MAC EXTENSIONS FOR SMART ANTENNA SUPPORT

摘要

Apparatus and methods implement aggregation frames and allocation frames. The aggregation frames include a plurality of MSDUs or fragments thereof aggregated or otherwise combined together. An aggregation frame makes more efficient use of the wireless communication resources. The allocation frame defines a plurality of time intervals. The allocation frame specifies a pair of stations that are permitted to communicate with each other during each time interval as well as the antenna configuration to be used for the communication. This permits stations to know ahead of time when they are to communicate, with which other stations and the antenna configuration that should be used. A buffered traffic field can also be added to the frames to specify how much data remains to be transmitted following the current frame. This enables network traffic to be scheduled more effectively.