Patent ID: 7356335

Claim:
A wireless communication apparatus having a point coordination function for performing centralized control over access to a wireless medium used by a basic service set of mobile stations by giving the mobile stations permission to transmit packets, the mobile stations divide packets into fragment packets and transmit all but the last of the fragment packets with a more fragments indication indicating that there are more fragment packets to be transmitted, comprising: an input communication unit for input of packets received from the mobile stations; an outgoing packet input unit for receiving packet body data to be transmitted; an outgoing address input unit for receiving a first address designating a first one of the mobile stations to which the packet body data are to be transmitted; an analyzer for analyzing information in the received packets to determine at least whether the mobile stations that transmitted the packet have more packets to transmit by checking the more fragments indication, and outputting analysis results, and the analyzer outputs a second address indicating a second one of the mobile stations, from which the received packet was received, a packet generator for generating outgoing packets according to the analysis results, the packet generator including said second address in the contention-free polling packet, whereby the polling packet is sent to the second one of the mobile stations; a timing controller for controlling the transmission timing of the outgoing packets; and a packet output unit for output of the outgoing packets at the designated transmission timing; wherein if one of the mobile stations transmits a packet with an indication that it has another packet to transmit, the packet generator generates a contention-free polling packet addressed to said one of the mobile stations, the contention-free polling packet giving said one of the mobile stations permission to transmit a next packet, and the packet output unit outputs the contention-free polling packet as one of the outgoing packets, before polling another one of the mobile stations.