Improved acknowledgment of grouped multi-user downlink transmissions in an 802.11ax network

摘要

An access point for a wireless network aggregates data frames respectively addressed to multiple stations and transmits them together in a single resource unit of a multi-user downlink transmission. The access point also signals in the data frames respective response resource units of a subsequent multi-user uplink transmission for the addressee stations to use. The responses may be acknowledgements 1040 of the received data frames 1020, and the response resources may be signalled in the data frames using the Uplink Multi-user Response Scheduling (URMS) control field defined in Wi-Fi 802.11ax. The multi-user downlink and uplink transmissions may belong to the same transmission opportunity (TxOP). The data frames may be aggregated in such a way that the total number of addressee stations in the downlink transmission from which acknowledgements are required does not exceed the maximum number of resource units in the corresponding uplink transmission.