Novel System Design for Reducing Cost and Power Consumption in a Multi-SIM User Equipment

Abstract

User Equipment (UE) with more than one Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) is designed usually with a single Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC), with one Rx and one Tx path component, for reduction of cost. The RFIC components are shared for serving requests from as many SIMs (Subscriber Identify Module) in the UE, leading to Physical Channel Resource (PCR) wastage for the operator during the tune away periods. We present a novel technique to arrive at the number of Rx and Tx paths components, that should be deployed when designing a Multi-SIM UE with limited PCR wastage. Through mathematical modelling, supported with simulations, our proposal gives the right number (e.g. 2 each) of Rx and Tx paths to be used while designing up to Quad-SIM (4 SIMs) UE. This results in saving up to 33.3 % both in the cost of the RFIC component selection and peak power consumption of the Quad-SIM UE as compared to literature.