| 摘要 |
A method and system is disclosed for inter-technology diversity. A transmitting device may concurrently transmit a communication unit, such as a data packet, on two or more different air interfaces to a receiving device. The receiving device may concurrently receive the two or more transmissions on two or more corresponding air interfaces, and may then apply forward error correction to the two or more received communication unit in order to recover an error-free version of the communication unit. The transmitting device could be a multi-modal base station (or other access element) of a wireless communication system, and the receiving device could be a multi-modal access terminal (AT) or other user equipment (UE). Additionally or alternatively, the transmitting device could be an AT or UE, and the receiving device could be a base station. |
| 主权项 |
1. In a first device communicatively coupled with a second device via a multi-technology air interface, a method comprising:
while operating in a single-technology mode, (i) engaging in a communication session with the second device using a single air-interface technology to receive communication units of the communication session transmitted by the second device via a first air-interface technology, and (ii) receiving an indication to activate operating in a diversity mode in which the first device is configured to receive communication units of the communication session concurrently on a plurality of air-interface technologies; while operating in the diversity mode, receiving a first signal transmitted by the second device via the first air-interface technology, the first signal carrying a particular communication unit of the communication session; while operating in the diversity mode, concurrently with receiving the first signal, receiving a second signal transmitted by the second device via a second air-interface technology, the second signal carrying a duplicate of the particular communication unit of the communication session, wherein the first air-interface technology and the second air-interface technology are different; while operating in the diversity mode, recovering both a received version of the particular communication unit from the received first signal and a received version of the duplicate of the particular communication unit from the received second signal; and while operating in the diversity mode, merging the received version of the particular communication unit and the received version of the duplicate of the particular communication unit according to an error-correction algorithm to recover a transmission-error-free copy of the particular communication unit of the communication session, wherein recovering both the received version of the particular communication unit from the received first signal and the received version of the duplicate of the particular communication unit from the received second signal comprises discontinuing recovery of the received version of the duplicate of the particular communication unit upon a prior determination that a level of transmission error of the received version of the particular communication unit is below an error threshold, wherein merging the received version of the particular communication unit and the received version of the duplicate of the particular communication unit according to the error-correction algorithm comprises applying error correction to only the received version of the particular communication unit if the level of transmission error of the received version of the particular communication unit is below the error threshold, and wherein applying error correction to only the received version of the particular communication unit comprises bypassing error correction if the received version of communication unit is free of transmission errors. |
