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

• US 8,134,912 B2
• Filed: 10/20/2008
• Issued: 03/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Li, Qinghua, Oyman, Ozgur, Lin, Xintian E., Yin, Hujun
• Primary Examiner(s): Phan, Tri H
• Application Number:
  US12/288,483
• Publication Number:
  US 20100098037A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,240 Days
• Field of Search: 370/203, 370/208, 370319-320, 370/335, 370342-344, 455/410, 455/422.1, 455/425, 455/434, 455/435.1, 455/436, 455/438, 455/439, 455/450, 455/456.4, 455/456.5, 455/466, 455/574
• US Class Current: 370/203
• 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 an additional SS in a wireless metropolitan area network, wherein the SS attempts to overhear a first uplink message from the additional SS to the BS and piggy back a second uplink message, wherein the second uplink message is sent in an uplink with the SS'"'"'s uplink data to the BS and includes the overheard first uplink message.

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

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

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

and

the BS and a set of distributed overhearing SS jointly receive sent short messages for the allocated open subchannels in a same subframe as scheduled subchannels.

5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the unscheduled subscribers provide channel training symbols for the demodulation of an open subchannel and the open subchannel is randomly or selectively selected by each unscheduled subscriber.

6. The apparatus of claim 5, wherein the open subchannels are allocated at a beginning of the uplink subframe to increase the number of potential overhearing SSs, and overheard messages are piggybacked by overhearing SSs with their data on allocated scheduled subchannels later in a same uplink subframe.

7. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein said short message is a beamforming matrix feedback due to sudden channel variation.

8. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein the BS broadcasts an acknowledgement of each short message received without the assistance of piggyback messages, a connection identifier (CID) of the short message the BS directly received, or an open subchannel index where the short message is received correctly, and wherein an overhearing SS may determine whether to piggyback according to the BS'"'"'s broadcast.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein if too many overhearing SSs forward a message for a same SS, the BS may request some of the overhearing SSs to stop forwarding for the same SS.

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

and

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

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the overhearing SSs use a gap to decode an overheard delay sensitive message first and then decode a delay insensitive message, and if the decoding of the delay sensitive message is successful, the decoded message is squeezed into the prescheduled subchannel of the overhearing SS and sent with an overhearing SS'"'"'s uplink data;

and

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

12. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the second uplink message and the SS'"'"'s uplink data are encoded in a channel code block larger than the first uplink message.

13. A method, comprising:

communicating by a first subscriber station (SS) with a base station (BS) and a second SS in a wireless metropolitan area network and attempting by the first SS to overhear a first message from the second SS and piggy back a second message for the overheard message from said first SS'"'"'s uplink to the BS with the first SS'"'"'s 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 the second SS, an OFDMA mode in an uplink subframe, the BS allocates scheduled subchannels to scheduled subscribers for the scheduled subscribers to send their data respectively and the BS allocates open subchannels in the second SS'"'"'s uplink subframe for direct transmission of unscheduled short messages and the short messages are directly sent to the open subchannels by unscheduled subscribers who do not have an allocated uplink resource;

and

the BS and a set of distributed overhearing SS jointly receive sent short messages for the allocated open subchannels in a same subframe as scheduled subchannels.

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

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

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

20. The method of claim 15, further comprising broadcasting by the BS an acknowledgement of each short message received without the assistance of piggyback messages, a connection identifier (CID) of the short message the BS directly received, or an open subchannel index where the short message is received correctly, and wherein an overhearing SS may determine whether to piggyback according to the BS'"'"'s broadcast.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising requesting some of the overhearing SSs by the BS to stop forwarding for a same SS if too many overhearing SSs forward a message for the same SS.

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

and

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

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

and

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