Patent ID: 8457089

Claim:
A high-throughput (HT) receiving station to operate in a wireless local area network (WLAN), the HT receiving station arranged to: receive a data frame sent from a transmitting station over a number of spatial streams (Nss) and over orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) subcarriers, each spatial stream having a HT modulation and coding scheme (MCS); determine a rate for a response frame to be sent in response to receipt of the data frame based on the HT MCS of at least one of the spatial streams, the rate being a non-HT basic rate that is a highest of a basic rate set that is less than or equal to a non-HT reference rate that is selected based on the HT MCS; and transmit the response frame to the transmitting station without spatial multiplexing on one of the sets of OFDM subcarriers in accordance with the determined rate, wherein the data frame is configured in a HT format and the response frame is configured for transmission in a non-HT format, wherein the response frame is a control response frame comprising either an acknowledgement (ACK) frame or a clear-to-send (CTS) frame, wherein the data frame is a HT data frame that is received concurrently over two or more sets of orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) subcarriers, each set providing a 20 MHz channel bandwidth, wherein the non-HT basic rate is a highest of a basic service set (BSS) basic rate set (BSSBasicRateSet), and wherein the BSSBasicRateSet is selected from a lookup table to be less than or equal to the non-HT reference rate.