Hardware Abstraction Layer for Multi-Radio Routing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Wireless ad-hoc peer-to-peer communication networks face challenges in operating multiple heterogeneous radios simultaneously due to the lack of a common wireless routing protocol that can normalize feedback from the physical layer, limiting network capacity, compatibility, and functionality.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that create a hardware abstraction layer to normalize physical layer feedback, enabling multiple types of radios to operate using a common wireless routing protocol by integrating the PHY/MAC layer with the routing layer, facilitating link adaptation, data rate selection, and power control, and providing a software foundation for collecting statistics to select routes and channel access schemes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple heterogeneous radios operate simultaneously without a common routing protocol, then network functionality is limited, but implementing separate routing protocols for each radio type increases device complexity and reduces ease of operation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a hardware abstraction layer as an intermediary component between the physical radio layer and the routing protocol layer. This abstraction layer translates and normalizes feedback from different heterogeneous radio types into a common format that the routing protocol can process uniformly, enabling multiple radio types to operate simultaneously without requiring separate routing protocols for each radio type.
Solution Approach 2:
The hardware abstraction layer is designed with universal functionality that can handle multiple types of radios (e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular) through a single unified interface. This multi-functional design allows the same routing protocol to work across diverse radio technologies, eliminating the need for radio-specific routing implementations and reducing overall system complexity.
2Productivity
If a hardware abstraction layer is implemented to normalize physical layer feedback, then multiple radio types can operate concurrently, but the device complexity increases due to the additional software layer
Solution Approach 1:
The hardware abstraction layer is designed to autonomously perform the task of normalizing feedback from different radio types without requiring external intervention or complex processing from upper layers. It automatically translates diverse physical layer feedback formats into a standardized form, enabling multiple radios to operate concurrently while managing its own complexity internally rather than propagating it to the rest of the system.
3Adaptability or versatility
If separate PHY/MAC layers are used for different radio types, then network compatibility is improved, but upgrading the network requires upgrading the networking layer as well, increasing loss of time
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the radio-type-specific processing logic from the networking layer and places it in the hardware abstraction layer. This separation allows the networking layer to remain unchanged and universal, while the abstraction layer handles the variability of different radio types. Consequently, upgrades to support new radio types can be implemented by modifying only the abstraction layer without affecting or requiring upgrades to the networking layer, significantly reducing upgrade time.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method that creates an abstraction of the physical layer of a wireless communication network (100), in particular, a wireless ad-hoc peer-to-peer communication network (100), and that normalizes the feedback from the physical layer to enable multiple types of nodes (102, 106, 107) in the wireless network to operate using a common wireless routing protocol. This routing protocol uses a link quality metric to determine the best route regardless of how it actually chooses the route or disseminates such link quality information. The generalized routing metric can be derived for any node (102, 106, 107), regardless of its relative performance or its media access control (MAC) technology. The system and method also create a transaction summary that can be used for link adaptation and link quality estimation to determine, for example, future data rates, link quality/routing metrics, and transmit powers.