Patent ID: 7873061

Claim:
A system comprising: an access point (AP), including: one or more ingress queues; one or more egress queues; an aggregation and queuing engine coupling the ingress queues to the egress queues; radio hardware coupled to the egress queues; wherein, in operation, the aggregation and queuing engine: assigns target delivery time (TDT) to a first packet having a first destination, a second packet having the first destination, and a third packet having a second destination in the ingress queues, maps the first packet, the second packet, and the third packet onto a time axis for transmission by TDT, where the first packet and the third packet are adjacent on the time axis, if a gap between the first packet and the third packet in the time axis is large enough that aggregating and sending the first packet and the second packet allows the first packet to be sent in the first packet TDT and the third packet to be sent in the third packet TDT: aggregates the first packet with the second packet, enqueues the aggregated first packet and second packet on the egress queues, and enqueues the third packet, after the aggregated first packet and second packet, on the egress queues, wherein, in operation, the radio hardware dequeues and sends packets enqueued on the egress queues.