Patent ID: 8238313
Filing Date: 2012-08-07
Classification: H04W

Abstract:
1. A method for communicating in a wireless personal area network (WPAN), comprising: using Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA) in said WPAN network by exploiting directional antennas; allocating SDMA devices into two types of SDMA groups in said WPAN, unidirectional and bidirectional SDMA groups, and wherein transmission in only one direction within each communicating pair is allowed in the unidirectional SDMA groups, while bidirectional transmission within communicating pairs can be done in the bidirectional SDMA groups, said bidirectional SDMA groups use a same time slot for transmission of data frames and acknowledgement frames (ACKs); and wherein in said unidirectional SDMA groups, when a data frame is transmitted in a specific unidirectional SDMA group then the corresponding ACK to the data frame transmitted in the specific unidirectional SDMA group is transmitted in another bidirectional or unidirectional SDMA group other than the specific unidirectional group or TDMA-allocated time slots and when an ACK is transmitted in the specific unidirectional group then the corresponding data frame to the ACK transmitted in the specific unidirectional SDMA group was previously transmitted in another bidirectional or unidirectional SDMA group other than the specific unidirectional SDMA group or TDMA-allocated time slots and a delayed-ACK acknowledgement policy is used by devices allocated to said unidirectional groups.