Mechanisms of reducing power consumption for NAN devices

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium including instructions that when executed by hardware processing circuitry of a wireless communication device cause the wireless communication device to:

• operate according to a sync-mode of a WiFi communication protocol that includes transmission of a beacon frame to initiate at least one of joining a cluster of devices or starting a cluster;
• transition communication to a non-sync mode that includes a sleep mode that recurrently disables the transceiver during scheduled discovery window time durations of the cluster;
• determine whether to schedule transmission of a service discovery frame;
• monitor for at least one of a response frame or a beacon frame sent by any neighbor device of the cluster;
• and
• change operation to a background scan mode when the at least one of the response frame or the beacon frame sent by any neighbor device is undetected for a specified time duration and transmission of a service frame by the computing device is unscheduled.

A wireless communication system comprising:

• a transceiver configured to communicate information with one or more neighbor devices in accordance with a sync mode of a WiFi communication protocol;
• one or more antennas electrically coupled to the transceiver;
• and
• a controller configured to:
• monitor for reception of at least one of a response frame or a beacon frame sent by any neighbor device;
• determine whether to schedule transmission of a service frame;
• join a cluster of devices according to a network protocol and transition communication to a non-sync mode that includes a sleep mode that recurrently disables the transceiver during scheduled discovery window time durations of the cluster;
• and
• change operation to a background scan mode when the at least one of the response frame or the beacon frame sent by any neighbor device is undetected for a specified time duration and the transmission of a service frame is unscheduled.

A method of operating a wireless local area network (WLAN) device, the method comprising:

• operating the WLAN device in a sync-mode that includes transmitting a beacon frame to initiate at least one of joining a cluster of devices or starting a cluster of devices;
• monitoring for at least one of a response frame or a beacon frame sent by any neighbor device of the device cluster;
• operating the WLAN device in a non-sync mode when joined to the device cluster including operating the WLAN device in a sleep mode that recurrently disables a transceiver of the WLAN device during discovery windows scheduled for the device cluster;
• and
• changing operation to a background scan mode when the at least one of the response frame or the beacon frame is undetected by the WLAN device for a specified time duration and transmission of a service discovery frame by the WLAN device is unscheduled.