A wireless communication protocol for an access point (AP) multi-link device (MLD) using carrier-sense multiple-access collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) with multi-link operations. Transmit opportunities (TXOPs) are obtained by setting a random number of backoff slots, as a random backoff, for channel contention on each link, and counting down the random backoff on each link independently. When the backoff for the link reaches zero, channel access is obtained and a TXOP duration of reserved on a link whose end time cannot occur later than the latest existing TXOPs of the AP MLD. Numerous variations are described for setting the random number of backoff slots and for reserving the TXOP duration on a link.