Indication of wireless signal quality using detected errors in data

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9629004-B2
Application number	US-201414517330-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 17, 2014
Priority date	Oct 17, 2014
Publication date	Apr 18, 2017
Grant date	Apr 18, 2017

Abstract

Techniques for indication of wireless signal quality are described. According to various implementations, attributes of a wireless signal are detected and processed to ascertain a quality of the wireless signal. Based on an ascertained signal quality, indicia of the signal quality can be exposed. For instance, an indication of wireless signal quality is communicated to an application and/or service that manages communication of media data. According to one or more embodiments, an application/service may perform one or more actions based on the indication of signal quality, such as a procedure to improve signal quality, a procedure to optimize wireless performance, and so forth.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:
at least one processor; and
one or more computer-readable storage media including instructions stored thereon that, responsive to execution by the at least one processor, cause the system to perform operations including:
receiving a signal strength value that indicates signal strength of a wireless signal used to communicate media data as part of communication between a client device and an endpoint device;
ascertaining a quantity of errors detected in the wireless signal;
determining an adjustment value based on the quantity of errors in the wireless signal;
adjusting the signal strength value of the wireless signal using the adjustment value such that the adjusted signal strength value reflects a signal quality value for the wireless signal in accordance with the quantity of errors detected in the wireless signal; and
outputting an indication of the signal quality value for display on a display device based at least in part on the adjusted signal strength value.

2. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the media data comprises at least one of voice data or video data communicated between the client device and the endpoint device.

3. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the operations further include:
performing, by the at least one of an application or a service, one or more actions based on an indication of the signal quality, the one or more actions including at least one of:
initiating a corrective procedure to attempt to increase the signal quality; or
initiating an optimization procedure based on the indication of signal quality.

4. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the operations further include initiating a corrective procedure to attempt to increase the signal quality, said initiating the corrective procedure including performing, by at least one of an application or a service, an error correction procedure on the media data.

5. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the operations further include initiating a corrective procedure to attempt to increase the signal quality, said initiating the corrective procedure including performing, by at least one of an application or a service, forward error correction (FEC) on the media data.

6. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the operations further include initiating a corrective procedure to attempt to increase the signal quality, said initiating the corrective procedure including performing, by at least one of an application or a service, a cyclical redundancy check (CRC) on the media data.

7. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the operations further include initiating an optimization procedure based on an indication of the signal quality, said initiating the optimization procedure including at least one of increasing a codec rate used for communicating media data, or decreasing transmission power used to transmit media data.

8. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the outputting the indication of the signal quality for display on the display device includes outputting a signal strength indicator along with the indication of the signal quality.

9. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the outputting the indication of the signal quality for display on the display device includes outputting the indication of the signal quality as part of a graphical user interface of at least one of an application or a service.

10. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the operations further include:
causing a selectable control to be displayed, the selectable control being selectable to cause initiation of a corrective procedure; and
initiating the corrective procedure to attempt to increase the signal quality in response to selection of the selectable control.

11. A system as described in claim 1 , wherein the operations further include causing a selectable control to be displayed, the selectable control being selectable to cause details concerning the signal quality to be presented.

12. A method comprising:
determining a signal strength value for a wireless signal used to communicate data;
detecting a number of errors in the data over a particular period of time;
determining an adjustment value based on the number of errors;
ascertaining, by a computing device, a signal quality value of the wireless signal by adjusting the signal strength value using the adjustment value, the data including media data communicated between two or more devices; and
communicating a notification of the signal quality value to one or more of a communication application or a communication service that manages communication of the media data.

13. A method as recited in claim 12 , wherein the number of errors are detected via one or more of a cyclical redundancy check (CRC) performed on the data, or forward error correction (FEC) decoding performed on the data.

14. A method as recited in claim 12 , wherein the number of errors are detected based on a number of retransmissions of at least some of the data.

15. A method as recited in claim 12 , wherein said ascertaining and said communicating are performed by a quality service that is remote from a device on which the communication application resides.

16. A method as recited in claim 12 , wherein the the signal quality value includes one of an indication of a trend of decreasing signal quality, or a trend of increasing signal quality.

17. A method comprising:
receiving, by a computing device, a signal quality value that indicates signal quality of a wireless signal, the signal quality value being determined by:
determining a signal strength value for the wireless signal;
detecting a number of errors data included in the wireless signal;
determining an adjustment value based on the number of errors;
adjusting the signal strength value based at least in part on the adjustment value; and

performing, by the at least one of the application or the service, one or more actions based on the signal quality value, the one or more actions including causing a graphical user interface to be displayed that includes a visual indication of the signal quality.

18. A method as described in claim 17 , wherein the one or more actions further include causing a procedure to be performed to attempt to increase the signal quality.

19. A method as described in claim 17 , wherein the one or more actions further include causing a procedure to be performed to attempt to increase the signal quality, the procedure including performing, by the one or more of the application or the service, at least one of forward error correction (FEC) or a cyclical redundancy check (CRC) on media data.

20. A method as described in claim 17 , wherein the one or more actions further include causing one or more suggestions for increasing the signal quality to be displayed via the graphical user interface.

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Hassan Amer A
• Jefremov Andrei

Classifications

• H04L41/22

  comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI] · CPC title

• H04L1/0009

  by adapting the channel coding (H04L1/1812 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H04L1/004

  by using forward error control (H04L1/0618 takes precedence; coding, decoding or code conversion, for error detection or correction H03M13/00) · CPC title

• H04L1/08

  by repeating transmission, e.g. Verdan system {(H04L1/1858 and H04L1/189 take precedence)} · CPC title

• H04W24/02 Primary

  Arrangements for optimising operational condition · CPC title