Patent ID: 7417971

Claim:
A wireless station, having established a paging channel with a first access point and having associated with the first access point prior to the wireless station entering the power savings mode, comprising: a location manager to store information of one or more access points that are in a group of access points with the first access point, the group of access points define a paging area, and the information of each of the one or more access points includes a Basic Service Set Identifier (BSSID) and one or more of the following: target beacon transmission time (TBTT), TBTT offset, beacon interval, and beacon interval ratio; a paging message processor to receive a beacon having a paging area identifier, wherein the paging message processor is configured to determine that paging area has not changed when the received beacon is from the first access point, wherein the wireless station performs scanning based on the stored information to receive a beacon or a probe response of a second access point when the beacon from the first access point is not received, wherein the paging message processor is configured to determine that the paging area has not changed when the beacon or the probe response from the one or more access points that are in the group of access points with the first access point is received based on the scanning, and to determine the paging area has changed when the beacon or the probe response from the first access point and the one or more access points in the group of access points is not received based on the scanning, where the wireless station uses the one or more of the TBTT, TBTT offset, beacon interval, and beacon interval ratio when determining the new time for the beacon, and where the wireless station uses BSSID when sending a directed probe reciuest to solicit a probe response; and a paging controller coupled to the paging message processor, wherein the paging controller is configured to establish a paging channel with the second access point through a handoff procedure when the paging area has changed, wherein the paging controller is configured to establish the paging channel with the handoff procedure by: synchronizing to the second access point; authenticating the wireless station with the second access point; and associating the wireless station and the second access point; and wherein the paging controller is configured to establish the paging channel with the second access point without performing the handoff procedure when the paging area has not changed, wherein the paging controller is configured to establish the paging channel with the second access point by synchronizing to the second access point without authenticating the wireless station with the second access point, and without associating the wireless station and the second access point.