Apparatus,systems and methods adapted for opportunistic forwarding of uplink short messages in wireless metropolitan area networks

• US 20100098037A1
• Filed: 10/20/2008
• Published: 04/22/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Yin, Hujun, Lin, Xintian E., Li, Qinghua, Oyman, Ozgur
• Granted Patent: US 8,134,912 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/338
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1664 the supervisory signal being transmitted together with payload signals; piggybacking
• 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 88/04 adapted for relaying to or from another terminal or user

Abstract

An embodiment of the present invention provides an apparatus, comprising a subscriber station (SS) operable to communicate with a base station (BS) and at least one additional subscriber station (SS) in a wireless metropolitan area network, wherein the at least one additional SS attempts to overhear a first message from the SS and piggy back a second message for the overheard message from the SS'"'"'s uplink data to the BS with its uplink data.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising:

a subscriber station (SS) operable to communicate with a base station (BS) and at least one additional subscriber station (SS) in a wireless metropolitan area network, wherein said at least one additional SS attempts to overhear a first message from said SS and piggy back a second message for the overheard message from said SS'"'"'s uplink data to said BS with its uplink data.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said first message is a short message, a band bandwidth allocation request, or service request, or a CDMA code.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said second message is a CDMA code index, or a short message.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said second message and said uplink data are encoded in a larger channel code block.

5. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein said SS uses an OFDMA mode and in an uplink subframe, said BS allocates subchannels to scheduled subscribers for them to send their data respectively and said apparatus allocates some subchannels in said uplink subframe for direct transmission of unscheduled short messages and said short messages are directly sent to the open subchannels by subscribers who do not have allocated uplink resource;

and

said BS and a set of distributed overhearing stations jointly receive sent short messages and have already been allocated subchannels in the same subframe.

6. The apparatus of claim 5, wherein said subscribers provide channel training symbols only for the demodulation of an open subchannel and said open subchannel is randomly or selectively selected by each subscriber.

7. The apparatus of claim 5, wherein said short message is a beamforming matrix feedback due to sudden channel variation.

8. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein said open subchannels are allocated at the beginning of said uplink subframe to increase the number of potential overhearing stations and overheard messages are piggybacked by overhearing stations with their data on allocated subchannels later in the same uplink subframe.

9. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein said BS broadcasts an acknowledgement of each short message received by itself, or a connection ID (CID) of said short message the BS directly received, or said BS broadcasts an open subchannel index where said short message is received correctly and wherein an overhearing station may decide whether to piggyback according to said BS'"'"'s broadcast.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein if too many overhearing stations forward a message for the same subscriber station, said BS may ask some of said overhearing stations to stop forwarding for said subscriber station.

11. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein said short messages are categorized into delay sensitive and delay insensitive classes and said BS reserves time for the decoding;

and

wherein open subchannels for delay sensitive short messages are allocated at the beginning of an uplink subframe so that decoding time for the overhearing station can be maximized, and between the open subchannels for said delay sensitive messages and prescheduled subchannels for the overhearing stations, open subchannels for delay insensitive messages and prescheduled subchannels for nonoverhearing stations can be allocated.

12. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein said overhearing stations use a gap to decode the overheard delay sensitive message first and then the delay insensitive one, and if the decoding of the delay sensitive message is successful, the decoded message is squeezed into the prescheduled subchannel of the overhearing station and sent with the overhearer'"'"'s uplink data;

and

wherein overhearing stations continue to decode said delay insensitive messages in the current uplink subframe and decide whether to continue to decode and forward the message based on the broadcasted acknowledgements of open subchannels in the next downlink subframe.

13. A method, comprising:

communicating by a subscriber station (SS) with a base station (BS) and at least one additional subscriber station (SS) in a wireless metropolitan area network and attempting by said at least one additional (SS) to overhear a first message from said subscriber station (SS) and piggy back a second message for the overheard message from said SS'"'"'s uplink data to said BS with its uplink data.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein said second SS'"'"'s uplink data is a band bandwidth allocation request or service request.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein said second SS'"'"'s uplink data is a short message.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising using, by said second SS, an OFDMA mode and in an uplink subframe, said BS allocates subchannels to scheduled subscribers for them to send their data respectively and said apparatus allocates some subchannels in said uplink subframe for direct transmission of unscheduled short messages and said short messages are directly sent to the open subchannels by subscribers who do not have allocated uplink resource;

and

said BS and a set of distributed overhearing stations jointly receive sent short messages and have already been allocated subchannels in the same subframe.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising providing by said subscribers channel training symbols only for the demodulation of an open subchannel and said open subchannel is randomly selected by each subscriber.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein said short message is a beamforming matrix feedback due to sudden channel variation.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising allocating said open subchannels at the beginning of said uplink subframe to increase the number of potential overhearing stations and overheard messages are piggybacked by overhearing stations with their data on allocated subchannels later in the same uplink subframe.

20. The method of claim 15, further comprising broadcasting by said BS an acknowledgement of each short message received by itself and a connection ID (CID) of said short message the BS directly received, or broadcasting by said BS an open subchannel index where said short message is received correctly and wherein an overhearing station may decide whether to piggyback according to said BS'"'"'s broadcast.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising asking some of said overhearing stations by said BS to stop forwarding for said subscriber station if too many overhearing stations forward a message for the same subscriber station.

22. The method of claim 15, further comprising categorizing said short messages into delay sensitive and delay insensitive classes and reserving by said BS time for the decoding;

and

wherein open subchannels for delay sensitive short messages are allocated at the beginning of an uplink subframe so that decoding time for the overhearing station can be maximized, and between the open subchannels for said delay sensitive messages and prescheduled subchannels for the overhearing stations, open subchannels for delay insensitive messages and prescheduled subchannels for nonoverhearing stations can be allocated.

23. The method of claim 22, further comprising using a gap by said overhearing stations to decode the overheard delay sensitive message first and then the delay insensitive one, and if the decoding of the delay sensitive message is successful, the decoded message is squeezed into the prescheduled subchannel of the overhearing station and sent with the overhearer'"'"'s uplink data;

and

wherein overhearing stations continue to decode said delay insensitive messages in the current uplink subframe and decide whether to continue to decode and forward the message based on the broadcasted acknowledgements of open subchannels in the next downlink subframe.