Neighbor awareness networking discovery window congestion mitigation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11147126-B2
Application number	US-201916403885-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 6, 2019
Priority date	May 15, 2018
Publication date	Oct 12, 2021
Grant date	Oct 12, 2021

Abstract

One or more wireless stations may operate to configure direct communication with neighboring mobile stations, e.g., direct communication between the wireless stations without utilizing an intermediate access point. A mechanism for wireless stations to mitigate medium congestion in discovery windows may include suppressing solicited publisher responses via an SRF for a first time period and resetting the SRF after the first time period in order to receive updates from peer devices.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A wireless station, comprising:
at least one antenna;
at least one radio in communication with the at least one antenna and configured to perform communications via a Wi-Fi interface; and
at least one processor in communication with the at least one radio;
wherein the at least one processor is configured to cause the wireless station to:
transmit, in a first discovery window, a first subscriber service discovery frame (SDF) to one or more neighboring wireless stations, wherein the first subscriber SDF is transmitted according to a peer-to-peer transmission protocol;
receive, in the first discovery window, one or more first solicited publisher SDFs from at least one of the one or more neighboring wireless stations;
transmit in a second subscriber SDF, during a subsequent second discovery window, a first service response filter (SRF) to the one or more neighboring wireless stations, wherein the first SRF is determined at least in part on the one or more received first solicited publisher SDFs, and wherein the first SRF indicates that the one or more neighboring wireless stations are to suppress responses to the second subscriber SDF in one or more subsequent discovery windows;
reset contents of the first SRF, subsequent to the second discovery window and after a specified period of time following transmission of the second subscriber SDF, thereby generating a second SRF;
transmit in a third subscriber SDF, during a third discovery window after the specified period of time, the second SRF to the one or more neighboring wireless stations, wherein the second SRF indicates that the one or more neighboring wireless stations are to respond to the third subscriber SDF; and
receive, in a fourth discovery window subsequent to the third discovery window, one or more second solicited publisher SDFs from at least one of the one or more neighboring wireless stations.

2. The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein the first SRF comprises a data structure indicating a medium access control (MAC) address of at least one of the one or more neighboring wireless stations.

3. The wireless station of claim 2 ,
wherein the data structure comprises a Bloom filter representing one or more of the MAC addresses.

4. The wireless station of claim 2 ,
wherein the data structure comprises a list of one or more of the MAC addresses.

5. The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the wireless station to:
receive, from at least one neighboring wireless station of the one or more neighboring wireless stations, an unsolicited publisher SDF in a subsequent discovery window, wherein a MAC address of the at least one neighboring wireless station is indicated by the first SRF.

6. The wireless station of claim 5 ,
wherein the unsolicited publisher SDF includes an update to service specific information.

7. The wireless station of claim 6 ,
wherein the unsolicited publisher SDF further includes an incremented service update indicator.

8. The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein the specified period of time comprises at least two discovery window intervals.

9. The wireless station of claim 8 ,
wherein a discovery window interval is defined by at least one of:
a number of time units between successive discovery windows;
a number of time slots between successive discovery windows, wherein a time slot represents a number of time units; or
a number of time blocks between successive discovery windows, wherein a time block represents a number of time slots, and wherein a number of time slots represents a number of time units.

10. An apparatus, comprising:
a memory; and
at least one processor in communication with the memory, wherein the at least one processor is configured to:
receive, in a first discovery window, one or more first solicited publisher SDFs from one or more neighboring wireless stations, wherein the one or more first solicited publisher SDFS are received subsequent to a first subscriber SDF transmitted at a start of the first discovery window;
generate instructions to cause transmission, during a subsequent second discovery window, of a first service response filter (SRF) in a second subscriber SDF, wherein the first SRF is determined at least in part on the one or more received first solicited publisher SDFs, and wherein the first SRF indicates that the one or more neighboring wireless stations are to suppress responses to the second subscriber SDF in one or more subsequent discovery windows;
generate instructions to cause transmission, during a third discovery window after a specified period of time following transmission of the second subscriber SDF, of a second SRF in a third subscriber SDF, wherein the second SRF indicates that the one or more neighboring wireless stations are to respond to the third subscriber SDF, wherein the second SRF is generated by resetting contents of the first SRF following transmission of the second subscriber SDF; and
receive, in a fourth discovery window subsequent to the third discovery window, one or more second solicited publisher SDFs from at least one of the one or more neighboring wireless stations.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 ,
wherein the first SRF comprises a data structure indicating one or more medium access control (MAC) addresses of the one or more neighboring wireless stations.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 ,
wherein the data structure comprises at least one of:
a Bloom filter representative of the one or more MAC addresses; or
a list of the one or more MAC addresses.

13. The apparatus of claim 10 ,
wherein the at least one processor is further configured to:
receive, from at least one neighboring wireless station of the one or more neighboring wireless stations, an unsolicited publisher SDF in a subsequent discovery window, wherein a MAC address of the at least one neighboring wireless station is indicated by the first SRF.

14. The apparatus of claim 13 ,
wherein the unsolicited publisher SDF includes an update to service specific information, and wherein the unsolicited publisher SDF further includes an incremented service update indicator.

15. The apparatus of claim 10 ,
wherein the specified period of time comprises at least two discovery window intervals, and wherein a discovery window interval is defined by at least one of:
a number of time units between successive discovery windows;
a number of time slots between successive discovery windows, wherein a time slot represents a number of time units; or
a number of time blocks between successive discovery windows, wherein a time block represents a number of time slots, and wherein a number of time slots represents a number of time units.

16. A non-transitory computer readable memory medium storing program instructions executable by processing circuitry to cause a wireless station to:
receive, in a first discovery window, one or more first solicited publisher SDFs from one or more neighboring wireless stations, wherein the one or more first solicited publisher SDFs are received subsequent to a first subscriber SDF transmitted at a start of the first discovery window, wherein one or more first solicited publisher SDFs are received according to a peer-to-peer transmission protocol;
transmit, in a subsequent second discovery window, a first service response filter (SRF) in a second subscriber SDF, wherein the first SRF is determined at least in part on the one or more received first solicited publisher SDFs, and wherein the first SRF indicates that the one or more neighboring wireless s

Assignees

• Apple Inc

Inventors

• Kurian Lawrie
• Heerboth Peter N
• Liu Yong
• Haque Tashbeeb

Classifications

• H04L67/51 Primary

  Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services · CPC title

• H04L69/324

  in the data link layer [OSI layer 2], e.g. HDLC · CPC title

• H04W4/70

  Services for machine-to-machine communication [M2M] or machine type communication [MTC] · CPC title

• H04W4/80

  Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication · CPC title

• H04W8/005

  Discovery of network devices, e.g. terminals · CPC title