Systems and methods for simultaneously using multiple WLAN modules operating in different wireless bands

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9439099-B2
Application number	US-201314109847-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 17, 2013
Priority date	Oct 14, 2013
Publication date	Sep 6, 2016
Grant date	Sep 6, 2016

Abstract

Systems and methods for enabling a wireless local area network (WLAN) client to communicate simultaneously over more than one band at a time are described, where each client has at least one radio that is operational in each supported band. Load balancing based on traffic requirements optimizes the use of the multiple bands.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
wirelessly communicating by an access point with a wireless device over a first wireless channel;
simultaneously wirelessly communicating by the client station with the wireless device over a second wireless channel, wherein the first wireless channel is in a first wireless band, the second wireless channel is in a second wireless band, and wherein the first wireless band is distinct from the second wireless band; and
performing link aggregation by the access point to determine a simultaneous use of the first wireless channel and second wireless channel to target a quality of the communications between the access point and the wireless device, wherein the first wireless channel is distinct from the second wireless channel and wherein the first wireless channel and the second wireless channel use the same protocol, wherein the target quality is selected at least from the following criteria: a throughout, a delay, a delay variation, a number of retries when re-transmitting unacknowledged packets, and a quality of service (QoS) requirement.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the link aggregation is performed at a layer two level.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the link aggregation comprises the use of multipath TCP (transmission control protocol).

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the link aggregation is performed at an application layer in the network, wherein application layer link aggregation is selected from one of: multi-server HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol), BitTorrent, peer-to-peer aggregation methods, and server-based aggregation methods.

Assignees

• Netgear Inc

Inventors

• Emmanuel Joseph Amalan Arul
• Amini Peiman
• Liu Chia-Wei

Classifications

• H04W72/52 Primary

  based on load · CPC title

• H04W74/002

  Transmission of channel access control information · CPC title

• H04W80/02

  Data link layer protocols · CPC title

• H04W84/12

  WLAN [Wireless Local Area Networks] · CPC title

• H04W88/06

  adapted for operation in multiple networks {or having at least two operational modes}, e.g. multi-mode terminals · CPC title