US 2017/0366956 A1Published application

Neighbor discovery and neighbor selection of mesh network devices in a mesh network

AssigneeAmazon Technologies, Inc.

InventorsLori Yoshida, Andrew David Price, Varadaranjan Gopalakrishnan, Yi Zhu, Sheung Mei Chan

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Abstract

Network hardware devices organized in a wireless mesh network (WMN) in which one network hardware devices includes multiple radios. A processing device of a first network hardware device scans a channel of the first radio for access point (AP) beacon frames that each contains information identifying a mesh network device in a WMN. The processing device creates a list of a plurality of mesh network device from the AP beacon frames and transmits a location probe transmission by each of the plurality of radios one sector at a time in a neighbor discovery process. The processing device receives metrics of the location probe transmissions received by the plurality of mesh network devices in the neighbor discovery process and configures each of the plurality of radios to communicate with one of a set of neighbor mesh network devices using the metrics in a neighbor selection process.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A mesh network device comprising:

a first radio coupled to an omnidirectional antenna;
four radios comprising a second radio, a third radio, a fourth radio, and a fifth radio, the four radios organized into four groups of sectors, each of the four groups comprising a first directional antenna in a first sector of the respective group and a second directional antenna in a second sector of the respective group, wherein each of the four radios comprises four channels;
and
an application processor coupled to the first radio and the four radios, wherein the application processor is to:
i) receive, via the first radio, a first beacon frame from a second mesh network device, the first beacon frame including an informational element identifying the second mesh network device as an available access point in a wireless mesh network (WMN);
ii) send, via the first radio, a first node identifier of the mesh network device and a data channel identifier to the second mesh network device;
iii) receive, via the first radio, a second node identifier of the second mesh network device from the second mesh network device;
iv) broadcast a data frame multiple times from the respective first sector and the respective second sector, of each of the four groups of sectors, using a first channel of the second radio, a first channel of the third radio a first channel of the fourth radio, and a first channel of the fifth radio, wherein each data frame comprises a source sector identifier that identifies from which sector the respective frame is transmitted;
v) repeat step iv) for a second channel, a third channel, and a fourth channel of each of the four radios;
and
determine for the second mesh network device, a receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) value for each combination of the four channels and the four groups.

8 more elements

A mesh network device comprising:

a first radio of a first type;
a plurality of radios of a second type that is different than the first type;
and
a processing device coupled to the first radio and the plurality of radios, wherein the processing device is to:
receive, via the first radio, a first beacon frame from a second mesh network device and a second beacon frame from a third mesh network device;
send, via the first radio, a first message to the second mesh network device;
send, via the first radio, the first message to the third mesh network device;
send a broadcast message by each of the plurality of radios at the specified channel, one radio at a time;
receive, via the first radio, a first metric, associated with the broadcast message, from the second mesh network device and a second metric, associated with the broadcast message, from the third mesh network device;
and
configure a first of the plurality of radios to communicate with the second mesh network device and a second of the plurality of radios to communicate with the third mesh network based on the first and second metrics.

8 more elements

A method comprising:

receiving, via a first radio, a first beacon frame from a second mesh network device and a second beacon frame from a third mesh network device;
sending, via the first radio, a first message to the second mesh network device from which an AP beacon frame is received;
sending, via the first radio, the first message to the third mesh network device from which an AP beacon frame is received;
sending a broadcast message by each of the plurality of radios at the specified channel, one radio at a time;
receiving, via the first radio, a first metric, associated with the broadcast message, from the second mesh network device and a second metric, associated with the broadcast message, from the third mesh network device;
and
configuring a first of the plurality of radios to communicate with the second mesh network device and a second of the plurality of radios to communicate with the third mesh network based on the first and second metrics.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 15/188,831Filed 21 Jun 2016
Published: 21 Dec 2017
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification9 codes

H04W 8/005
Network data management: discovery of network devices, e.g. terminals
H04L 5/006
Allocation criteria: quality of the received signal, e.g. BER, SNR, water filling
H04L 67/104
In which an application is distributed across nodes in the network: peer-to-peer [P2P] networks
H04W 40/244
Connectivity information management, e.g. connectivity discovery or connectivity update: using a network of reference devices, e.g. beaconing

Family

US 10,129,731 B2Related patent
US 2017/0366956 A1This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.

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