Intellon Corporation

Qualcomm Incorporated

Atheros Communications, Inc.

Qualcomm Atheros Inc.

Bart W Blanchard

Lawrence W Yonge, Iii

William E Earnshaw

Timothy Robert Gargrave

Srinivas Katar

Stanley Joseph Kostoff, Ii

Harper Brent Mashburn

William Edward Lawton

Gregory Allen Magin

James Philip Patella

Hassan Kaywan Afkhamie

James E VanderMey

Lawrence W Yonge

Stanley J Kostoff

Stanley J Ii Kostoff

Iii Lawrence W Yonge

Lawrence W Iii Yonge

A method of operating in a network in which a plurality of stations communicate over a shared medium, comprising providing a physical layer (e.g., PHY) for handling physical communication over the shared medium; providing a high level layer (e.g., PAL) that receives data from the station and supplies high level data units (e.g., MSDUs) for transmission over the medium; providing a MAC layer that receives the high level data units from the high level layer and supplies low level data units (e.g., MPDUs) to the physical layer; at the MAC layer, encapsulating content from a plurality of the high level data units; dividing the encapsulated content into a plurality of pieces (e.g., segments) with each piece capable of being independently retransmitted; and supplying low level data units containing one or more of the plurality of pieces.

Medium access control layer that encapsulates data from a plurality of received data units into a plurality of independently transmittable blocks

A method of operating in a network (e.g., a power line communication network) in which a plurality of stations communicate over a shared medium (e.g., an AC power line) having a periodically varying channel. The method includes determining a plurality of channel adaptations (e.g., tone maps) for communication between a pair of stations, and assigning a different one of the plurality of channel adaptations to each of a plurality of phase regions of the periodically varying channel.

Channel adaptation synchronized to periodically varying channel

A scheme for configuring an FEC encoder (including an associated interleaver) for changing data channel characteristics. Channel information specifying a modulation mode and carriers capable of supporting the modulation mode for the data channel is received by a transmitting network node for use in a data transmission to a receiving network node. The received channel information is based on a prior data transmission to the receiving network node over the data channel. Configuration values are computed from the received channel information and an amount of data to be transmitted in a data transmission. The FEC encoder is configured to operate on the data transmission data amount according to the configuration information.

Forward error correction with channel adaptation

An interleaving/de-interleaving scheme for providing redundancy with both time and frequency diversity to data in OFDM symbols in a data transmission system. On the transmit side, encoded data to be modulated onto carriers in OFDM symbols is interleaved by storing the encoded data in an interleaver memory and reading multiple copies of the encoded data from the interleaver memory so that the encoded data copies are spread in time on non-consecutive symbols and in frequency on non-adjacent carriers. On the receive side, the multiple copies of the OFDM data are received, and phase noise computations are used to combine the multiple copies (in either metric or phase angle form) into one. From the combined copies a single metric value to be used in decoding the OFDM data is produced.

Robust transmission mode

An apparatus and methods are provided for network radio frequency ('RF') data communications. The apparatus preferably has an extended channel radio transmitter for selectively transmitting data communication radio signals across a plurality of different carrier frequencies which respectively define a plurality of extended data communication channels. The transmitter preferably includes a channel scanner for scanning the extended data communication channels for availability prior to transmitting across a selected one of the plurality of extended data communication channels. An extended channel radio receiver is responsive to the extended channel radio transmitter for receiving the data communication signals from the selected one of the extended data communication channels. The extended channel radio receiver preferably includes an extended channel data detection synchronizer responsive to the data communications signals being received by the receiver for synchronizing the transmitting and receiving of the data communication signals across the extended data communications channels. Any and all extended channel contending transmitters and receivers or transceivers within a network preferably sense and synchronize to the extended channel being transmitted within a predetermined period of time, i.e., within one bit time of Unit Symbol Time. This assures that normal carrier sense access control protocols operate correctly across the virtual channel which includes the plurality of possible extended channels.

Spread spectrum apparatus and method for network RF data communications

Growing community of inventors

Fort McCoy, FL, United States of America

Bart W Blanchard