Method of allocating protection duration of radio subsystem to intra-BSS stations using frames with network allocation vector

1. A method of allocating a protection duration of a radio subsystem for a transmitting station of a wireless communication system, comprising:

transmitting a frame to at least one receiving station of the wireless communication system, wherein the frame indicates the protection duration allocated for the radio subsystem;

wherein the frame is a proprietary frame and is specified if a bit-15 of a “duration/ID” field of a media access control (MAC) header of a power saving poll (PS-Poll) frame is zero.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

transmitting at least one of a beacon, probe response, and association frames to the at least one receiving station to indicate a capability of operating the radio subsystem, wherein the capability is indicated by a vendor specific information element of the at least one of the beacon, probe response, and association frames.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the protection duration of the radio subsystem is indicated by least significant bits 0-14 of the “Duration/ID” field of the MAC header of the PS-Poll frame.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the proprietary frame indicates a basic service set identifier (BSSID) of the transmitting station, a transmitter address indicated by the proprietary frame is set with the BSSID if “From DS” (Distribution System) field and “To DS” field of the MAC header of the PS-Poll frame are respectively one and zero, and a receiver address indicated by the proprietary frame is set with the BSSID the transmitting station if the “From DS” and “To DS” fields of the MAC header of the PS-Poll frame are respectively zero and one.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the protection duration includes a protection lead time and an operating time.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the frame is an intra-BSS frame if a BSSID of the transmitting station indicated by a “BSS color” field of the frame is same as a BSSID of the receiving station, or the frame is an inter-BSS frame if the BSSID of the transmitting station indicated by the “BSS color” field is different from the BSSID of the receiving station.

7. A method of allocating a protection duration of a radio subsystem for a receiving station of a wireless communication system, comprising:

receiving a frame from a transmitting station of the wireless communication system, wherein the frame indicates the protection duration allocated for the radio subsystem;

wherein the frame is a proprietary frame and is specified if a bit-15 of a “duration/ID” field of a media access control (MAC) header of a power saving poll (PS-Poll) frame is zero.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:

transmitting at least one of a beacon, probe response, and association frames to the at least one receiving station to indicate a capability of operating the radio subsystem, wherein the capability is indicated by a vendor specific information element of the at least one of the beacon, probe response, and association frames.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the protection duration of the radio subsystem is indicated by least significant bits 0-14 of the “Duration/ID” field of the MAC header of the PS-Poll frame.

10. The method of claim 7 , wherein the proprietary frame indicates a basic service set identifier (BSSID) of the transmitting station, a transmitter address indicated by the proprietary frame is set with the BSSID if “From DS” (Distribution System) field and “To DS” field of the MAC header of the PS-Poll frame are respectively one and zero, and a receiver address indicated by the proprietary frame is set with the BSSID the transmitting station if the “From DS” and “To DS” fields of the MAC header of the PS-Poll frame are respectively zero and one.

11. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:

updating a network allocate vector value according to the protection duration indicated by the proprietary frame if a BSSID of the receiving station is same as the BSSID of the transmitting station indicated by the proprietary frame; or

discarding the proprietary frame if the BSSID of the receiving station is different from the BSSID of the transmitting station indicated by the proprietary frame.

12. The method of claim 7 , wherein the protection duration includes a protection lead time and an operating time.

13. The method of claim 7 , wherein the frame is an intra-BSS frame if a BSSID of the transmitting station indicated by a “BSS color” field of the frame is same as a BSSID of the receiving station, or the frame is an inter-BSS frame if the BSSID of the transmitting station indicated by the “BSS color” field is different from the BSSID of the receiving station.

14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising:

updating a network allocate vector value according to the protection duration indicated by the frame if the frame is the intra-BSS frame; or

discarding the frame if the frame is the inter-BSS frame.