CN117915444B

CN117915444B - Energy-saving method, access point and storage medium for low-delay service

Info

Publication number: CN117915444B
Application number: CN202410310158.2A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 请求不公布姓名
Original assignee: Shanghai Yunpan Semiconductor Co ltd; Nanjing Yuncheng Semiconductor Co ltd
Current assignee: Shanghai Yunpan Semiconductor Co ltd; Nanjing Yuncheng Semiconductor Co ltd
Priority date: 2024-03-19
Filing date: 2024-03-19
Publication date: 2024-06-07
Anticipated expiration: 2044-03-19
Also published as: CN117915444A

Abstract

The embodiment of the invention relates to the field of wireless network transmission, and discloses an energy-saving method, an access point and a storage medium for low-delay service. In the invention, an access point informs a terminal whether a cached low-delay service exists in the access point by sending a beacon frame to the terminal; under the condition that the access point is informed of the cached low-delay service, the terminal is instructed to exit from the sleep mode; and after confirming that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment through the power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal. The mechanism for acquiring the cache data in different power saving modes is optimized for the low-delay service so as to ensure the timely awakening and transmission of the low-delay service, so that the performance and the power consumption of the network can be balanced better, and further the performance and the flexibility of the network can be improved, and the continuously developed service demands can be met.

Description

Energy-saving method, access point and storage medium for low-delay service

Technical Field

The embodiment of the invention relates to the field of wireless network transmission, in particular to an energy-saving method for low-delay service, an access point and a storage medium.

Background

Wi-Fi standards have been striving to boost the peak rate and capacity of networks. However, in high-density scenes such as airports, hotels, stadiums, multi-dwelling apartments, etc., the conventional Wi-Fi standard cannot guarantee the delay stability and low-delay performance of the network. Some emerging applications, such as telemedicine, virtual Reality (VR), online/multiplayer gaming, industrial control, logistics, robotics, stereo/multi-speaker audio, etc., have stringent requirements on network latency, requiring networks to be capable of transmitting large amounts of data in real-time and with predictability. In addition, many internet of things applications also require networks that can support mass device access. For such low latency services (low LATENCY TRAFFIC), the network needs to be able to transmit data in a very short time to ensure the smoothness and real-time of the user experience. If the network delay is too high, the user may suffer from problems such as picture blocking, sound interruption, operation failure, and the like, which affect the normal operation of the service. Therefore, improving the reliability of low-latency traffic transmission is a core research topic of Wi-Fi 8.

802.11 Radios are typically used intermittently. An effective energy saving technique is to turn off the radio when active communication is not taking place, which is the case most of the time, and then turn on the radio periodically to check for buffered traffic at the Access Point (AP) or send traffic to the AP. A station operating in this mode is referred to as a Power save mode (PS mode). Stations that are always able to receive traffic (i.e. do not turn off the radio) are called Active modes (Active modes). A station may switch between these two modes and declare its current mode using the Power management field (Power MANAGEMENT FIELD) in the frame control field (Frame Control field) of the MPDU it sends. The station indicates its change in power management mode (PS mode to active mode and vice versa) by transmitting an MPDU addressed to the AP that needs to be acknowledged. Confirm that the AP correctly received the notification of the mode change. A station in PS mode (PS mode) may be in one of two states. When the radio is in an active state and capable of transmitting and receiving frames, the station is in an awake state (AWAKE STATE). When the radio is not in an active state and cannot transmit or receive frames, the station is in a dormant state (doze state). Stations in active mode are always awake.

The original 802.11 specification assumed that the AP was powered by a power source and therefore was always in active mode. It needs to set the power management field to 0 in all frames it sends. Furthermore, if any station on the BSS is in PS mode, the AP will transmit broadcast traffic for a predictable interval so that stations in PS mode can wake up to receive traffic during these periods.

The inventors found that there are at least the following problems in the related art: in the PS mode, the wake-up time of the station has an important influence on the performance and power consumption of the network, especially for low-delay service, but the station cannot be wake-up in time at present, and the timeliness of low-delay service transmission is also affected.

Disclosure of Invention

The embodiment of the invention aims to provide an energy-saving method, an access point and a storage medium for low-delay service, which optimize a mechanism for acquiring cache low-delay service data under different power saving modes, ensure the timely awakening and transmission of the low-delay service and better balance the performance and power consumption of a network.

In order to solve the above technical problems, an embodiment of the present invention provides an energy saving method for a low-latency service, which is applied to an access point, and includes: informing the terminal whether a cached low-delay service exists in the access point or not by sending a beacon frame to the terminal; under the condition that the access point is informed of the cached low-delay service, the terminal is instructed to exit from the sleep mode; and after confirming that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment through the power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal.

The embodiment of the invention also provides an access point, which comprises: at least one processor; and a memory communicatively coupled to the at least one processor; the memory stores instructions executable by the at least one processor to enable the at least one processor to perform the energy saving method for low latency traffic described above.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a computer readable storage medium which stores a computer program, and the computer program realizes the energy-saving method of the low-delay service when being executed by a processor.

In the embodiment of the invention, an access point informs a terminal whether cached low-delay service exists in the access point by sending a beacon frame to the terminal; under the condition that the access point is informed of the cached low-delay service, the terminal is instructed to exit from the sleep mode; and after confirming that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment through the power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal. The mechanism for acquiring the cache data in different power saving modes is optimized for the low-delay service so as to ensure the timely awakening and transmission of the low-delay service, so that the performance and the power consumption of the network can be balanced better, and further the performance and the flexibility of the network can be improved, and the continuously developed service demands can be met.

In addition, the instructing the terminal to exit the sleep mode includes: instructing the terminal to switch from the sleep mode to the awake mode, and reducing the value of a beacon interval field in a beacon frame and instructing the terminal to adjust the frequency of receiving the beacon frame; or, instruct the terminal to adjust to an active mode to exit the sleep mode.

In addition, the bitmap control field in the beacon frame carries an indication field for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service; or, the beacon frame carries an additional bitmap control field which is specially used for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service; or, the beacon frame carries a TIM element which is special for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service; the notifying whether the terminal has the cached low-delay service in the access point by sending a beacon frame to the terminal comprises: and informing the terminal whether the cached low-delay service exists in the access point or not by sending a beacon frame carrying the indication field, the bitmap control field or the TIM element to the terminal.

In addition, sending the beacon frame carrying the indication field to the terminal includes: and the terminal is enabled to process the low-delay service and the non-low-delay service by sending the beacon frames carrying the indication fields corresponding to different service types, and the beacon frames carrying the indication fields are only sent to the terminal corresponding to the partial virtual bit mapping bitmap with one bit of 1.

In addition, after the power saving polling frame sent by the terminal confirms that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment, the method for transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal comprises the following steps: after confirming that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment through a power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, feeding back a confirmation frame aiming at the power saving polling frame to the terminal; transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal, and when the low-delay service fails to be transmitted at one time, receiving a power-saving polling frame with more data bits configured to be 1 in a frame control field sent by the terminal so as to transmit the rest low-delay service to the terminal; and when the low-delay service is transmitted, the terminal enters the sleep mode by receiving a confirmation frame of the terminal for the low-delay service.

In addition, after confirming that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment through the power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, when the cached low-delay service and non-low-delay service exist in the access point at the same time, the low-delay service is preferentially transmitted to the terminal.

In addition, an indication field for indicating whether the access point is in a low-delay service mode is carried in an access point energy-saving buffer status subfile field in a Qos control field in the beacon frame; wherein the access point will preferentially transmit the buffered low-latency traffic when the access point is in the low-latency traffic mode and will not preferentially transmit the buffered low-latency traffic when the access point is not in the low-latency traffic mode.

In addition, before the access point sends an initial PSMP frame to a plurality of terminals, the access point preferentially allocates wireless communication resources for a terminal to be transmitted with low-delay service in the plurality of terminals when configuring the initial PSMP frame so as to ensure that the wireless communication resources allocated by the access point and the terminal to be transmitted with low-delay service are enough to support the transmission of the low-delay service to be transmitted; and for the burst service to be transmitted which occurs after the access point sends the initial PSMP frames to a plurality of terminal sides, the access point generates corresponding updated PSMP frames for the burst service to be transmitted and sends the updated PSMP frames to the corresponding terminals.

Drawings

One or more embodiments are illustrated by way of example and not limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings, in which like references indicate similar elements, and in which the figures of the drawings are not to be taken in a limiting sense, unless otherwise indicated.

Fig. 1 is a flowchart of a method for saving energy for low-latency services provided according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a power saving poll frame solicitation low latency traffic procedure according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating a communication process during AP-side power saving multi-poll according to an embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of a communication process during STA-side power saving multi-poll according to an embodiment of the present invention;

fig. 5 is a schematic structural diagram of an access point according to another embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

For the purpose of making the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the embodiments of the present application more apparent, the following detailed description of the embodiments of the present application will be given with reference to the accompanying drawings. However, those of ordinary skill in the art will understand that in various embodiments of the present application, numerous technical details have been set forth in order to provide a better understanding of the present application. The claimed application may be practiced without these specific details and with various changes and modifications based on the following embodiments. The following embodiments are divided for convenience of description, and should not be construed as limiting the specific implementation of the present application, and the embodiments can be mutually combined and referred to without contradiction.

An embodiment of the invention relates to a low-delay service energy saving method, which can be applied to an Access Point (AP), wherein the AP can be attached to a multi-connection device (MLD) or can be a multi-connection device (AP MLD) serving as the access point. In the present embodiment, an Access Point (AP) informs a terminal (STA) whether there is a buffered low-latency service (LL) in the Access Point (AP) by sending a Beacon frame (Beacon frame) to the terminal; -instructing the terminal to exit sleep mode (doze state) in case of informing that there is cached low-latency traffic in the access point; and after confirming that the terminal has the capacity of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment through a power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal. The mechanism for acquiring the cache data in different power saving modes is optimized for the low-delay service so as to ensure the timely awakening and transmission of the low-delay service, so that the performance and the power consumption of the network can be balanced better, and further the performance and the flexibility of the network can be improved, and the continuously developed service demands can be met. The implementation details of the low-delay service energy saving method of the present embodiment are specifically described below, and the following description is provided only for convenience of understanding, and is not necessary to implement the present embodiment.

As shown in fig. 1, in step 101, an Access Point (AP) informs a terminal (STA) whether there is a buffered low-latency service (LL, collectively referred to as low LATENCY TRAFFIC) in the Access Point (AP) by transmitting a Beacon frame (Beacon frame) to the terminal;

The TIM element (TIM ELEMENT) is a structure in an 802.11 wireless network management frame, is an information element in a Beacon frame (Beacon frame) that is used to inform a sleeping terminal whether there is buffered unicast data waiting to be transmitted. TIM ELEMENT contains 6 fields: element ID (Element ID), length, DTIM Count (DTIM Count), DTIM Period (DTIM Period), bitmap Control (Bitmap Control), and partial virtual Bitmap (Partial Virtual Bitmap). The specific structure is as follows:

the meaning represented by each field in the table is as follows:

ELEMENT ID is a number defining an element in the management frame, for example ELEMENT ID of TIM ELEMENT is 5;

Length indicates the number of octets in the element that do not include ELEMENT ID and Length fields;

DTIM count: DTIM is an acronym english DELIVERY TRAFFIC Indication Message, and is used in conventional power saving modes for multi-point applications, i.e. by the AP by setting the interval of the DTIM. DTIM Count represents the number of Beacon frames to be transmitted before the next DTIM frame is transmitted, and this value is based on DTIM Period, for example, DTIM period=3, then the DTIM Count decreases from 2 until DTIM count=0, which is the DTIM frame; the DTIM count=2 and DTIM count=1 are TIM frames, and the DTIM frames are used to indicate that the buffered broadcast and multicast frames are about to be transmitted;

DTIM Period represents the Beacon interval number between two DTIM frames, and the value is 0 and is reserved at present;

The Bitmap Control field contains two parts: a traffic indicator (Traffic Indicator) and a Bitmap Offset (Bitmap Offset). Traffic Indicator is a1 bit flag indicating whether the AP has buffered broadcast or multicast data, if 1, indicating that all clients should wake up; if 0, it indicates no. The Bitmap Offset is a 7-bit number representing the starting position of Partial Virtual Bitmap. The specific structure is as follows:

Partial Virtual Bitmap is a bitmap (bitmap), each representing the AID (Association ID) of a STA associated with an AP. If a certain bit is 1, the client side has cached unicast data in the AP; if they are 0, it indicates that there is no cached data.

In order to ensure the transmission efficiency of the low-delay service, when the low-delay service needs to be sent to the STA under PS mode in the buffer of the AP, the embodiment includes the related information of the low-delay service in TIM ELEMENT, so that the STA knows and switches to the receiving state, and the following three types of implementation methods are exemplified:

Firstly, directly adding low-delay service indication (LL indication) in a bitmap control field in a beacon frame, namely carrying an indication field for informing whether the cached low-delay service exists in the access point in the bitmap control field in the beacon frame; and sending a beacon frame carrying the indication field to the terminal to inform the terminal whether the cached low-delay service exists in the access point. Compared with the other two types, the method saves signaling overhead and ensures the original integrity of TIM ELEMENT;

In a specific example, the Bitmap offset field may be compressed to 6 bits based on the current Bitmap Control field, and a low latency service indication (LL indication) is formed by using 1bit, that is, an indication field for informing whether there is a cached low latency service in the access point. When the LL indication is configured to be 1, the cache of the low-delay service is indicated to be on the AP side, and when the LL indication is configured to be 0, the cache is indicated to be free of the low-delay service. The location of the LL indication in the Bitmap control is not limited herein, and may be placed at the start position of the Bitmap control field, as shown below, or may be placed at other positions.

On the basis of introducing an indication field, in order to better correspond the low-delay service to the received terminal, in one example, the terminal is enabled to process the low-delay service and the non-low-delay service by sending the beacon frames carrying the indication field corresponding to different service types, and the beacon frames carrying the indication field are sent only to the terminal corresponding to the partial virtual bit map bitmap with one bit of 1. The following exemplifies two alternative embodiments for this:

(1) Considering the high priority and high timeliness of the low-latency service, when the AP side has the buffer of the low-latency service, LL Indication is set to 1, and currently TIM ELEMENT only informs STAs that have low-latency service to receive, that is, when one bit in Partial Virtual Bitmap is 1, it means that the STA has the buffered low-latency service on the AP side, and only sends the beacon frame carrying the Indication field to the terminal corresponding to the partial virtual bitmap with one bit of 1.

(2) Based on the above mode (1), further improvement can be performed, and in consideration of timely notification of non-low-delay service cache data, a mode of alternately transmitting Beacon frames carrying different TIM ELEMENT can be adopted. And sending Beacon frames carrying the indication fields corresponding to different service types to enable the terminal to process low-delay service and non-low-delay service, for example, if TIM ELEMENT for indicating the low-delay service is carried in the current Beacon frame, TIM ELEMENT in the next Beacon frame is used for indicating the non-low-delay service. Or the Beacon frames of two low-delay services are continuously sent, and then the Beacon frames of one non-low-delay service are sent. The alternating frequency of Beacon frames of specific low-delay service and non-low-delay service is configured by the AP side.

Secondly, configuring an independent Bitmap Control field for the low-delay service, namely carrying an additional Bitmap Control field special for informing whether the cached low-delay service exists in the access point in the beacon frame; and sending a beacon frame carrying the bitmap control field to a terminal, and informing the terminal whether cached low-delay service exists in the access point. Compared with the other two types, the method ensures the integrity of Bitmap offset. A separate Bitmap Control field (Bitmap Control field) configured for low-latency services, i.e. carrying an additional Bitmap Control field dedicated to informing the access point whether there is cached low-latency service in the access point, is called low-latency service Bitmap Control (LL Bitmap Control) for distinguishing, as follows:

LL Bitmap Control is an optional field, which is configured when there is cache data of the low-delay service, otherwise, the field is not configured. The LL Bitmap Control field consists of the LL indication and Bitmap offset fields as follows:

The LL indication is used to indicate whether there is a low-delay service buffer, when the LL indication is configured to be 1, it indicates that there is a low-delay service buffer on the AP side, and when the LL indication is configured to be 0, it indicates that there is no low-delay service in the buffer. The Bitmap Offset is a 7-bit number representing the starting position of Partial Virtual Bitmap. At this time, the AID indicated by Partial Virtual Bitmap is the AID corresponding to the terminal that has low latency service to receive.

Thirdly, a TIM ELEMENT is designed for the low-delay service independently, namely, the beacon frame carries a TIM (TIM-based message service) element which is specially used for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service or not, and the beacon frame carrying the TIM element is sent to the terminal to inform the terminal whether the access point has the cached low-delay service or not. Compared with other two types of buffer data notification which distinguish low-delay service and non-low-delay service, the low-delay service has own configuration, the buffer data indication of the non-low-delay service is not influenced, and the STAs which have low-delay service to be received can be clearly displayed. For distinguishing, the TIM element carrying the low-latency service dedicated to informing whether the access point has the buffer is called a low-latency service TIM element (LL TIM ELEMENT), and the structure of LL TIM ELEMENT is the same as that of the conventional TIM ELEMENT, except that Partial Virtual Bitmap indicates an AID corresponding to the STA having the low-latency service to be received. Note that ELEMENT ID needs to assign a different value than conventional TIM ELEMENT, and ELEMENT ID of the currently reserved field (reserved field), such as 149, etc., can be used.

On the other hand, in one example, the Element may also add related information (LL PARAMETER) of the low-latency service, in this example LL TIM ELEMENT is as follows:

The related information of the low-delay service may be a maximum acceptable delay time of the low-delay service, an urgent layer level of the low-delay service, etc., wherein a specific value of Octets (Octets) occupied by the LL PARAMETER field may be configured by a higher layer, for example, x=2.

The three schemes are the same as the TIM processing mode when the cached low-delay service instruction exists in the DTIM.

In step 102, an Access Point (AP) instructs the terminal to exit a sleep mode (doze state) if it is informed that there is buffered low-latency traffic in the access point; the implementation of instructing the terminal to exit the sleep mode is divided into a number of categories, which are discussed below in two categories:

Firstly, in order to save the energy consumption of the terminal side, the STA may still be in the energy-saving mode (PS mode), but needs to be timely switched from doze state (sleep mode) in the energy-saving mode to AWAKE STATE (awake mode) in the energy-saving mode according to the requirement of the low-delay service, that is, the access point instructs the terminal to switch from the sleep mode to the awake mode (AWAKE STATE); that is, when the STA needs to receive or transmit low-latency traffic, it should switch from doze state to AWAKE STATE, which is one of the trigger state switching conditions. And after the terminal is switched to AWAKE STATE, the data packet of the low-delay service can be received and sent at any time.

When the AP has low latency traffic to transmit to multiple STAs, or when one or some STAs frequently need to transmit low latency traffic, then the AP should adjust the frequency of Beacon frame (Beacon frame) transmissions, i.e., reduce the value of the Beacon interval field (Beacon INTERVAL FIELD) in the Beacon frame (Beacon frame body) and instruct the terminal to adjust the frequency of receiving the Beacon frame, i.e., modify the Beacon INTERVAL FIELD configuration in Beacon frame body to set it to a smaller value. For example, when the AP needs to transmit low latency traffic to more than a certain number (e.g., N) of STAs within a certain time, the Beacon INTERVAL FIELD should be reduced by a certain amount (e.g., DELTAINTERVAL), where the values of DELTAINTERVAL and N may be configured by the AP according to the actual situation. In addition, if a STA receives the low-delay service multiple times within a certain time, the value of Beacon INTERVAL FIELD can be adjusted. For example, when the AP needs to transmit low-latency traffic to the same STA multiple times (e.g., more than M times) within a certain period of time, the Beacon INTERVAL FIELD should also be reduced by a certain amount (e.g., DELTAINTERVAL), where the values of DELTAINTERVAL and M may also be configured by the AP according to the actual situation. After no low-delay service is transmitted for a long time, the AP is restored to the original Beacon interval configuration so as to save more electric quantity.

Correspondingly, STAs in PS mode should also adjust the frequency of listening to Beacon frames, i.e. the LISTEN INTERVAL configuration. The configuration mode is consistent with the configuration mode of the Beacon interval, when the Beacon interval is reduced and the current STA has or is having low-delay service transmission, the adjustment LISTEN INTERVAL is consistent with the Beacon interval or is a multiple of the Beacon interval so as to avoid missing the Beacon frame. After no low-delay service is transmitted for a long time, the STA is restored to the original LISTEN INTERVAL configuration so as to save more electric quantity.

Second, if the current STA is in PS mode and there is Low Latency (Low Latency) traffic to be transmitted or received, the Low Latency traffic should serve as one of the trigger conditions, so that the current STA is converted from power saving mode PS mode to active mode (active mode). I.e. the access point instructs the terminal to adjust to the active mode to exit the sleep mode, e.g. if at this time the AP side has low latency traffic to transmit to the STA, in a transmission Frame sent to the STA, the power management subfield (Power management subfield) in the Frame control field should be configured as active mode, i.e. the dot11power management mode (dot 11 PowerManagementMode) should be configured as active mode. Conversely, if the STA side has low latency traffic to transmit, it needs to request to the AP to switch PS mode to active mode. In the Frame sent by the STA to the AP, power management subfield in the Frame control field is configured as an active mode, where if the AP replies with an acknowledgement Frame (ACK) or a network block acknowledgement Frame (BlockAck), it indicates that the STA agrees to switch, otherwise, the STA still needs to keep the current mode. In addition, if the STA is still in PS mode but there are frequent requests to transmit low-latency traffic, it needs to be switched to active mode. For example, if the request to transmit the low latency service exceeds N times within a certain time, the terminal is switched to the active mode, where N is determined by a higher layer configuration or by the terminal implementation.

In step 103, after confirming that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at this time, the low-delay service is transmitted to the terminal through a Power saving Poll frame (PS-Poll frame, power Save-Poll frame) sent by the terminal. In the conventional power saving mode, the terminal side often requests the AP for the buffered data frame by transmitting a trigger frame to the AP. The trigger frame is typically a PS-Poll frame, which is known as a Power Save-Poll, a control frame. The PS-Poll frame is used to let the workstation actively send a signal to the access point to tell the access point its own status and request the access point to send the buffered data frame to itself when needed in the power saving mode. Thus, the workstation can save electric quantity and resources under the condition of not influencing data transmission.

In order to make the AP preferentially transmit the buffered data of the low-delay service to the STA when the STA is requesting the buffered data from the AP, to further ensure timely transmission of the low-delay service, the following two implementations are exemplified:

Firstly, the AP side specifies that if there is a buffer of a low-delay service, when a corresponding STA sends an indication frame (such as a PS-Poll frame) to request to buffer data, the AP side preferentially sends the buffer of the low-delay data to the STA, that is, after the access point confirms that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service through a power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, the access point preferentially transmits the low-delay service to the terminal when there is both the buffered low-delay service and non-low-delay service in the access point.

Secondly, considering the compatibility of the wifi system and reducing the influence on the existing protocol as far as possible, the STA side decides whether to request the buffer of the low-delay service or the buffer of the conventional service, at this time, a new design needs to be performed on the PS-Poll frame, and an instruction of requesting the buffer of the low-delay service is added, where the PS-Poll frame structure in this example is as follows:

Wherein, BSSID (RA) is the address of the receiving end, TA is the address of the transmitting segment; FCS is a frame check sequence; the Duration/ID (Duration/ID) field occupies 16 bits, bit0 to Bit13 (least significant Bit, LEAST SIGNIFICANT bits, LSB)) is used to indicate the AID of the STA. In this example, bit14 and/or Bit15 may be used to configure low latency traffic, e.g., when Bit14 and Bit15 are both configured to be 0, the PS-Poll frame is used to request buffered data corresponding to the low latency traffic. When Bit14 and Bit15 are both configured to be 1, the buffered data of the conventional service is requested, or the AP determines the sequence of sending the buffered data, as follows:

In one example, considering the compatibility of the wifi system and minimizing the impact on the existing protocol, a new Frame (Frame) may be designed to instruct the STA with low latency service to acquire buffered low latency data, which is called LL-Poll, when the terminal receives an instruction from the AP, indicating that the buffered data with low latency service is to be received, the terminal side should send LL-Poll to the AP after acquiring the transmitter, so as to notify the AP that the AP may send buffered low latency data to the terminal, and it may be seen that LL-Poll also belongs to a special power saving Poll Frame, the LL-Poll Frame may be a control Frame, the structure may be consistent with the design of PS-Poll, but note that a new value needs to be defined for the Subtype value (Subtype value) in the Frame control field in the control Frame to distinguish from PS-Poll Frame. The Type value (Type value) should be configured as a value of Control frame, i.e., 01. The Subtype value may be 0000, 0001, 1111, or the like, as shown in the following table:

In an example, as shown in fig. 2, when Beacon frame of an AP indicates that STA1 has low-latency service buffered data on the AP side, STA1 can send LL-Poll frame to request low-latency service buffered data in awake (awake) state no matter what power saving mode is in, and an Access Point (AP) confirms, through a power saving Poll frame sent by the terminal (PS-Poll frame or LL-Poll frame added with an indication of requesting low-latency service buffer), that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-latency service LL at this time, if in this case, the AP receives the LL-Poll frame, and if the AP side successfully receives the LL-Poll frame and allows transmitting the low-latency service buffered data to STA1, feedback an acknowledgement frame (ACK) for the power saving Poll frame to the terminal; and transmitting the low-delay service (LL-PPDU) to the terminal, wherein when the low-delay service fails to be transmitted once, namely, when the low-delay service still has low-delay service to be transmitted in a buffer, more data bits (More data bits) in a frame control field are configured to be 1, and the STA side can continuously transmit the LL-Poll frame to request the rest low-delay service buffer data. The corresponding access point receives a power saving polling frame with more data bits configured to be 1 in a frame control field sent by the terminal so as to transmit the rest low-delay service to the terminal; when the low-delay service is transmitted, the More data bit in the frame control field can be configured to be 0, and at the moment, after the STA receives the information, ACK is fed back, and the sleep state is entered. For the access point, the terminal enters the sleep mode by receiving an acknowledgement frame of the terminal for the low-delay service.

In one example, when an AP indicates an APSD (Automatic Power save transmission) mechanism is supported in an APSD (Automatic Power SAVE DELIVERY) subfield configuration in capability information (Capability Information) in Beacon, probe Response (Probe Response) and (Re) association Response frames (Association Response frames), the AP is indicated to have an APSD supporting capability. APSD is a mechanism to provide BU (Bufferable Unit ) to STAs in power save mode. The APSD mechanism is divided into two types, S-APSD and U-APSD, which are respectively scheduled automatic power save transmission (Scheduled Automatic Power-SAVE DELIVERY) and unscheduled automatic power save transmission (Unscheduled Automatic Power-SAVE DELIVERY). The following will briefly describe both separately:

The S-APSD mechanism is to control the power saving state and data transmission timing of the terminal by an Access Point (AP). The AP allocates a Service Period (SP) to the terminal, and when the scheduled time arrives, the AP transmits a trigger frame (TRIGGER FRAME) to the STA, and the STA wakes up to accept the frame in advance, thereby starting a Service time. The service time is scheduled through a Schedule Element (Schedule Element) field in the management frame so QOS-STAs can know in advance when they should wake up. Therefore, for the buffered data of the low-delay service, the AP side should send TRIGGER FRAME preferentially or only to the STA that needs to receive the low-delay service, so as to ensure the timely transmission of the low-delay service.

U-APSD is an improvement on traditional power saving, and when STA is associated, both the AP side and the STA side determine which AC (Access Category) have transmission attributes, which ACs have trigger attributes, and the maximum allowed number of transmission messages (MAX-SP) after triggering; when the client is dormant, the AC with the sending attribute sent to the client is cached in the sending cache queue, and the client needs to send the AC with the triggering attribute to acquire the cache frame. And after receiving the trigger message, the AP transmits frames belonging to the transmission queue according to the number of the transmission messages determined during access. AC without the send attribute still uses 802.11 traditional storage and delivery.

For both mechanisms, in one example, the AP should notify the STA that the AP is currently in low latency mode, i.e. the buffered data of the low latency traffic is sent preferentially. An indication field (Low Latency Mode) of the Low Latency Mode needs to be configured at this time, and the indication of the Low Latency Mode may be configured in an indication frame or a data frame or a beacon frame sent by the AP to the STA. Wherein the Qos control field (Qos Control field) is a field that is included in each frame, and in one example, an indication field for indicating whether the access point is in a low-latency service mode is carried in an access point energy-saving buffer status subfile field in the Qos control field in the beacon frame; the access point energy saving buffer status subfile field (AP PS Buffer State subfiled) in Qos Control field after the indication of the configured low latency mode is structured as follows:

The energy-saving Buffer area state subfile field is used for configuring PS Buffer state information of a receiving STA at an AP side, the indicated Buffer state is Buffer STATE INDICATED, the highest priority Buffer AC is Highest Priority Buffered AC, and the Qos AP Buffer load is Qos AP Buffered Load; an indication of Low Latency Mode is used to indicate a Low Latency traffic Mode, for example: when the Low Latency Mode is configured to be 1, it indicates that the current AP will preferentially send the buffered data of the Low Latency service, and when the Low Latency Mode is configured to be 0, the buffered data will be sent according to the priority of the AC or the instruction of the STA. Correspondingly, when the Low Latency Mode is configured to be 1, the Highest Priority Buffered AC field corresponds to the remaining buffered data state of the Low Latency service. When the Low Latency Mode is configured to be 0, the remaining cache data state corresponding to the original highest priority AC is indicated. In summary, the access point will preferentially transmit buffered low-latency traffic when the access point is in the low-latency traffic mode, and will not preferentially transmit buffered low-latency traffic when the access point is not in the low-latency traffic mode.

A new concept is introduced below, namely, a PSMP (Power-Save Multi-Poll) scheme, in which a PSMP frame is used to schedule a transmission period of an entire Power saving mode, and the transmission period is divided into two parts, namely, a PSMP-DTT (PSMP Downlink Transmission Time) and a PSMP-UTT (PSMP Uplink Transmission Time), corresponding to a downlink transmission (STA receiving data) time and an uplink transmission (STA transmitting data) time, respectively. A PSMP sequence starts with a PSMP frame in which PSMP-DTT and PSMP-UTT information are preconfigured, after receiving the PSMP frame, the STA side may wake up to receive information in the scheduled PSMP-DTT time, and the STA may wake up and transmit uplink data during the PSMP-UTT period, thereby reducing more listening procedures and saving energy. The access point side to which the access point belongs may have a plurality of slave access points, in this example the terminal side to which the terminal belongs has a plurality of slave terminals;

a problem is faced under the PSMP mechanism, how to guarantee the reliability of low-latency traffic transmission based on the existing PSMP mechanism when the AP or STA side has low-latency traffic to transmit, and in order to facilitate understanding, the following analysis is performed in two angles:

For the AP, as shown in fig. 3, if the AP has a low-latency service to be transmitted to a certain terminal on the terminal side, for example, STA1, before the access point sends an initial PSMP frame to a plurality of terminals on the terminal side (STA 1 and STA2 in fig. 3), more resources should be preferentially allocated to the low-latency service in the PSMP, and the resources and time periods allocated to other STAs are suspended or terminated, and all the resources are concentrated to the low-latency service, that is, the access point preferentially allocates wireless communication resources to the access point and the terminal corresponding to the low-latency service to be transmitted when configuring the initial PSMP frame, so as to ensure that the wireless communication resources allocated to the access point and the terminal are sufficient to support the transmission of the low-latency service to be transmitted; and then the AP transmits data to STA1 and STA2 in the PSMP-DTT period, STA1 and STA2 sequentially transmit data to the AP in the PSMP-UTT period to the AP, in one example, for a burst service to be transmitted that occurs after the access point transmits an initial PSMP frame to the terminal side, that is, if there is a low-latency service on the AP side that needs to be transmitted to STA1 after the initial PSMP frame is transmitted, the AP generates a corresponding updated PSMP frame for the burst service to be transmitted, and transmits the updated PSMP frame to the terminal side, which is embodied by configuring a PSMP burst frame (PSMP burst) to the low-latency service, and after the PSMP-UTT is finished, an updated PSMP frame should be specifically allocated to the STA for the low-latency service, and the resources allocated to other STAs should be suspended or terminated to ensure the reliability of the low-latency service transmission, and then the low-latency service data to STA1 is transmitted to STA 1.

For all terminals at the terminal side, if it is found that low-delay service needs to be transmitted to the AP after receiving the PSMP sent by the AP, as in STA1 in fig. 4, the STA1 needs to send a low-delay service indication to the AP to notify the AP that the AP itself has a low-delay service request to send, in addition to the Data sent to the AP during the PSMP-UTT, the indication may be a QoS Null frame or a QoS Data frame with a low-delay service identifier, so as to notify the AP that the low-delay service needs to be sent. After receiving the low-delay service sending request frame from the STA, the AP side feeds back a PSMP burst frame (the AP configures the PSMP burst to the low-delay service) to configure new resources to the low-delay service, and in order to ensure the transmission of the low-delay service, the AP side should tilt the resources preferentially to the low-delay service, ensure the complete transmission of the low-delay service, pause or terminate the transmission resources of other STAs, so as to ensure the reliability of the transmission of the low-delay service.

In this embodiment, an access point informs a terminal whether there is a buffered low-latency service in the access point by sending a beacon frame to the terminal; under the condition that the access point is informed of the cached low-delay service, the terminal is instructed to exit from the sleep mode; and after confirming that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment through the power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal. The mechanism for acquiring the cache data in different power saving modes is optimized for the low-delay service so as to ensure the timely awakening and transmission of the low-delay service, so that the performance and the power consumption of the network can be balanced better, and further the performance and the flexibility of the network can be improved, and the continuously developed service demands can be met.

The above method is divided into steps, which are only for clarity of description, and may be combined into one step or split into multiple steps when implemented, so long as they include the same logic relationship, and they are all within the protection scope of the present application; it is within the scope of this application to add insignificant modifications to the algorithm or flow or introduce insignificant designs, but not to alter the core design of its algorithm and flow.

It should be noted that each module in this embodiment is a logic module, and in practical application, one logic unit may be one physical unit, or may be a part of one physical unit, or may be implemented by a combination of multiple physical units. In addition, in order to highlight the innovative part of the present invention, units that are not so close to solving the technical problem presented by the present invention are not introduced in the present embodiment, but this does not indicate that other units are not present in the present embodiment.

Another embodiment of the invention is directed to an access point, as shown in fig. 5, comprising at least one processor 501; and a memory 502 communicatively coupled to the at least one processor; the memory 502 stores instructions executable by the at least one processor 501, and the instructions are executed by the at least one processor 501 to enable the at least one processor 501 to perform the low latency traffic power saving method as described above.

Where the memory 502 and the processor 501 are connected by a bus, the bus may comprise any number of interconnected buses and bridges, the buses connecting the various circuits of the one or more processors 501 and the memory 502. The bus may also connect various other circuits such as peripherals, voltage regulators, and power management circuits, which are well known in the art, and therefore, will not be described any further herein. The bus interface provides an interface between the bus and the transceiver. The transceiver may be one element or may be a plurality of elements, such as a plurality of receivers and transmitters, providing a means for communicating with various other apparatus over a transmission medium. The data processed by the processor 501 is transmitted over a wireless medium via an antenna, which further receives the data and transmits the data to the processor 501.

The processor 501 is responsible for managing the bus and general processing and may also provide various functions including timing, peripheral interfaces, voltage regulation, power management, and other control functions. And memory 502 may be used to store data used by processor 501 in performing operations.

Another embodiment of the present invention relates to a computer-readable storage medium storing a computer program. The computer program implements the above-described method embodiments when executed by a processor.

That is, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that all or part of the steps in implementing the methods of the embodiments described above may be implemented by a program stored in a storage medium, where the program includes several instructions for causing a device (which may be a single-chip microcomputer, a chip or the like) or a processor (processor) to perform all or part of the steps in the methods of the embodiments of the application. And the aforementioned storage medium includes: a usb disk, a removable hard disk, a Read-only memory (ROM), a random access memory (RAM, randomAccessMemory), a magnetic disk, or an optical disk, or other various media capable of storing program codes.

It will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that the foregoing embodiments are specific examples of carrying out the invention and that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

Claims

1. An energy saving method for low delay service, which is applied to an access point, comprises:

Informing the terminal whether a cached low-delay service exists in the access point or not by sending a beacon frame to the terminal;

Under the condition that the access point is informed of the cached low-delay service, the terminal is instructed to exit from the sleep mode;

After confirming that the terminal has the capacity of transmitting the cached low-delay service at the moment through a power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, transmitting the cached low-delay service existing in the access point to the terminal;

The bitmap control field in the beacon frame carries an indication field for informing whether the cached low-delay service exists in the access point; or, the beacon frame carries an additional bitmap control field which is specially used for informing whether the cached low-delay service exists in the access point; or, the beacon frame carries a TIM element dedicated to informing whether the cached low-delay service exists in the access point;

wherein the notifying, by sending a beacon frame to a terminal, whether there is a buffered low-latency service in the access point by the terminal includes:

And sending a beacon frame carrying an indication field used for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service or not to the terminal, or carrying an additional bit map control field special for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service or not, or carrying a beacon frame special for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service or not, of a TIM element used for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service or not.

2. The method for power saving for low latency traffic according to claim 1, wherein the instructing the terminal to exit sleep mode comprises:

instructing the terminal to switch from the sleep mode to the awake mode, and reducing the value of a beacon interval field in a beacon frame and instructing the terminal to adjust the frequency of receiving the beacon frame; or alternatively, the first and second heat exchangers may be,

The terminal is instructed to adjust to an active mode to exit the sleep mode.

3. The method for saving energy of low-latency service according to claim 1, wherein the sending, to the terminal, the beacon frame carrying the indication field for informing whether there is the buffered low-latency service in the access point in the bitmap control field includes:

And sending a beacon frame which is carried with an indication field used for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service or not to the bitmap control field corresponding to different service types to the terminal, indicating the terminal to process the low-delay service and the non-low-delay service, and sending the beacon frame which is carried with the indication field used for informing whether the access point has the cached low-delay service or not to the terminal corresponding to the partial virtual bitmap with one bit of 1.

4. The method for saving energy of low-delay service according to claim 1, wherein transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal after the power saving poll frame transmitted by the terminal confirms that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at this time, comprises:

After confirming that the terminal has the capability of transmitting the low-delay service at the moment through a power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, feeding back a confirmation frame aiming at the power saving polling frame to the terminal;

Transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal, and when the low-delay service fails to be transmitted at one time, receiving a power saving polling frame with more data bits configured to be 1 in a frame control field sent by the terminal so as to transmit the rest low-delay service to the terminal;

And when the low-delay service is transmitted, the terminal is confirmed to enter the sleep mode by receiving a confirmation frame of the terminal for the low-delay service.

5. The method for power saving for low latency traffic according to claim 1, further comprising:

And after confirming that the terminal has the capacity of transmitting the low-delay service through the power saving polling frame sent by the terminal, preferentially transmitting the low-delay service to the terminal when the cached low-delay service and non-low-delay service exist in the access point at the same time.

6. The energy-saving method of low-delay service according to claim 1, wherein an indication field for indicating whether the access point is in a low-delay service mode is carried in an access point energy-saving buffer status subfile field in a Qos control field in the beacon frame;

Wherein the access point will preferentially transmit the buffered low-latency traffic when the access point is in the low-latency traffic mode, and the access point will not preferentially transmit the buffered low-latency traffic when the access point is not in the low-latency traffic mode.

7. The method for power saving for low latency traffic according to claim 1, further comprising:

before the access point sends an initial PSMP frame to a plurality of terminals, the access point preferentially allocates wireless communication resources for the terminals to be transmitted with low-delay service in the plurality of terminals when configuring the initial PSMP frame so as to ensure that the wireless communication resources allocated by the access point and the terminals to be transmitted with low-delay service are enough to support the transmission of the low-delay service to be transmitted;

And for the burst service to be transmitted which occurs after the access point sends the initial PSMP frames to a plurality of terminal sides, the access point generates corresponding updated PSMP frames for the burst service to be transmitted and sends the updated PSMP frames to the terminals corresponding to the burst service to be transmitted.

8. An access point, comprising:

At least one processor; and

A memory communicatively coupled to the at least one processor; wherein,

The memory stores instructions executable by the at least one processor to enable the at least one processor to perform the low latency traffic power saving method of any of claims 1 to 7.

9. A computer readable storage medium storing a computer program, wherein the computer program when executed by a processor implements the low latency service power saving method of any of claims 1 to 7.