CN113346919B

CN113346919B - Receiving device, receiving system and operation method

Info

Publication number: CN113346919B
Application number: CN202010135594.2A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 何俊鸿; 汪彦呈; 李昌明
Original assignee: Realtek Semiconductor Corp
Current assignee: Realtek Semiconductor Corp
Priority date: 2020-03-02
Filing date: 2020-03-02
Publication date: 2022-10-04
Anticipated expiration: 2040-03-02
Also published as: CN113346919A

Abstract

The disclosure relates to a receiving device, a receiving system and an operating method. A receiving apparatus is disclosed to receive a packet. The receiving device includes physical layer circuitry. The physical layer circuit is used for demodulating the packet to obtain at least one index related to the packet, and judging whether the packet is an abnormal packet according to the at least one index. If the packet is an abnormal packet, the physical layer circuit discards the packet.

Description

Receiving device, receiving system and operation method

Technical Field

Embodiments described in the present disclosure relate to a discard packet technique, and more particularly, to a receiving apparatus, a receiving system and an operating method.

Background

With the development of technology, electronic devices have been applied to various fields. Data can be transmitted between two electronic devices by communication technology.

In some related art, when a receiving apparatus receives a packet, the packet is preprocessed by a physical layer (PHY) circuit in the receiving apparatus. The physical layer circuit then transfers the processed packet to a medium access control layer (MAC layer) circuit in the receiving device. Next, the mac layer circuit determines whether to execute a packet drop (packet drop) procedure. However, this will take more processing time.

Disclosure of Invention

Some embodiments in the present disclosure relate to a receiving apparatus. The receiving device is used for receiving the packet. The receiving device includes physical layer circuitry. The physical layer circuit is used for demodulating the packet to obtain at least one index related to the packet, and judging whether the packet is an abnormal packet according to the at least one index. If the packet is an abnormal packet, the physical layer circuit discards the packet.

Some embodiments in this disclosure relate to a receiving system. The receiving system comprises a first receiving device and a second receiving device. The first receiving device includes a first physical layer circuit. The second receiving device includes a second physical layer circuit. The first physical layer circuit is configured to receive and demodulate a packet from a transmitting device to obtain a first value associated with at least one indicator of the packet. The second physical layer circuit is configured to receive and demodulate the packet to obtain a second value associated with at least one indicator of the packet. Based on the first value and the second value, the packet is determined whether it is an abnormal packet. If the packet is an abnormal packet, the first physical layer circuit and the second physical layer circuit discard the packet.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a method of operation. The operation method comprises the following steps: receiving a packet by a receiving device; demodulating, by a physical layer circuit of a receiving device, a packet to obtain at least one indicator associated with the packet; judging whether the packet is an abnormal packet or not by the physical layer circuit according to at least one index; and discarding the packet by the physical layer circuit if the packet is an abnormal packet.

In summary, the receiving apparatus, the receiving system and the operating method of the disclosure can discard abnormal packets by using the physical layer circuit, so as to save processing time.

Drawings

In order to make the aforementioned and other objects, features, advantages and embodiments of the disclosure more comprehensible, the following figures illustrate:

fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a communication system according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

fig. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating processing stages of a receiving device according to some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of stages in FIG. 2 according to some embodiments of the present disclosure; and

fig. 4 is a flow chart of an operation method according to some embodiments of the disclosure.

Detailed Description

The term "coupled," as used herein, may also refer to "electrically coupled," and the term "connected" may also refer to "electrically connected. "coupled" and "connected" may also mean that two or more elements co-operate or interact with each other.

Refer to fig. 1. Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a communication system 100 according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. As shown in fig. 1, the communication system 100 includes a transmitting device 120, a receiving device 140, and a receiving device 160. In some embodiments, the transmitting device 120 may perform data transmission with the receiving device 140 and the receiving device 160 through a communication technology. The communication technology is, for example, a wired communication technology or a wireless communication technology. The Wireless communication technology is, for example, wireless Fidelity (WIFI), but the disclosure is not limited thereto.

The number of transmitting devices or the number of receiving devices in fig. 1 is merely an example, and various suitable numbers are within the scope of the present disclosure.

The following description will take the receiving apparatus 140 as an example. In operation, the transmitting device 120 may transmit a packet to the receiving device 140 to transmit data to the receiving device 140. However, the data transfer process may suffer from interference, causing packet distortion.

In some related art techniques, when a receiving device receives a packet, the packet is pre-processed by physical layer circuitry in the receiving device. The physical layer circuit passes the processed packet to a medium access control layer circuit in the receiving device. Then, the medium access control layer circuit determines whether to execute the packet discarding procedure. When the packet is discarded, the receiving device will not process the packet further. However, this would take more processing time.

In contrast to the related arts, in the present disclosure, when the receiving device 140 receives a packet from the transmitting device 120, the physical layer circuit PHY1 of the receiving device 140 can determine whether to discard the packet. If the PHY circuit PHY1 determines to discard the packet, the PHY circuit PHY1 performs a packet discarding procedure, so that the PHY circuit PHY1 does not need to continue to spend time demodulating the packet to directly process the next packet. In some embodiments, the receiving device 160 may also have similar operations. That is, when the receiving device 160 receives the packet from the transmitting device 120, the PHY2 of the receiving device 160 may also determine whether to discard the packet. If the PHY2 determines to discard the packet, the PHY2 may perform a packet discarding procedure. Since the packet discarding procedure can be performed earlier in the processing stage of the phy layer circuit (without waiting for the processing stage of the mac layer circuit), the receiving device 140 (or 160) can be prevented from consuming too much time to process the packet that is distorted due to interference.

Refer to fig. 2. Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating processing stages of the receiving device 140 according to some embodiments of the disclosure. The receiving device 160 has similar operations, and therefore, the description thereof is omitted. Referring to the example of FIG. 2, the process of determining whether to discard a packet includes an idle stage 210, an initialization stage 220, a monitoring stage 230, a determining operation 240, and a discard stage 250.

The operation of these stages will be described below. Reference is also made to fig. 1-3. Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of stages in fig. 2 according to some embodiments of the disclosure.

For the example of FIG. 3, FIG. 3 includes time points T1-T8. The transmission device 120 sequentially transmits the packet PK1 and the packet PK2. The packet PK1 includes a header (header) H1 and a payload (payload) PL1. Similarly, packet PK2 comprises header H2 and payload PL2. The number of groupings in fig. 3 is merely an example, and various suitable numbers are within the scope of the present disclosure.

When the receiving device 140 has not received any packets, the receiving device 140 is in the idle phase 210. In some embodiments, when the receiving device 140 is idle, the related hardware may be in an off state to save power consumption.

When the receiving device 140 receives the packet PK1, the receiving device 140 performs a Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) procedure on the packet PK1. After the packet PK1 passes through the clear channel assessment procedure, the receiving device 140 goes from the idle stage 210 to the initialization stage 220. In the initial stage 220, the physical layer circuit PHY1 demodulates the packet PK1 to obtain the metrics associated with the packet PK1. The index is, for example, the signal strength of the packet PK1, the carrier frequency offset, the signal-to-noise ratio, the Barker code sum value, the error vector magnitude, or the guard interval (guard interval). The types of the above-described indices are merely examples, and various indices are within the scope of the present disclosure. For example, the physical layer circuit PHY1 may demodulate the header H1 of the packet PK1 to obtain a first value of the signal strength of the packet PK1 corresponding to the time point T1.

During the monitoring phase 230, the physical layer circuit PHY1 continues to demodulate the packet PK1 to obtain a second value of the signal strength of the packet PK1 corresponding to the time point T2.

In the determining operation 240, the physical layer circuit PHY1 determines whether the packet PK1 is an abnormal packet according to the index. For example, the PHY layer circuit PHY1 calculates a difference between the second value and the first value, and compares the difference with a first threshold (e.g., a signal strength threshold) to determine whether the packet PK1 is an abnormal packet. For example, if the difference is equal to or smaller than the first threshold, the PHY1 determines that the packet PK1 is a normal packet, and returns to the monitoring stage 230. If the difference is greater than the first threshold, the PHY1 determines that the packet PK1 is an abnormal packet, and then enters the discard stage 250.

In the discard packet phase 250, the physical layer circuit PHY1 discards the packet PK1 and stops performing the clean channel estimation procedure. The receiving device 140 then returns to the idle stage 210 and waits for the next successful receipt of the packet (e.g., packet PK 2). Stated another way, if the variation of the signal strength values corresponding to different time points is too large, the packet PK1 may be interfered and distorted, so the physical layer circuit PHY1 discards the packet PK1 and does not continue to process, thereby saving the processing time. If the variation of the signal strength values corresponding to different time points is small, the packet PK1 is not distorted or is distorted to a small extent, so that the demodulation of the packet PK1 can be continued.

In some embodiments, the physical layer circuit PHY1 continuously and periodically monitors this indicator of the packet PK1. For example, if the PHY layer circuit PHY1 determines that the packet PK1 is a normal packet, the PHY layer circuit PHY1 will continue to demodulate the packet PK1 to obtain a third value corresponding to the time point T3. Next, the PHY1 calculates a difference between the third value and the second value, and compares the difference with the first threshold to determine whether the packet PK1 is still a normal packet. Similarly, if the difference is greater than the first threshold, the PHY1 determines that the packet PK1 is an abnormal packet and discards the packet PK1 in the discard packet stage 250. If the difference is equal to or smaller than the first threshold, the PHY1 determines that the packet PK1 is still a normal packet.

In some other embodiments, the PHY1 further calculates a difference between the third value and the first value, and compares the difference with a second threshold to determine whether the packet PK1 is still a normal packet. That is, in these embodiments, the difference between the subsequently obtained value and the first value is used to determine whether the packet PK1 is still a normal packet, and the threshold is gradually adjusted. In some embodiments, the second threshold is greater than the first threshold. For example, if the difference between the first value and the second value is equal to or smaller than the first threshold value, the physical layer circuit PHY1 determines that the packet PK1 is an abnormal packet and discards the packet PK1 in the discarding step 250 if the difference between the third value and the first value is larger than the second threshold value. On the contrary, if the difference between the third value and the first value is equal to or smaller than the second threshold, the physical layer circuit PHY1 determines that the packet PK1 is still a normal packet.

The packet PK2 and the associated time points T5-T8 have similar operations, and will not be described in detail herein.

Reference is again made to fig. 1. The receiving device 140 and the receiving device 160 may form a receiving system and respectively receive the same packet from the transmitting device 120. In some embodiments, the receiving device 140 and the receiving device 160 may be antennas, respectively. The physical layer circuit PHY1 of the receiving device 140 may demodulate the packet to obtain a first value of an index related to the packet. The PHY2 of the receiving device 160 may also demodulate the packet to obtain a second value of the indicator associated with the packet. Based on the first value and the second value, it is possible to determine whether the packet is an abnormal packet. That is, in these embodiments, the index difference between different receiving devices (e.g., different antennas) is used to determine whether the packet is a normal packet. For example, if the difference between the first value and the second value is greater than a third threshold value, the packet is determined to be an abnormal packet.

In some other embodiments, if the first value or the second value is lower than the fourth threshold value, the packet is determined to be an abnormal packet. For example, if the signal strength value (the first value) obtained by the physical layer circuit PHY1 is almost zero, it indicates that the transmission process of the packet may suffer from a great interference, and thus the packet is determined to be an abnormal packet. In this case, the physical layer circuit PHY1 and the physical layer circuit PHY2 discard the packet respectively.

Refer to fig. 4. Fig. 4 is a flow chart of an operating method 400 according to some embodiments of the disclosure. The operation method 400 includes operations S410, S420, S430 and S440.

In some embodiments, the operation method 400 is applied to the communication system 100 of fig. 1, but the disclosure is not limited thereto. For ease of understanding, the method 400 will be discussed in conjunction with the communication system 100 of fig. 1 and fig. 3.

In operation S410, a packet PK1 is received by the receiving device 140. In some embodiments, packet PK1 includes header H1 and payload PL1.

In operation S420, the packet PK1 is demodulated by the physical layer circuit PHY1 of the receiving device 140 to obtain at least one index related to the packet PK1. In some embodiments, the physical layer circuit PHY1 may demodulate a portion of the header H1 of the packet PK1 to obtain a signal strength value of the packet PK1 corresponding to the point in time T1.

In operation S430, the physical layer circuit PHY1 determines whether the packet PK1 is an abnormal packet according to the indicator. In some cases, the transmission process of the packet PK1 may suffer from interference to cause distortion of the packet PK1. In some embodiments, the physical layer circuit PHY1 may determine whether the characteristic of the packet PK1 has changed greatly by using the values of the indicators corresponding to different time points.

In operation S440, if the packet PK1 is an abnormal packet, the physical layer circuit PHY1 discards the packet PK1 to avoid the receiving device 140 consuming too much time to process the distorted packet.

The operations of the method 400 are exemplary only and need not be performed in the order shown. The various operations of the method 400 may be added, substituted, omitted, or performed in a different order, as appropriate, without departing from the manner and scope of operation of various embodiments of the present disclosure.

In summary, the receiving apparatus, the receiving system and the operating method of the present disclosure can discard the abnormal packet by using the physical layer circuit, so as to save the processing time.

Various functional components and blocks have been disclosed herein. It will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that functional blocks may be implemented by circuits (whether dedicated circuits or general purpose circuits that operate under the control of one or more processors and coded instructions), which generally comprise transistors or other circuit elements that control the operation of the electrical circuits in accordance with the functions and operations described herein. As will be further appreciated, the specific structure and interconnections of circuit elements in general may be determined by a compiler, such as a Register Transfer Language (RTL) compiler. A register transfer language compiler operates on scripts (scripts) that are fairly similar to assembly language code (assembly language code) and compiles the scripts into a form for layout or fabrication of the final circuit. Indeed, the register transfer language is well known for its role and purpose in facilitating the design process of electronic and digital systems.

Although the present disclosure has been described with reference to the above embodiments, it should be understood that the present disclosure is not limited thereto, and that various changes and modifications can be made by one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the present disclosure.

Claims

1. A receiving device for receiving a packet, wherein the receiving device comprises:

the physical layer circuit demodulates the packet to obtain at least one index associated with the packet, and determines whether the packet is an abnormal packet according to the at least one index, wherein the physical layer circuit demodulates the packet at a first time to obtain a first value of the at least one index, obtains a second value of the at least one index at a second time, calculates a first difference between the second value and the first value, and compares the first difference with a first threshold to determine whether the packet is an abnormal packet, and discards the packet if the packet is an abnormal packet.

2. The receiving device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the physical layer circuit determines the packet to be an abnormal packet if the first difference is greater than the first threshold, and wherein the physical layer circuit determines the packet to be a normal packet if the first difference is equal to or less than the first threshold.

3. The receiving device as recited in claim 1, wherein if the phy layer circuit determines that the packet is a normal packet, the phy layer circuit is further configured to obtain a third value of the at least one indicator at a third time, calculate a second difference between the third value and the second value, and compare the second difference with the first threshold to determine whether the packet is still a normal packet.

4. The receiving device as claimed in claim 3, wherein if the second difference is greater than the first threshold, the physical layer circuit determines the packet to be an abnormal packet, and wherein if the second difference is equal to or less than the first threshold, the physical layer circuit determines the packet to be still a normal packet.

5. The receiving device as recited in claim 1, wherein if the phy layer circuit determines that the packet is a normal packet, the phy layer circuit is further configured to obtain a third value of the at least one indicator at a third time, calculate a second difference between the third value and the first value, and compare the second difference to a second threshold to determine whether the packet is still a normal packet.

6. A receiving system, comprising:

a first receiving device comprising a first physical layer circuit for receiving and demodulating a packet from a transmitting device to obtain a first value related to at least one indicator of the packet; and

a second receiving device comprising second physical layer circuitry to receive and demodulate the packet to obtain a second value associated with the at least one indicator of the packet,

wherein a difference between the second value and the first value is calculated and compared to a threshold to determine whether the packet is an abnormal packet, and wherein the first phy layer circuit and the second phy layer circuit discard the packet if the packet is an abnormal packet.

7. The receiving system of claim 6 wherein the packet is determined to be an abnormal packet if the difference between the first value and the second value is greater than the threshold value.

8. The receiving system of claim 6 wherein the packet is determined to be an abnormal packet if the first value or the second value is below the threshold value.

9. An operating method, comprising:

receiving a packet by a receiving device;

demodulating, by a physical layer circuit of the receiving device, the packet to obtain at least one indicator associated with the packet;

determining whether the packet is an abnormal packet according to the at least one indicator by the physical layer circuit, wherein the physical layer circuit demodulates the packet at a first time to obtain a first value of the at least one indicator, obtains a second value of the at least one indicator at a second time, calculates a first difference between the second value and the first value, and compares the first difference with a first threshold value to determine whether the packet is an abnormal packet; and

if the packet is an abnormal packet, discarding the packet by the physical layer circuit.