Method for the transmission of a frame by an access point of a wireless local area network

An access point of a wireless local area network, the access point being adapted to perform a frame transmission in said wireless local area network, the access point having implemented a phase of association with a plurality or wireless terminals, the access point comprising:

• electronic circuitry configured for receiving, during the association phase, from each terminal of the plurality of wireless terminals, an information indicating whether each terminal of the plurality of wireless terminals are compatible with transmissions in a multicast mode;
• and wherein, to transmit the frame, the electronic circuitry is further configured for:
• obtaining data to be transmitted in the multicast mode to a plurality of destination terminals from among each of the multicast compatible wireless terminals;
• obtaining data to be transmitted in a unicast mode to at least one respective destination terminal from among the wireless terminals which are not multicast compatible or do not wish to participate in multicast;
• constructing a physical-layer header including:
• in a common signalling field, an identification of each channel resource intended to be used for making the frame transmission thereby indicating whether the data is to be transmitted in unicast mode or whether the data will be transmitted in multicast mode;
• and
• in each field of a series of specific signalling fields, information representing an association between a channel resource identifier used and a unique identifier of a destination terminal concerned or of a group of destination terminals concerned, so that each destination terminal can determine each channel resource to listen to in order to receive the data that are addressed to each channel resource, whether in the unicast mode or in the multicast mode;
• wherein the destination terminal or the group of destination terminals are selected from the plurality of wireless terminals.