IEEE 802.11ba

7Medium Access Control Frame Design

7.1 Introduction

The goal of this chapter is to help the readers, even those unfamiliar with the IEEE 802.11 standard, to quickly grasp the idea of how information that is relevant to the functionalities discussed in previous chapters is signaled in IEEE 802.11 frames.

We will first go over the design details for the information elements, then main radio (MR) medium access control (MAC) frames and wake‐up radio (WUR) MAC frames. Information elements are covered in Section 7.2, MR MAC frames are covered in Section 7.3, and we conclude with WUR MAC frames in Section 7.4.

7.2 Information Elements

7.2.1 General

Information elements are small containers that carry management information. This information is shared by including one or more elements in Management frames that are exchanged between devices (see Section 7.3). Each element is identified by a numerical label and has a length that depends on the amount of information carried by the element.

Since its inception the IEEE 802.11 standard has defined a variety of information elements, each of which carrying information for specific functionalities and/or amendments. The number of elements is expected to grow further in the future as more functionalities are defined by the standard. In the early days, each element was identified by an element ID of 8 bits and as such up to 256 could be defined. However, when a specific amendment (namely IEEE 802.11ai) was being proposed, the IEEE 802.11 ...