Originally intended in the United States to be used primarily for instructional television broadcasts, the 2.5 to 2.7 GHz spectrum was found to be under-utilized for that purpose. Ultimately the FCC granted permission for this spectrum to be utilized by fixed wireless communication systems, including fixed Broadband Wireless Access (“BWA”), and, more specifically, Broadband Wireless Internet Access (“BWIA”) applications and systems.
Fixed wireless systems are typically used to expeditiously transmit large quanta of data on high volume networks, including those used to access the Internet or World Wide Web (“WWW”). A typical high-speed-high-volume data transfer network includes one or more remote originating stations, where data are created or stored. The created or stored data are transmitted to a base station which includes a transceiver. The base station may wirelessly communicate with the Customer Premises Equipment (“CPE”) of one or more subscribers or customers (“users” herein) who randomly and periodically desire to access the data via CPE (“Customer Premises Equipment”), such as a computer (PC, laptop, etc.), a computer system, a personal data assistant or a similar device. To this end, each item of CPE includes a wireless modem which includes a transceiver that can send data to and receive data from the transceiver in the base station. The data transfer network also includes a so-called “backbone” network on which various control signals are transmitted via the transceivers in the base station and the modems of the users.
If sufficient users are present in a given venue, multiple base stations (or “head ends”) may be set up in, and service, one or more respective adjacent or overlapping cells located in the venue. The data are transmitted from the data generators and/or data storage facilities in one or more originating stations to the base stations, typically via Hybrid Fiber/Coax (“HFC”) networks, but also via optical fibers, satellites, or other suitable links therebetween. The data are then transmitted by the base stations to the users within the venue. It has been found less expensive and more expedient to furnish these data from the base stations to the users via wireless techniques rather than by landlines or other non-wireless expedients.
In the foregoing regard, as with a cellular telephone network, it is necessary that two-way communications take place between each base station and each user's CPE served thereby. That is, each base station must be able to send data and information to the CPEs served thereby—so-called down link (down load or down stream) data—and each CPE must be able to send data and information to the base station serving it—so-called up link (up load or up stream) data. When the FCC gave permission to use the 2.5-2.7 GHz spectrum for fixed wireless communications, it also gave approval to the use of two-way communications thereover. As noted above, the data and information includes data desired to be accessed by the users and control signals and training messages for establishing and regulating the flow of data to the users.
It is well known that the quality of wireless communications can be adversely affected by such things as (i) meteorological events, solar flares and other nearby electrical systems, and (ii) objects and structures located between, or near the path between, a transmitter and its served receivers. Other structures and occurrences may have an effect on or influence the modulated electromagnetic waves attending this form of communication. Wireless communications may be deleteriously affected by interference, which may be caused by the items in (i), above, and fading, which may be caused by the items in (ii), above.
Fading is caused by fluctuations in the amplitude of a transmitted wireless electromagnetic signal. The fluctuations are the result of multipath transmission of the transmitted signal resulting from one or more reflections of the signal from objects between its transmitter and a receiver or near the path between the transmitter and the receiver. Each reflection creates an additional transmission path for the signal, and each path has associated therewith some time delay. The overall effect at the receiver of the transmitted signal and the reflected signal(s) is that of a vectorial combination of variously delayed signals, with each received signal contributing a different phase and magnitude. There results a standing wave pattern between the transmitter and the receiver, where fading is caused by changes in magnitude versus spatial location.
Fading—whether flat fading or frequency selective fading—may be minimized, if not eliminated, by various signal processing techniques, referred to as channel equalization, including a technique called Decision Feedback Equalization (“DFE”). Depending on the various factors, successful channel equalization can represent major labor effort and monetary expenditure. If fading occurs because of reflections from stationary objects, such as buildings, the standing wave pattern is static in space. If the signals are reflected from a moving object, such as automobile traffic, channel equalization is even more difficult and expensive to achieve, since the standing wave pattern now moves in space. Also, the cost and complexity of channel equalization increases significantly with transmission rate.
Other steps to minimize or eliminate fading include providing a line-of-sight path between a transmitter and a receiver, the use of highly directional antennas and the use of multiple antennas at the receiver and/or the transmitter.
Transmissions in nearby cells or systems using the same carrier frequency may cause co-channel interference. Other services or equipment, as well as meteorological phenomena, utilizing or producing signals at the carrier frequency may also result in interference. Attempts to reduce or eliminate interference often include increasing the distance between the transmitter and the interfering equipment. This expedient may not be available, especially where large permanent structures or meteorological sources are involved, and if available, may prove very costly. Where the interfering equipment is a wireless communication system, interference reduction may be achieved through a decrease in frequency reuse by the interfering equipment. But, reducing frequency reuse in the interfering system concomitantly reduces that system's capacity.
Interference may be mitigated by spreading the signal over the frequency spectrum through the use of spread spectrum techniques. Interference may also be mitigated by using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (“OFDM”) and coding across the frequency spectrum. This latter technique has been found to be as beneficial as spread spectrum techniques.
Moreover, OFDM has been found to ameliorate fading caused by multipath transmission. Alternatives to OFDM—Single Carrier Modulation (“SCM”)+equalization, direct sequence spreading and adaptive space-time coding—have been shown to be less advantageous. In any event, OFDM is the technique of choice at the high transmission rates used in broadband wireless systems. More particularly, the use of OFDM and multiple transmit/receive antennas in a broadband wireless system has led to the realization of an efficient, low error rate system for transmitting large quanta of data at high speed. For further discussion of the foregoing, reference is made to Document Number WP-1_TG-1, Version 1.2 (Dec. 15, 2000), a white paper of the Broadband Wireless Internet Forum (“BWIF”), entitled VOFDM Broadband Wireless Transmission and Its Advantages over Single Carrier Modulation. 
A communication system is typically subject to a Media Access Control (“MAC”) protocol, i.e., a protocol that allocates the use of communication channels among independent, competing users. BWIF has selected DOCSIS (“Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification”) as the MAC for use by Fixed BWI systems, even though DOCSIS was developed for cable systems.
In the early days of networking, the choice of using circuit switching or packet switching was said to depend on performance and cost considerations. Although “correct” choices were said to be difficult to make, a general rule of thumb was set forth: Circuit switching is suitable for networking with constant bit rate voice or video, while packet switching is preferred for bursty data sources such as computer data sources. Today, packet switching is better developed and its performance/cost tradeoffs are well understood. Accordingly, packet switching is presently usually preferred as the multiplexing technique to be associated with all sources, including voice, video and data under both Internet Protocol (“IP”) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (“ATM”) scenarios. For many, if not most, applications, packet switching has a throughput advantage over circuit switching of one hundred or more. When user-acceptable computer response times are considered, packet switching offers a WWW throughput advantage over circuit switching of more than fifteen. If a system has N users, circuit switching can deliver, at best, 1/N of the total channel capacity to each user. Packet switching offers a user access to the full bandwidth nearly instantaneously.
Thus, the types of wireless systems under consideration best utilize OFDM/DOCSIS/packet switching. See Document Number WP-2_TG-1, Version 1.1 (Dec. 5, 2000), a BWIF white paper entitled Media Access Protocols: Circuit Switching to DOCSIS. This type of system can be generally characterized as a Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (“MMDS”) in which (1) the base station continuously transmits data to, and makes these data available to, all of the CPEs served thereby, but (2) in order to access data transmitted from the base station, the base station must first accept a service request previously transmitted thereto by a CPE.
DOCSIS is a Demand Assignment (“DA”) MAC, which, it has been determined, is the species of MAC that exhibits the best performance for data and voice sources. Use of a DA MAC connotes that a CPE must first make a service request (a demand) for service from the base station. DOCSIS is based on the premise that transmitted data packets are pre-defined IP packets, although provisions exist for the transmission of ATM cells. DOCSIS supports variable length Protocol Data Unit (“PDU”) comprising an Ethernet-type Packet. The structure of the pre-defined packet cannot be broken, or the intended receiver, here, either the CPE or the base station, cannot access and read the data in the packet.
Notwithstanding the use of OFDM, multiple antennas and DOCSIS, experience has shown that the wireless path between a base station and a CPE is more subject to degradation or transmission difficulties than is the HFC or other network between the base station and the originating station(s). Such degradation is usually manifested by the failure of one or more data packets transmitted by the base station to reach, or be properly received by, a user, or from the failure of a user request or demand to reach, or be properly received by, the base station. In the former event, the packet(s) is(are) accordingly “lost” to the receiving entity, the CPE.
Accordingly, there has arisen a need for a technique pursuant to which the CPE may automatically request a retransmission of the “missing”, corrupted or otherwise degraded packet(s) from the transmitting entity for receipt by the receiving entity. Addressing this need is one goal of the present invention. As presently constituted, MMDS utilizing DOCSIS contains no standard provision for an Automatic Repeat Request (“ARQ”) to be made by CPE in response to the loss or degradation of one or more data packets in a message sent by a serving base station. The provision of an ARQ function in an MMDS, broadband wireless communication system is described in my commonly assigned United States Patent application, Ser. No. 10/035,667, entitled “METHOD OF AND APPARATUS FOR IMPLEMENTING AN AUTOMATIC REPEAT REQUEST FUNCTION IN A FIXED WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM.”
It should be noted herein that the term “ARQ” is used to denote any technique or method, and any hardware/software for performing the technique or method, by which a downstream, normally receiving entity, such as CPE at a customer site, (1) alerts or informs an upstream, normally transmitting entity, such as a base station, that a transmission to the former by the latter has been lost or degraded and (2) requests that the lost or degraded portion of the transmission be re-sent. Stated differently, “ARQ’ refers to a method by which a downstream receiving entity informs an upstream transmitting entity that a transmission was defective and should be sent again.
Notwithstanding the presence of an ARQ function in the system, numerous retransmissions of missing data to CPE devices decreases the speed and efficiency of the system. Specifically, since the base station typically transmits the same data to all CPE devices, retransmission to any one CPE device represents a time when new data are not being transmitted to any of the devices. Accordingly there is a need for a technique that permits upgrading the path over which a CPE device receives data when that device experiences data degradation.