Patent Application
20080207253
1. Field of Invention:
The present invention relates to a system for managing radio modules integrated within a wireless communication device, and more specifically, to a multiradio control system enabled to create an operational schedule for two or more concurrently operating radio modules, wherein a radio module having local control may manage unscheduled communication in view of various inputs.
2. Description of Prior Art:
Modern society has quickly adopted, and become reliant upon, handheld devices for wireless communication. For example, cellular telephones continue to proliferate in the global marketplace due to technological improvements in both the quality of the communication and the functionality of the devices. These wireless communication devices (WCDs) have become commonplace for both personal and business use, allowing users to transmit and receive voice, text and graphical data from a multitude of geographic locations. The communication networks utilized by these devices span different frequencies and cover different transmission distances, each having strengths desirable for various applications.
Cellular networks facilitate WCD communication over large geographic areas. These network technologies have commonly been divided by generations, starting in the late 1970s to early 1980s with first generation (1G) analog cellular telephones that provided baseline voice communication, to modern digital cellular telephones. GSM is an example of a widely employed 2G digital cellular network communicating in the 900 MHZ/1.8 GHZ bands in Europe and at 850 MHz and 1.9 GHZ in the United States. This network provides voice communication and also supports the transmission of textual data via the Short Messaging Service (SMS). SMS allows a WCD to transmit and receive text messages of up to 160 characters, while providing data transfer to packet networks, ISDN and POTS users at 9.6 Kbps. The Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), an enhanced messaging system allowing for the transmission of sound, graphics and video files in addition to simple text, has also become available in certain devices. Soon emerging technologies such as Digital Video Broadcasting for Handheld Devices (DVB-H) will make streaming digital video, and other similar content, available via direct transmission to a WCD. While long-range communication networks like GSM are a well-accepted means for transmitting and receiving data, due to cost, traffic and legislative concerns, these networks may not be appropriate for all data applications.
Short-range wireless networks provide communication solutions that avoid some of the problems seen in large cellular networks. Bluetooth™ is an example of a short-range wireless technology quickly gaining acceptance in the marketplace. A 1 Mbps Bluetooth™ radio may transmit and receives data at a rate of 720 Kbps within a range of 10 meters, and may transmit up to 100 meters with additional power boosting. Enhanced data rate (EDR) technology also available may enable maximum asymmetric data rates of 1448 Kbps for a 2 Mbps connection and 2178 Kbps for a 3 Mbps connection. A user does not actively instigate a Bluetooth™ network. Instead, a plurality of devices within operating range of each other may automatically form a network group called a “piconet”. Any device may promote itself to the master of the piconet, allowing it to control data exchanges with up to seven “active” slaves and 255 “parked” slaves. Active slaves exchange data based on the clock timing of the master. Parked slaves monitor a beacon signal in order to stay synchronized with the master. These devices continually switch between various active communication and power saving modes in order to transmit data to other piconet members. In addition to Bluetooth™ other popular short-range wireless networks include WLAN (of which “Wi-Fi” local access points communicating in accordance with the IEEE 802.11 standard, is an example), WUSB, UWB, ZigBee (802.15.4, 802.15.4a), and UHF RFID. All of these wireless mediums have features and advantages that make them appropriate for various applications.
More recently, manufacturers have also begun to incorporate various resources for providing enhanced functionality in WCDs (e.g., components and software for performing close-proximity wireless information exchanges). Sensors and/or scanners may be used to read visual or electronic information into a device. A transaction may involve a user holding their WCD in proximity to a target, aiming their WCD at an object (e.g., to take a picture) or sweeping the device over a printed tag or document. Near Field communication (NFC) technologies include machine-readable mediums such as radio frequency identification (RFID), Infra-red (IR) communication, optical character recognition (OCR) and various other types of visual, electronic and magnetic scanning are used to quickly input desired information into the WCD without the need for manual entry by a user.
Device manufacturers continue to incorporate as many of the previously discussed exemplary communication features as possible into wireless communication devices in an attempt to bring powerful, “do-all” devices to market. Devices incorporating long-range, short-range and NFC resources often include multiple mediums for each category. This may allow a WCD to flexibly adjust to its surroundings, for example, communicating both with a WLAN access point and a Bluetooth™ communication accessory, possibly at the same time.
Given the large array communication features that may be compiled into a single device, it is foreseeable that a user will need to employ a WCD to its full potential when replacing other productivity related devices. For example, a user may utilize a fully-functioned WCD to replace traditional tools such as individual phones, facsimile machines, computers, storage media, etc. which tend to be cumbersome to both integrate and transport. In at least one use scenario, a WCD may be communicating simultaneously over numerous different wireless mediums. A user may utilize multiple peripheral Bluetooth™ devices (e.g., a headset and a keyboard) while having a voice conversation over GSM and interacting with a WLAN access point in order to access the Internet. Problems may occur when these concurrent transactions cause interference with each other. Even if a communication medium does not have an identical operating frequency as another medium, a radio modem may cause extraneous interference to another medium. Further, it is possible for the combined effects of two or more simultaneously operating radios to create intermodulation effects to another bandwidth due to harmonic effects. These disturbances may cause errors resulting in the required retransmission of lost packets, and the overall degradation of performance for one or more communication mediums.
While a total wireless connection loss would be unacceptable to most mobile device users, a slight degradation in signal quality, for example in audio and/or video signal quality, may be tolerated in order to avoid a total communication failure. Audio and/or video signal quality may be controlled by a codec (encoder/decoder or compressor/decompressor). A codec is software and/or hardware that compresses and decompresses audio and/or video data streams. The purpose of a codec is to reduce the size of audio samples and video frames in order to speed up transmission and save storage space. This signal compression may reduce the amount of resources are needed to transmit a signal, but at the same time may also reduce the quality of the audio and/or video signal. The sound quality delivered by a codec does not have to be perfect, and in some cases, the use of a lower quality (e.g., lower bit rate) codec may not even be noticeable. Similarly, video quality may still be clear while not operating at top performance. This lower bit rate codec may use less resources that may be reallocated to other communication.
What is therefore needed is a system for managing wireless resources in the same device that utilize conflicting wireless communication mediums. The system should be able to determine potential conflicts between wireless communication mediums being utilized by radio modules operating in the same wireless communication device. Based on this determination and other factors (e.g., priority between wireless communication mediums), the quality of one or more signals being conveyed by the radio modules should be adjusted in order to reallocate resources to radio modules utilizing other wireless communication mediums. The changing of signal quality may include changes to one or more codecs and/or altering the processing of one or more signals to remove less critical signal information. While the resulting signal may be lower quality, stability of the overall wireless communication in the device may be preserved.
The present invention includes at least a method, device, computer program and radio module for managing the operation of a plurality of radio modules integrated within the same WCD. In at least one embodiment of the present invention, a control strategy may be employed to regulate the quality level of a signal delivered by a codec in order to balance the performance realized in the reproduction certain signals with overall communication stability.
In at least one embodiment of the present invention, a potential communication conflict may be determined between wireless communication mediums being utilized by radio modules integrated within a wireless communication device. The wireless communication mediums may each be implemented by different radio modules, or alternatively, may be utilized substantially concurrently in a single multimode radio module. The one or more radio modules may be directly coupled or through a controller local to the radio module(s) in order to share information regarding the state of message queues assigned to the various wireless communication mediums. This message queue status may be utilized with other operational and scheduling information to determine a priority for each wireless communication medium.
Once a priority of operation has been determined in the wireless communication mediums, the operation of the one or more radio modules may be modified in order to preserve stability in overall WCD communication. A high priority wireless communication medium may require additional resources in the WCD in order to maintain a communication link. To support this requirement, the signal quality may be reduced in another wireless communication medium. This reduction of quality may free up resources for the higher priority wireless communication medium, and take place by, for example, reducing the bit rate of a codec in another wireless communication medium. The reduction in quality to a signal, such as an audio signal, may be unperceivable, or at least tolerable, to a user, and may help preserve stable communications in the WCD. A different codec with lower bit rate may be activated to reduce the signal quality, or alternatively, a strategy to eliminate less critical information from the signal may be employed.
The invention will be further understood from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment, taken in conjunction with appended drawings, in which:
While the invention has been described in preferred embodiments, various changes can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, as described in the appended claims.
A WCD may both transmit and receive information over a wide array of wireless communication networks, each with different advantages regarding speed, range, quality (error correction), security (encoding), etc. These characteristics will dictate the amount of information that may be transferred to a receiving device, and the duration of the information transfer.
In the example pictured in
The transmission range between two devices may be extended if both devices are capable of performing powered communication. Short-range active communication 140 includes applications wherein the sending and receiving devices are both active. An exemplary situation would include user 110 coming within effective transmission range of a Bluetooth™, WLAN, UWB, WUSB, etc. access point. In the case of Bluetooth™, a network may automatically be established to transmit information to WCD 100 possessed by user 110. This data may include information of an informative, educational or entertaining nature. The amount of information to be conveyed is unlimited, except that it must all be transferred in the time when user 110 is within effective transmission range of the access point. Due to the higher complexity of these wireless networks, additional time is also required to establish the initial connection to WCD 100, which may be increased if many devices are queued for service in the area proximate to the access point. The effective transmission range of these networks depends on the technology, and may be from some 30 ft. to over 300 ft. with additional power boosting.
Long-range networks 150 are used to provide virtually uninterrupted communication coverage for WCD 100. Land-based radio stations or satellites are used to relay various communication transactions worldwide. While these systems are extremely functional, the use of these systems is often charged on a per-minute basis to user 110, not including additional charges for data transfer (e.g., wireless Internet access). Further, the regulations covering these systems may cause additional overhead for both the users and providers, making the use of these systems more cumbersome.
As previously described, the present invention may be implemented using a variety of wireless communication equipment. Therefore, it is important to understand the communication tools available to user 110 before exploring the present invention. For example, in the case of a cellular telephone or other handheld wireless devices, the integrated data handling capabilities of the device play an important role in facilitating transactions between the transmitting and receiving devices.
Control module 210 regulates the operation of the device. Inputs may be received from various other modules included within WCD 100. For example, interference sensing module 220 may use various techniques known in the art to sense sources of environmental interference within the effective transmission range of the wireless communication device. Control module 210 interprets these data inputs, and in response, may issue control commands to the other modules in WCD 100.
Communications module 230 incorporates all of the communication aspects of WCD 100. As shown in
User interface module 240 includes visual, audible and tactile elements which allow the user 110 to receive data from, and enter data into, the device. The data entered by user 110 may be interpreted by control module 210 to affect the behavior of WCD 100. User-inputted data may also be transmitted by communications module 230 to other devices within effective transmission range. Other devices in transmission range may also send information to WCD 100 via communications module 230, and control module 210 may cause this information to be transferred to user interface module 240 for presentment to the user.
Applications module 250 incorporates all other hardware and/or software applications on WCD 100. These applications may include sensors, interfaces, utilities, interpreters, data applications, etc., and may be invoked by control module 210 to read information provided by the various modules and in turn supply information to requesting modules in WCD 100.
Memory 330 may include random access memory (RAM), read only memory (ROM), and/or flash memory, and stores information in the form of data and software components (also referred to herein as modules). The data stored by memory 330 may be associated with particular software components. In addition, this data may be associated with databases, such as a bookmark database or a business database for scheduling, email, etc.
The software components stored by memory 330 include instructions that can be executed by processor 300. Various types of software components may be stored in memory 330. For instance, memory 330 may store software components that control the operation of communication sections 310, 320 and 340. Memory 330 may also store software components including a firewall, a service guide manager, a bookmark database, user interface manager, and any communication utilities modules required to support WCD 100.
Long-range communications 310 performs functions related to the exchange of information over large geographic areas (such as cellular networks) via an antenna. These communication methods include technologies from the previously described 1G to 3G. In addition to basic voice communication (e.g., via GSM), long-range communications 310 may operate to establish data communication sessions, such as General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) sessions and/or Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) sessions. Also, long-range communications 310 may operate to transmit and receive messages, such as short messaging service (SMS) messages and/or multimedia messaging service (MMS) messages.
As a subset of long-range communications 310, or alternatively operating as an independent module separately connected to processor 300, transmission receiver 312 allows WCD 100 to receive transmission messages via mediums such as Digital Video Broadcast for Handheld Devices (DVB-H). These transmissions may be encoded so that only certain designated receiving devices may access the transmission content, and may contain text, audio or video information. In at least one example, WCD 100 may receive these transmissions and use information contained within the transmission signal to determine if the device is permitted to view the received content.
Short-range communications 320 is responsible for functions involving the exchange of information across short-range wireless networks. As described above and depicted in
NFC 340, also depicted in
As further shown in
WCD 100 may also include one or more transponders 380. This is essentially a passive device that may be programmed by processor 300 with information to be delivered in response to a scan from an outside source. For example, an RFID scanner mounted in an entryway may continuously emit radio frequency waves. When a person with a device containing transponder 380 walks through the door, the transponder is energized and may respond with information identifying the device, the person, etc. In addition, a scanner may be mounted (e.g., as previously discussed above with regard to examples of NFC 340) in WCD 100 so that it can read information from other transponders in the vicinity.
Hardware corresponding to communications sections 310, 312, 320 and 340 provide for the transmission and reception of signals. Accordingly, these portions may include components (e.g., electronics) that perform functions, such as modulation, demodulation, amplification, and filtering. These portions may be locally controlled, or controlled by processor 300 in accordance with software communication components stored in memory 330.
The elements shown in
The user interface 350 may interact with a communication utilities software component, also contained in memory 330, which provides for the establishment of service sessions using long-range communications 310 and/or short-range communications 320. The communication utilities component may include various routines that allow the reception of services from remote devices according to mediums such as the Wireless Application Medium (WAP), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) variants like Compact HTML (CHTML), etc.
System level 420 processes data requests and routes the data for transmission. Processing may include, for example, calculation, translation, conversion and/or packetizing the data. The information may then be routed to an appropriate communication resource in the service level. If the desired communication resource is active and available in the service level 430, the packets may be routed to a radio modem for delivery via wireless transmission. There may be a plurality of modems operating using different wireless mediums. For example, in
Problems may occur when some or all of these communications are carried on simultaneously. As further shown in
Since all of the single mode radio modules may share the resource of physical layer 512 as depicted in
An exemplary multimode radio module 510 is now explained in
Admission control 516 may act as a gateway for the multimode radio module 510 by filtering out both different wireless communication medium requests from the operating system of WCD 100 that may be sent by multimode radio module 510 and that may further result in conflicts for multimode radio module 510. The conflict information may be sent along with operational schedule information for other radio modules to multimode manager 514 for further processing. The information received by multimode manager 514 may then be used to formulate a schedule, such as a schedule for utilization of wireless communication mediums, controlling the release of messages for transmission from the various message queues 518.
The previous example of a multimode radio module 510 is now used for the sake of explanation when discussing codec control. The present invention is not limited to this particular embodiment and may be implemented with either single mode radio modules 500 or multimode radio modules 510.
The information received by multimode manager 514 may be used to control various codecs used in accordance with the wireless communication mediums supported by multimode radio module 510. These codecs may each be controlled individually, and are represented in
Each codec may be configured individually so as to balance the communication requirements of the various message queues 518 in view of the information received and processed by multimode manager 514. For example, WLAN may be the highest priority wireless communication medium for multimode radio module 510. This may be determined by at least one of a user configuration in WCD 100, an application using WLAN for wireless communication, the nature of how the specific communication medium functions (e.g., because WLAN is unscheduled), etc. WLAN is therefore set closer to “H” in order to ensure the best quality of communication. Due to WLAN using a large portion of the available resources for multimode radio module 510, the other codecs 532 may be set at a lower quality level to prevent the complete depletion and possible overloading of resources. In this example, Bluetooth™ may be second in priority operating at a slightly lower quality level, followed by WiMAX and any other wireless communication mediums (MISC.) serviced by multimode radio module 510.
In another example of the present invention,
Adjusting the quality of a signal is not limited to directly altering a codec. Signal quality may also be adjusted after a codec has converted a signal in preparation for transmission. An exemplary post-codec signal quality adjustment system in accordance with at least one embodiment of the present invention is disclosed in
An example of wireless communication medium activity is disclosed in
Assuming that the required bandwidth for the full data streaming is 50% and the packet size from the codec is 3000 μs. This initial packet size has been represented as combined “A” and “B” segments, however, these packets may be further segmented into separate “A” and “B” packets each 1500 μs long (it is also possible to use smaller segments, but two segment parts are used here for the sake of explanation). These packets (and the WLAN protocol overhead) can be transmitted inside the allocation window (1500 μs+overhead<2500 μs). If every “A” and “B” packet in data stream 556 is immediately and successfully transmitted, meaning that one packet is transmitted and acknowledged in each allocation window, WLAN would be capable of providing 40% bandwidth, which is below the 50% actually required. This shortfall may cause WLAN radio module transmission buffer 552 to overflow, which may result in the arbitrary loss or dropping of packets. Arbitrary packet loss may, for example, create image stuttering and/or blackouts in the WLAN video feed, and may possibly lead to total loss of the video feed.
However, with the implementation of bitrate scaling, segmenting and scaling element 534 is able to segment input packets from WLAN signal 566 into smaller tagged packets. These segments may be stored into a buffer 562. Link quality parameters may then be selected to ensure uninterrupted transmission of Bluetooth™ signal 564. These parameters may be determined, for example, by multimode manager 514. Scaling element 534 may then act in accordance with these parameters and discard some of the segmented packets in order to bring the signal quality and resource usage to a desired level. Since each WLAN packet 566 may be divided into “A” and “B” packets, and the codec supports bitrate scaling, the segmenting and scaling element may be instructed to discard “B” packets when necessary since they are not vital to the stream. This is shown in
In an attempt to better manage communication in WCD 100, an additional controller dedicated to managing wireless communication may be introduced. WCD 100, as pictured in
Additional detail is shown in
The effect of MCS 700 is seen in
MCS 700, in this example, may be implemented utilizing a variety of bus structures, including the I2C interface commonly found in portable electronic devices, as well as emerging standards such as SLIMbus that are now under development. I2C is a multi-master bus, wherein multiple devices can be connected to the same bus and each one can act as a master through initiating a data transfer. An I2C bus contains at least two communication lines, an information line and a clock line. When a device has information to transmit, it assumes a master role and transmits both its clock signal and information to a recipient device. SLIMbus, on the other hand, utilizes a separate, non-differential physical layer that runs at rates of 50 Mbits/s or slower over just one lane. It is being developed by the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance to replace today's I2C and I2S interfaces while offering more features and requiring the same or less power than the two combined.
MCS 700 directly links distributed control components 702 in modules 310, 312, 320 and 340. Another distributed control component 704 may reside in master control system 640 of WCD 100. It is important to note that distributed control component 704 shown in processor 300 is not limited only to this embodiment, and may reside in any appropriate system module within WCD 100. The addition of MCS 700 provides a dedicated low-traffic communication structure for carrying delay sensitive information both to and from the various distributed control components 702.
The exemplary embodiment disclosed in
As previously stated, a distributed control component 704 may exist within master control system 640. Some aspects of this component may reside in processor 300 as, for example, a running software routine that monitors and coordinates the behavior of radio activity controllers 720. Processor 300 is shown to contain priority controller 740. Priority controller 740 may be utilized to monitor active radio modems 610 in order to determine priority amongst these devices. Priority may be determined by rules and/or conditions stored in priority controller 740. Modems that become active may request priority information from priority controller 740. Further, modems that go inactive may notify priority controller 740 so that the relative priority of the remaining active radio modems 610 may be adjusted accordingly. Priority information is usually not considered delay sensitive because it is mainly updated when radio modems 610 activate/deactivate, and therefore, does not frequently change during the course of an active communication connection in radio modems 610. As a result, this information may be conveyed to radio modems 610 using common interface system 620 in at least one embodiment of the present invention.
At least one effect of a distributed control MCS 700 is seen in
MCS interface 710 may be used to (1) Exchange synchronization information, and (2) Transmit identification or prioritization information between various radio activity controllers 720. In addition, as previously stated, MCS interface 710 is used to communicate the radio parameters that are delay sensitive from a controlling point of view. MCS interface 710 can be shared between different radio modems (multipoint) but it cannot be shared with any other functionality that could limit the usage of MCS interface 710 from a latency point of view.
The control signals sent on MCS 700 that may enable/disable a radio modem 610 should be built on a modem's periodic events. Each radio activity controller 720 may obtain this information about a radio modem's periodic events from synchronizer 730. This kind of event can be, for example, frame clock event in GSM (4.615 ms), slot clock event in Bluetooth™ (625 us) or targeted beacon transmission time in WLAN (100 ms) or any multiple of these. A radio modem 610 may send its synchronization indications when (1) Any radio activity controller 720 requests it, (2) a radio modem internal time reference is changed (e.g. due to handover or handoff). The latency requirement for the synchronization signal is not critical as long as the delay is constant within a few microseconds. The fixed delays can be taken into account in the scheduling logic of radio activity controller 710.
For predictive wireless communication mediums, the radio modem activity control may be based on the knowledge of when the active radio modems 610 are about to transmit (or receive) in the specific connection mode in which the radios are currently operating. The connection mode of each radio modem 610 may be mapped to the time domain operation in their respective radio activity controller 720. As an example, for a GSM speech connection, priority controller 740 may have knowledge about all traffic patterns of GSM. This information may be transferred to the appropriate radio activity controller 720 when radio modem 610 becomes active, which may then recognize that the speech connection in GSM includes one transmission slot of length 577 μs, followed by an empty slot after which is the reception slot of 577 μs, two empty slots, monitoring (RX on), two empty slots, and then it repeats. Dual transfer mode means two transmission slots, empty slot, reception slot, empty slot, monitoring and two empty slots. When all traffic patterns that are known a priori by the radio activity controller 720, it only needs to know when the transmission slot occurs in time to gain knowledge of when the GSM radio modem is active. This information may be obtained by synchronizer 730. When the active radio modem 610 is about to transmit (or receive) it must check every time whether the modem activity control signal from its respective radio activity controller 720 permits the communication. Radio activity controller 720 is always either allowing or disabling the transmission of one full radio transmission block (e.g. GSM slot).
An alternative distributed control configuration in accordance with at least one embodiment of the present invention is disclosed in
Referring now to
An example message packet 900 is disclosed in
The modem activity control signal (e.g., packet 900) may be formulated by MRC 600 or radio activity controller 720 and transmitted on MCS 700. The signal includes activity periods for Tx and Rx separately, and the periodicity of the activity for the radio modem 610. While the native radio modem clock is the controlling time domain (never overwritten), the time reference utilized in synchronizing the activity periods to current radio modem operation may be based on one of at least two standards. In a first example, a transmission period may start after a pre-defined amount of synchronization events have occurred in radio modem 610. Alternatively, all timing for MRC 600 or between distributed control components 702 may be standardized around the system clock for WCD 100. Advantages and disadvantages exist for both solutions. Using a defined number of modem synchronization events is beneficial because then all timing is closely aligned with the radio modem clock. However, this strategy may be more complicated to implement than basing timing on the system clock. On the other hand, while timing based on the system clock may be easier to implement as a standard, conversion to modem clock timing must necessarily be implemented whenever a new activity pattern is installed in radio modem 610.
The activity period may be indicated as start and stop times. If there is only one active connection, or if there is no need to schedule the active connections, the modem activity control signal may be set always on allowing the radio modems to operate without restriction. The radio modem 610 should check whether the transmission or reception is allowed before attempting actual communication. The activity end time can be used to check the synchronization. Once the radio modem 610 has ended the transaction (slot/packet/burst), it can check whether the activity signal is still set (it should be due to margins). If this is not the case, the radio modem 610 can initiate a new synchronization with MRC 600 or with radio activity controller 720 through synchronizer 730. The same happens if a radio modem time reference or connection mode changes. A problem may occur if radio activity controller 720 runs out of the modem synchronization and starts to apply modem transmission/reception restrictions at the wrong time. Due to this, modem synchronization signals need to be updated periodically. The more active wireless connections, the more accuracy is required in synchronization information.
As a part of information acquisition services, the MCS interface 710 needs to send information to MRC 600 (or radio activity controllers 720) about periodic events of the radio modems 610. Using its MCS interface 710, the radio modem 610 may indicate a time instance of a periodic event related to its operation. In practice these instances are times when radio modem 610 is active and may be preparing to communicate or communicating. Events occurring prior to or during a transmission or reception mode may be used as a time reference (e.g., in case of GSM, the frame edge may be indicated in a modem that is not necessarily transmitting or receiving at that moment, but we know based on the frame clock that the modem is going to transmit [x]ms after the frame clock edge). Basic principle for such timing indications is that the event is periodic in nature. Every incident needs not to be indicated, but the MRC 600 may calculate intermediate incidents itself. In order for that to be possible, the controller would also require other relevant information about the event, e.g. periodicity and duration. This information may be either embedded in the indication or the controller may get it by other means. Most importantly, these timing indications need to be such that the controller can acquire a radio modem's basic periodicity and timing. The timing of an event may either be in the indication itself, or it may be implicitly defined from the indication information by MRC 600 (or radio activity controller 720).
In general terms these timing indications need to be provided on periodic events like: schedule broadcasts from a base station (typically TDMA/MAC frame boundaries) and own periodic transmission or reception periods (typically Tx/Rx slots). Those notifications need to be issued by the radio modem 610: (1) on network entry (i.e. modem acquires network synchrony), (2) on periodic event timing change e.g. due to a handoff or handover and (3) as per the policy and configuration settings in the multiradio controller (monolithic or distributed).
In at least one embodiment of the present invention, the various messages exchanged between the aforementioned communication components in WCD 100 may be used to dictate behavior on both a local (radio modem level) and global (WCD level) basis. MRC 600 or radio activity controller 720 may deliver a schedule to radio modem 610 with the intent of controlling that specific modem, however, radio modem 610 may not be compelled to conform to this schedule. The basic principle is that radio modem 610 is not only operating according to multiradio control information (e.g., operates only when MRC 600 allows) but is also performing internal scheduling and link adaptation while taking MRC scheduling information into account.
Now referring to
However, if potential conflicts are determined in step 1202, then in step 1206 a relative priority between active wireless communication mediums may be determined. As previously stated, this relative priority may be determined in view of a multitude of factors such as the state of the message queue supporting a wireless communication medium, an application utilizing a wireless communication medium, a user setting, etc. Once the priority is determined, then in step 1208 a continuous adjustment process may commence, wherein the different active radio modules 610 (or active message queues in the case of a multimode radio module 510) may be monitored in order to determine if resources need to be reallocated. For example, if a higher priority wireless communication medium requires additional resources (e.g., needs more time allocated to transmit packets through antenna 520 via PHY layer 512), then a decision may be made in step 1210 to reallocate more communication resources to the higher priority medium. In another scenario, the quality of a higher priority wireless communication medium may be reduced in order to stabilize communication for other radio modules 610 in WCD 100. This may include altering a codec for another wireless communication medium in order to reduce the quality, and likewise the burden, on radio modem 610 in step 1212 in accordance with any of the previous disclosed signal quality adjustment processes. This monitoring process may continue to balance the load on radio module 610 starting in step 1208 until the resources in WCD 100 are appropriately allocated between the radio modules 610 (e.g., the answer to step 1210 is “no”) and the transmission for all active radio modules has completed in step 1214. Then the process may restart again at 1200, or may obtain schedule information at step 1216 if MRC 600 is present.
Accordingly, it will be apparent to persons skilled in the relevant art that various changes in forma and detail can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. This the breadth and scope of the present invention should not be limited by any of the above-described exemplary embodiments, but should be defined only in accordance with the following claims and their equivalents.
