Soft buffer management

Soft buffer management circuitry is provided for use in a device of a wireless communication system. The soft buffer management circuitry has input circuitry for receiving information relating to an aggregated carrier comprising a plurality, NDU/ULcells, of configured component carriers. Control circuitry is provided for prioritizing allocation of storage in the soft buffer depending on a carrier index value indicating a prioritization of a corresponding component carrier relative to the other configured component carriers. The buffer is partitioned into a number min (NC, NDL/ULcells) partitions, where NC gives a number of carriers for which soft buffer storage is to be prioritized. A UE comprising the soft buffer management circuitry and a soft buffer management method are also provided.