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A normal CTS-to-Self preceeding a data exchange looks like this:

DIFS-CTS-SIFS-DATA-SIFS-ACK

It sounds like you were saying that this "new" way of doing things was to not have DIFS after CTS...but it's not anyway in normal operation. :-) You have to arbitrate to send the CTS-to-Self. Maybe I was misunderstanding your intent in that part.

However, I can tell you positively that Meru pads downlink CTS-to-Self frames as part of their "Air Traffic Control" mechanism. By padding downlink CTS frames, they force all other STAs to hush while downlink data frames follow the CTS. They have repeatedly stated that they do this in the press.

The trick is the UPSTREAM control. Part of Meru's secret sauce is their control of the upstream flows from clients of different types so that no one station (perhaps a .11b STA) dominates the airtime (like happens all the time in WLANs). The way they do it is simply ingenious.

The way Extricom works is completely different. Their whitepapers cover it in detail, and it too is brilliant (though non-standard for sure). The effect is much the same though.

Devinator