System and method for Wi-Fi downlink-uplink protocol design for uplink interference alignment

摘要

Embodiments are provided to enable concurrent uplink transmissions from multiple Wi-Fi stations (STAs) to one or more access points (APs) using Interference Alignment (IA). In an embodiment, the STAs broadcast, to one or more APs, beamforming reports including channel estimation information for downlink. The one or more AP then performs channel estimation using the beamforming reports, and selects at least some of the STAs. The AP also computes beamforming information for IA of uplink transmissions between the selected STAs and sends, to the selected STAs, the beamforming information. The beamforming information is piggy-backed over downlink data packets to the selected STAs. Each selected STA then sends an uplink data frame concurrently with one or more other uplink data frames from one or more other selected STAs to the AP. The uplink data frames are configured for concurrent uplink transmissions according to the beamforming information for IA.