Patent ID: 9706599
Date: 2017-07-11
CPC Classifications: H04J,H04K,H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. A method for signaling characteristics of a single physical layer (PHY) data unit during transmission of the single PHY data unit between a first communication device and a second communication device over a communication channel, the method comprising: generating, at the first communication device, a PHY preamble of the single PHY data unit; generating, at the first communication device, i) a first portion of a data payload of the single PHY data unit, and ii) a second portion of the data payload of the single PHY data unit; and generating, at the first communication device, a PHY midamble of the single PHY data unit, wherein the PHY midamble is to be transmitted subsequent to transmission of the first portion of the data payload and prior to transmission of the second portion of the data payload, and the PHY midamble includes i) an indication of whether an additional midamble in the single PHY data unit follows the second portion of the data payload, and ii) a first length field that specifies a number of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbols in the second portion of the data payload of the single PHY data unit, so that a third communication device can determine a time duration during which the third communication device should not transmit in order to avoid interfering with transmission of the single PHY data unit.