US Patent 7697457 Wireless communication apparatus and wireless communication method

A wireless communication apparatus comprises a transmission buffer configured to store packets addressed to one or more communication nodes in the network until a transmission timing; a requesting interval determination unit configured to determine a listen interval for each of the communication nodes based on the amount and/or the priority of packets accumulated in the transmission buffer; and a transmission unit configured to transmit a request frame to each of the communication nodes to request the communication nodes to receive a beacon from the wireless communication apparatus at the determined listen interval.