US 5,852,405 A · Wireless LAN system

Abstract

In a wireless LAN system having two or more master stations each connected to a wired LAN and a plurality of slave stations each connected to a terminal for wirelessly sending and receiving signals to and from the master station via a prescribed channel, each master station is provided with a table for managing the state of channel use. The master station has a LAN controller which periodically notifies the other master station of the state of use of its own channel via a notification packet. Upon receiving a notification packet sent periodically from the other master station, the LAN controller stores the state of use of the channel of the other master station, of which it has been notified by the notification packet, in the channel management table. When it becomes necessary to allocate a channel to the slave station under its supervision, the LAN controller refers to the channel management table, selects a channel that is not being used by any other master station, allocates the selected channel to the slave station and communicates with the slave station. The LAN controller stores the state of use of its own channel in the table.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A master station in a wireless LAN system having a plurality of master stations each connected to a wired LAN and a plurality of slave stations each connected to a terminal for wirelessly sending and receiving signals to and from one of said plurality of master stations via a prescribed channel, each master station comprising:

a table for managing state of channel use by other master stations;
means for transmitting state of use of its own channel to other master stations periodically in the form of a notification packet;
means for receiving and storing state of channel use of said other master stations in said table when a notification packet has been received from each of said other master stations;
means for selecting a channel not being used by said other master stations upon referring to said table when communication is to be performed with a slave station under supervision;
and
means for communicating with the slave station via the channel selected.

3 more elements

A wireless LAN system having a plurality of master stations each connected to a wired LAN and a plurality of slave stations each connected to a terminal for wirelessly sending and receiving signals to and from one of said plurality of master stations via a prescribed channel, wherein each master station comprises:

a table for managing state of channel use by other master stations;
means for transmitting state of use of its own channel to other master stations periodically in the form of a notification packet;
means for receiving and storing state of channel use of said other master stations in said table when a notification packet has been received from each of said other master stations;
means for selecting a channel not being used by said other master stations upon referring to said table when communication is to be performed with a slave station under supervision;
and
means for communicating with the slave station via the channel selected;
each master station referring to said table when channel allocation has been requested by the slave station under supervision, selecting a channel for communicating with said slave station and then communicating with the slave station via the channel selected.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Wireless LAN system

Life of this patent

Wireless LAN system

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims10