Patent ID: 8054851

Claim:
A method for detecting a hidden station in a specific station constituting a wireless communication network, the method comprising: receiving, by the specific station, a frame after a lapse of an idle state interval longer than a predetermined waiting time; determining, by the specific station, whether the received frame is normal by performing a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) on the received frame; if the CRC is passed: determining, by the specific station, whether a size of the received frame is equal to an Acknowledge (ACK) frame size; and determining, by the specific station, that there is a hidden station if the size of the received frame is equal to the ACK frame size, and there is no hidden station if the size of the received frame is not equal to the ACK frame size; and if the CRC is failed: decoding, by the specific station, a Physical Layer Convergence Procedure (PLCP) header of the received frame; determining, by the specific station, whether the decoded PLCP header is a desired PLCP header of the received frame; if the decoded PLCP header is the desired PLCP header, determining, by the specific station, that there is a hidden station if a length of the received frame is 14 bytes; and if the decoded PLCP header is not the desired PLCP header: acquiring, by the specific station, information on the length and a data rate of the received frame by checking a frame length field and a data rate field of the decoded PLCP header; calculating, by the specific station and using the acquired information on the length and the data rate of the received frame, the length of the received frame; and determining, by the specific station, that there is a hidden station if the length of the received frame is 14 bytes, wherein the specific station determines a data transmission using a Request-to-Send (RTS)/Clear-to-Send (CTS) mechanism if there is a hidden station, and a data transmission in a Distributed Coordinated Function (DCF) if there is no hidden station.