Medium access control methods with quality of service and power management for wireless local area networks
First Claim
1. A medium access control (MAC) method for applications with power conservation and quality-of-service requirements in a basic service set (BSS) of a wireless local area network (WLAN), comprising:
- an optional registration procedure, which is coordinated by the access point (AP) to ensure that active stations can join the polling list from higher priority to lower priority; and
a mandatory polling procedure, which is coordinated by the AP to ensure that each polled station can transmit data frames according to the transmission opportunity (TXOP) and transmission order announced in the vector-list poll (V-POLL) frame;
wherein the MAC method is used in the contention-free period (CFP), wherein a BSS consists of an AP and a finite number of mobile stations, wherein a mobile station can be either in the active mode or in the power saving (PS) mode, wherein the AP broadcasts the V-POLL frame, and wherein the registration procedure is performed during the registration period and the polling procedure is performed during the polling period.
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Abstract
A MAC method has three procedures: a prioritization procedure, a collision resolution procedure, and a polling procedure. The prioritization procedure employs the handshaking method to ensure that a high priority station can join the polling list earlier than a low priority station. The collision resolution procedure employs a tree-splitting algorithm to ensure all active stations that underwent the prioritization period can join the polling list in a bounded time. In the polling procedure, the AP allocates the TXOP for each admitted station and schedules the transmission order of all admitted stations. In addition, the AP broadcasts the schedule information in the V-POLL frame. A power-saving station can wake up at the start of the contention-free period. To conserve power, on inspecting the V-POLL frame, if a PS station finds that it cannot transmit nor receive data frames during the polling period, then that station may return to the doze state.
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Citations
14 Claims
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1. A medium access control (MAC) method for applications with power conservation and quality-of-service requirements in a basic service set (BSS) of a wireless local area network (WLAN), comprising:
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an optional registration procedure, which is coordinated by the access point (AP) to ensure that active stations can join the polling list from higher priority to lower priority; and
a mandatory polling procedure, which is coordinated by the AP to ensure that each polled station can transmit data frames according to the transmission opportunity (TXOP) and transmission order announced in the vector-list poll (V-POLL) frame;
wherein the MAC method is used in the contention-free period (CFP), wherein a BSS consists of an AP and a finite number of mobile stations, wherein a mobile station can be either in the active mode or in the power saving (PS) mode, wherein the AP broadcasts the V-POLL frame, and wherein the registration procedure is performed during the registration period and the polling procedure is performed during the polling period. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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Specification