802.11ax Buffer Status Reporting for Uplink and Direct Link Traffic
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing wireless communication standards, such as 802.11ax, struggle to efficiently manage bandwidth and latency in high-density environments, particularly for bandwidth-demanding services like gaming and virtual reality, due to inefficient reporting of buffered direct link traffic and competition between Single User and Multi-User schemes, leading to increased collisions and degraded throughput.
Innovation Solution
Integrate direct link buffer reporting into the existing Buffer Status Report (BSR) format of the 802.11 standard by using 'not applicable' values in the standardized BSR control field subfields to signal both uplink and direct link traffic needs, allowing simultaneous reporting while maintaining the standardized format.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If the existing BSR format is used to report only uplink traffic, then the reporting mechanism is simple and standardized, but the AP cannot obtain knowledge of direct link traffic leading to inefficient resource allocation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines direct link traffic reporting with uplink traffic reporting in a single BSR control field. The two subfields serve dual purposes: indicating both the number of TIDs with buffered uplink traffic and the presence of buffered direct link traffic, thereby merging two reporting functions into one structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The BSR control field subfields are designed to perform multiple functions simultaneously. The first subfield indicates both uplink TID count and direct link traffic status, while the second subfield provides additional direct link traffic information, making the existing standardized format universal for both reporting types.
2Productivity
If Single User and Multi-User schemes compete for medium access, then each scheme can operate independently, but collisions increase and throughput decreases in high density environments
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where the AP receives BSR reports containing direct link traffic information from non-AP stations. Based on this feedback, the AP can make informed scheduling decisions to allocate resources appropriately, reducing collisions between SU and MU schemes by coordinating medium access through centralized control.
3Device complexity
If all communications go through the AP in MU scheme, then resource allocation is centralized and efficient, but air time is doubled and medium access time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments traffic into uplink traffic (through AP) and direct link traffic (peer-to-peer). By allowing direct link communications to occur without full AP involvement, the system reduces air time for certain traffic types while maintaining centralized resource allocation for uplink traffic, effectively dividing the communication paths to optimize performance.
Data Source
AI summary
An 802.11ax access point, AP, manage a granted transmission opportunity to schedule multi user uplink and downlink transmissions with non-AP stations. Resource units may also be allocated to non-AP stations for direct link, DiL, transmissions. To efficiently arbitrate between scheduling new MU UL transmissions or DiL transmissions, the AP must know the needs of the non-AP stations. The buffer status report, BSR, either solicited or unsolicited, provides an ACI Bitmap subfield and a Delta TID subfield to signal a number of TIDs for which buffered uplink traffic is declared. The BSR is amended so that these two subfields further signal, in addition to the buffered UL traffic, when there is buffered DiL traffic. Other subfields may provide more information on the amount of buffered DiL traffic.