Transmission apparatus and method, receiving apparatus and method for latency reduction using FEC packets at MAC layer

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12500692-B2
Application number	US-201917263563-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 1, 2019
Priority date	Aug 3, 2018
Publication date	Dec 16, 2025
Grant date	Dec 16, 2025

Abstract

A transmission apparatus for use in a communication system comprises MAC layer processing circuitry and PHY layer processing circuitry. The MAC layer processing circuitry is configured to encode, on a MAC layer, N data units, each comprising payload data, into M parity units, each comprising parity data allowing the reconstruction of one or more erroneous data units among said N data units in a receiver apparatus, according to a parity rule, the N data units and the corresponding M parity units representing a parity block, and to form a MAC layer data stream from the data units and the parity units of the parity block. The PHY layer processing circuitry is configured to encode, on a PHY layer, bits of the MAC layer data stream into codewords of a code and to form a PHY layer data stream from the codewords.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1 . A transmission apparatus for use in a communication system, the transmission apparatus comprising:
MAC layer processing circuitry configured to:
encode N data units on a MAC layer into M parity units according to a parity rule, wherein N is different than M, each data unit of the N data units comprises payload data, each parity unit of the M parity units comprises parity data allowing a reconstruction of one or more erroneous data units among the N data units in a receiver apparatus, and a parity block is represented by the N data units followed by the M parity units; and
form a MAC layer data stream from the N data units and the M parity units of the parity block; and
PHY layer processing circuitry configured to:
encode, on a PHY layer, bits of the MAC layer data stream into codewords of a code; and
form a PHY layer data stream from the codewords, wherein
each data unit, of the N data units, includes:
a data header comprising one or more of information about a type of data unit, transmission apparatus and receiving apparatus address duration information indicating duration of the data unit and sequence number of the data unit,
a payload portion comprising the payload data including one or more of user data, management data and control data, and
a frame check sequence comprising a checksum over the data header and the payload portion of the data unit.

2 . The transmission apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to pad the N data units by padding data to have a same length before encoding them into the M parity data units.

3 . The transmission apparatus as claimed in claim 2 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to interleave the N data units and the M parity units of the parity block and to form the MAC layer data stream from the interleaved data units and parity units.

4 . The transmission apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to allocate the N data units and the M parity units of the MAC layer data stream to different PHY layer resources.

5 . The transmission apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to apply binary encoding or non-binary encoding to the N data units to generate the M parity units.

6 . The transmission apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein a parity unit comprises:
a parity header including one or more of:
an identifier identifying the parity unit,
information indicating a length of the parity unit, a length of the aggregate N data units, or a length of the parity block,
transmission apparatus and receiving apparatus address,
parity information indicating the applied parity rule, and
parity sequence information indicating an index of the parity unit,
a parity payload portion comprising the parity data, and a parity frame check sequence comprising a checksum over the parity header and the parity payload portion of the parity unit.

7 . The transmission apparatus as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to arrange a delimiter between two subsequent data units, between two subsequent parity units, or between two subsequent parity blocks.

8 . The transmission apparatus as claimed in claim 7 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to add information into the delimiters indicating whether a subsequent unit is a data unit, whether the subsequent unit is a parity unit, or whether the subsequent unit is a beginning of a new parity block.

9 . The transmission apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein the transmission apparatus is configured to agree with the receiving apparatus or inform the receiving apparatus on the parity rule, numbers of N and M and an interleaver configuration or to determine them by evaluating capabilities of the receiving apparatus.

10 . A transmission method for use in a communication system, the transmission method comprising:
performing a MAC layer processing including:
encoding N data units on a MAC layer into M parity units according to a parity rule, wherein N is different than M, each data unit of the N data units comprises payload data, each parity unit of the M parity units comprises parity data allowing a reconstruction of one or more erroneous data units among the N data units in a receiver apparatus, and a parity block represented by the N data units followed by the M parity units; and
forming a MAC layer data stream from the N data units and the M parity units of the parity block; and
performing a PHY layer processing including:
encoding, on a PHY layer, bits of the MAC layer data stream into codewords of a code; and
forming a PHY layer data stream from the codewords, wherein
each data unit, of the N data units, includes:
a data header comprising one or more of information about a type of data unit, transmission apparatus and receiving apparatus address, duration information indicating duration of the data unit and sequence number of the data unit,
a payload portion comprising the payload data including one or more of user data management data and control data, and
a frame check sequence comprising a checksum over the data header and the payload portion of the data unit.

11 . A receiving apparatus for use in a communication system, the receiving apparatus comprising:
PHY layer processing circuitry configured to:
derive codewords of a code from a received PHY layer data stream; and
decode, on a PHY layer, the codewords into bits of a MAC layer data stream; and
MAC layer processing circuitry configured to:
derive N data units from the MAC layer data stream to detect erasures in the N data units, wherein N is different than M, each data unit of the N data units comprises payload data and corresponds to a parity unit of M parity units, each parity unit of the M parity units comprises parity data, and a parity block is represented by the N data units followed by the M parity units; and
reconstruct, on a MAC layer and according to a parity rule, one or more data units by use of the correctly received parity units in a case that an erasure is detected in one or more data units, wherein
each data unit, of the N data units, includes:
a data header comprising one or more of information about a type of data unit, transmission apparatus and receiving apparatus address, duration information indicating duration of the data unit and sequence number of the data unit,
a payload portion comprising the payload data including one or more of user data, management data and control data, and
a frame check sequence comprising a checksum over the data header and the payload portion of the data unit.

12 . The receiving apparatus as claimed in claim 11 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to pad error-free data units by padding data to have a same length before reconstructing an erroneous data unit and to remove the padding data from the error-free data units after the reconstruction of the erroneous data unit.

13 . The receiving apparatus as claimed in claim 11 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to deallocate the N data units and the M parity units from PHY layer resources onto the MAC layer data stream.

14 . The receiving apparatus as claimed in claim 11 , wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry is further configured to apply binary decoding or non-binary decoding to reconstruct an erroneous data unit.

15 . The receiving apparatus as claimed

Assignees

• Sony Corp

Inventors

• Handte Thomas
• Ciochina Dana
• Loghin Nabil Sven

Classifications

• H04W72/0466

  the resource being a scrambling code · CPC title

• H04L1/0041 Primary

  Arrangements at the transmitter end · CPC title

• H04L1/189

  Transmission or retransmission of more than one copy of a message · CPC title

• H04L1/1628

  List acknowledgements, i.e. the acknowledgement message consisting of a list of identifiers, e.g. of sequence numbers (H04L1/1614 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H04L1/0057 Primary

  Block codes (H04L1/0061, H04L1/0064 take precedence) · CPC title