WAP supporting complementary subnets in a WLAN

摘要

A wireless access point (WAP) including: a station set identifier and a subnet controller. The station set identifier is configured to identify at least one set of at least two station nodes among the plurality of station nodes and complementary communication options for each station in the at least one set which facilitate concurrent communications between the WAP and the stations in the set. The subnet controller is configured both to generate subnets equal in number to a number of stations in at least one set, and for each subnet an associated beacon channel discrete from the beacon channels of other subnets, together with any required aggregate channels matching each station's identified communication option and an associated medium access control, and further to control transmission of data from the WAP to the at least two station nodes concurrently on the associated subnets.

主权项

1. A wireless communication apparatus for providing a wireless local area network (WLAN) to a plurality of wireless stations; and the wireless communication apparatus comprising:
a wireless access point (WAP) having:
a plurality of antenna;a plurality of shared and discrete components coupled to one another to form transmit and receive chains each coupled to a corresponding one of the plurality of antenna for orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) WLAN communications with the plurality of wireless stations;a subnet controller coupled to the plurality of shared and discrete components and configured to generate at least two subnets each associated with corresponding ones of the plurality of wireless stations and for each subnet a discrete communication bandwidth including a beacon channel for wireless station association and communication together with a discrete medium access control (MAC) for collision sense multiple access (CSMA) uplinks from each of the plurality of stations to the WAP, and concurrent downlinks of discrete communications from the WAP to a selected one of the plurality of stations associated with a first of the at least two subnets and to a selected other of the plurality of stations associated with a second of the at least two subnets, thereby improving downlink performance of the WAP; and a station set identifier coupled to the subnet controller and configured to identify an association of each of the plurality of stations with a corresponding one of the at least two subnets, by ranking estimated concurrent downlink airtime requirements of various combinations of each of the plurality of stations and station bandwidths for each of the at least two subnets based on an estimated communication demand and throughput capability at various bandwidths of each of the plurality of stations.