Methods, wireless communication stations, and system for device-to-device discovery and advertisement

A wireless communication station (STA) comprising:

• a medium access control (MAC) layer to configure a join request message for joining an advertising group of user stations (STAs);
• and
• physical layer (PHY) circuitry to:
• receive a list of STAs of the advertising group, the STAs of the advertising group being within a broadcast range of the STA,
• transmit the join request message to a first upchain STA in a join window of the first upchain STA, the first upchain STA being a member of the list of STAs of the advertising group,
• receive a response to the request from the first upchain STA,
• transmit an ACK to the first upchain STA in response to receiving subsequent beacons transmitted by the first upchain STA;
• and
• one or more processors to
• determine an identity of the first upchain STA based on an inspection of the list of STAs of the advertising group.

A computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed on a machine, cause the machine to:

• extract, from a beacon, a list of user stations (STAs) of an advertising group, the STAs of the advertising group being within a broadcast range of the machine;
• transmit a join request to a first upchain STA, an identity of the first upchain STA being determined based on an inspection of list of STAs,
• periodically transmit advertising information or social information of the advertising group subsequent to receiving a response to the join request, a time interval between transmissions being based on a number of STAs in the advertising group, and
• transmit an ACK to the first upchain STA in response to receiving a beacon transmitted by the first upchain STA;
• and
• store the list of STAs in a memory.

A wireless communication station (STA) comprising:

• physical layer (PHY) circuitry to
• broadcast a list of user stations (STAs) in an advertising group, the list including a downchain STA, the STAs of the advertising group being within a broadcast range of the STA;
• and
• one or more processors to
• determine whether an acknowledgment of a broadcast has been received from the downchain STA within a time interval;
• and
• remove the downchain STA from the list or retransmit the broadcast to the downchain STA based on the determining.