System and related methods for clustering multi-point communication targets

• US 7,299,073 B2
• Filed: 10/19/2005
• Issued: 11/20/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/28/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: ArrayComm LLC (Ygomi LLC)
• Inventors: Wilson, Sarah Kate, Chauvin, Todd Henry, Kerr, Adam Bruce, Brunner, Christopher, Trott, Mitchell D., Kapasi, Athanasios A., Lindskog, Erik David
• Primary Examiner(s): Trinh, Sonny
• Application Number:
  US11/254,599
• Publication Number:
  US 20060040672A1
• Time in Patent Office: 762 Days
• Field of Search: 455/452.1, 455/453, 455/562.1, 455445-447, 455449-450, 455/226.1, 455/226.2, 455/67.11, 455/424, 455/63.1, 455/501, 455/570, 455/114.2, 455/452.2
• US Class Current: 455/562.1
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 16/28 using beam steering
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/00 Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/08 User group management

Abstract

A system and related methods for clustering multi-point communication targets is presented. According to one aspect of the invention, a method comprising measuring one or more performance characteristics associated for each of at least a subset of a plurality of targets in a wireless communication system, and selectively building one or more clusters, each cluster including one or more target(s) and sharing a wireless communication channel, based at least in part on the performance characteristics.

Claims

1. A method for communicating from a communication station of a wireless system to multiple communication targets of the wireless system, comprising:

initializing multiple weight sets to apply to a signal to be exchanged between an antenna array of the communication station and the communication targets;

measuring a performance characteristic of multiple communication targets for each weight set, the performance characteristic indicating a quality of the signal at each communication target for each weight set;

determining which weight set provides a highest quality performance characteristic for each communication target; and

selectively building one or more clusters to share a common wireless communication channel based at least in part on similarities of the performance characteristics for each communication target, each cluster having one or more communication targets.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the performance characteristic includes at least one of a signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR), a signal to noise ratio (SNR), a received signal strength indication (RSSI), a bit-error rate (BER), or a frame-error rate (FER).

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each cluster includes up to M targets and each communication channel accommodates up to N targets, and wherein building one or more clusters further comprises:

assigning a subset of up to N targets to share a first communication channel resource; and

selectively assigning an additional subset of up to N of a remaining (M−

N) targets to share an additional communication channel resource within the cluster.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein measuring the performance characteristic comprises:

estimating the performance characteristic for each target for each weight set.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein determining which weight set provides the highest quality performance characteristic for each communication target further comprises:

identifying a target within a cluster with the best performance characteristic estimate; and

generating a new weight set for the cluster based at least in part on the performance characteristic of the identified target.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

repeating the identifying a target and generating a new weight set for each cluster;

estimating the performance characteristic for each target within each cluster using the generated new weights; and

selectively regrouping targets to build one or more clusters according to the weight set that provides the best performance characteristic for each of the targets.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

selectively monitoring one or more targets changing performance characteristics; and

iteratively repeating the identifying, generating, estimating, and regrouping until no significant improvement in the estimated performance characteristics of the one or more targets is identified.

8. An article of manufacture comprising a storage medium having content which, when executed, causes a device to perform operations including:

initializing multiple weight sets to apply to a signal to be exchanged between an antenna array of a communication station and multiple communication targets;

measuring a performance characteristic of multiple communication targets for each weight set, the performance characteristic indicating a quality of the signal at each communication target for each weight set;

determining which weight set provides a highest quality performance characteristic for each communication target; and

selectively building one or more clusters to share a common wireless communication channel based at least in part on similarities of the performance characteristics for each communication target, each cluster having one or more communication targets.

9. A communication station comprising:

an antenna array having multiple antenna elements with which to communicate with multiple communication targets in a wireless communication system;

a processor coupled with the antenna array to generate multiple weight vectors with which to process one or more signals for transmission from the antenna array to the communication targets; and

a clustering engine coupled with the processor to measure a performance characteristic of at least a subset the communication targets of the wireless communication system, determine a weight vector that provides a highest quality performance characteristic for each communication target, and selectively build one or more clusters to share a common wireless communication channel based at least in part on commonalities of the measured performance characteristic;

a communication agent, coupled with the processor and the clustering engine, to populate each cluster with one or more of the communication targets based, at least in part, on the measured performance characteristic associated with the communication targets with respect to the one or more signals processed with the multiple weight vectors, and develop one or more common weight vectors to process signals for transmission from the antenna array for each cluster.

10. The communication station of claim 9, wherein the performance characteristic comprises a signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR), the clustering engine to estimate the SINR for each communication target for each of the weight vectors, select one of the weight vectors for each of the communication targets that maximizes the SINR for each communication target, and produce a cluster of communication targets for each of the weight vectors based, at least in part, on the SINR of each communication target.

11. The communication station of claim 10, the clustering engine further to identify a communication target within each cluster with a lowest SINR, and dynamically generate a new weight vector based, at least in part, on the SINR of the identified communication target.

12. The communication station of claim 11, the clustering engine to estimate the performance characteristic of each communication target within each cluster using the generated new weight vector for each cluster, and regroup communication targets in clusters according to the weight vectors that provide the best SINR for each communication target.

13. The communication station of claim 12, the clustering engine to iteratively repeat the process until further re-grouping of communication targets fails to produce a significant improvement in the estimated performance characteristic of the communication targets.

14. The communication station of claim 10, the clustering engine to calculate the new weight vector as a least-squares weight associated with the identified communication target.

15. The communication station of claim 9, further comprising:

a memory subsystem having stored therein content; and

control logic, coupled with the memory subsystem, to access and execute at least a subset of the stored content to implement one or more of the clustering agent or the communication agent.