Access point for wireless local area network

Home, business and commercial networks are becoming increasingly diverse and more often involve the interaction of both wireless local area networks (WLAN) and wired networks. A typical infrastructure for a home or business network includes one or more wireless or wired gateways, such as a modem or set-top box, to service one or more client applications or stations. As the client stations and applications in home and business networks become more diverse, the traditional gateway devices are unable to provide interfaces for all of the applications.

The gateway may, for example, be required to provide interfaces to mobile devices, such as laptops and personal digital assistants, and to provide interfaces to stationary devices, such as personal computers and consumer electronics. Each of the various devices and client applications may use different communication standards, protocols, frequencies or technology, such as, for example, wireless networks complying with the 802.11 standards and wired networks using twisted pair, cable or power line communication media. Accordingly, the known gateway devices may not support all of the client applications that a user desires to add to a home or business network.

Embodiments of the present invention include, for example, physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) layer circuitry in an access point comprising a first group of one or more channel paths for processing a first set of one or more transmit data streams according to a first mode of operation, and a second group of one or more channel paths for processing a second set of one or more transmit data streams according to a second mode of operation.

The present invention provides many applicable inventive concepts that can be embodied in a wide variety of specific contexts. The specific embodiments discussed are merely illustrative of specific ways to make and use the invention, and do not limit the scope of the invention. The following detailed description explains exemplary embodiments of the present invention. The description is not to be taken in a limiting sense, but is made only for the purpose of illustrating the general principles of embodiments of the invention. In the various figures, identical or similar entities, modules, devices etc. may have assigned the same reference number.

In the following, various embodiments will be described wherein an access point may independently and concurrently service two or more client applications via two or more channels, frequencies, bands and/or networks. As will be described later in more detail, the independent and concurrent operation of physical layer channels allows for flexible and dynamic configuration of the access point which may, for example, be used to optimize the data traffic to and from the various client applications by the access point.