Patent ID: 8855067

Claim:
A method, comprising: maintaining assignment records for multi-user communication groups, the assignment records being used to communicate with one or more wireless communication devices, the assignment records comprising an assigned group identifier and an assigned group member identifier, wherein the assigned group identifier identifies at least one of the multi-user communication groups, wherein the assigned group member identifier identifies at least one spatially steered stream within a multi-user transmission that is associated with the assigned group identifier; generating one or more assignment records for an additional wireless communication device; generating an assignment message that includes the one or more generated assignment records, wherein the assignment message indicates (i) one or more group identifiers and one or more group member identifiers that are assigned to the additional wireless communication device and (ii) one or more group identifiers that are not assigned to the additional wireless communication device, wherein the one or more group member identifiers that are assigned to the additional wireless communication device are indicated by one or more first values included in the assignment message, and the one or more group member identifiers that are not assigned to the additional wireless communication device are indicated by one or more second values included in the assignment message; and transmitting the assignment message to cause the additional wireless communication device to (i) initialize or update a multi-user group table based on the assignment message and (ii) filter one or more received multi-user transmissions based on the multi-user group table.