Patent ID: 7433670

Claim:
A method of conveying priority of buffered frames to power saving stations in a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) including an Access Point (AP) and at least one power saving station, the method comprising: indicating to a station the presence of at least one buffered frame in at least one of legacy buffers and Automatic Power Save Delivery (APSD) buffers in the AP for the station, wherein said indicating is done by at least one of transmitting a Traffic Indicator Map (TIM) and transmitting a More Data Bit in a downlink frame; receiving an indication from the station that the station is ready to receive at least one of the buffered frames for the station; selecting a buffer for releasing at least one said buffered frame to the station; determining a number of frames to transmit from the selected buffer; transmitting said number of frames from said buffer to said station, wherein said transmitting a More Data Bit further comprises transmitting an Remaining Buffer (RB) bit with said More Data bit; determining, when said More Data bit is not set, there are no more frames remaining buffered at said AP; determining, when said RB bit is not set and said More Data bit is set, there are frames of lower priority than the received frame remaining buffered at the AP; and determining, when said RB bit and said More Data bit are set, there are frames of comparable priority to the received frame remaining buffered at the AP.