Patent ID: 7366144

Claim:
A method of dynamically setting at least one threshold at an access point in a wireless local area network, comprising: sensing signals from other access points; determining a carrier detect threshold based on received signal strength of at least one of the sensed signals, wherein the carrier detect threshold is a level of an observed carrier signal, below which a network station in the wireless local area network or the access point will not attempt to process received data signals; determining received signal strength of a received data signal; comparing the received signal strength of the received data signal to the carrier detect threshold to determine whether to continue to attempt to recover data from the received data signal; continuing the attempt to recover the data from the received data signal if the received signal strength of the received data signal is greater than the carrier detect threshold; and discontinuing the attempt to recover the data from the received data signal if the received signal strength of the received data signal is less than the carrier detect threshold.