IEEE 802.11ba

6Wake‐up Radio Medium Access Control

6.1 Introduction

This chapter describes the key functionalities of the medium access control (MAC) layer of IEEE 802.11ba, with a focus on how wake‐up radio (WUR) is integrated into and improves network discovery, connectivity, synchronization, and power management (PM). In addition, the chapter describes how frequency division multiple access (FDMA) and protected WUR frames are utilized to improve efficiency and security of transmissions over the WUR. If a station (STA) is equipped with a main radio (MR) and a WUR, and is capable of receiving WUR PPDUs via the WUR radio, and supports the WUR operation, we refer to the STA as a WUR STA in the rest of this book. Similarly, if an access point (AP) is equipped with a MR and a WUR, is capable of transmitting WUR PPDUs via the WUR radio, and supports the WUR operation, we refer to the AP as a WUR AP.

6.2 Network Discovery

6.2.1 General

During network discovery a STA scans the available channels in the frequency bands it supports to discover a suitable AP to which the STA may associate with or eventually roam to, at some point in the future. Traditionally, the STA chooses between two scanning methods:

• Passive scanning: The MR of the STA listens on each channel for Beacon frames that are sent periodically by APs
• Active scanning: The MR of the STA transmits Probe Request frames and then listens for Probe Response frames sent by APs that received the Probe Request frames

Passive scanning generally ...