Apparatus, system, and method of link disablement of an access point (AP)

Inventor: Laurent Cariou (Milizac, FR)

Assignee: INTEL CORPORATION

H04W48/16 H04W72/51 H04W76/15

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Quick Facts

Patent No.: US 12713334
App. No.: 17/561,325
Granted: Aug 18, 2026
Kind: B2

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Abstract

For example, an Access Point (AP) Multi-Link Device (MLD) and/or a non-AP MLD may be configured to utilize a mechanism configured to support link disablement of an AP. For example, the AP MLD may be configured to transmit from an AP of the AP MLD a broadcast frame including a link disable advertisement, the link disable advertisement to advertise a link disablement of the AP for all non-AP MLDs associated with the AP, the link disablement of the AP to indicate that the AP is to be unavailable for communication with all the non-AP MLDs associated with the AP; and disable communication of beacon frames and response frames from the AP based on the link disable advertisement.

Claims (32)

1 . An apparatus comprising:

a processor configured to cause an Access Point (AP) Multi-Link Device (MLD) to:

transmit from an AP of the AP MLD a broadcast frame comprising a link disable advertisement, the link disable advertisement to advertise a link disablement of the AP for all non-AP MLDs associated with the AP MLD, the link disablement of the AP to indicate that a link of the AP is to be disabled for communication for all the non-AP MLDs associated with the AP MLD, wherein the link disable advertisement is configured to indicate a time duration of a time period during which the link of the AP is to be disabled for all the non-AP MLDs; and

disable communication of beacon frames and response frames from the AP based on the link disable advertisement; and

a memory to store information processed by the processor.

2 . The apparatus of claim 1 configured to cause the AP MLD to transmit from another AP of the AP MLD the link disable advertisement to advertise the link disablement of the link of the AP.

3 . The apparatus of claim 1 configured to cause the AP MLD to transmit from all APs of the AP MLD the link disable advertisement to advertise the link disablement of the link of the AP.

4 . The apparatus of claim 1 configured to cause the AP MLD to determine whether the link disablement of the AP is allowed based on a condition corresponding to the non-AP MLDs associated with the AP.

5 . The apparatus of claim 4 , wherein the condition is configured to prohibit the link disablement of the AP based on a determination that a non-AP MLD has only one link with the AP MLD, and the only one link is between the non-AP MLD and the AP.

6 . The apparatus of claim 4 , wherein the condition is configured to prohibit the link disablement of the AP based on a determination that a legacy device, which is a non-MLD device, is associated with the AP.

7 . The apparatus of claim 4 , wherein the condition is configured to allow the disablement of the AP only based on a determination that:

there is no non-AP MLD having only one link with the AP MLD, and the only one link is between the non-AP MLD and the AP; and

there is no legacy device, which is a non-MLD device, associated with the AP.

8 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the link disable advertisement is to indicate to a non-AP MLD that the link of the AP is to be disabled for any Uplink (UL) or Downlink (DL) communication by the non-AP MLD.

9 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the link disable advertisement is to indicate to a non-AP MLD that the link of the AP is not to be used by the non-AP MLD.

10 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the link disable advertisement is to indicate to a non-AP MLD that the link of the AP is not to be used by the non-AP MLD, even if the link of the AP is enabled per a Traffic Identifier (TID) to link (TID-to-link) mapping negotiation between the non-AP MLD and the AP MLD.

11 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the link disable advertisement is to indicate to a non-AP MLD that a Traffic Identifier (TID) to link (TID-to-link) mapping is to identify that no TIDs are mapped to the link of the AP.

12 . The apparatus of claim 1 configured to cause the AP MLD to:

transmit from the AP a first broadcast frame comprising the link disable advertisement;

disable communication of beacon frames and response frames from the AP based on the link disable advertisement in the first broadcast frame;

transmit from the AP a second broadcast frame comprising a link re-enable advertisement to advertise a link re-enablement of the AP, the second broadcast frame after the first broadcast frame; and

re-enable communication of beacon frames and response frames from the AP based on the link re-enable advertisement in the second broadcast frame.

13 . The apparatus of claim 1 configured to cause the AP MLD to configure the link disable advertisement comprising a first field configured to indicate a time at which the time period is to begin, and a second field configured to indicate the time duration of the time period during which the link of the AP is to be disabled for all the non-AP MLDs.

14 . The apparatus of claim 1 configured to cause the AP MLD to configure the link disable advertisement comprising a Channel Switch Announcement (CSA) element and a Max Channel Switch Time element, wherein the CSA element is to indicate a current channel of the AP, the Max Channel Switch Time element comprising a switch time field to define a timing of a link re-enablement of the AP.

15 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the broadcast frame comprises a beacon frame.

16 . The apparatus of claim 1 comprising at least one radio to transmit the broadcast frame from the AP.

17 . The apparatus of claim 16 comprising one or more antennas connected to the radio, and another processor to execute instructions of an operating system of the AP MLD.

18 . A product comprising one or more tangible computer-readable non-transitory storage media comprising computer-executable instructions operable to, when executed by at least one processor, enable the at least one processor to cause an Access Point (AP) Multi-Link Device (MLD) to:

disable communication of beacon frames and response frames from the AP based on the link disable advertisement.

19 . The product of claim 18 , wherein the instructions, when executed, cause the AP MLD to transmit from all APs of the AP MLD the link disable advertisement to advertise the link disablement of the link of the AP.

20 . The product of claim 18 , wherein the link disable advertisement is to indicate to a non-AP MLD that a Traffic Identifier (TID) to link (TID-to-link) mapping is to identify that no TIDs are mapped to the link of the AP.