Fountain-Coded Multi-Carrier PDUs for Low-Latency Reliability

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Solution Overview

Problem

Dual connectivity and carrier aggregation in wireless communication systems can be inefficient and wasteful, leading to increased overhead and latency due to PDU duplication and out-of-order delivery.

Innovation Solution

Encoding a dataset using fountain coding to mitigate these issues, allowing for reduced overhead and latency by eliminating the need for in-order PDU delivery and utilizing all received PDUs for decoding.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If PDU duplication is used in dual connectivity and carrier aggregation, then reliability is improved, but overhead and resource consumption increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecommunication reliabilityVSAvoidresource waste

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of substance

Solution Approach 1:

The patent merges the transmission of duplicate PDUs across multiple carriers by applying fountain coding to generate encoded packets that are distributed across carriers. Instead of sending identical copies, the system combines the data into encoded packets that can be decoded from any sufficient subset, reducing redundancy while maintaining reliability.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #5Merging (Combining)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent changes the parameter of PDU representation by transforming original PDUs into fountain-coded encoded packets. This parameter change allows the system to achieve the same reliability goal with fewer transmitted packets, as the encoding process creates a set of packets where any K packets can reconstruct the original data, reducing the need for full duplication.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

2Reliability

If PDU duplication is used across multiple carriers, then reliability is improved, but latency increases due to out-of-order delivery

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecommunication reliabilityVSAvoidlatency

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The patent inverts the traditional approach by not requiring in-order delivery of PDUs. Instead of sending duplicate PDUs that must be received and processed in sequence, the system uses fountain coding to create encoded packets that can be decoded in any order, as long as enough packets are received. This inversion eliminates the latency caused by waiting for out-of-order packets to be resequenced.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #13The other way round (Inversion)

3Reliability

If the same set of PDUs is sent over multiple carriers, then reliability is improved, but processing overhead increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecommunication reliabilityVSAvoidprocessing overhead

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts the redundancy from identical PDU copies and replaces it with fountain coding efficiency. Instead of taking out duplicate PDUs and processing them separately, the system extracts the essential information once, encodes it using fountain coding, and distributes the encoded packets across carriers. This reduces processing overhead at both transmitting and receiving ends.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Data Source

PatentUS20250141590A1Network coding design for low-latency communications

Publication Date: 2025.05.01 QUALCOMM INC

AI summary

An apparatus, such as a base station, may determine channel conditions associated with at least two carriers on which communication with another apparatus is configured. The apparatus may encode a dataset into a set of protocol data units (PDUs) using fountain coding based on the channel conditions. The apparatus may send a first subset of the set of PDUs to the other apparatus on a first carrier of the at least two carriers. The apparatus may send a second subset of the set of PDUs to the other apparatus on a second carrier of the at least two carriers. Another apparatus, such as a user equipment (UE), may receive the set of PDUs from the apparatus over the at least two carriers, and may decode the set of PDUs to obtain a dataset using fountain coding.