Patent ID: 9258829
Filing Date: 2016-02-09
CPC Classification: H04B,H04L,H04W

Claim Text:
1. A collision rate reduction method operative for Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) data communications in a power line communications (PLC) network including one or more MIMO PLC devices and one or more legacy PLC devices operating according to a legacy PLC data transmission standard using an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation scheme, the PLC network being operative to support a MIMO channel having N T transmit phases and N R receive paths, the collision rate reduction method comprising: at a MIMO PLC transmitter device, obtaining legacy Frame Control Header (FCH) data and generating a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) sequence therefor, the legacy FCH data for populating an FCH portion of a MIMO data signal frame that includes MIMO-compliant FCH data, a MIMO-compliant preamble (M-Preamble) portion and a payload data portion; perturbing at least a portion of the legacy FCH data; and encoding and transmitting the MIMO data signal frame that includes the perturbed legacy FCH data and the CRC sequence of unperturbed legacy FCH data, wherein the CRC sequence is configured to fail at a legacy PLC receiver device in order to ensure a predetermined back-off time by the legacy PLC receiver device when it receives the MIMO data signal frame via the PLC network.