4.5 Configuring Listen Interval and DTIM Monitoring

The WINC allows the host MCU application to tweak system power consumption by configuring beacon monitoring parameters. The AP periodically send beacons for every DTIM period (for example, 100 ms). The beacon contains a TIM element which informs the station about the unicast data for the station that are buffered in the AP. The station negotiates with the AP for a listen interval. The listen interval tells the AP for how many beacon periods the station will sleep before it wakes up to receive data buffered in the AP. Some APs might drop buffered data after Listen Interval elapses if the data is not retrieved by the station.

The WINC driver allows the host MCU application to configure beacon monitoring parameters as follows:

• Configure DTIM monitoring – that is to enable or disable reception of broadcast/multicast data using the following API:
  • m2m_wifi_set_sleep_mode(desired_mode, 1) to receive broadcast data
  • m2m_wifi_set_sleep_mode(desired_mode, 0) to ignore broadcast data
• Configure the listen interval – using the m2m_wifi_set_lsn_int API