System and method to facilitate the use of multiple radios to increase the capacity of a wireless communication network

摘要

A system and method for increasing the capacity of a wireless network (100, 300) including a plurality of access points (APs) (106, 305) and a plurality of nodes (200), at least one of said nodes (200) and at least one of said APs (106, 305) including multiple radios (310), the method comprising: (i) determining the routing metrics to one of said APs through each radio interface that is common between one of the nodes and that AP; (ii) selecting the radio interface whose routing metrics meet a desired criteria for packet stream transmission between the at least one node and the AP; and (iii) transmitting at least one packet stream from the node to the AP through the selected radio interface.

主权项

1. A method of operation of a wireless communication network comprising:
communicatively coupling each radio of a first plurality of radios within an origination node to an associated radio of a plurality of radios within each of a plurality of neighbor nodes, thereby creating one or more communicatively coupled pair of radios; sending a message from each radio of the first plurality of radios of the origination node to each of the associated radios of the plurality of radios of each of the plurality of neighbor nodes, wherein the sent message comprises an advertisement that sets all routing metrics of a plurality of routing metrics to the originating node to zero; in response to the message received from the origination node, calculating, at each of the plurality of neighbor nodes, the routing metrics to the origination node, wherein the routing metrics account for a quantity of communicatively coupled pairs of radios between the neighbor node and the origination node; receiving the calculated routing metrics for each communicatively coupled pair of radios of each of the plurality of neighbor nodes from each of the plurality of neighbor nodes by the origination node; and selecting, by the origination node, a neighbor node and a communicatively coupled pair of radios between the selected neighbor node and the origination node for communication with the origination node based at least in part on the calculated routing metrics.