MAC Layer Delayer for Mutual Exclusiveness in Uplink Data Transmission
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing portable Internet system terminals face issues with ensuring mutual exclusiveness of queue operations during uplink data transmission, leading to potential data structure modifications and system faults due to the lack of atomic operations in tasklets.
Innovation Solution
A terminal with a MAC layer comprising a classifier, a delayer, a wait queue, and a packet processor, where the delayer uses a circular queue to store function pointers and arguments, ensuring sequential and delayed calls to queue operating functions, thereby maintaining mutual exclusiveness and preventing data structure modifications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If the classifier is operated by the tasklet for asynchronous event processing, then the response speed to uplink data events is improved, but the mutual exclusiveness of queue operations cannot be guaranteed leading to data structure modification risks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a lock mechanism as an intermediary between the tasklet and the wait queue operations. The lock acts as a mediator that coordinates access to the queue data structure, ensuring mutual exclusiveness while allowing the tasklet to continue operating asynchronously. When the tasklet needs to modify the queue, it first acquires the lock, performs the modification safely, then releases the lock, preventing concurrent modifications from other tasklets or kernel threads.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies preliminary action by acquiring the lock before performing queue operations and releasing it after completion. This preliminary acquisition of the locking mechanism ensures that the critical section protecting the queue data structure is entered only when exclusive access is guaranteed, preventing race conditions before they can occur.
2Productivity
If frequent interrupts occur due to asynchronous uplink data events, then the processing capability is improved, but the overlap of multiple tasklets causes data structure modification errors
Solution Approach 1:
The lock mechanism serves as an intermediary that serializes access to the shared queue data structure. Even when multiple tasklets are triggered frequently by asynchronous events, the lock ensures that only one tasklet can modify the queue at a time, preventing overlapping modifications while maintaining high processing capability through efficient lock acquisition and release.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements periodic action through the structured acquire-release pattern of the lock mechanism. Each tasklet acquisition and release of the lock creates discrete, periodic protection intervals around critical queue operations, ensuring that even with frequent interrupts, the data structure remains protected during each operation cycle.
Data Source
AI summary
A terminal of a portable Internet system comprising a medium access control (MAC) layer and a physical layer, the MAC layer comprising: a classifier classifying packets into classes; a delayer calling queue operating functions when a predetermined period of time is passed after the packets are classified by the classifier; a wait queue storing packets by the queue operating functions; and a packet processor processing the packet in the wait queue and transmitting the processed packet to the physical layer.