In an existing cellular communications system, such as a Global System for Mobile Communications (English: Global System for Mobile Communication, GSM for short) system, a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (English: Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, WCDMA for short) system, or a Long Term Evolution (English: Long Term Evolution, LTE for short) system, supported communication is mainly for voice and data communication. Generally, a quantity of connections supported by a conventional base station is limited, and conventional communication is easy to implement.
A next-generation mobile communications system supports not only conventional communication but also M2M (English: Machine to Machine) communication, which is also known as MTC (English: Machine Type Communication) communication. It is predicted that a quantity of MTC devices connected to a network will be up to 50 billion to 100 billion by 2020, and far more than a quantity of existing connections. M2M services have diversified service types, and therefore have highly different requirements for a network. Roughly, there are the following several requirements:
reliable but delay-insensitive transmission; and
ultra-reliable and low latency transmission.
A service that requires reliable and delay-insensitive transmission is easy to process. However, an ultra-reliable and low latency transmission service, such as a V2V (English: Vehicle to Vehicle) service, requires transmission to be not only low-delay but also reliable. If transmission is unreliable, retransmission is caused. As a result, a transmission delay is excessively long, and cannot meet requirements.
Existence of a large quantity of connections makes a future wireless communications system highly different from an existing communications system. For the large quantity of connections, more resources need to be consumed to connect terminal devices, and more resources need to be consumed to transmit scheduling signaling related to data transmission of the terminal devices.
Therefore, a grant-free transmission method is proposed, thereby reducing a delay and meeting reliable transmission at least to some extent. In addition, even ultra-reliability can be achieved by means of the solution design.
However, in the prior art, there are no solutions for configuring a grant-free transmission resource and for obtaining related information.