Non-R-TWT member STA access grant for burst traffic transmission

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12538291-B2
Application number	US-202218052664-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 4, 2022
Priority date	Nov 16, 2021
Publication date	Jan 27, 2026
Grant date	Jan 27, 2026

Abstract

A non-AP STA, which is a scheduled STA having membership in an R-TWT scheduled STA, having an enqueued urgent burst of RTA traffic for the AP during an ongoing R-TWT SP of which it does not have R-TWT membership, is enabled to initiate R-TWT negotiation with the scheduling AP inside the ongoing R-TWT SP to either request a temporary or a long-term membership of the current ongoing R-TWT SP or request to setup a new temporary or long-term R-TWT SP after the current SP, but before the SP it originally had membership in, or to contend for an RA-RU in the current R-TWT SP if UORA feature is enabled. Thus, a non-R-TWT member STA is granted access for its burst traffic transmissions.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . An apparatus for wireless communication in a network, the apparatus comprising:
(a) a wireless communication circuit, as a wireless station (STA) which is a separate STA or as a STA in a multiple-link device (MLD), and operating as either a regular STA or an Access Point (AP) STA, for wirelessly communicating with other wireless stations (STAs) using a carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism on a wireless local area network (WLAN) in which enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is utilized for random channel access on all the links; (b) a processor coupled to said wireless communication circuit for operating on the WLAN; (c) a non-transitory memory storing instructions executable by the processor for communicating with other STAs; and (d) wherein said instructions, when executed by the processor, perform steps of a wireless communications protocol for said wireless communication circuit, comprising:
(i) enqueuing an urgent burst of real-time application (RTA) traffic by a non-AP STA for transmission to the AP during an ongoing restricted target wake time (R-TWT) service period (SP), in which said non-AP R-TWT STA does not have an R-TWT membership;
(ii) initiating an R-TWT negotiation from said non-AP STA, with the AP for performing scheduling as a scheduling AP, inside the ongoing R-TWT SP, wherein said negotiation contains a request: (A) for either a temporary or a long-term membership in a specific R-TWT SP which is either the current R-TWT SP or an R-TWT SP after the currently ongoing R-TWT SP but before the R-TWT SP that the non-AP STA originally had R-TWT membership for, or (B) for contending for a random access-resource unit (RA-RU) in the current R-TWT SP if the uplink orthogonal frequency division multiple access-based random access (UORA) feature is enabled;
(iii) wherein said scheduling AP may accept or reject the membership request from the non-AP STA making the membership request, or it may indicate an alternate R-TWT setup or dictate a preferred R-TWT setup from the STA; and
(iv) wherein in response to the membership request being accepted, said non-AP STA transmits its urgent burst of RTA traffic: (A) in the specific R-TWT SP; or (B) contends for a RA-RU in the current R-TWT SP if UORA is enabled.

2 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said R-TWT negotiation is based on said non-AP STA transmitting a TWT request frame and receiving a TWT response frame, each of these frames carrying TWT information elements comprising a negotiation type subfield which indicates this form of negotiation.

3 . The apparatus of claim 2 , wherein said TWT information elements are further comprising a subfield of a request type field for indicating temporary or long-term membership in the current R-TWT, which can be used by said scheduling AP for indicating whether membership is accepted.

4 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein UORA may be enabled in response to setting a value in the broadcast TWT recommendation field to request enabling UORA with at least one RA-RU feature in the R-TWT.

5 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein a non-AP STA which is scheduled for any R-TWT can contend for an RA-RU transmission in the current R-TWT SP if UORA is enabled.

6 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein a non-AP STA which is not scheduled for any R-TWT can contend for an RA-RU transmission in the current R-TWT SP if UORA is enabled.

7 . The apparatus of claim 6 , wherein upon its OFDMA backoff (OBO) counter reaching a terminal count, a non-AP STA, despite not being an R-TWT member STA can directly send a UL PPDU using one RA-RU or can send a buffer status report (BSR) in the RA-RU to allow said scheduling AP to allocate specific RUs to it for performing directly access in the next triggered UL PPDU transmission.

8 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the non-AP STA which is an R-TWT scheduled STA requests to join the current R-TWT SP using a guaranteed unicast RU allocated to a specific association identification (AID) owned by it.

9 . The apparatus of claim 8 , wherein a value of the broadcast TWT recommendation field indicates a request for said guaranteed unicast RU allocation.

10 . The apparatus of claim 8 , wherein said guaranteed unicast RU allocation cannot be scheduled at the beginning of any R-TWT SP.

11 . The apparatus of claim 8 , wherein the non-AP STA which is scheduled for any R-TWT can initiate said guaranteed unicast RU allocation during the current ongoing R-TWT SP by exchanging negotiation frames with said scheduling AP.

12 . The apparatus of claim 8 , wherein upon receiving an acceptance message from said scheduling AP, the non-AP STA can immediately access the guaranteed unicast RU assigned to its AID to transmit in this R-TWT SP.

13 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said non-AP STA, which is an R-TWT scheduled STA, can contend for a new group association identification (AID) on allocated RA-RU(s) that are designated for non-AP STAs which are not R-TWT members.

14 . The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein the broadcast TWT recommendation field is set to a specific value to indicate enabling RA-RU access for non-AP STAs that are not R-TWT members.

15 . The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein contending for a new group association identification (AID) on allocated RA-RU(s) can be scheduled at the beginning of any R-TWT SP.

16 . The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein said new AID is carried in a beacon frame and broadcast periodically.

17 . The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein the non-AP STA, which has not obtained membership in a current R-TWT SP, can contend for access to the RA-RU(s) specifically assigned to the new group AID to transmit in this R-TWT SP.

18 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said non-AP STA, which is a scheduled R-TWT STA can: (A) be assigned a temporary membership of the current ongoing R-TWT SP for one time; (B) be assigned a long-term membership can be torn down at any time.

19 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said non-AP STA that is a scheduled R-TWT member that is a MLD STA can request to setup different R-TWT agreements on its multiple links.

20 . An apparatus for wireless communication in a network, the apparatus comprising:
(a) a wireless communication circuit, as a wireless station (STA) which is a separate STA or as a STA in a multiple-link device (MLD), and operating as either a regular STA or an Access Point (AP) STA, for wirelessly communicating with other wireless stations (STAs) using a carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism on a wireless local area network (WLAN) in which enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is utilized for random channel access on all the links; (b) a processor coupled to said wireless communication circuit for operating on the WLAN; (c) a non-transitory memory storing instructions executable by the processor for communicating with other STAs; and (d) wherein said instructions, when executed by the processor, perform steps of a wireless communications protocol for said wireless communication circuit, comprising:
(i) enqueuing an urgent burst of real-time application (RTA) traffic by a non-AP STA for transmission to the AP during an ongoing restricted target wake time (R-TWT) service period (SP), in which said non-AP R-TWT STA does not have an R-TWT membership;
(ii) initiating an R-TWT negotiation from said non-AP STA, with the AP for performing scheduling as a scheduling AP, inside the ongoing R-TWT SP, wherein said negotiation contains a

Assignees

• Sony Group Corp
• Sony Corp America

Inventors

• Xia Qing
• Abouelseoud Mohamed
• Sun Li-Hsiang
• Xin Liangxiao

Classifications

• H04W74/0816

  with collision avoidance · CPC title

• H04W72/121 Primary

  for groups of terminals or users · CPC title

• H04W84/12

  WLAN [Wireless Local Area Networks] · CPC title

• H04W28/16

  Central resource management; Negotiation of resources or communication parameters, e.g. negotiating bandwidth or QoS [Quality of Service] · CPC title

• H04W74/04 Primary

  Scheduled access (hybrid access H04W74/02) · CPC title