Centralized radio resource management (RRM) of a wireless mesh network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11375395-B2
Application number	US-201916436193-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 10, 2019
Priority date	Jun 10, 2019
Publication date	Jun 28, 2022
Grant date	Jun 28, 2022

Abstract

Network hardware devices organized in a wireless network. A controller device receives device information about each of a multiple network devices, network congestion at each device, scan data, and a station list from each of the devices. The controller device assigns a channel to each radio of the multiple network devices using the device information, the network congestion data, the scan data, and the station list and outputs a first subset of channel assignments to a first group of the network devices, a second subset of channel assignments to a second group of the network devices, and a third subset of channel assignments to a third group of the network devices.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
receiving, by a controller device from a plurality of network devices of a wireless network, device information about each of the plurality of network devices, network congestion data at each of the plurality of network devices, scan data that identifies each radio of each network device of the plurality of network devices, and a station list that identifies a least one client device associated with at least one of the plurality of network devices;
generating, by the controller device, channel assignment information that includes a list of channels, wherein each channel from the list of channels is associated with at least one radio of each of the plurality of network devices, and wherein the list is generated using the device information, the network congestion data, the scan data, and the station list;
sending, by the controller device, a first subset of the channel assignment information to each network device of a first group of network devices of the plurality of network devices;
receiving, from one or more of the network devices of the first group, information that confirms that the client devices, associated with any of the network devices of the first group, have changed to the first subset of the channel assignment information; and
sending, by the controller device, a second subset of the channel assignment information to each network device of a second group of network devices of the plurality of network devices in response to the receiving the information.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, by the controller device from the plurality of network devices, updated device information about each of the plurality of network devices, updated network congestion data at each of the plurality of network devices, updated scan data that identifies each radio of other network devices of the plurality of network devices, and an updated station list that identifies a least one client device associated with at least one of the plurality of network devices;
receiving, from one or more of the network devices of the second group, second information that confirms that the client devices, associated with any of the network devices of the second group, have changed to the second subset of the channel assignment information; and
sending, by the controller device, a third subset of the channel assignment information to each network device of a third group network devices of the plurality of network devices in response to the receiving the second information.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the first group comprises a base station node access point (BSN AP), wherein the second group comprises a relay node access point (RLN AP), and wherein the third group comprises a home access node access point (HAN AP).

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the generating the channel assignment information comprises:
determining, from the scan data, an average radio-to-radio receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) value for each of the plurality of network devices across a specified time range, the average radio-to-radio RSSI value indicating a signal strength between a radio of a first network device and a radio of a second network device;
determining, from the network congestion data, an average channel measurement for each of the plurality of network devices across the specified time range;
identifying a first radio cluster and a second radio cluster by identifying radios having the average radio-to-radio RSSI values exceeding a threshold value; and
assigning a channel to each radio of the first radio cluster and each radio of the second radio cluster using a minimum weight matching algorithm.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein generating the channel assignment information further comprises generating the list of channels with each of the channels assigned to each of the radios of the first radio cluster and the second radio cluster.

6. The method of claim 5 , further comprising identifying all client devices associated with any one of the network devices of the first group.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising identifying all client devices associated with any one of the network devices of the second group.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first group comprises one or more base station node access points (BSN APs), wherein the second group comprises one or more home access node access points (HAN AP).

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the generating the channel assignment information comprises:
storing the device information, the network congestion data, the scan data, and the station list in time-series database tables; and
determining, by the controller device, a set of time-series statistics per device for each of the plurality of network devices.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the determining the set of time-series statistics per device comprises determining a first average channel load per a first time period and a second average channel load per a second time period.

11. The method of claim 9 , wherein the set of time-series statistics comprises at least one of:
radio clustering statistics;
airtime statistics per device;
first congestion statistics per cluster, the first congestion statistics derived from a respective node's airtime per cluster;
second congestion statistics per network, the second congestion statistics derived from a respective node's airtime per network;
third congestion statistics derived from a respective radio link budget;
airtime required for a peer receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) per network;
signal strength between two node's frame latency per device;
average delay between frames from the a device channel load per device;
channel load per device;
channel load per radio cluster;
channel load per network;
packet error rate (PER); or
frame error rate (FER).

12. The method of claim 9 , further comprising generating a peer list comprises associated client stations for each access point (AP) or associated APs for each base station.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the generating the channel assignment information comprises:
storing the device information, the network congestion data, the scan data, and the station list in time-series database tables;
generating, by the controller device, a peer RSSI matrix, the peer RSSI matrix comprising an average radio-to-radio receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) value for each of the plurality of network devices across a specified time range;
determining an average channel measurement value for each of the plurality of network devices across the specified time range; and
assigning, by a network optimizer executed by the controller device, the channel to each radio of the plurality of network devices using the peer RSSI matrix and the average channel measurement values.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the generating the channel assignment information further comprises assigning, by the controller device, the channel to each radio of a radio cluster using a minimum weight matching algorithm.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of network devices are mesh network devices that are part of a wireless mesh network, and wherein the controller device is one of the mesh network devices that is part of the wireless mesh network.

16. A system comprising:
a server; and
a wireless network of a plurality of network devices communicatively coupled to the server, wherein at least one of the plurality of network devices is a base station node access point (BSN AP) and at least one of the plurality of network devic

Assignees

• Amazon Tech Inc

Inventors

• Wong Chiu Ngok Eric
• Tsai Kun Ting
• Hu Xueheng
• Lu Jian
• Lucrecio Armando J

Classifications

• H04W72/51

  based on terminal or device properties · CPC title

• H04B17/318

  Received signal strength · CPC title

• H04W40/248

  Connectivity information update · CPC title

• H04W84/18

  Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks · CPC title

• H04W28/021 Primary

  in wireless networks with changing topologies, e.g. ad-hoc networks (self-organizing networks H04W84/18) · CPC title