Hop-Level Packet Acknowledgment in Polled Mesh Networks
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Solution Overview
Problem
Polled mesh networks face challenges in ensuring successful end-to-end communication while maintaining system throughput, often requiring redundant packet transmission to account for potential losses, which consumes bandwidth and reduces efficiency.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method where acknowledgments are sent at each hop level to confirm successful packet transmission, allowing the central node to avoid retransmitting packets that have already been successfully received, thereby reducing the number of packets transmitted per hop and improving system throughput.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If redundant packet transmission is used to ensure successful end-to-end communication in polled mesh networks, then communication reliability is improved, but system throughput deteriorates due to bandwidth consumption
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms where intermediate nodes send acknowledgments back to the central node to confirm successful packet reception. This feedback allows the system to distinguish between packets that need retransmission and those that don't, thereby maintaining reliability while reducing unnecessary retransmissions that would consume bandwidth and reduce throughput.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the mesh network into intermediate nodes and endpoint nodes, with each intermediate node independently acknowledging packet receipt. This segmentation allows the central node to receive targeted feedback from specific intermediate nodes, enabling selective retransmission only when necessary, thus balancing reliability and throughput.
2Reliability
If automatic retry of outbound and inbound packets is implemented to increase successful transmission probability, then communication reliability is improved, but bandwidth consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses feedback from intermediate nodes acknowledging packet receipt to determine whether automatic retries are necessary. Instead of blindly retrying all packets, the central node receives confirmation from intermediate nodes and only retries packets that were not successfully received, thereby maintaining transmission success probability while reducing bandwidth consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of retransmission behavior from fixed automatic retries to dynamic conditional retries based on acknowledgment feedback. This parameter change allows the system to adapt retransmission attempts to actual network conditions, reducing unnecessary bandwidth consumption while maintaining reliable transmission.
Data Source
AI summary
A method, wireless mesh network and processor-readable storage medium for promoting successful end-to-end communication in a polled mesh network while improving system throughput are disclosed herein. Successful communications are acknowledged at each hop level to reduce the need to duplicate packets for redundancy. In this way, if a first bidirectional node transmits a packet to a second bidirectional node, the second bidirectional node acknowledges the packet, and the first bidirectional node receives the acknowledgement, then the first bidirectional node does not need to send a duplicate packet.