Patent ID: 7570624

Claim:
A method of scheduling transmissions of one or more wireless communication stations, the method comprising: instructing a plurality of wireless communication stations to set a transmission-disable counter to count a first value corresponding to a selective-transmission time period during which transmission by only a selected one of said plurality of stations is to be allowed; and instructing the selected station by transmitting a protection end frame to the selected station such that the protection end frame is not received by one or more other stations of said plurality of stations thus setting the transmission-disable counter of the selected station to a second value that allows transmission of the selected station during at least part of said selective-transmission time period wherein the transmission of said protection end frame comprises generating a set of N spatial channels to be transmitted to said selected station, using a set of N respective antennas, by applying at least one precoding matrix to a set of inputs including said protection-end frame and one or more dither sequences, and wherein said precoding matrix includes a beamforming vector based on channel state information of said selected station and one or more additional vectors orthogonal to said beamforming vector.