Communication method for wireless LANS

• US 20060092871A1
• Filed: 08/11/2005
• Published: 05/04/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 11/01/2004
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Inventors: Tandai, Tomoya, Takagi, Masahiro, Adachi, Tomoko, Utsunomiya, Yoriko, Nishibayashi, Yasuyuki, Nakajima, Tetsu
• Application Number:
  US11/201,258
• Publication Number:
  US 20060092871A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/328
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1614 using bitmaps
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1671 the supervisory signal being transmitted together with control information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1685 the supervisory signal being transmitted in response to a specific request, e.g. to a polling signal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1835 Buffer management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/188 Time-out mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/23 in the downlink direction of a wireless link, i.e. towards a terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 74/0866 using a dedicated channel for access

Abstract

A physical frame is generated and transmitted to a destination terminal. In this physical frame, one of a data frame, an acknowledgement frame, and an acknowledgement request frame, and a transmission permission frame which is used in place of a normal Ack frame associated with a delayed Block Ack, and permits the destination terminal to perform piggyback transmission, are aggregated.

Claims

1. A communication method comprising:

generating a physical frame in which;

one of a data frame, an acknowledgement frame, and an acknowledgement request frame, and a transmission permission frame which is used in place of a normal Ack frame associated with a delayed Block Ack, and permits a destination terminal to perform piggyback transmission, are aggregated; and

transmitting the physical frame to the destination terminal.

6. A method according to claim 1, wherein the piggyback transmission comprises transmitting, from the destination terminal to a transmission source, a physical frame in which an acknowledgement frame and at least one MAC frame are aggregated.

7. A method according to claim 1, further comprising determining, in accordance with a remaining period of a channel use permission period, whether or not to aggregate the transmission permission frame in the physical frame.

8. A method according to claim 1, further comprising:

determining, after a lapse of a minimum frame time since transmission of the physical frame, whether or not an acknowledgement frame is contained in a physical frame returned from the destination terminal; and

requesting a retransmission of the acknowledgement frame when the acknowledgement frame is not contained.

9. A method according to claim 1, wherein the presence/absence of the acknowledgement frame is determined on the basis of error detection at a specific frame position in a physical frame returned from the destination terminal.

2. A communication method comprising:

receiving a physical frame in which;

one of a data frame, an acknowledgement frame, an acknowledgement request frame, and a transmission permission frame which is used in place of a normal Ack frame associated with a delayed Block Ack, and permits a destination terminal to perform piggyback transmission, are aggregated; and

detecting notification of the normal Ack associated with the delayed Block Ack on the basis of the transmission permission frame.

3. A communication method comprising:

generating a physical frame in which a transmission permission frame for permitting piggyback transmission and data frames for a plurality of destination terminals are aggregated; and

transmitting the physical frame to said plurality of destination terminals,

wherein after data in an opposite direction is received from the destination terminal, a confirmation notification indicating that transmission of a partial response is performed by a delayed type is replaced with a transmission permission frame to the destination terminal.

4. A communication method comprising:

receiving a physical frame in which a transmission permission frame for permitting piggyback transmission and data frames for a plurality of destination terminals are aggregated;

transmitting a data frame to a transmission source terminal of the physical frame upon piggybacking the data frame on a partial response frame; and

transmitting a plurality of MAC frames to a plurality of destination terminals again to a plurality of destination terminals upon aggregating the MAC frames within a continuous transmission permission period currently held by a terminal which has transmitted a physical frame to said plurality of destination terminals,

wherein destination information contained in plural destination control information contained in the physical frame is checked, and if an address of a receiving terminal of the physical frame is not contained, it is determined that application of a delayed policy to a partial response to a piggybacked and transmitted data frame has failed.

5. A communication method comprising:

receiving a physical frame in which MAC frames which are addressed to a plurality of destination terminals and have a plurality of priorities are aggregated;

storing MAC frames of a received physical frame in a reception buffer prepared for each priority; and

managing, on a premise that a control information frame is aggregated in a head portion of a MAC frame for each destination and each priority, the reception buffer by using sequence number information of a data frame following the control frame if an error calculation result on the control frame is correct, and the data frame has been successfully received.