Cumulative Beacon Frame Reducing WLAN Overhead
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Solution Overview
Problem
In overlapping basic service sets (OBSS) of wireless local area networks (WLANs), the frequent transmission of individual beacon frames by access points leads to significant communications overhead, resulting in lower bandwidth utilization and reduced OTA throughput efficiency.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system and method for cumulative beacons, where a primary announcer access point generates and broadcasts a cumulative beacon frame that includes the basic service set identifiers (BSSIDs) and service set identifiers (SSIDs) of all participating access points, replacing the individual beacon frames and reducing the number of frames transmitted.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multiple access points transmit individual beacon frames, then each access point can announce its presence and provide network information, but communications overhead increases significantly and bandwidth utilization decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple individual beacon frames from different access points into a single cumulative beacon frame. This cumulative beacon includes a list of BSSIDs and SSIDs representing all participating access points, thereby merging the presence announcement function of multiple APs into one transmitted frame, which directly reduces communications overhead while maintaining reliability of presence announcement.
2Loss of information
If multiple access points transmit individual beacon frames, then network information can be broadcast to stations, but the number of transmitted frames increases reducing OTA throughput efficiency
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the network information broadcast function of multiple access points into a single cumulative beacon frame. Each access point's network information (BSSID, SSID) is included in the cumulative beacon list, allowing stations to receive network information from multiple APs through a single frame reception, thereby improving OTA throughput efficiency while maintaining complete information broadcast.
3Reliability
If access points transmit beacons frequently, then station associations can be maintained and network status can be monitored, but bandwidth utilization is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines frequent individual beacon transmissions into less frequent cumulative beacon transmissions. By aggregating multiple APs' beacon information into a single frame, the system maintains station associations and network status monitoring functionality while reducing the total number of frames transmitted, thereby improving bandwidth utilization efficiency.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for operating a first access point of a first plurality of access points comprising access points participating in cumulative beacon operations includes generating a cumulative beacon including basic service set identifiers (BSSIDs) and service set identifiers (SSIDs) of each access point in the first plurality of access points, and sending the cumulative beacon.