Multi-link Acknowledgment Aggregation for Wireless Latency Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current wireless communication standards, such as IEEE 802.11ax, face challenges in minimizing latency and overhead for low latency applications and multi-link operations, particularly in signaling presence across multiple links, which delays resource allocation and increases latency.
Innovation Solution
The proposed solution extends the NFRP design to allocate multiple tone-sets for a STA MLD to signal presence on multiple links, allowing for simultaneous acknowledgment transmissions using NDP PPDU variants, reducing latency and overhead by enabling efficient signaling across multiple links.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If separate acknowledgment transmissions are used for each link, then reliability of acknowledgment is improved, but latency and overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple separate acknowledgment transmissions across different links into a single aggregated acknowledgment frame. The MLD consolidates acknowledgments for multiple received frames from different links and transmits them together in one PPDU, reducing the total number of transmissions and associated latency while maintaining reliability through the aggregated acknowledgment structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal acknowledgment mechanism that can handle acknowledgments for multiple links simultaneously. The single acknowledgment frame serves multiple functions by acknowledging frames from different links, different STAs, and different traffic types in a unified structure, eliminating the need for separate dedicated acknowledgment transmissions for each link.
2Reliability
If multiple separate polling transmissions are sent to STAs on different links, then presence signaling reliability is improved, but resource allocation efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple separate polling transmissions into a single aggregated polling frame. The AP MLD sends one consolidated NFRP trigger frame that polls multiple STAs across different links simultaneously, rather than sending separate polling frames for each link. This reduces the total number of transmissions and improves resource allocation efficiency while maintaining presence signaling reliability.
3Reliability
If individual acknowledgment frames are transmitted for each link, then acknowledgment completeness is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal acknowledgment processing mechanism that handles multiple links through a single standardized frame structure. The MLD uses a unified acknowledgment frame format that can represent acknowledgments for multiple links, STAs, and frames simultaneously, simplifying the processing logic compared to maintaining separate handling mechanisms for each link while ensuring complete acknowledgment coverage.
4Measurement precision
If separate NFRP trigger frames are sent for each link, then presence detection accuracy is improved, but overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple separate NFRP trigger frames into a single aggregated trigger frame that can poll multiple STAs across different links. This consolidated approach reduces the total quantity of control frames transmitted while maintaining presence detection accuracy through the unified polling mechanism that can identify and track presence status of multiple STAs simultaneously.
Data Source
AI summary
This disclosure describes systems, methods, and devices related to multi-link acknowledgments. A device may transmit a trigger frame to a station device (STA) multi-link device (MLD), wherein the trigger frame polls the STA MLD to announce presence on communication links. The device may identify a null data packet (NDP) from the STA MLD announcing its presence on a set of communication links. The device may establish the set of communication links with the STA MLD, wherein the STA MLD comprises a plurality of station devices (STAs). The device may allocate a plurality of tone-sets to the plurality of STAs within the STA MLD. The device may identify energy on the allocated tone-sets for each link that the STA MLD has presence on.