Bandwidth Puncture and Block Acknowledgment Rules
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Solution Overview
Problem
The use of punctured transmissions in IEEE 802.11be wireless communications poses challenges related to rules for punctured response frames, control/management frames, request/response frames, and determining the location of the puncture in bandwidth, which affect communication efficiency and interference management.
Innovation Solution
An electronic device transmits and receives block acknowledgments in multiple non-contiguous sub-bands separated by a punctured sub-band, excluding the punctured sub-band, and provides or receives a bitmap to specify these sub-bands, facilitating the use of preamble puncture and improving spectrum usage and communication performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If punctured transmission is used to avoid interference from legacy devices, then spectrum usage efficiency is improved, but communication reliability deteriorates due to disjointed sub-bands and missing acknowledgments in punctured regions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the 80 MHz channel into multiple 20 MHz sub-bands, allowing selective transmission in non-punctured sub-bands while avoiding interference in punctured sub-bands. This segmentation enables the system to maintain reliable communication in available sub-bands while efficiently utilizing the overall spectrum by excluding only the necessary punctured portions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms where the receiving device sends block acknowledgments (BA) back to the transmitting device to confirm successful reception of data in each sub-band. This feedback ensures communication reliability by allowing the transmitter to verify which sub-bands were successfully received and retransmit if necessary, while maintaining the punctured transmission structure for spectrum efficiency.
2Loss of information
If block acknowledgments are transmitted in all sub-bands including punctured regions, then communication completeness is improved, but energy waste occurs due to transmitting in punctured sub-bands
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts or removes block acknowledgments from the punctured sub-bands, transmitting BAs only in the non-punctured sub-bands where actual data transmission occurred. This prevents energy waste from transmitting acknowledgments in sub-bands that were intentionally left empty due to interference, while still maintaining communication completeness by acknowledging all successfully received data.
3Measurement precision
If multiple block acknowledgments are sent in separate sub-bands, then acknowledgment precision is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple block acknowledgments from different sub-bands into a single aggregated BA frame that contains acknowledgment information for all sub-bands. This merging approach maintains acknowledgment precision by tracking each sub-band's reception status individually while reducing device complexity by transmitting a single combined acknowledgment rather than multiple separate ones.
Data Source
AI summary
An electronic device (such as an access point) that receives one or more block acknowledgments is described. This electronic device may transmit an extremely high-throughput (EHT) physical layer convergence protocol (PLCP) protocol data unit (PPDU) to a recipient electronic device, where the EHT PPDU is transmitted in multiple non-contiguous sub-bands that are separated by a punctured sub-band. Moreover, the electronic may receive the one or more block acknowledgments from the recipient electronic device, where the one or more block acknowledgments exclude the punctured sub-band. Note that the EHT PPDU may exclude transmitted energy in the punctured sub-band. Moreover, the punctured sub-band may have a bandwidth of at least 20 MHz and may be different from a primary sub-band.