Method and apparatus for LDPC transmission over a channel bonded link

#The disclosed method and apparatus relates to communications generally, and more particularly, some embodiments relate to communications over a bonded channel between nodes within a network.

#In many communications applications, it is desirable to send as much information as possible as fast as possible. One way to increase the amount of information that can be sent in a predetermined amount of time is to send the information in parallel (i.e., send information over more than one wire or channel at the same time). However, in some communications systems, such parallel communications require coordination between the channels that are concurrently sending information.

#In particular, in a home entertainment network, such as a network that is operated in accordance with the well-known MoCA standard, sending information over different channels requires coordination that makes it difficult to use hardware that is not in close communication.

#The disclosed method and apparatus, in accordance with one or more various embodiments, is described with reference to the following figures. The drawings are provided for purposes of illustration only and merely depict examples of some embodiments of the disclosed method and apparatus. These drawings are provided to facilitate the reader's understanding of the disclosed method and apparatus. They should not be considered to limit the breadth, scope, or applicability of the claimed invention. It should be noted that for clarity and ease of illustration these drawings are not necessarily made to scale.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating the scheduling of the Allocation Unit (AU) by the NC.

#FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating the MAP processing by the Transmitting Node.

#In accordance with the well-known MoCA 2.0 standard for home entertainment communication networks, information is organized into protocol data units. Several of these protocol data units can be aggregated together to form an aggregated protocol data unit (A-PDU). For each A-PDU that a transmitting node has to transmit, a reservation request (RR) information element (IE) is sent to the network controller (NC) requesting a transmission slot for that A-PDU. An IE is defined as optional information that is encoded in a format. The format comprises a “Type”, a “Length” and a “Value”. The Type is a numeric code which indicates the kind of field that this part of the message represents. The Length is the size of the value field. The Value is a variable sized set of bytes which contains data for this part of the message. IEs are used in messages such as MAPs, Reservation Requests, Probe Reports, Pre-admission Discovery Requests and Responses, and Device Discovery messages, each of which are defined by the MoCA 2.0 specification.

#In one embodiment of the disclosed method and apparatus, when a transmitting node has an A-PDU to transmit, the A-PDU comprising a particular number of bytes (“M”), the transmitting node calculates the number of symbols (Nsym) required to transmit the M bytes of the A-PDU. If both the transmitting and receiving node are capable of operating with channel bonding and the transmission indicates either a unicast profile in channel bonding or a VLPER (very low packet error rate) unicast profile in channel bonding by transmitting a physical layer (PHY) profile value that is equal to 0x12 (i.e., the hexadecimal value equivalent to the binary value “0001 0010”), the number of symbols Nsym is calculated as follows: NBAS,1, NBAS,2: The number of bits per Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbol for the two channels to be used (i.e., the primary and extension channels), respectively; Nparity: The number of parity bits per LDPC codeword (same for both channels); kLDPCmax,1, kLDPCmax,2: Maximum LDPC codeword payload sizes from EVM reports for each channel MOH: Bonded channel frame splitting overhead (fixed at 34 Bytes top to cover the worst case) MBAS,i: the (approximate) maximum number of payload bits per OFDM symbol for each channel i. MBAS=MBAS,1+MBAS,2: the maximum payload bits per bonded OFDM symbol

#Where ⁢ : ⁢ ⁢ M Bas , i = ⌊ N BAS , i × kLDPC max , i kLDPC max , i + N parity ⌋ , i = 1 , 2