US 7,120,158 B2Granted

Communication device and method for transmitting through the use of accumulation of capacity tokens

AssigneeSony Corporation

InventorHiroshi Kyusojin

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

A transmission timing deciding unit decides the transmission timing for packet data based on time information from a time control unit and flow information from a flow information managing unit. At the decided timing, a packet transmitting unit transmits packet data at the head of the packet queue in the event that the accumulated capacity of a token exceeds zero, and further transmits best-effort flow packets in the event that predetermined conditions are satisfied. Thus, a communication apparatus and communication method can be provided wherein, in the event that a single network interface is shared by multiple flows, coexistence with best-effort flows can be realized while maintaining the reserved bandwidth for each flow so as to avoid collision of transmission requests from the flows.

Claims11

Dependent claims

A communication apparatus for transmitting multiple flows of packet data including bandwidth-guaranteed flow, said apparatus comprising:

timing deciding unit for determining transmission timing of packets of said bandwidth-guaranteed flow;
and
packet transmitting unit for transmitting leading packet data in a packet queue according to accumulation capacity of tokens, at a timing set by said timing deciding means,
wherein
said packet transmitting unit subtract the size of said transmitted packet from said accumulation capacity of said tokens following transmitting said packet data at the head of said packet queue,
said multiple flows of packet data include best-effort flow along with bandwidth-guaranteed flow.
said packet transmitting means transmit said best-effort flow packet data at a timing wherein said bandwidth-guaranteed flow packet data is not being transmitted,
said packet transmitting means perform transmission of each packet data by time-division multiplex,
transmission timing appropriated to each of said packet data is real-time, and wherein time at which said packet data is actually transmittable is managed as virtual time, and
said best-effort flow packet data is transmitted only in the event that said virtual time is ahead of said real-time.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.