Backoff mechanism techniques for spatial reuse

US10117106B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• QUALCOMM Incorporated · US

Inventors

• Gwendolyn Denise Barriac · Encinitas, US
• Simone Merlin · San Diego, US
• George Cherian · San Diego, US
• Alfred Asterjadhi · San Diego, US
• Yan Zhou · San Diego, US
• Gang Ding · San Diego, US
• Qingjiang Tian · San Diego, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Aug 17, 2016
• Grant date: Oct 30, 2018
• Expiry date: Oct 22, 2036

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04W74/0816
• WIPO field: Digital communication
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Techniques for reducing delay in scheduling traffic transmission in an overlapping basic service set (OBSS) environment by modifying backoff mechanisms are disclosed. In some examples, a device (e.g., station (STA), access point (AP)) decodes at least a portion of a preamble of a packet to determine whether the packet is sent by a member of an OBSS (e.g., STA, AP from a different BSS). Backoff operations are typically deferred as a result of the decoding. Aspects of the present disclosure provide a method, apparatus, and system in which the backoff operations are resumed prior to expiration of the period reserved for an OBSS packet by the network allocation vector (NAV). That is, the device may not honor the NAV of the OBSS packet, and instead perform spatial reuse by transmitting another packet (or signal) on the same frequency channel during the NAV of the OBSS packet.