Group polling and reservation requests in a wireless network

Abstract

A wireless network comprises at least one access point and a plurality of wireless stations which may communicate with the access point. The access point generates and transmits a first frame to the wireless stations. The first frame defines a time interval during which each of the wireless stations having data for transmission may attempt to send a second frame. The second frame informs the access point of the traffic categories or streams the data belongs to and the time amounts needed to transmit the data belonging to the indicated traffic categories or traffic streams. The time interval thus defines a pre-designated time window during which only second frames used to request transmission times for buffered data may be sent by wireless stations. The access point then may grant transmission times to those wireless stations that have indicated that they have data to transmit to transmit their data in a controlled fashion. The first frame also defines a contention window from which the transmission times of second frames are derived, randomized, and optimized. The first frame may further contain information about the wireless stations from which the second frames were correctly received by the access point in the previous time interval during which second frames were sent.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.