Method and system for testing and optimizing the performance of a radio ...

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(12) United States Patent

Thomson et al.

(io) Patent No.: (45) Date of Patent:

US 7,792,052 Bl *Sep. 7, 2010

(54) METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR TESTING AND OPTIMIZING THE PERFORMANCE OF A RADIO COMMUNICATION DEVICE

(75) Inventors: John S. Thomson, Union City, CA (US);

William J. McFarland, Los Altos, CA
(US)

(73) Assignee: Atheros Communications, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US)

( * ) Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 14 days.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

(21) Appl.No.: 12/236,818

(22) Filed: Sep. 24, 2008

Related U.S. Application Data

Continuation of application No. 10/254,181, filed on
Sep. 24, 2002, now Pat. No. 7,447,163.

Provisional application No. 60/325,077, filed on Sep.
25, 2001.

(63) (60)

(51)

(52) (58)

(56)

Int. CI.

H04J1/16 (2006.01)

U.S. CI 370/252; 370/469

Field of Classification Search None

See application file for complete search history.

References Cited

U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS 6,671,284 Bl* 12/2003 Yonge et al

370/462

A radio communication device is tested by forwarding relevant signal characteristic data derived at the physical (PHY) layer to the media access control (MAC) layer for processing, analysis and feedback to the radio circuit to improve performance. The relevant signal characteristics are forwarded to the MAC within (appended to) a data packet. Thus, the relevant signal characteristic is forwarded to the MAC along an existing data path (a path originally designed to transfer the receive frame only, but now transfers the combined receive frame with the attached radio characteristic). The radio characteristic may be used for testing and/or tuning the radio circuit. In one embodiment, the radio characteristic is a frequency domain representation of a received signal. The radio is tuned based on a channel estimate derived from comparison of frequency domain representations of transmitted and received signals.

33 Claims, 11 Drawing Sheets