| 摘要 |
A packet network employs frame aggregation to reduce the number of physical-layer frames employed to transfer a given amount of user data. A packet network might employ physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers of a wireless local area network (WLAN) operating in accordance with one or more IEEE 802.11 standards. Frame aggregation combines several separate, higher-layer frames with user data into one PHY-layer frame, thus increasing the amount of user data per PHY-layer frame transmitted. <??>In a first embodiment, several LLC-frames (201(1)-(N)) are combined to a "dummy" LLC-frame (202), which is supplied to the standardized MAC layer (204). <??>In a second embodiment several MAC-frames (316(1)-(M)) are concatenated and supplied with both a dummy header (308) and an error correction field (309), before being supplied to the standardized physical layer (311). <??>In a third embodiment, a physical frame is built by adding to several MAC frames (406(1)-(M)) respective preceding PLCP-headers (409(1)-(M)), combining them and adding the preamble of the physical layer (408). <??>In a fourth embodiment, several MAC frames (506(1)-(N)) are ordered by destination address and/or data rate, concatenated and supplied with a MAC-descriptor (508) before being supplied to the standardized physical layer (512). <IMAGE>
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