Restricted target wait time (R-TWT) operations and parameters

An apparatus for wireless communication in a network, the apparatus comprising:

• (a) a wireless communication circuit, as a wireless station (STA) operating as either a regular STA or an Access Point (AP) STA for wirelessly communicating with other wireless stations (STAs) using a carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism on a wireless local area network (WLAN);
• (b) a processor coupled to said wireless communication circuit for operating on the WLAN;
• (c) a non-transitory memory storing instructions executable by the processor for communicating with other STAs;
• and
• (d) wherein said instructions, when executed by the processor, perform steps of a wireless communications protocol for said wireless communication circuit, comprising:
• (i) reusing broadcast target wake time (B-TWT) signaling as defined in IEEE 802.11ax for establishing a restricted TWT (R-TWT);
• (ii) indicating within said B-TWT, using a bit of a broadcast TWT parameter set field which is reserved in IEEE 802.11ax, for indicating use of R-TWT;
• (iii) indicating additional settings to specify traffic flow for R-TWT in response to utilizing other bits in a broadcast TWT recommendation field which are reserved in IEEE 802.11ax;
• and
• (iv) wherein one or more traffic flow settings are selected from a group of traffic flow settings consisting of:
• (A) indicating whether a quiet element is used to protect R-TWT, (B) indicating whether the restricted TWT can be extended to beyond its scheduled end time if corresponding traffic has not been transmitted at the end of R-TWT service period (SP), (C) indicating whether the AP is forced to use PSR-based spatial reuse during restricted TWT SP, (D) indicating whether the AP and R-TWT members can access multiple overlapped R-TWT SPs on different links over the same periods of time, (E) indicating whether traffic from all stream classification service (SCS) is allowed to transmit during R-TWT SP, (F) indicating whether a member of R-TWT needs to wake-up/sleep in response to the broadcast TWT, (G) indicating an amount of traffic information included in the Broadcast TWT parameter set field.

A method of wireless communication in a network, comprising:

• (a) communicating between a wireless station (STA) executing a wireless communications protocol and operating as either a regular STA or an Access Point (AP) STA for wirelessly communicating with other wireless stations (STAs) using a carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism on a wireless local area network (WLAN);
• (b) reusing broadcast target wake time (B-TWT) signaling as defined in IEEE 802.11ax for establishing a restricted TWT (R-TWT);
• (c) indicating within said B-TWT, using a bit of a broadcast TWT parameter set field which is reserved in IEEE 802.11ax, for indicating use of R-TWT;
• and
• (d) indicating additional settings to specify traffic flow for R-TWT in response to utilizing other bits in a broadcast TWT recommendation field which are reserved in IEEE 802.11ax.