The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 16, 1999
Filed:
Dec. 15, 1995
Darwin A Engwer, San Jose, CA (US);
Ken Clements, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Jonathan M Zweig, Mountain View, CA (US);
Daniel S Perrin, San Jose, CA (US);
Netwave Technologies, Inc., , US;
Abstract
A wireless local area network allows roaming of a mobile unit to allow it to serially associate with a number of access points of the network fixed backbone. This roaming is supported by an improved measurement of communications link quality, which includes calculating a mean error free length of a test pattern broadcast by each access point and received by a mobile unit. The test pattern is a digital data message. Thus an accurate measurement of link quality is provided which allows a mobile unit to determine whether it should change its association to another access point having improved communications link quality. Further, a load balancing process is provided to balance the communications load amongst a variety of access points, by allowing mobile units also to switch their association with access points in accordance with a current total data rate at any given access point and also considering the number of currently high data rate mobile units associated with a particular access point at any one time.