| CPC H04W 74/0816 (2013.01) [H04W 84/12 (2013.01)] | 25 Claims |

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1. An apparatus for wireless communication in a network, the apparatus comprising:
(a) a wireless communication station (STA) performing transmission of frames over a channel between the medium access control (MAC) layers of an IEEE 802.11 network as a wireless station (STA) which is a separate STA or as a STA in a multiple-link device (MLD), and operating as either a regular STA or an Access Point (AP) STA, for wirelessly communicating with other wireless STAs using a carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism on a wireless local area network (WLAN) in which enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is utilized for random channel access on all the links;
(b) a processor coupled to said wireless communication circuit for operating on the WLAN;
(c) a non-transitory memory storing instructions executable by the processor for communicating with other STAs; and
(d) wherein said instructions, when executed by the processor, perform steps of a wireless communications protocol, comprising:
(i) obtaining a transmit opportunity (TXOP) by the STA operating as an AP STA;
(ii) allocating time within said TXOP by said AP STA with one or more non-AP STAs in response to satisfying access class (AC) requirements;
(iii) transmitting a frame by said AP STA, wherein said frame indicates requested AC requirements, to be met by one of the one or more non-AP STAs for utilizing the allocated time in the TXOP;
(iv) receiving a response back from one of the one or more non-AP STAs which has received said frame indicating requested AC requirements as transmitted by said AP STA;
(v) wherein said response received by the AP STA indicates whether the requested AC requirements will be met by the non-AP STA; and
(vi) wherein if the requested AC requirements are met by the non-AP STA, then the non-AP STA will proceed with accessing the network and transmitting data having the requested AC requirements.
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