04W 40/22 (2013.01); H04W 84/047 (2013.01)] | 20 Claims |
1. A method of operating an infrastructure equipment in a wireless communication network comprising a plurality of infrastructure equipment, the method comprising:
communicating, with a first infrastructure equipment acting as a donor node connected to a core network, the core network being part of the wireless communications network, signals representing data by a second infrastructure equipment over a first communications path via one or more others of the infrastructure equipment acting as relay nodes, the infrastructure equipment being a child node and the donor node being a parent node, the parent node being connected to the child node via a backhaul communications link and configured to allocate uplink communications resources to the child node;
transmitting, by the child node to the donor node over the first communications path, local assistance information associated with the child node;
determining, by the donor node based on the local assistance information associated with the child node, values associated with each of the first communications path and one or more other communications paths between the child node and either the donor node or a second donor node via one or more others of the infrastructure equipment acting as relay nodes, the first communications path and the one or more other communications paths being different;
receiving, by the child node from the donor node via the parent node or from the parent node, the values associated with each of the first communications path and the one or more other communications paths;
determining, by the child node, based on the value associated with each of the first communications path and the one or more other communications paths, to change from a first communications path to a second communications path which is one of the one or more other communications paths; and
communicating, by the child node, with the donor node over the second communications path.
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