Measuring medium activity patterns in wireless networks and deriving information from the activity patterns

A method for obtaining information about medium activity patterns of a second station on a medium scanned by a first station, comprising:

• transmitting by the first station a Medium Sensing Measurement Request;
• receiving, by the first station in response to the transmitted request, a Medium Sensing Measurement Report comprising an activity pattern of the second station;
• using by the first station the activity pattern of the second station to discover at least one of
• i. the second station being a non-IEE 802.11 device,
• ii. the second station being an IEE 802.11e device,
• iii. the quality of service (QoS) parameter set being applied by the second station,
• iv. the second station using a hybrid coordination function (HCF),
• v. the second station being one of IEE 802.11b and IEE 802.11g, and
• vi. the second station being hidden from the first station.

An apparatus at a first station for obtaining information about a second station that operates on a medium scanned by the first station, comprising:

• a receiver for receiving an incoming signal from the second station over a predetermined sensing interval;
• an activity acquisition and pattern derivation circuit that measures activity patterns of said incoming signal and derives patterns;
• a timer that provides a time reference in timer units (TUs);
• and
• a control processor, coupled to said activity acquisition and pattern derivation circuit and said timer, configured to sense a busy and an idle activity of said incoming signal and derive an activity pattern as a histogram over time, wherein the control processor is configured to:
• detect a busy period and an idle period during the predetermined sensing interval;
• accumulate a received power level of the activity;
• sense the busy period when the received power level exceeds a predetermined power threshold and a preamble is detected;
• and
• sense the idle period when the received power level does not exceed than the predetermined power threshold and the preamble is not detected.