Patent ID: 7903611

Claim:
A handoff method in a wireless local area network (WLAN), the WLAN communication system comprising a mobile station (MS) and a plurality of access points (APs), the handoff method comprising: the MS switching between a data transceiving mode and a probing mode at a predefined interval while the MS is transmitting/receiving packages, wherein in the probing mode, the MS probes one or more channels each time and selects an AP from the probing result for handoff and re-establishing a network connection according to a predetermined rule; the MS further performs a stop-then-resume mechanism while the MS switches between the data transceiving mode and the probing mode, and according to the stop-then-resume mechanism, when the signal quality value between the current AP and the MS is lower than a minimum acceptable value, the MS selects a temporary AP and temporarily switches from the current AP to the temporary AP to continue probing; when the temporary AP does not exist, the MS stops switching to the data transceiving mode and stays in the probing mode to continuously probe unprobed channels until an AP having a signal quality value greater than the signal quality value of the AP currently connected to the MS is found, and the MS selects the AP having a signal quality value greater than the signal quality value of the AP currently connected to the MS as the temporary AP for handoff.