Patent ID: 11963224
Assignee: SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 8:
9. An apparatus for wireless communication in a network, the apparatus comprising:
(a) a wireless communication circuit, as a wireless station (STA) as either an Access Point (AP) or a non-AP STA, is configured for wirelessly communicating over a channel with other wireless stations (STAs), which are either APs or non-AP STAs, on a wireless local area network (WLAN) in which packets carry frames;
(b) a processor coupled to said wireless communication circuit for operating on the WLAN as a STA;
(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 one or more steps comprising:
(i) initiating a non-zero backoff procedure by setting a backoff counter to a random value greater than or equal to at least one backoff slot in starting to contend for a channel;
(ii) counting down said backoff counter depending on channel conditions;
(iii) accessing the channel when the backoff counter reaches zero; and
(iv) wherein said station operating in the role of an AP reuses an Enhanced DCF Channel Access (EDCA) parameter set by communicating the EDCA parameter set to its associated STAs for setting said non-zero backoff procedure.