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:
Jan. 26, 2010
Filed:
Nov. 09, 2004
Sammy Ming Kit Chau, Kowloon, HK;
Soung C. Liew, Hong Kong, CN;
Vincent Lau, Hong Kong, CN;
Abstract
Some representative embodiments are directed to controlling access to a wireless medium using 'credit' periods and 'free' periods. During a credit period, credits are initially assigned to the stations and each station is repetitively polled as long as the station has credit remaining and data is available to communicate. During the free periods, stations are polled using a start-time fair queuing algorithm. By dividing the access to the wireless medium in this manner, real time applications may use the credit periods to prevent communication latency from deteriorating application performance. Specifically, the repetitive occurrence of the credit periods and the assignment of credits to the stations ensures that each station will communicate at least at a minimum data rate. Additionally, controlling access to the wireless medium in this manner prevents frame collisions and, thereby, increases network throughput.