It’s All About…Timing

Station clocks are synchronized at certain periods of transmission by a
time stamp beacon. When working in infrastructure mode, your access
point operates as the timing master and produces all the needed timing
beacons. You can sustain synchronization to within 4 microseconds (give
or take delay due to propagation). The timing beacons also function with
respect to your power management. There are two power-saving modes
pertinent to your needs: awake and doze.

When working in “awake” mode, each station operates at full power so
that it can receive packets any time. Each node must tell the access point
of its intent prior to entering a “doze” state. In this mode, each node must
wake up every so often so that it can monitor the network for beacons
that inform the access point that there are messages for it waiting in the
queue.