Simultaneous Multiband Operation of a MIMO Communication Device

• US 20130301631A1
• Filed: 05/08/2012
• Published: 11/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/08/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Limited (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Broadcom Corporation (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hegde, Gireesh
• Granted Patent: US 8,837,454 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/345
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/0064 with separate antennas for the more than one band H04B1/0053 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0413 MIMO systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 16/14 Spectrum sharing arrangements between different networks

Abstract

A system and method is presented to support simultaneous connections to multiple network connections. For example, a wireless radio of a communication device may be used to transmit or receive data from two network channels, each associated with a network connection. The communication device may allocate a first set of resources from the wireless radio to be used to communicate across a first network channel and allocate a second set of communication resources from the wireless radio to be used to simultaneously communicate a cross a second network channel.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

in a Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (“

MIMO”

) communication device comprising a wireless radio with multiple physical (“

PHY”

) transceiver cores;

alternately communicating in a time division manner across a first network channel and a second network channel using the multiple PHY transceiver cores together;

recognizing a transition indication to operate in a simultaneous multiband communication mode, and in response;

allocating a first PHY transceiver core from the multiple PHY transceiver cores to communicate across the first network channel;

allocating a second transceiver core from the multiple PHY transceiver cores to communicate across the second network channel; and

communicating data across the first network channel using the first PHY transceiver core while simultaneously communicating data across the second network channel using the second PHY transceiver core.

2. The method of claim 1, where the first PHY transceiver core is different from the second PHY transceiver core.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying a transition condition to transition operation to a simultaneous operation mode.

4. The method of claim 1, where the first set of PHY transceiver cores comprises a single PHY transceiver core and where the second set of PHY transceiver cores comprises a single PHY transceiver core.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a transition indication to operate in single band communication mode; and

communicating data across a network channel using the multiple PHY transceiver cores.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

replicating media access control (“

MAC”

) related architecture to support communicating data across the multiple network channels.

7. The method of claim 6, where replicating MAC related architecture comprises replicating MAC related architecture virtually.

8. A communication device comprising:

a first PHY core operable to communicate across multiple network channels;

a second PHY core operable to communicate across multiple network channels; and

a communications controller communicatively coupled to the first PHY core and the second PHY core, the communications controller operable to set a current communication mode of the first PHY core and the second PHY core by selectively changing between;

a single band communication mode in which the first PHY core and the second PHY communicate data across a network channel in time division manner; and

a multiband communication mode in which the first PHY core communicates data across a first network channel while the second PHY core communicates data across a second network channel.

9. The communication device of claim 8, where the first network channel and the second network channel are associated with different network connections.

10. The communication device of claim 9, where the first PHY core comprises a register space that tracks the current communication mode of the first PHY core.

11. The communication device of claim 8, where the second PHY core comprises a register space that tracks the current communication mode of the second PHY core.

12. The communication device of claim 8, the multiband communication mode comprises media access control (“

MAC”

) related architecture replicated to support both the first and second PHY cores.

13. The communication device of claim 12, where the MAC architecture comprises virtual MAC related architecture.

14. The communication device of claim 12, where the MAC related architecture comprises a datapath between a host processor interface and a PHY interface, a direct-memory-access (“

DMA”

) channel, an encryption engine, a time synchronization function timer, a First-In-First-Out (“

FIFO”

) queue, or any combination thereof.

15. A method comprising:

in a Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (“

MIMO”

) communication device comprising multiple physical (“

PHY”

) cores;

performing a MIMO communication across a first network channel associated with a first network connection using the multiple PHY cores;

receiving a request to communicate across a second network connection;

allocating a first subset of the multiple PHY cores to continue communication across the first network channel;

allocating a second subset of the multiple PHY cores to communicate across a second network channel associated with the second network connection, where the second subset of the multiple PHY cores does not include any PHY cores from the first subset of multiple PHY cores; and

simultaneously communicating across the first network channel using the first subset of the multiple PHY cores and communicating across the second network channel using the second subset of the multiple PHY cores.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

transmitting, after allocating a first subset of the multiple PHY cores to continue communication across the first network channel, an indication message to a device communicatively coupled to the communication device through the first network connection, where the indication message indicates the first subset of the multiple PHY cores allocated for communication across the first network connection.

17. The method of claim 15, where the first subset of the multiple PHY cores comprises a single PHY core.

18. The method of claim 15, where the second subset of the multiple PHY cores comprises a single PHY core.

20. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

receiving an indication that communication across the second network connection has completed;

allocating the second subset of the multiple PHY cores to communicate across the first network channel; and

performing a MIMO communication across the first network channel using the first subset of the multiple PHY cores and the second subset of the multiple PHY cores.

19. The method of claim, further comprising:

receiving a request to communicate across a third network connection; and

allocating a third subset of the multiple PHY cores to communicate across a third network channel associated with the third network connection, where;

the third subset of the multiple PHY cores comprises a PHY core from the first subset of the multiple PHY cores, the second subset of the multiple PHY cores, the multiple PHY cores, or any combination thereof; and

the third subset of the multiple PHY cores does not include any PHY cores from the first subset of the multiple PHY cores or the second subset of the multiple PHY cores.