Method for evaluating radio links in a communication network

• US 20030147423A1
• Filed: 01/28/2003
• Published: 08/07/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: InterDigital Patent Holdings, Inc. (InterDigital, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Licensing (Vantiva SA)
• Inventors: Jeanne, Ludovic, Fontaine, Patrick, Dore, Renaud
• Granted Patent: US 7,940,789 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/468
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/50 Testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/00 Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/06 Testing, supervising or monitoring using simulated traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/10 Flow control between communication endpoints
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/18 Negotiating wireless communication parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/02 Communication route or path selection, e.g. power-based or shortest path routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/12 WLAN [Wireless Local Area Networks]

Abstract

The invention concerns a method for the rate regulation of radio link probing in a communication network comprising at least a receiver terminal and at least one transmitter terminal, characterized by the steps, at the level of the receiver terminal, of:

determining the amount of data sent by each transmitter terminal to the receiver terminal through respective radio links,

when a probing of a link is to be made, probing the link corresponding to the transmitter terminal having sent the greatest amount of data.

Claims

1. Method for the rate regulation of radio link probing in a communication network comprising at least a receiver terminal and at least one transmitter terminal, characterized by the steps, at the level of the receiver terminal, of:

determining the amount of data sent by each transmitter terminal to the receiver terminal through respective radio links,

when a probing of a link is to be made, probing the link corresponding to the transmitter terminal having sent the greatest amount of data.

2. Method according to claim 1, wherein the step of determining the amount of data comprises the step of accumulating a value of a function taking into account the amount of data in accumulators associated with respective transmitter terminals and wherein an accumulator is reset after a probe for its corresponding transmitter terminal has been carried out.

3. Method according to claim 1, wherein the amount of data received from a transmitter terminal is weighted before being added to a corresponding accumulator.

4. Method according to claim 3, wherein the weight used for the data from a given transmitter terminal is a function of the type of data transmitted by said given transmitter terminal.

5. Method according to claim 1, wherein a predetermined number of probes is allocated to a receiver terminal for a predetermined time period.

6. Method according to claim 5, wherein probing is carried out substantially periodically.

7. Method according to claim 2 and one of the claims 3 to 6, wherein an element of a ordered chained list is associated with each transmitter terminal, each element comprising a transmitter terminal identifier, the current accumulator value and pointers to the previous and next element, the list being ordered according to decreasing accumulator content.

8. Method according to claim 7, wherein elements corresponding to transmitter terminals not having transmitted for a given period of time are removed from the list.

9. Method according to claim 1, including the step of probing transmitting terminals potentially transmitting data at a low rate compared to transmitting terminals from which the receiver terminal receives data.