HYBRID AUTOMATIC REPEAT REQUEST (H-ARQ) FOR A WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORK

摘要

Apparatus and methods for a hybrid automatic repeat request (H-ARQ) mechanism for wireless communication devices of a wireless local area network (WLAN) are disclosed. Methods and apparatus to determine whether a packet is an original, first transmission or a retransmission of a previously transmitted packet without decoding the payload of the packet are disclosed. Medium access control (MAC) addresses of a transmitter, such as an access point (AP), and a receiver, such as a station (STA), of a WLAN are encoded separately with a retransmission bit to indicate whether the packet is retransmitted. For an aggregated MAC protocol data unit (A-MPDU), a sequence number is included to determine which MAC protocol data units (MPDUs) of the A-MPDU are retransmitted. When retransmission is indicated, the receiver of the STA performs a hybrid automatic repeat request (H-ARQ) process to combine the retransmitted packet with previously received packets.

主权项

1. A method for soft-decision decoding with retransmission, the method comprising:
by a wireless device: receiving a data frame that includes a retransmission header field and at least one media access control (MAC) protocol data unit (PDU); when the data frame is addressed to the wireless device and a header frame check sequence (FCSh) for the retransmission header field passes:
for each retransmitted MAC PDU (MPDU) of the data frame, performing bit-level combining of a soft-decision MPDU determined for the retransmitted MPDU with previous transmissions of the MPDU to form a soft-decision combined MPDU;decoding the soft-decision combined MPDU into a decoded hard-decision MPDU; andoutputting the decoded hard-decision MPDU when a data FCS (FCSd) for the decoded hard-decision MPDU passes; and when the data frame is not addressed to the wireless device or the FCSh for the retransmission header field fails, discarding the data frame.