Patent Application
20150131752
The present invention relates generally to the field of Wi-Fi-RDN stations and in particular to such stations comprising multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) receiving systems using beamforming.
Prior to setting forth a short discussion of the related art, it may be helpful to set forth definitions of certain terms that will be used hereinafter. Many of these terms are defined in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 specification but it should be appreciated that the invention is not limited to systems and methods complying with the IEEE 802.11 specification.
The term “Wi-Fi” is used to refer to technology that allows communication devices to interact wirelessly. The wireless communication may use microwaves, e.g. in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wavebands.
The term “AP” is an acronym for Access Point and is used herein to define a wireless fidelity “Wi-Fi” or other wireless station that is an attachment point for user equipment “UE” to a wireless communications network.
The term “UE” is an acronym for User Equipment(s) and is an example of a station, e.g. Wi-Fi station (STA) that may attach to an AP.
The term “station” or STA is a term used for any participant on the network, for example as used in the 802.11 specification. Both UEs and APs are considered in this context to be examples of stations. In the following the abbreviation STA is used for stations whose packets are detected by a Wi-Fi RDN station implementing embodiments of the invention.
The specific Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism used in the 802.11 Media Access Control (MAC) is referred to as the distributed coordination function (DCF). A station that wishes to transmit first performs a clear channel assessment (CCA) by sensing the medium for a fixed duration, the DCF inter-frame space (DIFS).
SIFS, Short Inter Frame Space, as defined in the 802.11 specifications is period between reception of the data frame and transmission of the ACK. SIFS is shorter than DIFS.
The term Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) as used herein refers to the CCA function as defined in the 802.11 specifications.
The term Base Band Processor (BBP) as used herein refers to encoding data and decoding data so as to create the required Wi-Fi baseband signal for all versions of the 802.11 protocol(s).
The term Enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is an extension of the basic DCF introduced in the 802.11e amendment to support prioritized quality of service (QoS). The EDCA mechanism defines four access categories (ACs).
The term AC is an acronym for Access category as used herein refers to AC AC as defined in the 802.11 specifications. Each AC has a specific values of access parameters, e.g., contention window maximum or minimum CWmin or CWmax, Arbitration Inter-Frame Space Number AIFSN and TXOP (transmit opportunity) limit.
The term CW is an acronym for contention window as defined in the 802.11 specifications. The random backoff count (number of slots needed to wait before retransmission) is selected from the range [0, CW], where CW is typically equal to CWmin.
The term transmit opportunity (TXOP) is a bounded period during which a station may transfer data of particular traffic as defined in the 802.11 specifications.
The term power-save multi-poll (PSMP) is a scheduling technique introduced in 802.11n to optimize channel access for devices that receive and transmit small amounts of data periodically and would like their communications interface to remain inactive most of the time to conserve power, i.e. when they are not actively transmitting or receiving frames.
The term “MIMO” is an acronym for multiple input multiple output and as used herein, is defined as the use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve communication performance. MIMO offers significant increases in data throughput and link range without additional bandwidth or increased transmit power. It achieves this goal by spreading the transmit power over the antennas to achieve spatial multiplexing that improves the spectral efficiency (more bits per second per Hz of bandwidth) or to achieve a diversity gain that improves the link reliability (reduced fading), or increased antenna directivity.
“Channel estimation” is used herein to refer to estimation of channel state information which describes properties of a communication link such as signal to noise ratio “SNR” and signal to interference plus noise ratio “SINR”. Channel estimation may be performed by user equipment or APs as well as other components operating in a communications system.
The term “beamforming” sometimes referred to as “spatial filtering” as used herein, is a signal processing technique used in antenna arrays for directional signal transmission or reception. This is achieved by combining elements in the array in such a way that signals at particular angles experience constructive interference while others experience destructive interference. Beamforming can be used at both the transmitting and receiving ends in order to achieve spatial selectivity.
The term “beamformer” as used herein refers to RF circuitry that implements beamforming and usually includes a combiner and may further include switches, controllable phase shifters, and in some cases amplifiers. At least one of the combiners has antenna distinguishing circuitry, wherein the antenna distinguishing circuitry is configured to distinguish between any one of the signals feeding the combiner. The beamformer is controlled by a processor, e.g. part of UE baseband resources, which uses metrics, e.g. channel estimation of each antenna (also known as a “Look-Thru” process), to calculate and set up beamformer weights, or uses a weights search procedure by tuning one antenna of the beamformer based on SINR or data rate (e.g. using a search algorithm). The weights determine the relative amounts of signals from each antenna that are used in the combiner.
The term “Receiving Radio Distribution Network” or “Rx RDN” or simply “RDN” as used herein is defined as a group of beamformers as set forth above.
A Wi-Fi RDN station equipped with one receive antenna or more may be augmented by replacing the connection between a given receiver input and its antenna with a Radio-Distribution-Network (RDN) that combines several additional antennas together and feeds the RF combined signal to the radio input in such a way that increases directivity and equivalent antenna gain for one or all of the legacy radios in the station.
A Wi-Fi RDN station performs from time to time a look through process (Look-Thru) to obtain channel estimation of a single antenna using antenna distinguishing circuitry configured to selectively disconnect and terminate all but one of the antennas so that only one signal coming from the antennas is conveyed to the combiner's output, at a time; such a Look-Thru can be performed every few packets.
SUMMARY While using a single antenna for channel estimation (Look-Thru), the signal plus interference to noise ratio (SINR) is lower than the one enjoyed while all antennas participate in beamforming, and if this Look-Thru is performed while receiving data from a serving AP, the average gain is a combination of no gain packets during Look-Thru (because beamforming cannot be done during Look-Thru) and high gain packets when antennas are combined in a beamformer.
To mitigate such the partial loss of gain which occurs while channel estimation is being carried out, embodiments of the invention may comprise a method in which channel estimation or Look-Thru is performed as much as possible while the serving AP communicates with one or more other STAs.
According to embodiments of the invention, a Wi-Fi radio distribution network (RDN) station is provided for use in a wireless communications network comprising a plurality of wireless stations. The Wi-Fi RDN station may comprise: a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) receiving system configured to operate in accordance with a channel estimation MIMO receiving scheme; and a RDN connected to the MIMO receiving system. The RDN may comprise at least one beamformer arranged to be fed by two or more antennas, wherein each of the beamformers includes a combiner configured to combine signals coming from a plurality of antennas associated with the respective beamformer into a single signal. The MIMO receiving system is configured to perform one or both of channel estimation using a single antenna or beamforming. Both said channel estimation and said beamforming may be based on one or more packets addressed to one or more wireless stations in the communications network other than the Wi-Fi RDN station.
According to other embodiments of the invention a method of performing channel estimation at a first station being served by an access point “AP” in a wireless communications system may comprise: detecting transmission of a packet; determining that the packet was transmitted from or sent to a station other than said first station being served by said AP; determining that the next packet to be transmitted by the AP will be for said station other than said first station; performing channel estimation using a single antenna while the AP is transmitting to said other station.
According to other embodiments of the invention a method of operating a Wi-Fi radio distribution network (RDN) station for use in a wireless communications network comprising a plurality of wireless stations, the Wi-Fi RDN station may comprise: performing one or both of channel estimation using a single antenna or beamforming, based on one or more packets addressed to one or more wireless stations in the communications network other than the Wi-Fi RDN station.
In order to use another STA's service, the signal used for Look-Thru must be un-precoded, so embodiments of the invention are based on methods where the legacy long term training field, (L-LTF) is used.
A known problem with using the L-LTF for channel estimation, is that the MAC destination address or source address is not known until the data frame is received. In the case of the L-LTF it is well after the L-LTF is received. So channel estimation may be done on the L-LFT and then the data frame is decoded and a decision is made to keep or discard the value depending on whether the packet is addressed to the station that decoded it.
Wi-Fi is a time division duplex system (TDD), where the transmitting and receiving functions use the same channel, implemented with a limited amount of frequency resources that use techniques of collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) to allow multiple user equipment's (UEs) to share the same channel.
Embodiments of the invention provide a station with a way to predict when its serving AP will transmit a packet to other STAs and set up RDN for channel estimation of an antenna accordingly. This may be based on Wi-Fi CSMA/CA protocol. For example according to embodiments of the invention it is possible to estimate when CTS, Data and acknowledgement (ACK) packets will start after the RTS and do channel estimation on the packet from the AP addressed to another STA.
When other STA's traffic becomes low and sparse, the station will need from time to time to perform look through on its own received packets. The criterion for determining when this should take place may be the ratio between air time or number of other STAs' packets and air time or number of its own packets over a period (e.g. 100 ms or few seconds).
When no other STAs are operating on the network (e.g. at home) or other STAs' traffic becomes low, the station may revert to a weights search procedure controlled by a search algorithm to determine the beamformer weights, or channel estimation using a single antenna, both of which may be based on packets addressed to the station.
For a better understanding of the invention, and in order to show how it may be implemented, references are made, purely by way of example, to the accompanying drawings in which like numerals designate corresponding elements or sections.
a shows an example of RTS-CTS timeline according to embodiments of the invention;
b illustrates a Block Ack message sequence chart according to embodiments of the invention;
The drawings together with the following detailed description are designed make the embodiments of the invention apparent to those skilled in the art.
It is stressed that the particulars shown are for the purpose of example and solely for discussing the preferred embodiments of the present invention, and are presented in the cause of providing what is believed to be the most useful and readily understood description of the principles and conceptual aspects of the invention. In this regard, no attempt is made to show structural details of the invention in more detail than is necessary for a fundamental understanding of the invention. The description taken with the drawings makes apparent to those skilled in the art how the several forms of the invention may be embodied in practice.
The invention is not limited in its application to the details of construction and the arrangement of the components set forth in the following descriptions or illustrated in the drawings. The invention is applicable to other embodiments and may be practiced or carried out in various ways. Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein is for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting. In the description that follows, a Wi-Fi RDN station with N radios and M antennas, where wherein M is greater than N, is configured to perform channel estimation on each antenna of N beamformers according to Wi-Fi protocol.
As shown above, system 100 includes one beamformer with antenna distinguishing circuitry 140 for each group of antennas 10-1 to 10-Ki that is being combined into a single radio circuit 12i. In operation, each beamformer 140 is configured to distinguish between (e.g., to isolate individual contributions of) the signals coming from or received from the antennas 10 which feed (e.g. send signals to) the respective radio circuits 12. As will be explained below, there are many methods that may be used in order to implement the signal distinguishing operation which is may be used for derivation of phase and/or amplitude of each signal. These distinguishing schemes may further be controlled via control module 130. As will be described below the beamformer with antenna distinguishing circuitry 140 may include radio frequency (RF) elements such as phase shifters, switches, terminators, and amplifiers.
Wi-Fi is a time division duplex system (TDD), where the transmitting and receiving functions use the same channel, implemented with a limited amount of frequency resources that use techniques of collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) to allow multiple user UEs to share the same channel. The Wi-Fi 802.11 PHY frame structure and MAC layer will be illustrated by
802.11 CCA uses both physical and virtual carrier sense functions to determine the state of the medium. The physical carrier sense resides in the PHY and uses energy detect and preamble detect with frame length deferral to determine when the medium is busy. The virtual carrier sense resides in the MAC and uses reservation information carried in the Duration field of the MAC headers announcing impeding use of the medium.
The virtual carrier sense mechanism is called the network allocation vector (NAV) as shown in
To protect a station's transmission/reception from collision with hidden nodes, a station may begin a sequence with an RTS/CTS exchange as illustrated in
An RTS/CTS exchange at the beginning of a TXOP sets the NAV of stations in the vicinity of both the initiator and recipient. The RTS and CTS frames are transmitted at a basic rate and are thus widely received. The robust modulation used and the fact that the widely received frames are transmitted from both ends of the link makes the RTS/CTS exchange the most robust mechanism for establishing protection with hidden nodes and mix of legacy stations.
The Block ACK policy feature, included in the ratified IEEE 802.11e amendment, improves system throughput by reducing the amount of overhead required by a station to acknowledge a burst of received traffic. The Block ACK mechanism is initialized by an exchange of Add Block Acknowledgment (ADDBA) Request/Response frames. After initialization, blocks of QoS data frames can be transmitted from the originator to the recipient.
According to embodiments of the invention a station may be provided with a way to predict when its serving AP will transmit a packet to other STAs. This may be based on Wi-Fi CSMA/CA protocol. The station may then set up its RDN, e.g. for channel estimation of an antenna, accordingly. According to embodiments of the invention, upon RTS/CTS/DATA/ACK exchange between the serving AP, e.g. Node B in
According to embodiments of the invention a Wi-Fi RDN station may perform one or both of channel estimation or beamforming based on one or more packets addressed to one or more other stations communicating with the station's AP. The decision as to whether channel estimation or beamforming are to be performed may depend, for example, on whether the AP is about to send a new packet to another channel. If it is, channel estimation may be performed using this new packet. If it is not, e.g. the next packet is bound for the Wi-Fi RDN station, and if the level of traffic to other stations is high, previous channel estimations based on packets bound for other stations may be used for beamforming to receive the next packet. Thus both the beamforming and the channel estimation are based on one or more packets addressed to stations other than the Wi-Fi RDN station.
Therefore according to embodiments of the invention a Wi-Fi RDN station may be configured to predict when an AP is about to transmit a packet to an AP. The operations of
If the result of the determination at operation 703 is negative, the flow reverts to operation 701.
As another part of the prediction process the station may identify packets for which the TA is the address of the serving AP. Thus according to embodiments of the invention, if the result of the determination at operation 702 is negative, because the RA in the detected packet is not set to the serving AP, the flow continues to operation 705 where the received packet's TA is checked to determine whether it is set to the serving AP. It will be appreciated that the flows commencing with operations 702 and 705 may be performed in parallel or in the opposite order with the TA being checked before the RA. If the result of the operation 705 is negative the flow reverts to operation 701. If the result of operation 705 is positive and the TA is that of the serving AP, the subsequent operations may depend on the type of frame that has been detected. According to embodiments of the invention, the subsequent operations are performed to determine which of any identified packets addressed to the serving AP precede a transmission from the serving AP to a station other that the Wi-Fi RDN station. Thus subsequent operations may determine whether the frame is RTS, PSMP or ADDBA. These may be done in any order or in parallel. One possible running order is described below.
The packet may be further checked to determine whether it is an RTS at operation 706. If the result of the determination at operation 706 is positive and the packet is an RTS frame from the serving AP, the flow proceeds to operation 709. Here, the station waits for the duration of a SIFS and CTS. Then at operation 710 it is predicted that the serving AP will send a data packet if the packet is determined to be RTS from serving AP.
If the determination at operation 706 is negative the flow continues to operation 707 where it is determined whether the packet is a PSMP frame. PSMP optimizes for power consumption by providing the downlink and uplink schedule at the start of a PSMP phase so that individual stations can shut down their receivers until needed in the downlink phase and transmit when scheduled during the uplink phase with performing CCA. The station predicts that the serving AP will send next packets based on scheduling in PSMP at operation 708 if the packet is determined at operation 707 to be a PSMP frame containing the schedule for the subsequent downlink and uplink transmissions from the serving AP.
If the result of the determination at operation 707 is negative, the flow proceeds to operation 711. Here it is determined whether the received frame is an ADD Block Acknowledge Request or Response frame. If the result of the determination is positive, the flow proceeds to operation 712. At operation 712, the station predicts that the serving AP will send next packets based on the Block Ack sequence if the received frame was determined to be an ADD Block Acknowledge Request or Response frame at operation 711. If the result of the determination at operation 711 is negative, the flow reverts to operation 701.
Thus, operations 704, 712, 708 and 710 all predict from previous determinations that the serving AP is about to send a packet to another STA. The flow of
If the determination at operation 802 is positive and it is predicted in operation 802 that the next packet from the serving AP will be addressed to another STA, the station may adopt a first receiving mode in which it performs channel estimation using a single antenna (Look-Thru) on packets addressed to the other STA at operation 804. According to embodiments of the invention, each channel estimation operation may require only one packet.
If the determination at operation 802 is negative, for example the next packet is not addressed to another STA but is addressed to the Wi-Fi RDN station implementing the flow of
If it is determined at operation 803 that traffic of other STAs is low, for example it is below a predetermined threshold, the station may perform channel estimation and/or beamforming based on packets addressed to the station. There are a number of ways this can be done. Two possibilities are illustrated in operation 805. One is for the station to use beamforming antennas with a weights search procedure controlled by a search algorithm. In one example of such a procedure, beamforming is performed using a subset of the antennas selected according to predetermined performance criteria. This may avoid the need for channel estimation. Another possibility is for the station to perform channel estimation, e.g. using a single antenna, on packets addressed to the station. This is preferably done using a low duty cycle to minimize the reduction in gain resulting from the effective down time during channel estimation. For example the duty cycle may use no more than 25% of packets for channel estimation, with the other at least 75% being used for beamforming.
According to some embodiments of the present invention, in case internal noise dominates and the level or SNR of the respective signal received during Look-Thru is below a specific threshold, the RDN control module may apply the discrete level “off” to a specific signal coming from the antennas. The station may selectively use a selection of the beamforming antennas associated with a beamformer based on the level or SNR of the respective signal from the antennas with reference to a specific threshold.
The methods described herein are applicable to all versions of the 802.11 protocol, specifically 802.11a, b, g, n and ac.
As will be appreciated by someone skilled in the art, aspects of the present invention may be embodied as a system, method or an apparatus. Accordingly, aspects of the present invention may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or “system.” Thus embodiments of the invention provide one or more tangible or intangible computer readable media comprising instructions which when implemented in a WiFi RDN station cause the station to implement the operations described in the foregoing.
The aforementioned block diagrams illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems and methods according to various embodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portion of code, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). It should also be noted that, in some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.
In the above description, an embodiment is an example or implementation of the inventions. The various appearances of “one embodiment,” “an embodiment” or “some embodiments” do not necessarily all refer to the same embodiments.
Although various features of the invention may be described in the context of a single embodiment, the features may also be provided separately or in any suitable combination. Conversely, although the invention may be described herein in the context of separate embodiments for clarity, the invention may also be implemented in a single embodiment.
Reference in the specification to “some embodiments”, “an embodiment”, “one embodiment” or “other embodiments” means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiments is included in at least some embodiments, but not necessarily all embodiments, of the inventions.
It is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein is not to be construed as limiting and are for descriptive purpose only.
The principles and uses of the teachings of the present invention may be better understood with reference to the accompanying description, figures and examples. It is to be understood that the details set forth herein do not construe a limitation to an application of the invention. Furthermore, it is to be understood that the invention can be carried out or practiced in various ways and that the invention can be implemented in embodiments other than the ones outlined in the description above.
It is to be understood that the terms “including”, “comprising”, “consisting” and grammatical variants thereof do not preclude the addition of one or more components, features, steps, or integers or groups thereof and that the terms are to be construed as specifying components, features, steps or integers. If the specification or claims refer to “an additional” element, that does not preclude there being more than one of the additional element. It is to be understood that where the claims or specification refer to “a” or “an” element, such reference is not be construed that there is only one of that element.
It is to be understood that where the specification states that a component, feature, structure, or characteristic “may”, “might”, “can” or “could” be included, that particular component, feature, structure, or characteristic is not required to be included.
Where applicable, although state diagrams, flow diagrams or both may be used to describe embodiments, the invention is not limited to those diagrams or to the corresponding descriptions. For example, flow need not move through each illustrated box or state, or in exactly the same order as illustrated and described.
Methods of the present invention may be implemented by performing or completing manually, automatically, or a combination thereof, selected steps or tasks. The term “method” may refer to manners, means, techniques and procedures for accomplishing a given task including, but not limited to, those manners, means, techniques and procedures either known to, or readily developed from known manners, means, techniques and procedures by practitioners of the art to which the invention belongs.
The descriptions, examples, methods and materials presented in the claims and the specification are not to be construed as limiting but rather as illustrative only. Meanings of technical and scientific terms used herein are to be commonly understood as by one of ordinary skill in the art to which the invention belongs, unless otherwise defined.
The present invention may be implemented in the testing or practice with methods and materials equivalent or similar to those described herein. While the invention has been described with respect to a limited number of embodiments, these should not be construed as limitations on the scope of the invention, but rather as exemplifications of some of the preferred embodiments. Other possible variations, modifications, and applications are also within the scope of the invention. Accordingly, the scope of the invention should not be limited by what has thus far been described, but by the appended claims and their legal equivalents.
This application claims the benefit of prior U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61/903,178 filed Nov. 12, 2013, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61903178 | Nov 2013 | US |
