Access point (ap), station (sta) and method of channel access for spatial reuse

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that stores instructions for execution by one or more processors to perform operations for contention based access by an access point (AP), the operations to configure the one or more processors to:

• determine whether channel activity is present during a sensing period based on channel sensing with an omni-directional pattern;
• when channel activity is determined as absent during the sensing period:
• decrement an omni-directional backoff parameter for an omni-directional contention and decrement one or more directional backoff parameters for one or more directional contentions for one or more candidate transmit directions;
• when channel activity is determined as present during the sensing period:
• refrain from decrement of the omni-directional backoff parameter;
• and
• determine whether to decrement the directional backoff parameters based on directional channel sensing in the candidate transmit directions;
• and
• determine that access to the channel for a transmission opportunity (TXOP) has been obtained by the AP when the omni-directional backoff parameter or at least one of the directional backoff parameters is decremented to zero during the sensing period.

An apparatus of a station (STA), the apparatus comprising:

• memory;
• and processing circuitry, configured to:
• generate a backoff parameter for contention based access to a channel;
• sense the channel with an omni-directional pattern;
• when channel inactivity is sensed with the omni-directional pattern, decrement the backoff parameter and determine whether to transmit on the channel based on the decremented backoff parameter;
• and
• when channel activity is sensed with the omni-directional pattern:
• decode a request-to-send (RTS) frame from an originating STA, the RTS frame included in a data transmission from the originating STA to a destination STA during a transmission opportunity (TXOP) obtained by the originating STA;
• determine, based at least partly on durations of the TXOP and the data transmission included in the RTS frame, a remainder time of the TXOP after the data transmission;
• and
• when the remainder time of the TXOP is greater than a threshold:
• perform directional channel sensing in one or more candidate transmit directions to determine a transmit direction for a directional transmission by the STA during the TXOP, the directional channel sensing based on directional reception of receive training (R-TRN) fields included in the RTS frame.

A method of contention-based access, comprising:

• generating a backoff parameter for contention based access to a channel;
• sensing the channel with an omni-directional pattern;
• when channel inactivity is sensed with the omni-directional pattern, decrementing the backoff parameter and determining whether to transmit on the channel based on the decremented backoff parameter;
• and
• when channel activity is sensed with the omni-directional pattern:
• decoding a request-to-send (RTS) frame from an originating STA, the RTS frame included in a data transmission from the originating STA to a destination STA during a transmission opportunity (TXOP) obtained by the originating STA;
• determining, based at least partly on durations of the TXOP and the data transmission included in the RTS frame, a spatial reuse TXOP (SR-TXOP) included within the TXOP after the data transmission;
• and
• contending for access to the channel during the SR-TXOP in accordance with a spatial reuse (SR) backoff parameter.