Gainspan Corporation

Venu Madhava Rao Kosuri

Indudharswamy G Hiremath

Pankaj Vyas

Vishal Batra

Sibasis Purohit

According to an aspect, a wireless station uses a low-frequency clock during sleep intervals and a high-frequency clock during awake intervals. Drift between the low-frequency clock and the high-frequency clock are corrected to enable aligning a wake time instant of the wireless receiver with start of beacon transmissions from an access point, and thereby to reduce power wastage. According to another aspect, errors between the clock of an access point and that of a wireless station are corrected. The wireless station computes an error between the clocks, and extrapolates the error for a sleep interval to compute a wake-up time instant. The correction and extrapolation are performed in every awake interval. Again, undesired power consumption in the wireless station is thereby reduced.

Correction of clock errors in a wireless station to enable reduction of power consumption

An access point communicates with a wireless station based on a point-to-point channel, to determine time instances of future communication to be received from the wireless station. In intervals between such future communications, the access point powers down at least some portions of a circuit contained within the access point for at least a partial duration between such future communications. In an embodiment, the powered-down portions include the receiver portions of the access point. The access point may be battery-powered, and the powering-down of the receiver portions enables reduction of power consumption in the access point.

Reducing power consumption in a device operating as an access point of a wireless local area network

A wireless station (A) is operated in a power-save mode, in which the station is alternately in power-ON and power-OFF states to reduce power consumption. Wireless station (A) computes at least some future time instances at which another wireless station (B) is expected to start transmitting control messages. Wireless station (A) is ensured to be in the power-ON state in corresponding time intervals encompassing durations of at least some of such future transmissions of control messages by wireless station (B), and is thereby enabled to receive the control messages. In an embodiment, the control messages correspond to group key message updates in which values of a decryption key are transmitted, wireless station (A) being a wireless client, wireless station (B) being an access point, with wireless stations (A) and (B) operating in a wireless network consistent with IEEE 802.11 specifications, and communication between wireless stations (A) and (B) being encrypted.

Growing community of inventors

Bengaluru, India

Venu Madhava Rao Kosuri