Traffic indication in multi-link operation

This disclosure provides methods, devices and systems for reducing beacon bloat, inefficient spectrum use, and coupling of multi-link transmission element (MLTE) with a traffic indication map (TIM) element. In certain aspects, an MLTE may be transmitted by an access point (AP) multi-link device (MLD) in a frame separate from the beacon frame to reduce the size of the beacon frame. In such an example, the beacon frame may provide an indication to a non-AP MLD that is should remain awake to receive data. In certain aspects, the AP may transmit multiple MLTEs to reduce the amount of bandwidth used for MLTE transmission by cutting out non-AP MLDs and other stations (STAs) that do not have buffered data. In certain aspects, the AP may assign each non-AP MLD capable of transmission identifier (TID)-to-link mapping (TID2LM) with a per-link traffic indication bitmap (PLTIB) to decouple the MLTE from the TIM element.