CN107105424B - Method and system for efficient addressing and power saving in wireless systems - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for addressing groups of stations in a wireless communication system begins by assigning stations in the system to groups. A group identifier is transmitted to each station, and the group identifier is indicated in the frame for each group having data in the frame. The addressing method may be applied to save power for the station, wherein the station enters a power save mode if the group identifier for the station is not present in the frame.

Description

Method and system for efficient addressing and power saving in wireless systems

The present application is a divisional application of the chinese patent application entitled "efficient addressing and power saving method and system in wireless system" with an application date of 20/4/2006 and an application number of 200680013768.6.

Technical Field

The present invention relates to wireless communication systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling transmission via an enhanced dedicated channel (E-DCH).

Background

Frame aggregation and frame bursting are two proposed mechanisms to enhance the performance of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) systems. The mechanism is considered to be an extension of 802.11n to the 802.11 wlan standard that may facilitate higher yielding wlan devices. The TGnSync and WWISE proposals consider various frame aggregation and frame burst schemes.

Fig. 1 shows different types of frame integration and frame burst schemes proposed by TGnSync, WwiSE or both. The integration schemes can be generally distinguished based on their integrated component parts.

Medium Access Control (MAC) service data unit (MSDU) aggregation (100) may integrate one or more MAC service data units (102) to form an integrated MAC service data unit (a-MSDU)104, each separated by a subframe header 106. The medium access control header 108 is added to the integrated medium access control service data unit to form a single medium access control protocol data unit (MPDU) 110.

Medium access control protocol data unit aggregation (120) may integrate one or more medium access control protocol data units (mac pdu's) 122 to form a single integrated mac protocol data unit (a-MPDU)124, with each mac pdu separated by a mac pdu delimiter 126. A Physical (PHY) header 128, including an intrinsic training and Signaling (SIGNAL) field 130 and an HT training and signaling field 132, is added to the integrated medium access control protocol data unit 124 to form a Physical Protocol Data Unit (PPDU) 134.

The entity protocol data unit aggregation (140) may integrate one or more entity protocol data units (142), each entity protocol data unit including an entity header (144) and a medium access control protocol data unit (mac pdu) 146. A physical header 148, including an intrinsic training and signaling field 150 and an HT training and signaling field 152, is added to form a single integrated physical protocol data unit (a-PPDU) 154.

A physical protocol data unit burst (160), also known as a High Throughput (HTP) burst transmission, involves transmitting a sequence of frames 162 at a single medium access by a single high throughput Station (STA). Each frame 162 includes a physical header 164 having an inherent training and signaling field 166 and an HT training and signaling field 168, and a mac pdu 170. The frames 162 may be transmitted as partially integrated physical protocol data units (rtp pdus), or with reduced interframe spacing (RIFS)172 to enhance media efficiency.

The aggregation or burst scheme may support aggregated frames destined for transmission to a single receiver (i.e., a single wlan destination), aggregated frames destined for transmission to multiple receivers (i.e., multiple wlan destinations), or both. SRA is used to refer to single receiver integration, while MRA is used to refer to multi-receiver integration. For example, the mac sdu aggregation scheme is typically used for single receiver integration because it only contains one mac address that identifies a single wlan receiver address. On the other hand, because each mac pdu in the ensemble or burst contains a mac address that identifies different wlan receiver addresses, mac pdu ensemble, physical pdu ensemble, and physical pdu burst schemes can be used for single receiver ensemble or multiple receiver ensemble.

The frame aggregation and burst scheme has the benefit of increasing the efficiency and overall throughput of the wlan system. Disadvantages most of the frame aggregation and burst schemes are not supported/friendly for saving power/battery. The main problem is that the integration frame and burst duration is rather long. So if knowledge of which station's data (i.e., which wlan destination address) is contained within the integrated frame and burst is not provided in advance, each station within the wlan must receive and decode the entire integrated frame or burst to check whether the frame or burst contains some data intended for transmission to the station.

The act of receiving and decoding the lengthy packet consumes a significant amount of energy at the station's receiver, and significant power/battery savings can be achieved if the receiving station has a priori knowledge that it should not listen (receive and decode) if it is not expecting a particular integrated frame or burst at the receiver.

By providing a priori knowledge of which stations have data in the integrated frame or burst, all stations that do not have data in the integrated frame or burst may conserve power by sleeping (i.e., not listening or decoding all packets) for the duration of the integrated frame or burst. On the other hand, a station with data in an integrated frame or burst may save power if some more advance information is provided. The advance information relates to the data transmission timing of stations within the integrated frame or burst. The basic concept is that the station uses prior timing information to wake up (listen and decode) during the portion of the integrated frame or burst that contains its data and to sleep during the remaining portion that does not contain its data, thereby reducing its power consumption.

In the prior art, there are several proposals to support power/battery savings. As shown in fig. 2, the integrated medium access control protocol data unit integration scheme 200 of the TgnSync proposal proposes to use a multi-receiver integration descriptor (MRAD) as the first medium access control protocol data unit (integrated medium access control protocol data unit) in an integration frame that is scheduled to be transmitted to multiple receivers. The entity protocol data unit 202 includes a entity header 204 and an integrated medium access control protocol data unit 206. The physical header 204 includes an intrinsic training and signaling field 208 and an HT training and signaling field 210. The integrated mac pdu 206 comprises a multiple receiver integrated descriptor mac pdu 212 and multiple mac pdu's 214 each separated by mac pdu delimiters 216.

The multiple receiver integrated descriptor medium access control protocol data unit 212 is used in the following manner. A station that does not have data in an integrated frame or burst will receive and decode until the end of the multiple receiver integrated descriptor medium access control protocol data unit 212, while a station may know that its receiver address is not included in the multiple receiver integrated descriptor, which may sleep (i.e., disable its receiver) until the end of the integrated frame. Because TgnSync requires that mac-pdus destined for the same receiver address must be placed next to each other in the integrated mac-pdu, a station with data in the integrated frame will receive and decode the data until it receives all of its mac-pdus and detects a different receiver address in the next mac-pdu, at which point it can sleep (i.e., disable its receiver) until the end of the integrated frame.

Even though the multiple receiver integrated descriptor mechanism provides a power saving method in the case of multiple receiver integration on an integrated mac pdu basis, the multiple receiver integrated descriptor mechanism is suitable for single rate multiple receiver integration and is not sufficient for multi rate multiple receiver integration (where integrated mac pdu is transmitted at different rates) for physical protocol data unit integration and not for physical protocol data unit bursts.

One proposal describes multi-rate (or multi-MCS) multi-receiver integration (MMRA) that supports power savings when multi-rate multi-receiver integration is used. The proposal includes the use of a multirate multi-receiver integration descriptor (MMRAD) with station identifier (i.e., receiver address) information and timing offset information, which can be used for power savings. The multirate multireceiver integration descriptor is defined in the medium access control part of the frame and a single bit in the physical part of the frame (located explicitly in the HT-SIG field) is used to indicate the occurrence of the multirate multireceiver integration descriptor.

The prior art proposals suffer from a number of disadvantages, such as the large and inefficient length of the multi-receiver integration descriptor or multi-rate multi-receiver integration descriptor, which is a variable length field, which can only be simplified by using fixed length packets. Also because of the large field, power saving information cannot be embedded within the physical layer that should be maintained small in size. Because the power saving information is transmitted on the medium access control level, it is not very robust because the multi-receiver integration descriptor is transmitted at a rate that is not decodable by all stations. It is also a mac protocol data unit so that if it is lost or if a station cannot decode it correctly, power cannot be saved. Another disadvantage is that the timepoint information is not provided in an efficient manner. Most of the current proposals apply integrated mac pdu integration and cannot operate efficiently and robustly with integrated physical protocol data unit integration, physical protocol data unit burst, multirate multi-receiver integration or reverse traffic.

Disclosure of Invention

The method is applicable to frame integration schemes, frame burst schemes, and frames that are not integrated (i.e., as transmitted to a single receiver). The present invention is not limited to power and battery conservation, but may also be used for other purposes, such as providing addressing scalability via simplified group addressing, for packet scheduler design or implementation, or for various radio resource management functionalities.

A method for addressing groups of stations in a wireless communication system begins by assigning stations in the system to groups. A group identifier is transmitted to each station, and the group identifier is indicated in the frame for each group having data in the frame.

One method of facilitating power savings in a wireless communication system begins by assigning stations in the system into groups. A group identifier is transmitted to each station, and the group identifier is indicated in the frame for each group having data in the frame. If the group identifier for the station is not present in the frame, the station enters a power save mode thereby saving power.

One method of facilitating power savings in a wireless communication system begins with marking a direction of traffic in a frame, which marks the frame destination. If the traffic direction is not toward the station, the station enters a power save mode thereby saving power.

One method of facilitating power savings in a wireless communication system begins with receiving and decoding frames at a station until the station decodes a power saving indicator. If the power save indicator indicates that the station can use power save mode, the station enters power save mode.

One method of facilitating power savings in a wireless communication system is to transmit timing information to stations in a frame, the timing information beginning with a portion of the frame. The station enters a power save mode based on the timing information. The station leaves the power save mode based on the timing information and receives and decodes a portion of the frame after leaving the power save mode.

A method for facilitating power savings in a wireless communication system begins by providing a listening indication to a frame that includes an indication of how many frames are to be decoded by stations other than the intended receiver of the frame. The listen indication is included in a frame, which is transmitted to the station. A frame is received at the station and a listen indication is decoded. Frames are decoded at a station based on the listening indicator, wherein the station enters a power saving mode after decoding the portion of the frame indicated by the listening indicator, whereby the station saves power.

A method for facilitating power savings in a wireless communication system begins by transmitting a first frame from a station to an access point, including a request from the station to exit a transmission type. At least a second frame is transmitted from the access point. A second frame is received at the station that decodes the transmission type of the second frame. If the transmission type of the second frame is the transmission type that the station has exited, the station enters a power save mode.

Drawings

A more detailed understanding of the present invention can be obtained from the following description of the preferred embodiments and the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a diagram of a number of existing frame aggregation and burst schemes;

FIG. 2 is a diagram of an existing MAC PDU integration scheme using multiple receiver integration descriptors;

fig. 3 is a group diagram of packet stations and communications with an access point;

fig. 4 shows an example of using group identifier information associated with the time of day information and the station's sleep time period;

fig. 5A is a diagram of the native layer convergence protocol (PLCP) header in the existing TgnSync entity header;

FIG. 5B is a diagram of an inherent physical layer convergence protocol header including a frame type indicator;

FIG. 6A is a diagram of an existing HT-SIG field in an existing TgnSync entity header;

FIG. 6B shows a schematic diagram including HT-SIG_XHT-SIG field graphic representation of field;

FIG. 7A is a diagram of the existing signal-MM and signal-N fields in the WWiSE physical header; and

FIG. 7B is a signal-MM and signal-N field icon containing additional information fields.

Detailed Description

The term "station" (STA) hereafter includes, but is not limited to, a user equipment, a wireless transmit/receive unit, a fixed or mobile subscriber unit, a pager, or any other type of device capable of operating in a wireless environment. Hereinafter referred to as an "Access Point (AP)" includes, but is not limited to, a node B, a base station, a site controller, or any other interfacing device in a wireless environment.

The present invention is applicable to a variety of different technologies including integrated frames, non-integrated frames, reverse schemes such as multi-responder schemes for multi-response multi-receiver integration (MRMRA), reverse traffic, multi-polling and multi-response multi-receiver integrated multi-poll (MMP). Thus, the scope of power savings defined by the present invention may cover frames that are individual, not integrated, or integrated by a single receiver, all integrated frames or burst types, and all schemes with multiple responders or using multiple polls.

Station group addressing

The present invention provides a method for efficiently addressing groups of stations. Because of the many bit groups required for a limited size header, such as a phy header, current solutions for addressing wlan stations are not efficient for them. Basically, current wlan systems and methods are not efficient in addressing stations at the physical layer or even the mac layer.

The present invention proposes a new efficient scheme for group addressable stations that can be used for wlan headers of limited size. This group addressing may be used by various performance enhancement functions, such as power saving, radio resource management, improved quality of service (QoS), and packet scheduling (packet scheduler design and implementation). When the number of stations is small enough, it can also be used to uniquely identify the final service destination (e.g., the receiving wlan station). In a wlan, efficient addressing can be achieved by having the ap organize the stations being served (e.g., the stations associated with the ap) into different groups, each of which can include multiple stations. The terms "power save group," "group of stations," or "address group" may be used to refer to the group.

Although wlan stations are typically uniquely identified by their mac addresses, enhancements and power savings can be achieved without specifying the entire mac address or a portion of the mac address of the station. In addition, "group address," "group identifier," "group designator," or "group number" may be used to facilitate power savings. As illustrated in fig. 3, assume that the access point 300 may organize the six stations 302-312 being served into four groups. One possibility is that access point 300 assigns stations #1(302) and #6(312) to group 1, stations #2(304) to group 2, stations #4(308) and #5(310 to group 3, and stations #3(306) to group 4. access point 300 may also place a station into multiple groups, in fig. 3, stations #5(310) and #6(312) are deployed in both group 1 and group 3.

Once access point 300 determines to assign stations to one or more groups, it may send the assigned group or group signal to the stations using any message pattern. For example, when station #6(312) associates with access point 300 and once the access point has determined to assign or classify station #6 as part of group 1, the access point may use a management frame, action frame, control frame, or data frame to indicate to station #6 that it has been assigned to group 1. This signaling may be directed in various ways, such as by introducing new fields within an association or reassociation frame; an incumbent management or action frame (e.g., used for a block Acknowledgement (ACK) setup, traffic flow setup, or Direct Link Protocol (DLP) setup); if confirmed, barrier confirmation request (BAR) and barrier confirmation (BA), initiator integrated control (IAC)/responder integrated control (RAC), Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS) request and modulation coding scheme feedback; and a data frame.

Some kind of confirmation (feedback) may be used whereby a station can confirm that it has correctly received its new group assignment. The group assignment and its subsequent acknowledgement (via feedback or acknowledgement) may be signaled within any existing wlan frame or by defining a new frame. The access point may be self-classifying itself as a special group portion, a no group portion, any group portion that may include other stations, or per group portion. The access point may also communicate its assigned group to the associated station.

An access point may belong to a predetermined group (e.g., a fixed value) that is of interest to all stations (e.g., a group identified by all 0 s and 1 s; in fig. 3, an access point belongs to group 0. stations that have not yet been assigned to a group by an access point may assume that they are predetermined as part of all possible groups (e.g., stations belong to each group until they are assigned to a particular group).

Group assignment, reassignment, or signaling may be directed at any point in time deemed necessary by an access point or station and is not limited to a particular phase such as protocol or association. Static assignments may also be used whereby an operator or user may configure or organize the stations or access points into the necessary groups and enter the information into the stations or access points. At the same time, the assigned algorithm may be designed for assignment, whereby a station may assign itself into a group with little or no explicit communication/signaling.

A multi-dimensional group may be defined that may be interpreted as having sub-groups within the group. For example, stations may be assigned to group 1 and subgroup 2. The subgroup concept is useful for distinguishing between multiple stations belonging to the same group. For example, if group 1 includes three stations with four available subgroups within group 1, the three stations may each be placed into a different subgroup, thereby providing further differentiation between stations within the group. Thus, it is more common to assign one or more values to stations, each value representing a group, a subgroup within a group, and a subgroup within a subgroup. A more general example is to have N-dimensional groups, which can be identified by N-tuple (g1, g2, …, gN), and stations will be assigned N values, one for each N-dimension (i.e., group combination).

Groups may also be defined by considering other characteristics. For example, a group may identify whether broadcast traffic is contained within a frame and effectively encompasses all stations within the access point's coverage area. If the access point wants to transmit an integrated frame containing broadcast traffic and traffic belonging to group 2, it can use group 0 to indicate that there is broadcast traffic destined for all stations and can use group 2 to indicate that there is traffic for at least one station in group 2. This concept is particularly useful when the data within the consolidated frame is ordered by traffic type; for example, broadcast services and/or multicast services are placed before unicast services within an integration frame. A broadcast group may be used to indicate that the data type is broadcast service that is scheduled to be transmitted to all stations.

Similar concepts may be applied to multicast services with one or more groups identifying multicast services. A group may indicate that broadcast and multicast services are present simultaneously or either within a frame (i.e., a single group presents broadcast or multicast). Frame type information may be used to define the group. For example, a group may be used for management of frames, actions, or control types. In addition, the quality of service related information may be used when defining the group.

There are many possible algorithms that can be used to organize stations and/or different traffic types into available groups. An algorithm uses a set of memory table pointer bits (e.g., random access memory table) into which the entry containing the station's mac address is placed. Because the access point may maintain a look-up table of the mac addresses of its associated stations, the access point may use the least influential bit of the table pointer in which the mac addresses of the stations are stored in the random access memory table. The second algorithm applies a hash function to the mac address of the station (and other characteristics of the station and traffic, if expected). The third algorithm monitors (measures) the load (i.e., traffic usage) for each group (or station thereof) and dynamically changes the group assignments in such a way that approximately equal load is generated among all groups. The fourth algorithm selects the minimum usage group (for traffic use) to assign to the most recently associated station. Other algorithms include attempting to split/balance the load/usage across all groups, and taking into account other factors such as encapsulation/grouping having similar frame aggregation requirements, using similar data rates or power levels, or having similar quality of service or radio resource management requirements for these stations within the same group.

Transmitting group assignment information

As described above, management, action, control or data frames may be used to transmit the assigned group signal to a station, a group of another stations or a group of access points. For example, initiator integrated control/responder integrated control, RTS/CTS, modulation coding scheme request and feedback, barrier acknowledgement request/barrier acknowledgement, association/reassociation request and response frames, or CF-poll or quality of service poll may be used for the signaling purpose. The signaling may include a group assignment message including a flag that may indicate this is a group assignment message, and the value of the newly assigned group (encoded as a bitmap or other type). The assignment message may also include information about the assigned group, such as whether the assigned group is applicable to the station, the access point, or another station (e.g., in direct link protocol).

Once a station correctly receives the group assignment message, it can confirm that it has correctly received the newly assigned group via a group acknowledgement message back to the access point. Alternatively, the station may periodically acknowledge the group unsolicited-it may transmit a group acknowledgement or confirmation message for each different communication range.

Assigning the stations to different groups

A station may also request a group reassignment if the group to which it is currently assigned is not satisfied. For example, a station measures its battery level, and if its power is low (i.e., when a particular threshold is crossed), it may tell the access point via a message that power is low, and it may require a group reassignment. A station may specifically include its battery level within the request. Upon receiving the message, the access point may decide to deny or accept the request of the station and may assign the station to the new group. Because the management, action, control, or data frame indicates that it is useful for the access point to design or organize its group, the station may have the ability to use power saving group information to save power during the protocol, setup, or any signaling phase via the indication of the access point.

Power saving group information

Information that is proposed to achieve power savings, simplified or scalable addressing, scheduling frames (scheduler implementation), any radio resource management function, or any other performance enhancement function is generically referred to as "power saving group information". The use of this information is not limited to power savings, but may also be used for other purposes, such as data scheduler implementation; grouping stations with similar aggregation requirements (i.e., frames that may be aggregated together), similar data rates, similar power, or similar quality of service requirements within the same group; and various radio resource management functions. Some or all of the frames that the wlan may use may include a frame header (physical or medium access control header), a frame body, or any previously transmitted frame (e.g., RTS/CTS, initiator integrated control/responder integrated control, CF-poll, or quality of service poll). The power saving group information may include one or more of the following fragment information.

Occurrence or validity flag (PVF)

A field (or bit) is used as a flag (referred to herein as a flag) to indicate whether at least one segment of power saving group information is present in a frame (e.g., within a frame header). For example, an occurrence or validity flag may be used to indicate whether there is power saving information within a frame. This flag may not be necessary in the case where each frame is assumed to contain power saving information. The flag may be used to implement a variable length entity or medium access control header field or header.

For example, the flag may indicate whether a header extension is present, where the header extension includes all or some of the power saving information. Bits may be used in the entity header signal field (e.g., the HT-SIG field or the signal-N field) to indicate that one (or more) additional ofdm symbols are provided in the HT-SIG field, where the additional ofdm symbols include fields that may provide all or some of the power saving information. In another variation, the flag may be used to indicate the power saving information field availability or validity included in a general (mandatory) ofdm symbol of the signal field without the need for additional ofdm symbols. Another use of the presence or validity flag (e.g., by using another bit) may indicate whether the power saving group information is valid.

Group presence (or absence) marker (GPI)

The frame includes an identification of the group of stations to which the frame is destined. The group presence (or absence) indicator may be applied to individual frames, aggregate frames, burst transmissions, or a sequence of frames. For example, specifying or encoding a type of group presence (or absence) marker information is accomplished through the use of a bitmap (or a mask). Returning to the four group example previously described, the group presence (or absence) indicator field may be defined to include four bits (b1, b2, b3, b4), whereby the value of 2 indicates whether the frame includes data assigned to at least one station of group 2. To illustrate, when an access point transmits data to a single station that is part of group 2, the access point may use the bitmap 0100 to indicate that stations belonging to group 2 have some data present in the transmitted frame that does not contain data belonging to the other three groups.

Alternatively, a group may be defined using a regular code (e.g., 10) to indicate that the frame contains data destined for stations belonging to group 2.

For another example, when the access point transmits data to the stations using an integrated frame (e.g., when using sdu integration, mac pdu integration, physical pdu integration burst, multirate multireceiver integration, or multi-poll), the 0110 bitmap value indicates that the frame contains data for at least one station of group 2 and at least one station of group 3, and the frame does not contain data for group 1 or group 4. It should be noted that even though this example assumes four groups, any group number may be used and the bitmap is extended to accommodate the group number used. Also, the group number used may be presented as a dynamic variable. The group presence (or absence) indicator may be included in a frame header, a physical header, a medium access control header, a multi-receiver aggregation descriptor, a multi-response multi-receiver aggregation multi-poll, or a signal field (native signal, HT-SIG, or signal-N) of any multi-poll frame.

Group time point information (GTI)

In the multi-receiver integration case, providing group timing information may save more power for the stations integrated within the frame. Stations that are not part of the integrated frame do not need group timing information because they can still achieve power savings by using group presence (or absence) markers.

To illustrate how the group timing information is used, consider that the bitmap value 0110 is used to indicate that the integrated frame contains data for at least one station of group 2 and at least one station of group 3. Assuming that the data of a given group are adjacent to each other within the integrated frame, a time of transmission or a vicinity of a start of the data of group 2 may be identified, and timing information may be provided that also identifies the time of transmission or the vicinity of the start of the data of group 2.

The group timing information may cause the group to put the data asleep (i.e., not received or decoded) until such time as the first segment of data for the group is transmitted, thereby achieving power savings therebetween. Because the receiving station may be asleep, power savings are achieved once it receives its data and detects a receiver address change in the next piece of data in the integrated frame.

To provide group timing information, each set of start times (e.g., in the form of a time offset) within the frame is provided. This information is at or near the point in time when the first segment of data belonging to any station in the group begins to be transmitted. In order to efficiently provide group timing information, instead of completely specifying (encoding) each group start time (or offset time), all group base durations (i.e., base periods) may be used, and different fractional values of the identified start times (e.g., time offsets) may be used for each group. For example, assuming a base duration of 16 time units, the group start time may be encoded and communicated as a fraction 3/4 by using two bits, which means that the group start time (e.g., group time offset) is any 12 time units from the reference time point (3/4 × 16 ═ b).

The base duration information may be derived from an existing field within the wlan frame header. For example: a RATE (RATE) and LENGTH (LENGTH) field within the entity header inherent signal field; HTLENGTH and modulation coding scheme fields within HT-SIG (signal) of TgnSync frame header; or the length and Config fields within the signal-N (signal) field of the WWiSE frame header may be used to derive the base duration information. The base duration is the same as \35795;, the cheat duration (SD) derived from the physical layer information. Using this \35795, the spoof duration (or any variation derivable therefrom) as the base duration can provide an efficient method of encoding and timing point (e.g., offset) information. Alternatively, the duration/identifier field of the medium access control header may be used to derive the base duration information.

An example of time point information based on the use of \ 35795, deception duration and group time point information is shown in fig. 4. The group timing information may indicate when the station should start listening to the medium, and in fig. 4, the encoded group timing information is given 1/4 \35795, the cheat duration interval. Table 1 illustrates the group timing point information coding used in fig. 4. It should be noted that although table 1 illustrates the group timing information in a manner of \ 35795;, decel duration, any type of frame duration may be used to encode the group timing information.

TABLE 1 example group timing information encoding

Group time point information value	When a station starts listening
		00	35795, duration of cheating at the beginning
01	35795, duration of deception 1/4
		10	35795, duration of deception 1/2
11	35795, duration of deception 3/4

The new field may be added to the entity or medium access control header of the wlan frame, specifically to specify the base duration. The base duration may correspond to a full duration of a frame or a partial duration of a frame. In addition to defining the base duration as a single-pdu (or frame) duration, the base duration may also be defined as a pdu burst (i.e., a base duration covering multiple frames) or an pdcp (integrated pdu) frame. Likewise, in a multirate receiver integration, reverse traffic, multicolling, or multirate receiver integration scheme, the base duration may cover the entire duration of the sequence of frames being exchanged.

In addition to the base duration, each cohort score value must be specified. The fractional value is multiplied by the base duration to obtain the group actual transfer start time (e.g., group transfer time offset). Assuming a fixed reference denominator, only the denominator value must be specified and communicated. For example, assuming a four denominator, two bits may be used to provide group timing point information.

Again taking the 0110 group presence (or absence) markers indicating the presence of groups 2 and 3 as an example, one possible way to encode group timing information is to have two bits per group, so the group timing information includes eight bits (b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8), whereby the bits b1 and b2 values can provide the numerator value of group 1 (which may not be needed in this example because the group presence (or absence) markers indicate the absence of group 1), while b3 and b4 provide the numerator value of group 2, and so on. For example, to obtain time offset information at or near the beginning of a group 2 transmission, we must multiply the base duration by the 'b 3b 4' value and divide by four. When the frame contains data for the station (i.e., when a group of stations appears within the frame), the time offset information is interpreted approximately as the time at or near which the station will listen to the frame.

The group timing information may be included in a frame header; an entity header; a medium access control header; or entity header, medium access control header, multi-receiver aggregation descriptor, multi-response multi-receiver aggregation multi-poll or any multi-poll frame within the signal field (native signal, HT-SIG, or signal-N). The group timing information need not be contained in the same location as the group presence (or absence) marker. For example, the group presence (or absence) indicator may be included in the physical header and the group timing information may be included in the mac header (e.g., in the multi-receiver integrated descriptor or the multi-response multi-receiver integrated multi-poll).

Group presence and time point information (GPTI)

Even if the group timing information and the group presence (or absence) marker information are defined as two separate fields, they can be combined together and the presence and time information encoded using a predetermined map to define two types of information within a field (group presence and time information). As shown in fig. 4 and table 2, there are various methods of encoding two pieces of information together.

TABLE 2 example group occurrence and time information coding

Group presence and point-in-time information value	When a station starts listening
		00	35795, duration of cheating at the beginning
01	35795, duration of deception 1/4
		10	35795, duration of deception 1/2
11	35795, at the end of the duration of cheating

With values 01, 10 and 11, the station can sleep deep until the listening time for the medium, thereby saving power. A special case of 11 may indicate that a group is not present because the station will start listening at \35795, at the end of the cheat duration and be asleep during the full transmission of the frame. The group presence and point-in-time information may be contained in a frame header, a physical header or a medium access control header. The group presence and time point information may be contained in a physical header, a medium access control header, a multi-receiver aggregation descriptor, a multi-response multi-receiver aggregation multi-poll or any multi-poll frame signal field (native signal, HT-SIG, or signal-N).

Access Point Color (APC), cell color, or Access Point coverage area color

In a multi-access point system with the same frequency channel, stations within a given cell (i.e., the access point coverage area) may listen for frame transmissions that occur in another nearby or neighboring cell. To capture the better power saving performance in this example, the wlan frame may include an access point identification, which may be referred to as "access point color" or "access point group" or "cell color" or "cell identification". The access point color is not necessarily uniquely identified to the access point. For example, if access point 1, access point 2, and access point 3 are close to each other and use the same frequency channel, access point 1 may be assigned 11 colors, access point 2 may be assigned 01 colors, and access point 3 may be assigned 00 colors by using two bits to identify the access point color. The access point color may be contained in a frame header, a physical header, a medium access control header, a multi-receiver integration descriptor, a multi-response multi-receiver integration multi-poll or any multi-poll frame signal field (native signal, HT-SIG, or signal-N).

Stations served by access point 1 may save power by not decoding further information in frames containing different access point colors in the frame header (e.g., a station associated with access point 1 saves power by not listening or decoding frames containing 00, 01, or 10 as its access point color). Access point color may further save power at the multi-access point system level, but even without it, the above approach may be used to save power.

MonitoringDirection or indication (LDI)

Listening direction or indication states which one must be read, decoded or interpreted. In some cases, wlan stations that are not intended for the intended receiver of the frame (i.e., whose data is not contained within the frame) must still read and decode the frame to retrieve the specific information. For example, a station may need to update its locally stored NAV duration value and decode at least the duration/identification information in the frame's mac header. Alternatively, a station may rely on physical header information (e.g., length and rate, modulation coding scheme, or Config field) to update its NAV duration value.

Even if the receiving station is not the intended receiver of the frame, the frame transmitter may use a field (e.g., bit or bits) in the header to specify whether all or some of the mac header information needs to be read and decoded by the receiving station. The transmitter may also use another field to specify whether the receiving station should update its locally stored NAV duration value based on information contained in an inherent entity header (e.g., an inherent signal field), a high throughput (i.e., 802.11n) entity header, or a medium access control header (e.g., a duration/identification field of a medium access control header).

Some implicit criteria may be used to derive whether the duration/identification field of the medium access control header (or substantially the entire medium access control header) needs to be read. A criterion may compare \ 35795 using the intrinsic physical signal field, the duration of fraud and \35795using the high-yielding entity HT-SIG (or signal-N) field, the duration of fraud. If there is a certain amount of difference between the two, the difference can be interpreted as an indication to further read and interpret into the medium access control header.

Meanwhile, a field (e.g., a bit) in the physical header may be used as an explicit listening direction or indication to indicate whether the station can sleep or should not sleep and keep listening until it decodes the first mac header (or several segments of mac information) and then sleep. This explicit indication of how deep the listening frames are can be further expanded to provide where/when (how events/fields or when) listening is stopped immediately: ASAP, e.g., after decoding the mac header, after decoding the first mac pdu, after decoding the multi-receiver aggregation descriptor, etc.

Traffic direction

Power can also be saved by knowing the traffic direction. For example, if a given station transmits traffic to the access point, the frame header may indicate that the data is intended for transmission to the access point. Because stations may sleep during transmissions by other stations to the access point, they may use this information by looking at this "traffic direction" (TD) field or bit to save power. Within the medium access control header, and more specifically within the frame control field of the medium access control header, there are "to DS" and "from DS" fields that can be used to identify the traffic direction. This information may also be used to save power. In addition, the new traffic direction may be placed in the physical header of the frame for the specific purpose of identifying the traffic direction. The traffic direction field may be placed in a signal field (an inherent signal, HT-SIG, or signal-N) of the entity header. This simple scheme has the advantage that it does not require specific new signaling to establish groups (one group contains the access point as a receiver and the other group contains all stations as receivers).

Exit integration and burst scheme

A station may signal to an access point that it prefers not part of a particular scheme that may cause the station to consume too much power, such as a particular aggregation or burst scheme, thereby conserving power for the station. For example, a station may use frames (management, action, control or data frames) that it does not want data destined to it to be part of an integrated frame. If the access point grants the request and acknowledges back grant to the station, the station may save power by sleeping when detecting that the frame utilizes the particular scheme. For example, when the sounding frame is integrated (by using information in a signal field, such as the HT-SIG field), the station may be asleep during the integrated frame.

A station may use frames that do not want data destined to it to be part of a particular type of integration, such as a multi-receiver integration. In this case, the station may be asleep during the frame that includes the multi-receiver integration. Likewise, a sta may require that it does not want to have mac pdu or pdu data integration part scheduled to it, but that it agrees to be the service data unit integration part. Fields in the frame header (e.g., in the signal field) may be used to indicate the exact type of integration scheme that the frame contains. Once a station detects that it does not assume listening to a frame, the station may be asleep for the duration of the frame because the frame does not contain data for the station. A station may agree whether it supports or prefers integrated frame reception (multi-destination or single-destination). Stations may be arranged by managing, acting, controlling or framing messages as part of a feature list, menu list, or preference list. The station may transmit this frame before association, immediately after association, some later time after association, or any other time.

Messages may also be generated dynamically, such as by having stations monitor their battery levels and cross certain thresholds and transmit requests to the access point that are excluded from more power consuming schemes (such as certain integration schemes). The station may also indicate the amount of power remaining within the message and its preferences excluded from or alternatively included.

Frame type indicator

The use of unused reserved bits within the intrinsic physical signal field (L-SIG) may also be used as a flag to identify the transmission of an extrinsic frame, such as an 802.11n frame. This field can be used to save power on new implementations (new emissions) of the native device, since the station can fall asleep during these non-native (e.g., 802.11n frame transmissions) frame transmissions.

Sleeping timer

To prevent the station from falling asleep due to an error condition for a long period of time, a timer mechanism is implemented at the station when the station enters a deep sleep mode. If the sta sleeps more than a predetermined time interval (configurable parameter), it will wake up when the timer expires and start listening to the medium again, since it is already in a dead end situation.

Power saving group information location

Any Power Saving Group Information (PSGI) fragment may be included in any type of wlan frame and any portion of a wlan frame. The power saving group information may be included in a physical header (e.g., a signal field), a medium access control header, a frame body, or a frame trailer. Some segments of power saving group information may be included in a particular location in a frame (e.g., within a body header), while some other segments of power saving group information may be placed somewhere in a frame (e.g., within a medium access control header).

For frames that are part of an physical protocol data unit ensemble or physical protocol data unit burst, the power saving group information may be included in a physical signal (header), a medium access control signal (header), a midamble, or a delimiter of the ensemble frame or burst, such as an intermediate frame. Also, for multiple-response multiple-receiver integration, reverse traffic, multi-polling, and multiple-response multiple-receiver integrated multi-polling, certain power saving group information fragments may be included in the wlan frame and the multiple-receiver integration descriptor or the multiple-response multiple-receiver integrated multi-polling. Adding several proposed power saving group information in the scheme may increase its efficiency (e.g., via time point information efficiency coding) and potentially improve its performance.

Fig. 5A is a diagram of an inherent physical layer convergence protocol header 500 in an existing TgnSync entity header. The PHY layer convergence protocol header includes a rate field 502, a reserved field 504, a length field 506, an in-line field 508, and a tail field 510. Since the phy layer convergence protocol header 500 is placed earlier in the frame, it is an efficient place to save the power representation of the receiving station for one of the power saving group information fields.

Fig. 5B is a diagram of an inherent physical layer convergence protocol header 550 including a frame type indicator field 552. Fields 502 and 506 are the same as in header 550. When the frame type indicator is one bit and the PHY convergence protocol header has a reserved bit, the PHY convergence protocol header is in place.

Fig. 6A is a diagram of an existing HT-SIG field 600 in an existing TgnSync entity header. The HT-SIG field 600 includes an HT-SIG1 portion 602 and an HT-SIG2 portion 604. The HT-SIG1 portion 602 includes a length field 610, a reserved field 612, and a medium access control field 614. The HT-SIG2 portion 604 includes an advanced coding field 620, a first reserved field 622, an echo packet field 624, a digital HY-LTF field 626, a short GI field 628, a second reserved field 630, a scrambler initialization field 632, a 20/40 bandwidth field 634, a crc field 636, and a trailer 638.

FIG. 6B shows a schematic diagram including HT-SIG_XAn HT-SIG field 650 diagram of portion 652; the HT-SIG1 portion 602 and the HT-SIG2 portion 604 are identical to the HT-SIG field 600. HT-SIG_XPortion 652 includes a frame indicator field 654, a traffic direction field 656, a presence or validity flag 658, a group presence (or absence) indicator/group timing information/group presence and timing information field 662, an access point color field 664, and a periodic redundancy check 666. Note that although HT-SIG_XPortion 652 is shown with all power saving group information field, HT-SIG_XPortion 652 may be constructed with any number of power saving group information fields without affecting the performance of the present invention. Furthermore, the power saving group information field order shown is merely exemplary, and a skilled artisan may rearrange the field order without affecting the operation of the invention.

Alternatively, the reserved field 612 in the HT-SIG1 portion 602 and the first and second reserved fields 622, 630 in the HT-SIG2 portion 604 may be used for power saving group information. The power save group information field may be expanded and placed in its original location in the reserved field, or the reserved field may be rearranged to form a space adjacent to the power save group information field.

Fig. 7A is a diagram of an existing signal-MM field 702 and an existing signal-N field 704 in a WWiSE entity header 700. Signal-MM field 702 includes a rate field 710, a reserved field 712, a length field 714, an in-line field 716, and a tail field 718. The signal-N field 704 includes a first reserved field 720, a configuration field 722, a length field 724, an LPI field 726, a second reserved field 728, a crc field 730, a trailer field 732, and a service field 734.

Fig. 7B is an illustration including a signal-MM field 752 and a signal-N field 754 in a WWiSE entity header 750. The power saving group information field may be placed in the existing reserved fields 712, 720, and 728. As shown in fig. 7B, the frame type indicator field 756 may be placed in the signal-MM field 752, while some other power saving group information field may be placed at positions 758 and 760 of the signal-N field 754. It should be noted that fields 758 and 760 may be rearranged within signal-N field 754 to form the power saving group information field neighborhood.

Validating power saving group information

Power saving group information integrity (correctness) may be protected via checksum (e.g., crc) or parity computation. The crc may be a newly defined field in the frame header or may be an existing check or crc field (e.g., HT-SIG or signal-N field) in the entity or medium access control header. The periodic redundancy check may be derived from all or part of the power saving group information alone, or may be derived from the frame header and some other information from which the power saving group information is derived.

Even though most of the descriptions and examples refer to an integration frame, all of the descriptions and examples may equally apply to bursts or sequences of frames, such as body protocol data unit bursts, multi-response multi-receiver integration, polling, multi-polling, or multi-poll multi-response multi-receiver integration schemes.

The invention described herein may be applied to any wlan system context, such as BSS, ESS, IBSS to wlan, mesh and wlan peer-to-peer (ad-hoc) networks. The network and roughly described and considered as a small difference in case is that any station can provide the functionality attributed to an access point if the access point does not appear as a node within the network. Many wlan stations may cooperate together without an ap to implement the functions and methods of the present invention.

The present invention is not limited to wlan systems or networks only, or to 802.11-based wlan systems only. The present invention may be used and applied in any wireless communication system, such as other wireless local area network technologies or standards, and other cellular communication systems, including Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), code division multiple access 2000, High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), or third generation partnership project (3GPP) LTE. The invention is also applicable and useful in wide area wireless networks, such as 802.16.

Examples

1. A method for addressing a group of STAs within a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the AP, STA or any entity organizes/classifies the STAs (or addresses of STAs) in the WLAN coverage area into groups, where a group may include multiple STAs and a STA may be included in multiple groups;

sending a signaling message to a STA to indicate the dispatch group or groups of the STA; and

using a newly added field (or fields) within the WLAN frame to indicate the group or groups whose data is included within the WLAN frame.

2. A field newly added (or added to a packet of any wireless system) within a WLAN frame, which can be used to specify any of the following:

the field indicating which group or groups contain data within the frame; or is

The field indicates which group or groups within the frame do not contain data.

3. The method of embodiment 1 or 2, wherein the newly added field is encoded as a bitmap, whereby the position of each bit can identify the number of groups and the value of a bit can identify whether the group is present or absent.

4. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the multiple STAs associated with an AP are organized into groups (which may be referred to as "power save groups").

5. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

all (or some) traffic frames indicate (by a field within the frame) the power saving group (or groups) for which the frame contains traffic.

6. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

when a frame is sent to a single STA, the AP indicates (via a field within the frame) the power save group to which the target STA belongs.

7. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

when a frame is sent to multiple STAs, the AP indicates (via fields within the frame) the power saving group to which each target STA belongs.

8. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

when transmitting to an AP, the STA identifies (by a field within the frame) the power saving group to which the STA belongs.

9. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

when transmitting to an AP, the STA identifies (by a field within the frame) the power saving group to which the AP belongs.

10. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

when transmitting to an AP, the STA does not identify the power saving group (e.g., using all "0" bitmaps or all "1" bitmaps) (by a field within the frame).

11. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

when transmitting to an AP, the STA identifies (by a field within the frame) a power saving group unique to this AP (e.g., the AP would be part of group 0, for example).

12. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

STAs organized or assigned to a power saving group are caused to save power by not listening (not decoding) all or part of a frame indicating that such power saving group is not included (present) within the frame.

13. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

when transmitting to a STA (or STAs), the AP indicates (by fields within the frame, and in particular within the PHY header of the frame) that the "traffic direction" is "to STA" (i.e., downlink).

14. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

when transmitting to an AP, the STA identifies (by a field within the frame, and in particular within the PHY header of the frame) that the "traffic direction" is "to the AP" (i.e., uplink).

15. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the STA is enabled to conserve power by not listening (not decoding) all or part of a frame that indicates (within the frame header, or within a PHY or MAC header) that the "traffic direction" is "to the AP" (i.e., the uplink) to utilize the "traffic direction" information.

16. A method for achieving battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the STA or AP receives and decodes the WLAN frame until it decodes and identifies the power save group information; and

once the STA or AP identifies that its group is not included within the WLAN frame, the STA or AP stops decoding or receiving other portions of the frame until a specified time (e.g., until the end of the frame).

17. A method for achieving battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

a STA or AP receives and decodes a WLAN frame until it decodes a field (or bit) indicating whether the receiving STA is allowed to save power;

the STA or AP receiving and decoding WLAN frames until it decodes and identifies power save group information; and

once the STA or AP identifies that its group is not included in the WLAN frame, and if the field (or bit) indicates that the receiving STA or AP is allowed to save power, the STA or AP stops decoding or receiving other portions of the frame until a specified time (e.g., until the end of the frame).

18. The method of embodiment 17 wherein prior signaling or messaging (e.g., by negotiation, or by using management, action, or control frames) is used between the AP and the STA so that the AP indicates whether the receiving STA is allowed to save power, and the STA stores such information in its memory and uses the information when identifying whether its group is not included in the WLAN frame.

19. A method for achieving battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

a STA or AP receives and decodes a WLAN frame until it decodes a field indicating whether the receiving STA or AP should receive and decode at least until the end of a MAC header (e.g., at the first MAC header of the frame);

the STA or AP receiving and decoding WLAN frames until it decodes and identifies power save group information; and

once the STA or AP identifies that its group is not included in the WLAN frame, and if the field (or bit) indicates that the receiving STA or AP should receive and code at least until the end of the MAC header, the STA or AP stops decoding or receiving other portions of the frame until a specified time (e.g., until the end of the frame) after receiving and decoding until the end of the MAC header.

20. The method of embodiment 19 wherein previous signaling or messaging (e.g., by negotiation, or by using management, action, or control frames) is used between the AP and the STA, whereby the AP indicates whether the receiving STA should receive and decode at least until the MAC header (e.g., at the first MAC header of the frame) ends, and the STA stores such information in its memory and uses it when identifying whether its group is not included in the WLAN frame.

21. A method for achieving battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

a STA or AP receives and decodes a WLAN frame until it decodes a field indicating whether the receiving STA or AP should receive and decode and use the duration/ID field of the MAC header (e.g., the first MAC header in the frame);

the STA or AP receiving and decoding WLAN frames until it decodes and identifies power save group information; and

once the STA or AP identifies that its group is not included in the WLAN frame, and if the field (or bits) indicate that the receiving STA or AP should receive and code at least until the end of the MAC header's duration/ID field, upon receiving and decoding such field, the STA or AP stops decoding or receiving other portions of the frame until a specified time (e.g., until the end of the frame).

22. The method of embodiment 21 wherein previous signaling or messaging (e.g., by negotiation, or by using management, action, or control frames) is used between the AP and the STA so that the AP indicates whether the receiving STA should receive, decode, and use the duration/ID field of the MAC header (e.g., at the first MAC header of the frame), and the STA stores such information in its memory and uses it when identifying whether its group is not included in the WLAN frame.

23. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the AP signals the STAs via messages included in the frame indicating to which power saving group the STAs are assigned (or organized).

24. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

a STA acknowledges to the AP via a message included within a frame that the STA is assigned to (or organized into) a power saving group.

25. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the AP sends a signal to the STAs via a message included in the frame indicating to which power saving group the other STAs are assigned (or organized), which has context for DLS or DLP.

26. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the STAs acknowledge to the AP via messages included within the frame that other STAs are assigned to (or organized into) a power saving group that has context for DLS or DLP.

27. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the AP signals to the STAs via messages included in the frame indicating to which power saving group the AP is assigned (or organized).

28. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

a STA acknowledges to an AP via a message included within a frame that the AP is assigned to (or organized into) a power saving group.

29. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

having the AP organize its associated STAs into groups that can be used for power savings;

causing the AP to assign STAs one or more power saving groups to which STAs have been assigned and to signal STAs; and

including information within a WLAN frame on which a power saving group has data included within the WLAN frame.

30. A WLAN frame format containing one or more fields for providing any form of identification or indication of which power saving group contains data within such a frame.

31. A WLAN frame format that includes any power saving group information within the PHY (physical layer) portion of the frame, e.g., within the PLCP header.

32. A WLAN frame format that includes any power saving group information within the MAC portion of the frame (e.g., within the MAC header).

33. A WLAN frame format that includes any power saving group information within a SIGNAL field of a PLCP (e.g., PHY) header (e.g., within the PLCP header).

34. A WLAN frame format that includes any power saving group information within the intrinsic SIGNAL field of the PLCP (e.g., PHY) header.

35. A WLAN frame format that includes any power saving group information within the high output SIGNAL field of a PLCP (e.g., PHY) header.

36. A WLAN frame format that includes any power saving group information within the HT-SIG field of the PLCP (e.g., PHY) header of the TGnSync proposal (file number IEEE 802.11-04/0889r 44).

37. A WLAN frame format that includes any power saving group information within the SIGNAL-N field of the PLCP (e.g., PHY) header of the WWiSE proposal (file number IEEE 802.11-05/0149r 1).

38. A WLAN frame format comprising any power saving group information within any PHY or MAC header of the TGnSync proposal (file number IEEE 802.11-04/0889r 44).

39. A WLAN frame format containing any power saving group information within any PHY or MAC header of the WWiSE proposal (file number IEEE 802.11-05/0149r 1).

40. A WLAN frame format whereby some fields defined or reserved within a Signal field of a PLCP (e.g., PHY) header (e.g., HT-SIG or Signal-N) may be redefined to contain power saving group information.

41. A method of enhancing the confidence level of power saving group information contained within a frame, comprising the steps of:

calculating a CRC or any other form of encoding or checksum of the power saving group information contained within a frame; and

the calculated CRC is included within the frame (e.g., within a header).

42. A method of enhancing the confidence level of power saving group information contained within a frame, comprising the steps of:

including the power saving group information within a SIGNAL field (e.g., HT-SIG or SIGNAL-N) of the frame; and

calculating a CRC field for the SIGNAL field using some or all elements of the SIGNAL field including the power saving group information.

43. A WLAN frame format that includes some power saving group information in the PHY portion of the frame and some other power saving group information in the MAC portion of the frame (e.g., the PHY portion may provide information that groups are present in the frame when the MAC portion may provide timing related information).

44. A WLAN frame format contains a field (or bits) that indicates whether such a frame contains a field (or fields) that provides power saving group information.

45. A WLAN frame format includes a field (or bit) that indicates whether such a frame includes an additional or extended field (or fields) that provides power saving group information.

46. A WLAN frame format includes a field (or bit) indicating the presence or validity of power saving group information within the frame, which may be referred to as PVF (presence or validity flag).

47. A method used by an AP or any STA to organize STAs into groups (referred to as "power save groups"), comprising the steps of:

the AP performs a lookup in a memory table to find the entry point storing the STA address (or any STA attribute); and

the point index or any function or variation thereof is introduced as an assigned power saving group using a look-up table.

48. A method used by an AP or any STA to organize STAs into groups (referred to as "power save groups"), comprising the steps of:

a subset of bits from an address (e.g., MAC address) of a STA, e.g., the two least significant bits of the MAC address (or a change thereof) of the STA, is utilized as a group to which the STA is to be assigned.

49. A method used by an AP or any STA to organize STAs into groups (referred to as "power save groups"), comprising the steps of:

a hash function or any other function on the address of the STA or on any of its attributes is applied to determine the group to which the STA is to be assigned.

50. A method used by an AP or any STA to organize STAs into groups (referred to as "power save groups"), comprising the steps of:

monitoring or measuring the traffic load and/or utilization level of some groups or some STAs within the AP area; and

traffic load and/or utilization values are used in the algorithm for assigning groups.

51. A method used by an AP or any STA to organize STAs into groups (referred to as "power save groups"), comprising the steps of:

STAs that typically use similar data rates or similar power levels are assigned to the same power saving group.

52. A method used by an AP or any STA to organize STAs into groups (referred to as "power save groups"), comprising the steps of:

STAs, which typically have traffic with similar QoS requirements, are assigned to the same power saving group.

53. A method used by an AP or any STA to organize STAs into groups (referred to as "power save groups"), comprising the steps of:

STAs, which typically have traffic with similar frame aggregation requirements (or similar historical frame aggregation types), are assigned to the same power saving group.

54. A method used by an AP or any STA to organize STAs into groups (referred to as "power save groups"), comprising the steps of:

STAs, which typically have similar traffic types or traffic requirements, are assigned to the same power saving group.

55. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

one or more power saving groups are assigned to the same STA.

56. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

one or more groups are specifically assigned to identify frames that contain traffic broadcast to all STAs.

57. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

one or more groups are specifically assigned to identify frames that contain traffic that is multicast to some STAs.

58. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

one or more groups are specifically assigned to identify frames that belong to a particular type, such as management frames.

59. The method of using the power saving group field content described by any of the previous embodiments for other purposes, such as scheduling implementation, multicast group identification, easier addressing, etc.

60. Any method or concept that uses certain classes of groups for other purposes or functions, thereby reusing those groups for the purpose of providing power saving information.

61. A method for encoding power saving group information, wherein a bitmap is used, wherein bits in the bitmap specify whether packets belonging to such group are present or absent.

62. A method for encoding power saving group timing information, wherein few bits are used to indicate a fraction of a duration during which a STA may sleep, but at which point the STA should wake up to listen for the start of its data.

63. A method for providing power saving information, wherein timing information is provided relating to a duration field derived from a length and rate field of a PLCP header intrinsic signal, high yield signal, or MAC header.

64. A method for providing power saving information, wherein timing information is provided relating to a duration field, whereby the duration is a new field for power saving purposes (e.g. a new doze duration or power saving duration).

65. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

if a STA finds itself requiring more power savings, it sends a signaling message to the AP asking for a new power saving group assignment.

66. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

if a STA finds itself requiring more power savings, the STA sends a signaling message to the AP asking the AP not to place its data within the aggregated frame or burst; and

the STA may recognize this as an integrated packet (using the integrated bit in the HT-SIG field) and will not read or decode it.

67. A WLAN frame format includes one bit to indicate the MAC NAV duration and PHY \35795, whether the spoofing durations match.

68. A WLAN frame format includes traffic direction information in a PHY header.

69. One uses traffic direction information in embodiment 68 for power saving purposes (e.g., if traffic is directed toward an AP, all STAs decoding such traffic direction information may stop listening and save power).

70. One uses the traffic direction information (e.g., "to DS" or "from DS") currently included in the WLAN MAC header for power saving purposes (e.g., if traffic is towards the AP, all STAs decoding such traffic direction information may stop listening and save power).

71. A WLAN frame format includes an indication field to indicate to a STA how far within the frame it should read.

72. A WLAN frame format includes an indication field that indicates to the STA where or when it can stop listening within the frame.

73. A WLAN frame format includes a listening direction or indication (LDI) field where information needs to be read, decoded or interpreted, or how far within the frame a STA is required to listen to.

74. A WLAN frame format includes a field (e.g., bit) to indicate the presence of an extended HT-SIG field or the presence of additional OFDM symbols within the HT-SIG field, so that the field or symbol may contain some power saving information.

75. A WLAN frame format includes a field (e.g., a bit) to indicate the presence of an extended SIGNAL field (e.g., HT-SIG or SIGNAL-N) in a frame header, where the extended SIGNAL field typically includes power saving information.

76. A WLAN frame format includes a field for GPI, GTI, or GPTI within an MRAD or multi-poll frame (e.g., MMP).

77. An MRAD frame format includes a field for GPI, GTI or GPTI.

78. An MMP frame format includes a field for GPI, GTI, or GPTI.

79. Any IAC/RAC, RTS/CTS, reverse traffic, CF-poll, QoS poll, or BA/BAR frame format, modified to include a field for GPI, GTI, GPTI, or any other power saving information.

80. Any WLAN frame format that includes timing information encoding that utilizes a "base duration" and a "slice" by which communications should be multiplied by the "base duration".

81. Any WLAN frame format that uses encoded timing information (e.g., offset information) including "base duration" and a "slice," or "base duration" and a "multiple.

82. "basic duration" is defined as or derived from "35795;" cheat duration ".

The "base duration" is defined as or derived from the "NAV duration".

84. Any WLAN frame format for signaling or communicating to the STA an assigned group of STAs, an assigned group of APs, or an assigned group of some other STA.

85. Any management, action, control, or data frame used to signal or communicate to an assigned group of STAs, an assigned group of APs, or an assigned group of some other STA to the STA.

86. Any IAC/RAC, RTS/CTS, reverse traffic, CF-poll, QoS poll, or BA/BAR frame format used to signal or communicate to an STA, an assigned group of STAs, an assigned group of an AP, or an assigned group of some other STA.

87. Any WLAN frame format for signaling or communicating to the STA an assigned group of STAs, an assigned group of APs, or an assigned group of some other STA.

88. Any management, action, control, or data frame used by a STA to send an update, acknowledgement, or reply to the AP's assigned group, or some other STA's assigned group.

89. Any IAC/RAC, RTS/CTS, reverse traffic, CF-poll, QoS poll, or BA/BAR frame format used by a STA to send an update, acknowledgement, or reply to the AP's assigned group, or some other STA's assigned group.

90. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the STA sends a signaling message using a management, action, control or data frame to indicate to the AP that its battery is at low power and the likely power level or duration of its battery.

91. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the STA sends a signaling message using management, action, control or data frames to indicate to the AP that it preferably does not employ all or part of some particular aggregation or burst scheme to save its power.

92. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the STA sends a signaling message using a management, action, control, or data frame to indicate to the AP that it wants to request a re-assignment of the power group to save more power.

93. A method for enabling battery and power savings in a WLAN, comprising the steps of:

the STA sends a signaling message using management, action, control, or data frames during negotiation, association, setup, or any other phase to indicate the capabilities and preferences of the STA to participate in all or some of the integration schemes.

94. A STA transmits a signaling message during a negotiation, association, setup, or any other phase using management, action, control, or data frames to indicate the capabilities of the STA (e.g., the STA may indicate that it is not capable of receiving an aggregation frame or a particular type of aggregation frame).

95. A STA may negotiate whether it supports reception of an integrated frame to multiple destinations or to a single destination.

96. A STA may transmit its supported features, capabilities list or preference list via management, action, control or data frames before association, immediately after association, at a later time after association, or at any time that will be used to negotiate with the AP whether the STA's data will be integrated or what type of integration scheme should be used.

97. Any one of the preceding embodiments, wherein said embodiment is used in the context of MRRA, MMRA, MRAD, or MMP.

98. Reserved bits within the native SIGNAL field are used to indicate this as any WLAN frame format that is not a native frame format (e.g., 820.11n frames).

99. Any WLAN frame format that uses reserved bits within the native SIGNAL field to enable power savings for native devices.

100. Reserved bits within the inherent SIGNAL field are used to indicate this as any WLAN frame format of an integrated frame.

101. Any of the previous embodiments wherein, for example, in a mesh network environment, if an AP is used, the AP is replaced with a WLAN STA so that another STA can act as an AP.

102. Any of the previous embodiments for a WLAN ad-hoc network, a WLAN mesh network, or a wireless wide area network (e.g., 802.16).

103. Any of the previous embodiments for other wireless LAN technologies and standards.

104. Any of the previous embodiments for use in other wireless communication systems, such as a cell system including, but not limited to, UMTS, WCDMA, CDMA 2000, HSDPA and HSUPA.

Claims (14)

1. An Access Point (AP), comprising:

a receiver configured to receive information from at least one Station (STA);

a processor configured to assign STAs to groups based on the received information; and

a transmitter configured to transmit a management frame including an indication of the assigned group to the STA;

wherein the receiver is further configured to receive an acknowledgement from the STA associated with the assigned group;

and wherein the transmitter is further configured to transmit a data frame comprising a physical layer (PHY) header and a data packet, wherein the PHY header comprises an indication of a group identifier associated with a group for which the data packet is destined to enable the STA to determine whether the data packet is destined for the STA, and enable the STA to enter a power save mode if the data packet is not destined for the STA.

2. The AP of claim 1, wherein the receiver is further configured to receive traffic usage information for each of a plurality of STAs and the processor is further configured to assign STAs to at least one of a plurality of groups based on the traffic usage information.

3. The AP of claim 1, wherein the receiver is further configured to receive power level information for each of a plurality of STAs and the processor is further configured to assign STAs to at least one of a plurality of groups based on the power level information.

4. The AP of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to assign STAs to more than one group.

5. The AP of claim 1, wherein the receiver is further configured to receive a quality of service requirement for each of a plurality of STAs and wherein the processor is further configured to assign STAs to groups based on the received quality of service requirements.

6. The AP of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to assign STAs to groups based on load balancing requirements.

7. A method for use in an Access Point (AP), the method comprising:

receiving information from at least one Station (STA);

assigning the STAs to at least one of a plurality of groups based on the received information;

transmitting a management frame including an indication of the assigned at least one group to the STA;

receiving an acknowledgement from the STA associated with the assigned at least one group; and

transmitting a data frame, wherein the data frame comprises a physical layer (PHY) header and a data packet, wherein the PHY header comprises an indication of a group identifier associated with a group for which the data packet is destined, and wherein the group identifier enables the STA to determine whether the data packet is expected for an assigned at least one group associated with the STA, and enable the STA to enter a power save mode if the data packet is not expected for the assigned at least one group associated with the STA.

8. A Station (STA), comprising:

a transmitter configured to transmit information to an Access Point (AP);

a receiver configured to receive a management frame including an indication of the assigned group from the AP;

wherein the transmitter is further configured to transmit an acknowledgement associated with the assigned group to the AP;

wherein the receiver is further configured to receive a data frame comprising a physical layer (PHY) header and a data packet, wherein the PHY header comprises an indication of a group identifier; and

a processor configured to determine whether the group identifier received in the PHY header of the data frame corresponds to an assigned group, and wherein the processor is further configured to cause the STA to enter a power save mode if the group identifier received in the PHY header of the data frame does not correspond to an assigned group.

9. The STA of claim 8, wherein the transmitter is further configured to transmit traffic usage information to the AP.

10. The STA of claim 8, wherein the transmitter is further configured to transmit power level information to the AP.

11. The STA of claim 8, wherein the indication of the assigned group indicates that the STA is assigned to more than one group.

12. The STA of claim 8, wherein the transmitter is further configured to transmit quality of service requirements to the AP.

13. The STA of claim 8, wherein the assigned group is based on load balancing requirements.

14. A method for use in a Station (STA), the method comprising:

transmitting information to an Access Point (AP);

receiving a management frame from the AP including an indication of the assigned group;

transmitting an acknowledgement associated with the assigned group to the AP;

receiving a data frame comprising a physical layer (PHY) header and a data packet, wherein the PHY header comprises an indication of a group identifier;

determining whether the group identifier received in the PHY header of the data frame corresponds to an assigned group; and

entering a power saving mode if the group identifier received in the PHY header of the data frame does not correspond to an assigned group.

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