Wireless communications with efficient retransmission operation

• US 20020012337A1
• Filed: 02/05/2001
• Published: 01/31/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 06/09/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Inventors: Dabak, Anand G., Schmidl, Timothy M., Nafie, Mohammed
• Granted Patent: US 6,839,325 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/349
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0026 Transmission of channel quality indication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0054 Maximum-likelihood or sequential decoding, e.g. Viterbi, Fano, ZJ algorithms
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/006 Trellis-coded modulation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1614 using bitmaps
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1664 the supervisory signal being transmitted together with payload signals; piggybacking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1819 with retransmission of additional or different redundancy
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1835 Buffer management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1874 Buffer management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/188 Time-out mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/00 Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/06 Testing, supervising or monitoring using simulated traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/04 Error control
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/06 Optimizing the usage of the radio link, e.g. header compression, information sizing , discarding information system modifying transmission characteristic according to link quality by modifying frame length H04L1/0007; dynamic adaptation of the packet size for flow control or congestion control H04L47/365
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/22 Negotiating communication rate
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 48/16 Discovering, processing access restriction or access information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/02 Selection of wireless resources by user or terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/10 Small scale networks; Flat hierarchical networks

Abstract

Automatic repeat request (ARQ) operations can be implemented in wireless communications by sending (2401) a plurality of data packets in a superpacket, and responding (2430) with an acknowledgement packet that indicates which packets of the superpacket require retransmission.

Claims

1. A method of performing wireless packet communications between wireless packet communication transceivers, comprising:

a first wireless packet communication transceiver transmitting via a wireless communication link to a second wireless packet communication transceiver a superpacket including a plurality of packets; and

in response to transmission of the superpacket, the second transceiver transmitting to the first transceiver via the wireless communication link an acknowledgement packet having a payload that includes a plurality of bits which respectively correspond to the packets of said superpacket and whose bit values indicate whether retransmission of the respectively corresponding packets is required.

2. The method of claim 1, including the first transceiver determining from the payload of the acknowledgement packet whether any packets of the superpacket are to be retransmitted, and the first transceiver retransmitting in another superpacket any packets that are determined from the acknowledgement packet to require retransmission.

3. The method of claim 2, including, in response to transmission of said another superpacket, the second transceiver transmitting to the first transceiver via the wireless communication link another acknowledgement packet having a payload that includes a plurality of bits which respectively correspond to the packets of said another superpacket and whose bit values indicate whether retransmission of the respectively corresponding packets is required.

4. The method of claim 1, including the second transceiver using an error detection procedure for detecting whether retransmission of any packets of the superpacket is required.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein said using step includes using a cyclic redundancy code for determining whether retransmission of any packets of the superpacket is required.

6. The method of claim 1, including the first transceiver transmitting to the second transceiver via the wireless communication link a packet requesting transmission of the acknowledgment packet by the second transceiver if the first transceiver determines that the acknowledgment packet has not been received correctly and that a time period for receiving the acknowledgment packet has not expired.

7. The method of claim 6, including the first transceiver repeating said step of transmitting the packet requesting transmission of the acknowledgment packet until an occurrence of one of a correct receipt of the acknowledgement packet and an expiration of the time period.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said packets of said superpacket include one of audio information, video information and computer graphics information.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein said payload bits are repetition coded in said acknowledgement packet.

10. A wireless packet communication apparatus, comprising:

an input for receiving from another wireless packet communication apparatus via a wireless communication link a superpacket including a plurality of packets;

an acknowledgment generator coupled to said input and responsive to said superpacket for producing an acknowledgment packet having a payload that includes a plurality of bits which respectively correspond to the packets of said superpacket and whose bit values indicate whether retransmission of the respectively corresponding packets is required; and

an output coupled to said acknowledgment generator for outputting said acknowledgment packet for transmission to said another wireless packet communication apparatus via the wireless communication link.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, including an error detector coupled to said input for determining whether any of the packets of said superpacket have been received incorrectly, said error detector coupled to said acknowledgment generator for providing thereto information indicative of any packets of said superpacket that have been received incorrectly.

12. The apparatus of claim 11, including a register coupled between said error detector and said acknowledgment generator for receiving said information from said error detector and providing said information to said acknowledgment generator.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein said acknowledgment generator is operable for inserting said information received from said register into said payload of said acknowledgment packet.

14. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein said packets of said superpacket include one of audio information, video information and computer graphics information.

15. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein said payload bits are repetition coded in said acknowledgement packet.

16. A wireless packet communication apparatus, comprising:

an output for providing for transmission to another wireless packet communication apparatus via a wireless communication link a superpacket including a plurality of packets;

an input for receiving from said another apparatus via the wireless communication link an acknowledgment packet having a payload that includes a plurality of bits which respectively correspond to the packets of said superpacket and whose bit values indicate whether retransmission of the respectively corresponding packets is required; and

an acknowledgment receiver coupled to said input and responsive to the payload of said acknowledgment packet for selecting from said previously transmitted superpacket any packets which the payload of said acknowledgment packet indicates are to be retransmitted.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein said packets of said superpacket include one of audio information, video information and computer graphics information.

18. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein said payload bits are repetition coded in said acknowledgement packet.