Ring-Like Wireless Communication Architecture for Fault Tolerance
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Fixed wireless networks face reliability issues due to signal absorption by weather conditions and oxygen, leading to fluctuations in quality of service and capacity, particularly with millimeter waves in the 60 GHz range.
Innovation Solution
A fault-tolerant communication system is implemented using a ring structure with additional sub-ring structures, where one wireless data link per sub-ring is kept dormant and activated only when a reduction in performance is detected, allowing for seamless switching to a new tree structure to maintain data transport.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a point-to-point wireless link is used to focus transmit power and increase reliability, then the link capacity and reach are improved, but the quality of service fluctuates due to weather conditions and signal absorption
Solution Approach 1:
The patent pre-establishes multiple alternative paths (ring structure with K additional links creating K+1 sub-rings) before any link failure occurs. When a link experiences performance reduction due to weather, the system can immediately switch to a pre-configured alternative path without waiting for failure detection and path computation, thus maintaining stable quality of service while preserving the reliability benefits of focused directional links.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic path selection where the network topology can switch between different tree structures formed by the ring and sub-ring configurations. The system dynamically activates dormant links and deactivates degraded links based on real-time link quality monitoring, allowing the network to adapt to changing weather conditions while maintaining reliable point-to-point connections.
2Reliability
If N wireless data links form a ring structure with K additional links creating sub-ring structures, then fault tolerance is improved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the network into K+1 sub-ring structures, each with a designated dormant link. This segmentation allows independent management and failure isolation of different path segments. When a failure occurs in one sub-ring, only that specific segment needs to reconfigure, while other segments remain unaffected, thus reducing the effective complexity management overhead compared to a fully meshed redundant network.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent deliberately discards (deactivates) one link per sub-ring structure under normal conditions to form tree structures, simplifying the active topology. These discarded links are kept as backup resources that can be recovered (activated) when failures occur, providing fault tolerance without maintaining full redundancy permanently. This approach balances complexity and reliability by only activating additional links when needed.
3Productivity
If one wireless data link per sub-ring is kept dormant and activated only when performance reduction is detected, then the optimization of data transport is improved, but the loss of time for detection and switching occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent pre-configures multiple tree structures corresponding to different dormant link selections before failures occur. Link quality monitoring is continuously performed in advance to detect performance reductions early. When degradation is detected, the system has already have alternative paths ready to activate, significantly reducing the switching time compared to computing new paths after failure detection.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements continuous monitoring of wireless link quality with feedback mechanisms that track link performance metrics. This feedback allows the system to detect performance reductions in real-time and trigger switching to alternative paths before complete failures occur, minimizing data transport disruption and maintaining optimized throughput by proactively responding to degradation trends.
Data Source
AI summary
Various systems and methods for fault-tolerant and otherwise optimized communication, in which a system includes communication nodes connected by wireless data links together forming a ring structure, as well as additional wireless data links operative to partition the ring structure into multiple sub-ring structures. The system is operative to select, per each of the sub-ring structures, one of the wireless data links to remain dormant, thereby effectively creating a certain communication tree structure. The system is further operative, upon detecting a communication problem or inefficiency in any or all of the sub-ring structures, to shut-down, per sub-ring structure detected, the problematic or otherwise inefficient wireless data link, and to reactivate instead the dormant wireless data link, thereby effectively switching to a new communication tree structure, and thus resolving the problem or otherwise improving efficiency.