Patent ID: 9252991
Filing Date: 2016-02-02
CPC Classification: H04B,H04L,H04W

Claim Text:
1. A method in a communication network, the method comprising: (i) receiving, at a client device, a sounding packet from an access point device over a wireless downlink communication channel having a plurality of 20 MHz-wide subchannels, the sounding packet having a packet bandwidth that spans the plurality of 20 MHz-wide subchannels; (ii) at the client device, identifying a subchannel block of the sounding packet, wherein the subchannel block spans only a subset of the plurality of 20 MHz-wide subchannels, and the subchannel block has a subchannel block contiguous bandwidth that is a) at least 20 MHz and b) smaller than the packet bandwidth of the sounding packet; (iii) performing a channel estimation (a) on the subchannel block, but (b) not on any other 20 MHz-wide subchannels of the plurality of 20 MHz-wide subchannels, to determine a partial channel estimation of the downlink communication channel; and (iv) communicating, to the access point in a feedback frame, the partial channel estimation of the downlink communication channel so that the access point can determine a steering matrix from the partial channel estimation for application to only a portion, in frequency, of an information carrying data packet, transmitted by the access point, when the information carrying data packet has a bandwidth larger than the subchannel block, wherein the feedback frame includes an indication of a bandwidth of the subchannel block to which the partial channel estimation corresponds, wherein the portion of the information carrying data packet corresponds in frequency to the subchannel block.