Patent ID: 7453799
Filing Date: 2008-11-18
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of dynamic ARQ windows management in a network, the method comprising: selecting an operational control mode by an ARQ management entity comprising a transmitter ARQ instance and a receiver ARQ instance configured to receive sliding window memory requests from at least one transmitter, and to control, according to the operational control mode selected out of a predetermined set of operational control modes, each of a plurality of data links which are managed by said at least one transmitter, said data links being configured to transport PDUs according to an ARQ protocol and being associated to a respective QoS priority belonging to a set of predetermined QoS priorities; sending one or more PDUs of a given one of said data links to a receiver by the at least one transmitter; storing received PDUs in a shared memory, in said receiver, shared among said data links, and configured to store the received PDUs, at least until they are acknowledged; sending back, by said receiver ARQ instance, a corresponding ARQ-ACK message including specific information comprising said selected operational control mode and/or flow control data; removing acknowledged PDUs from said shared memory, by said receiver ARQ instance, when delivering the corresponding ARQ-ACK message to an upper layer; continuing or stopping PDUs transmission on a respective one of said data links upon reception of said ARQ-ACK message, by said transmitter ARQ instance, based on said specific information comprised in said ARQ-ACK message, wherein the step of selecting the operational control mode is repeated dynamically on a per data link basis during the PDUs transmission, while taking into account the available memory space within said shared memory, said respective associated QoS priority and the sliding window memory requests received from said at least one transmitter by said receiver; and wherein continuing or stopping the PDUs transmission on the respective one of the plurality of data links upon reception of said ARQ-ACK message, by said transmitter ARQ instance, is based on the selected operational control mode and the flow control data of said specific information comprised in said ARQ-ACK message, wherein the selected operational control mode is selected out of the predetermined set of operational control modes including a binary flow control mode and a window flow control mode.