Communication apparatus and communication method

Abstract

The present invention relates to a communication device and a communication method, the communication device comprising: a receiving circuit for receiving a data unit from a transmitting end; a comparison circuit, coupled to the receiving circuit, for comparing a target station identification with a station identification in the data unit to generate a comparison result; a processing circuit, coupled to the comparison circuit, configured to perform a cyclic redundancy check according to the comparison result and a verification code in the data unit to generate a check result, and determine a frequency domain resource according to the check result and a very high throughput signal field in the data unit; and a transmission circuit, coupled to the processing circuit, for transmitting the frequency domain resource to a demodulation circuit.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present invention relates to a communication device and a communication method for a wireless communication system, and in particular to a communication device and a communication method for reducing the complexity of processing a data unit. Background Art

[0002] In a communication system, a cyclic redundancy check is used to detect whether a data unit received by a receiving end from a transmitting end has errors during transmission. Based on the data in the data unit, the transmitting end generates a verification code and appends the verification code to the end of the data. After receiving the verification code, the receiving end performs a cyclic redundancy check on the verification code to ensure the correctness of the data in the data unit. However, when transmitting multiple data units, the receiving end needs to spend a lot of time and resources to perform the cyclic redundancy check, which increases the complexity of processing the data unit. Therefore, how to reduce the complexity of processing the data unit is an urgent problem to be solved. Summary of the invention

[0003] One of the objectives of the present invention is to provide a communication device and a communication method for reducing the complexity of processing data units to solve the above-mentioned problem.

[0004] An embodiment of the present invention discloses a communication device, comprising a receiving circuit for receiving a data unit from a transmitting end; a comparing circuit coupled to the receiving circuit for comparing a target station identity (STAID) with a station identity in the data unit to generate a comparison result; a processing circuit coupled to the comparing circuit for performing a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) according to the comparison result and a verification code in the data unit to generate a verification result, and determining a frequency domain resource according to the verification result and an extremely high-throughput signal (EHT-SIG) field in the data unit; and a transmitting circuit coupled to the processing circuit for transmitting the frequency domain resource to a demodulation circuit.

[0005] The embodiment of the present invention further discloses a communication method, comprising receiving a data unit from a transmitting end; comparing a target station identity (STAID) with a station identity in the data unit to generate a comparison result; performing a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) according to the comparison result and a verification code in the data unit to generate a verification result; determining a frequency domain resource according to the verification result and an extremely high-throughput signal (EHT-SIG) field in the data unit; and transmitting the frequency domain resource to a demodulation circuit. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0006] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a communication system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[0007] FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a very high throughput multi-user physical layer protocol data unit according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[0008] FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a very high throughput signal field according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[0009] FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of a user field block according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[0010] FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a communication device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[0011] FIG. 6 is a flow chart of a process according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[0012] FIG. 7 is a flow chart of a process according to an embodiment of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0013] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a communication system 10 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The communication system 10 can be simply composed of a transmitter 12 and a receiver 14. In FIG. 1, the transmitter 12 and the receiver 14 are used to illustrate the architecture of the communication system 10. The communication system 10 can be a wireless local area network (WLAN), a long term evolution (LTE) system, an advanced long term evolution (LTE-advanced, LTE-A) system, a fifth generation (5G) system, or other wireless communication system. The transmitter 12 can be an access point (AP) in the local wireless network. In addition, the transmitter 12 and the receiver 14 can be implemented by devices such as mobile phones and notebook computers, but are not limited thereto. The transmitter 12 and the receiver 14 can support the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard (e.g., 802.11AX, 802.11be or its subsequent versions). The 802.11 standard may support Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) or Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO). In order to efficiently notify the transmission information of all scheduled stations (scheduled STA) to the receiving end 14, the 802.11 standard defines an extremely high throughput multi-user physical protocol data unit (EHT MUPPDU). The extremely high throughput multi-user physical protocol data unit may transmit a zero data packet format, a single user packet format, a multi-user packet format, or an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access packet format.

[0014] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a very high throughput multi-user physical layer protocol data unit 20 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The very high throughput multi-user physical layer protocol data unit 20 may be generated by the transmitter 12 of FIG. 1 and transmitted from the transmitter 12 to the receiver 14. As shown in FIG. 2, the very high throughput multi-user physical layer protocol data unit 20 may include a preamble 200, data 210, and a packet extension (PE) 220. The data 210 may be used to carry a physical layer service data unit (PSDU). The packet extension 220 may allow the receiver 14 to have extra time to process the data 210.

[0015] In FIG. 2 , the preamble 200 may include a legacy short training field (L-STF) 2000, a legacy long training field (L-LTF) 2100, a legacy signal field (L-SIG) 2200, a repeated L-SIG (RL-SIG) 2300, a universal signal field (U-SIG) 2400, an extremely high-throughput signal field (EHT-SIG) 2500, an extremely high-throughput short training field (EHT-STF) 2600, and a plurality of extremely high-throughput long training fields (EHT-LTF) 2700. The legacy short training field 2000 may be used for packet detection, automatic gain control (AGC), and coarse frequency offset estimation. The conventional long training field 2100 may be used for fine frequency offset estimation and channel estimation. The conventional signal field 2200 may include information such as transmission rate and length. The repeated conventional signal field 2300 may be used for auto detection. The common signal field 2400 may be used to define characteristics of the data 210, such as communication version, transmission direction (e.g., uplink or downlink), and transmission opportunity (TXOP) duration. The very high throughput signal field 2500 may include resource unit assignment information. The very high throughput short training field 2600 may be used to improve automatic gain control estimation in multiple-input multiple-output transmissions. The very high throughput long training field 2700 may be used for multiple-input multiple-output channel estimation and pilot subcarrier tracking.

[0016] FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of an ultra-high throughput signal field 30 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The ultra-high throughput signal field 30 can be applied to the ultra-high throughput signal field 2500 in FIG. 2, and can include at least one content channel. Each content channel 300 can include a common field 310 and a user specific field 320. The common field 310 can include a plurality of (e.g., 2) resource unit allocation subfield blocks 3000. The resource unit allocation subfield block 3000 can include at least one resource unit allocation subfield, a verification code, and a tail (not shown). At least one resource unit allocation subfield can be used to notify the receiving end 14 of the resource unit allocation (e.g., the allocation of resource units (RU) and / or multiple resource units (MRU) in a frequency band (e.g., 80 MHz)) of the current total data bandwidth. The verification code can be used to perform a cyclic redundancy check (CRC). The tail end can be used to perform forward error correction (FEC) decoding. The user-specific field 320 may include multiple user field blocks 3100 and a fill value 3200. The user field block 3100 may include at least one user field (e.g., 1 or 2), a verification code, and a tail end (not shown). The user field can be used to carry transmission information of a specific scheduling site. The relevant description of the verification code and the tail end can be referred to above and will not be repeated here. The fill value 3200 can be used to fill the length of the user-specific field 320 to meet the format requirements of the ultra-high throughput signal field 30.

[0017] FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of a user field block 40 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The user field block 40 can be applied to the user field block 3100 in FIG. 3. The user field block 40 can include two user fields 400, a verification code 410 and a tail 420. In a multi-user multi-input multi-output communication system, the user field 400 can include a station identity (STAID) 4000, a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) 4100, a coding 4200 and a spatial configuration 4300. In a non-MU-MIMO communication system, the user field 400 may include a site identifier 4000, a modulation and coding method 4100, a reserved information 4400, a network status service (NSS) 4500, a beamformed information 4600, and a code 4200. The site identifier 4000 may be used to indicate the transmission object (e.g., a specific scheduled site) of the data (e.g., the data 210 in FIG. 1). The modulation and coding method 4100 may be used to indicate the modulation method and the coding bit rate. The code 4200 may be used to indicate the coding rate. The spatial configuration 4300 may be used to set the antenna configuration of the scheduled site. The reserved information 4400 may be used to set the resources (e.g., time domain resources) used by the scheduled site to receive the data unit. The network status service 4500 may be used to indicate the data transmission rate. The beamformed information 4600 may be used to set the beam for the scheduled site to receive the data unit. The relevant description of the verification code 410 and the end 420 can be found in FIG. 3 and will not be repeated here.

[0018] FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a communication device 50 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The communication device 50 can be used in the receiving end 14 of FIG. 1 to reduce the complexity of processing data units. The communication device 50 includes a receiving circuit 500, a comparing circuit 510, a processing circuit 520 and a transmitting circuit 530. In detail, the receiving circuit 500 is used to receive a data unit DU (such as the ultra-high throughput multi-user physical layer protocol data unit 20 of FIG. 2) from a transmitting end (such as the transmitting end 12 of FIG. 1). The comparing circuit 510 is coupled to the receiving circuit 500 and is used to compare a target station identification with a station identification in the data unit DU to generate a comparison result. The processing circuit 520 is coupled to the comparing circuit 510 and is used to perform a cyclic redundancy check according to the comparison result and a verification code in the data unit DU to generate a check result, and determine a frequency domain resource FR according to the check result and an ultra-high throughput signal field (such as the ultra-high throughput signal field 30 of FIG. 3) in the data unit DU. The transmitting circuit 530 is coupled to the processing circuit 520, and is used to transmit the frequency domain resource FR to a demodulation circuit. In one embodiment, the target station identification is determined by the communication device 50 (e.g., the medium access control (MAC) layer of the communication device 50). In one embodiment, the frequency domain resource FR includes at least one resource unit and at least one multi-resource unit.

[0019] In one embodiment, the communication device 50 further includes a demodulation circuit. The demodulation circuit is coupled to the transmission circuit 530 and is used to demodulate the data in the data unit DU (e.g., the data 210 in FIG. 2 ) according to the frequency domain resource FR. In one embodiment, the step of the processing circuit 520 performing the cyclic redundancy check according to the comparison result and the verification code in the data unit DU includes: when the comparison result indicates that the target site identification and the site identification in the data unit DU are the same, the processing circuit 520 performs a cyclic redundancy check for the verification code. In one embodiment, when the comparison result indicates that the target site identification and the site identification in the data unit DU are not the same, the processing circuit 520 discards the data unit DU. Then, the receiving circuit 500 receives the next data unit from the transmitting end. In one embodiment, the step of the processing circuit 520 determining the frequency domain resource FR according to the check result and the very high throughput signal field in the data unit DU includes: when the check result is successful (e.g., the verification code transmitted from the transmitting end to the communication device 20 is not distorted), the processing circuit 520 analyzes the very high throughput signal field to determine the frequency domain resource FR. In one embodiment, when the verification result is a failure (eg, the verification code transmitted from the transmitter to the communication device 20 is distorted), the processing circuit 520 discards the data unit DU. Next, the receiving circuit 500 receives the next data unit from the transmitter.

[0020] In one embodiment, the data unit DU includes a preamble field, data, and a packet extension field (e.g., the preamble field 200, data 210, and packet extension field 220 of FIG. 2). In one embodiment, the preamble field includes an ultra-high throughput signal field (e.g., the ultra-high throughput signal field 2500 of FIG. 2 or the ultra-high throughput signal field 30 of FIG. 3), but is not limited thereto. The description of the preamble field can refer to FIG. 2, which is not repeated here. In one embodiment, the ultra-high throughput signal field includes a common field and a user-specific field (e.g., the common field 310 and the user-specific field 320 of FIG. 3). In one embodiment, the user-specific field includes a plurality of user field blocks and a padding value (e.g., the user field block 3100 and the padding value 3200 of FIG. 3). In one embodiment, a user field block among the plurality of user field blocks includes at least one user field and a verification code (e.g., user field 400 and verification code 410 in FIG. 4), but is not limited thereto. In one embodiment, a user field among the at least one user field includes a site identification, but is not limited thereto. The relevant description of the user field block and the user field can be referred to FIG. 4, and will not be repeated here.

[0021] The operation of the aforementioned communication device 50 can be summarized as a process 60 for reducing the complexity of processing data units, as shown in FIG6 . The process 60 includes the following steps:

[0022] Step S600: Start.

[0023] Step S602: Receive a data unit from a transmitting end.

[0024] Step S604: Compare a target site identification with a site identification in the data unit to generate a comparison result.

[0025] Step S606: Perform a cyclic redundancy check according to the comparison result and a verification code in the data unit to generate a verification result.

[0026] Step S608: Determine a frequency domain resource according to the check result and a very high throughput signal field in the data unit.

[0027] Step S610: Transmit the frequency domain resource to a demodulation circuit.

[0028] Step S612: End.

[0029] The operation of the aforementioned communication device 50 can be summarized as a process 70 for reducing the complexity of processing data units, as shown in FIG. 7 . The process 70 includes the following steps:

[0030] Step S700: Start.

[0031] Step S702: Receive a data unit from a transmitting end.

[0032] Step S704: Are a target site ID and a site ID in the data unit the same? If yes, execute step S706. If no, execute step S702.

[0033] Step S706: Perform a cyclic redundancy check for a verification code in the data unit.

[0034] Step S708: Is the cyclic redundancy check successful? If yes, go to step S710. If no, go to step S702.

[0035] Step S710: Analyze a very high throughput signal field in the data unit to determine a frequency domain resource.

[0036] Step S712: Transmit the frequency domain resource to a demodulation circuit.

[0037] Step S714: End.

[0038] The details and changes of processes 60 and 70 can be found in the above description and will not be repeated here.

[0039] “According to” may be replaced by “through”, “through the use of” or “in response to”. “Including” may be replaced by “for”.

[0040] It should be noted that the comparison circuit 510 compares the target station identification with the station identification in the data unit, which is a post-processing operation mode. This operation mode can be called "station identification match" (STAIDmatch), which can be replaced by other post-processing operations, such as pattern matching or threshold comparison.

[0041] It should be noted that the communication device 50 and the circuits therein (e.g., receiving circuit 500, comparing circuit 510, processing circuit 520, and transmitting circuit 530) can be implemented in many ways. For example, the circuits in the above devices can be integrated into at least one circuit. In addition, the communication device 50 and the circuits therein can be implemented by hardware (e.g., circuits), software, firmware (a combination of hardware devices and computer instructions and data, and the computer instructions and data are read-only software on the hardware device), electronic systems, or a combination of the above devices, but are not limited thereto.

[0042] The present invention provides a communication device and a communication method. After receiving a data unit, the communication device performs a site identification match. If the site identification match is successful (i.e., the target site identification is the same as the site identification in the data unit), the communication device will perform a cyclic redundancy check. Since the complexity of the site identification match is lower than the cyclic redundancy check, compared with the prior art (the communication device performs a cyclic redundancy check. If the cyclic redundancy check is successful, the communication device performs the site identification match), the complexity of processing the data unit is reduced, saving time and resources for the communication device to perform the cyclic redundancy check.

[0043] The above description is only a preferred embodiment of the present invention. All equivalent changes and modifications made according to the scope of the patent application of the present invention should fall within the scope of the present invention.

[0044]

Explanation of symbols

[0045] 10: Communication System

[0046] 12: Transmission terminal

[0047] 14: Receiver

[0048] 20: Very high output rate multi-user physical layer protocol data unit 200: Preamble field

[0049] 210: Data

[0050] 220: Packet extension field

[0051] 2000: Regular short training stalls

[0052] 2100: Regular long training slot

[0053] 2200: General signal field

[0054] 2300: Repeat the normal signal field

[0055] 2400: General signal field

[0056] 2500,30: Very high throughput signal field

[0057] 2600: Very high throughput short training slot

[0058] 2700: Very high throughput long training slot

[0059] 300: Content Channel

[0060] 310: Common fields

[0061] 320: User-specific fields

[0062] 3000: Resource unit configuration sub-slot block

[0063] 3100,40: User field block

[0064] 3200: Fill value

[0065] 400: User Field

[0066] 410: Verification code

[0067] 420: Tail end

[0068] 4000: Site identification

[0069] 4100: Modulation and Coding Methods

[0070] 4200: Encoding

[0071] 4300: Space Configuration

[0072] 4400: Retain information

[0073] 4500: Network status service

[0074] 4600: Beamforming information

[0075] 50: Communication device

[0076] 500: Receiving circuit

[0077] 510: Comparison circuit

[0078] 520: Processing circuit

[0079] 530: Transmission Circuit

[0080] DU: Data Unit

[0081] FR: Frequency Domain Resources

[0082] 60,70: Process

[0083] S600, S602, S604, S606, S608, S610, S612, S700, S702, S704, S706, S708, S710, S712, S714: steps.

Claims

1. A communication device, comprising: a receiving circuit for receiving a data unit from a transmitting end; a comparison circuit, coupled to the receiving circuit, for comparing a target site identification with a site identification in the data unit to generate a comparison result; a processing circuit coupled to the comparison circuit, configured to perform a cyclic redundancy check according to the comparison result and a verification code in the data unit to generate a check result, and determine a frequency domain resource according to the check result and a very high throughput signal field in the data unit; as well as A transmitting circuit is coupled to the processing circuit and is used for transmitting the frequency domain resource to a demodulation circuit.

2. The communication device according to claim 1, further comprising: The demodulation circuit is coupled to the transmission circuit and is used for demodulating the data in the data unit according to the frequency domain resource.

3. The communication device according to claim 1, wherein: According to the comparison result and the verification code in the data unit, the processing circuit performs the cyclic redundancy check step comprising: When the comparison result indicates that the target site identification and the site identification in the data unit are the same, the processing circuit performs the cyclic redundancy check for the verification code.

4. The communication device according to claim 1, wherein: When the comparison result indicates that the target site identification and the site identification in the data unit are not the same, the processing circuit discards the data unit.

5. The communication device according to claim 1, wherein: The step of the processing circuit determining the frequency domain resource according to the check result and the very high throughput signal field in the data unit comprises: When the verification result is successful, the processing circuit analyzes the very high throughput signal field to determine the frequency domain resource.

6. The communication device according to claim 1, wherein: When the verification result is a failure, the processing circuit discards the data unit.

7. The communication device according to claim 1, wherein: The data unit includes a preamble field, data and a packet extension field, and the preamble field includes the very high throughput signal field.

8. The communication device according to claim 7, wherein: The VHT signal field includes a common field and a user-specific field, and the user-specific field includes a plurality of user field blocks and a filling value.

9. The communication device according to claim 8, wherein: A user field block among the plurality of user field blocks includes at least one user field and the verification code, and the at least one user field includes the site identification.

10. A communication method, comprising: receiving a data unit from a transmitting end; comparing a target site identification with a site identification in the data unit to generate a comparison result; Performing a cyclic redundancy check according to the comparison result and a verification code in the data unit to generate a verification result; Determine a frequency domain resource according to the check result and a very high throughput signal field in the data unit; as well as The frequency domain resource is transmitted to a demodulation circuit.

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