System and method for characterizing the quality of a link in a wireless network

• US 20040246935A1
• Filed: 06/07/2004
• Published: 12/09/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/06/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Strong Force IoT Portfolio 2016, LLC (Strong Force Intellectual Capital, LLC)
• Original Assignee: MeshNetworks, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Inventors: Joshi, Avinash, Strutt, Guenael T.
• Granted Patent: US 7,558,818 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/338
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/00 Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks routing or path finding in wireless networks H04W40/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/00 Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/14 based on stability
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/18 based on predicted events
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/542 using measured or perceived quality
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 92/18 between terminal devices

Abstract

A system and method for characterizing the quality of a link, in particular, a bi-directional link, between nodes in a wireless communication network, such as a wireless ad-hoc peer-to-peer network, with minimum network overhead. The system and method determine the quality of link between two nodes by taking into consideration the view from both the nodes, and factors such as signal strength, signal-to-noise ratio or any statistic collected at the physical layer that is deemed representative of the quality of a link. The link quality can also be adjusted using a weighting factor.

Claims

1. A method for characterizing the quality of a link between nodes in an ad-hoc multi-hopping peer-to-peer wireless communication network by determining the quality of the link based on the assessed condition from the respective nodes

2. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the assessed conditions represent assessed conditions at the physical layer for each of the respective nodes.

3. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the quality of the link is communicated between the respective nodes

4. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the quality of the link determined by the respective nodes is adjusted based on the quality of the link that is communicated between the respective nodes.

5. A method as claimed in claim 4, wherein:

the adjustment to the quality of the link that is determined by the respective nodes is made according to a weighted average of the quality of the link that is determined by the respective nodes and the quality of the link that is communicated between the respective nodes.

6. A method as claimed in claim 4, wherein:

the adjustment to the quality of the link is performed if the quality of the link that is determined based on the assessed condition is greater than the quality of the link that is communicated between the respective nodes.

7. A method as claimed in claim 4, wherein:

the adjusted quality of the link converges toward the lowest of the qualities of the link that are determined by the respective nodes.

8. A method as claimed in claim 4, wherein:

the adjusted quality of the link can be used to determine whether the link between the respective nodes is bidirectional.

9. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the nodes are mobile.