Patent ID: 7418004

Claim:
A medium access control (MAC) method for applications with power conservation and quality-of-service requirements in a basic service set (BSS) of a wireless local area network (WLAN), comprising: an optional registration procedure, which is coordinated by a access point (AP) to ensure that active stations can join a polling list from higher priority to lower priority; and a mandatory polling procedure, which is coordinated by the AP to ensure that each polled station can transmit data frames according to a transmission opportunity (TXOP) and transmission order announced in a vector-list poll (V-POLL) frame; wherein the MAC method is used in a contention-free period (CFP), wherein a BSS consists of the AP and a finite number of mobile stations, wherein a mobile station can be either in the active mode or in the power saving (PS) mode, wherein the AP broadcasts the V-POLL frame, and wherein the registration procedure is performed during a registration period and the polling procedure is performed during a polling period; wherein the registration procedure comprises a prioritization procedure and a collision resolution procedure; during the registration period, the AP performs the polling procedure once the AP recognizes that the overrun of the registration process violates the default TXOP value promised to any admitted station; in the prioritization period, the AP performs the polling procedure when the AP has already enquired active stations with the lowest priority; during the prioritization period, the AP performs the collision resolution procedure once the AP detects a COLLISION event, wherein the collision resolution procedure is executed in a form of handshaking to thus add one or more active stations into the polling list.