Patent ID: 7907614

Claim:
A method in a wireless receiving station for fast generation of a block acknowledgment for a plurality of received frames to accommodate latency-sensitive data applications comprises: receiving a frame of the plurality of received frames, via a receiver, including a transmitter address, a quality of service (QoS) value, and a sequence number; concurrently searching for a match to the transmitter address and the QoS value to expedite access to a block acknowledgment (ACK) structure, wherein the match provides an index to the block ACK structure, the concurrently searching includes accessing the block ACK structure to: testing a sharing identifier of the block ACK structure; and when the sharing identifier tests unfavorably, initializing the block ACK structure to include, as a stored sequence number, the received sequence number minus a bitmap size plus one and the block ACK structure to include a cleared bitmap; and when a block ACK agreement exists that corresponds to the transmitter address and the QoS value: accessing the block ACK structure based upon the index and storing an acknowledgement state for the received frame in a bitmap of the block ACK structure; and when receipt of the plurality of frames is complete, generating, queuing, and transmitting, via a transmitter, a block ACK frame based upon an ACK policy field of the received frame.