Wireless Access Point Bandwidth Reservation for QoS
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Solution Overview
Problem
Wireless LANs face challenges in ensuring quality of service (QoS) for time-sensitive applications like VoIP due to limited bandwidth, particularly in unlicensed radio frequency spectra, necessitating effective bandwidth management and reservation control.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method where wireless traffic is prioritized, with higher priority traffic submitting bandwidth reservation requests to a wireless access point, and lower priority traffic accessing the channel without such requests, using a distributed medium access protocol to manage bandwidth and ensure QoS across a shared communication channel.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If bandwidth reservation requests are required from all wireless stations, then quality of service for time-sensitive traffic is improved, but device complexity and overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by differentiating bandwidth reservation requirements based on traffic priority levels. Only high-priority traffic (such as voice over IP) is required to submit bandwidth reservation requests, while lower-priority traffic uses standard distributed access without reservations. This selective approach ensures QoS for time-sensitive applications without imposing unnecessary complexity on all stations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments wireless traffic into multiple priority classes, with high-priority traffic requiring bandwidth reservations and low-priority traffic using standard contention-based access. This segmentation allows the system to apply different management mechanisms to different traffic types, resolving the contradiction between ensuring QoS and reducing overall system complexity.
2Reliability
If bandwidth reservations are implemented for all traffic, then quality of service is assured, but productivity and network efficiency decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by implementing bandwidth reservations only for high-priority traffic that requires guaranteed quality of service, while allowing lower-priority traffic to access the network using efficient distributed contention protocols. This selective reservation approach ensures QoS for critical applications without reducing overall network productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies partial action by implementing bandwidth reservations for only the portion of traffic that requires QoS guarantees (high-priority traffic), rather than applying reservations to all traffic. This partial implementation maintains network efficiency while providing necessary quality of service assurances for time-sensitive applications.
3Ease of operation
If distributed medium access protocol is used without bandwidth reservations, then ease of operation is maintained, but quality of service for time-sensitive traffic deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by maintaining simple distributed medium access for lower-priority traffic while implementing bandwidth reservation mechanisms specifically for high-priority traffic. This allows the system to preserve ease of operation for the majority of traffic while ensuring quality of service for time-sensitive applications through targeted reservation requirements.
Data Source
AI summary
Embodiments control access to a wireless network providing communication for wireless traffic and controlled by a wireless access point to assure quality of service for designated traffic by assigning all communication of the designated traffic to use one of the priorities on the wireless network, requiring that ones of the wireless traffic wanting to communicate using the one of the priorities and higher ones of the priorities and using a distributed medium access protocol submit bandwidth reservation requests to the wireless access point, granting a bandwidth reservation to one of the wireless traffic for communication by the wireless access point in response to a bandwidth reservation request upon bandwidth being available on the wireless network, and allowing other ones of the wireless traffic to communicate using lower ones of the priorities without requiring bandwidth reservation requests.