Interference mitigation by overhearing

摘要

Briefly, in accordance with one or more embodiments in a wireless network, a station may overhear one or more packets that are not necessarily destined for those stations. The overhearing station may decode the data of the packet, and may utilizes the decoded packet to remove a retransmission of that packet in a subsequent time slot and occurring at the same time as the transmission of a packet destined for that station in the same time slot. Such a retransmission of packets may occur for example in relay systems and/or in hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) systems. The retransmitted packet may be treated as an interference signal in the total received signal, so that the previously received and decoded packet may be subtracted from the total signal, allowing the desired packet to be decoded from the intended signal.

主权项

1. A method, comprising:
receiving at a first station from a base station a first downlink packet intended for another station by overhearing the transmission of the first packet; decoding the first packet at the first station; transmitting from the first station to the base station an acknowledgement that the first downlink packet was successfully decoded; receiving at the first station a first uplink packet and a retransmission of the first packet as a total signal, the first uplink packet being intended for the first station and being transmitted by a third station, the base station designating the first station to receive the first uplink packet in response to the acknowledgement transmitted by the first station that the first downlink packet was successfully decoded, and the retransmission of the first downlink packet being from the base station and intended for the another station; subtracting at the first station the decoded first packet from the total signal to provide a resulting signal; and decoding at the first station the first uplink packet from the resulting signal.