Wireless communication apparatus, wireless communication method, and program

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2017195857-A1
Application number	US-201515313293-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jun 5, 2015
Priority date	Jun 30, 2014
Publication date	Jul 6, 2017
Grant date	—

Abstract

To make it possible to perform retransmission control in which wireless resources are more efficiently utilized, a wireless communication apparatus includes: a wireless communication unit configured to perform wireless communication with a terminal apparatus; a communication control unit configured to control multicast transmission performed by the wireless communication unit; and a setting unit configured to set a threshold for determining whether or not it is necessary for the communication control unit to perform a retransmission process, on the basis of information about reception of a reception acknowledgment response corresponding to the multicast transmission from the terminal apparatus.

First claim

1 . A wireless communication apparatus comprising:
a wireless communication unit configured to perform wireless communication with a terminal apparatus; a communication control unit configured to control multicast transmission performed by the wireless communication unit; and a setting unit configured to set a threshold for determining whether or not it is necessary for the communication control unit to perform a retransmission process, on the basis of information about reception of a reception acknowledgment response corresponding to the multicast transmission from the terminal apparatus.

2 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 1 ,
wherein the threshold is a threshold related to a number of the terminal apparatuses which have transmitted back the reception acknowledgment response corresponding to the multicast transmission.

3 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 1 ,
wherein the threshold is a threshold related to a proportion of the terminal apparatuses which have transmitted back the reception acknowledgment response corresponding to the multicast transmission to the terminal apparatuses which are a destination of the multicast transmission.

4 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 1 ,
wherein the threshold is a threshold related to a number of times of retransmission of a frame which has been subjected to the multicast transmission.

5 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 1 ,
wherein the information about reception of the reception acknowledgment response is information indicating an importance level of a transmitted frame for which reception of the reception acknowledgment response has resulted in failure, and wherein the setting unit calculates the importance level on the basis of information about a multicast frame for which reception of the corresponding reception acknowledgment response has resulted in failure.

6 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 5 ,
wherein the setting unit calculates the importance level on the basis of an index of an upper layer related to data contained in the multicast frame.

7 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 6 ,
wherein the index of the upper layer contains information indicating a hierarchical level of encoding of the data encoded by a hierarchical encoding technique.

8 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 6 ,
wherein the index of the upper layer contains information indicating whether or not the data contains at least any one of video and audio.

9 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 6 ,
wherein the index of the upper layer contains information indicating a dependence relationship between the data and other data.

10 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 6 ,
wherein the index of the upper layer contains information indicating whether or not the data contains a time stamp.

11 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 6 ,
wherein the index of the upper layer contains information indicating whether or not the data contains a protocol header of the upper layer.

12 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 5 ,
wherein the setting unit calculates the importance level on the basis of a transmission setting which has been used in transmission of the multicast frame.

13 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 12 ,
wherein the transmission setting contains a setting for performing transmission using a bundle of a plurality of frequency channels.

14 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 5 ,
wherein the setting unit calculates the importance level on the basis of information about a media access control (MAC) layer of the multicast frame.

15 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 14 ,
wherein the information about the MAC layer contains information indicating a type of the multicast frame.

16 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 14 ,
wherein the information about the MAC layer contains information indicating a data amount of the multicast frame.

17 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising:
a retransmission method determination unit configured to determine a transmission method in the retransmission process performed by the communication control unit, on the basis of information about the terminal apparatus which has failed to receive the reception acknowledgment response corresponding to the multicast transmission.

18 . The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising:
a retransmission timing determination unit configured to determine a timing at which the communication control unit is to perform the retransmission process.

19 . A wireless communication method for use in a wireless communication apparatus which performs wireless communication with a terminal apparatus, the method comprising:
controlling multicast transmission using a processor; and setting a threshold for determining whether or not it is necessary to perform a retransmission process, on the basis of information about reception of a reception acknowledgment response corresponding to the multicast transmission from the terminal apparatus.

20 . A program for causing a computer to function as:
a wireless communication unit configured to perform wireless communication with a terminal apparatus; a communication control unit configured to control multicast transmission performed by the wireless communication unit; and a setting unit configured to set a threshold for determining whether or not it is necessary for the communication control unit to perform a retransmission process, on the basis of information about reception of a reception acknowledgment response corresponding to the multicast transmission from the terminal apparatus.

Assignees

• Sony Corp

Inventors

• Sakai Eisuke
• Itagaki Takeshi

Classifications

• H04N21/64776

  for requesting retransmission, e.g. of data packets lost or corrupted during transmission from server (ARQ protocols H04L1/18; implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP] H04L69/16) · CPC title

• H04W4/06 Primary

  Selective distribution of broadcast services, e.g. multimedia broadcast multicast service [MBMS]; Services to user groups; One-way selective calling services · CPC title

• H04L5/0055

  Physical resource allocation for ACK/NACK (for physical mapping arrangements in ARQ protocols H04L1/1861) · CPC title

• H04W28/04

  Error control · CPC title

• H04L47/806

  Broadcast or multicast traffic · CPC title