A radio communication apparatus in a radio packet communication system constituted by a plurality of radio stations and having a plurality of radio channels is provided. To allow radio stations belonging to different radio links to directly communicate with each other, when a packet as data is to be transmitted, a channel control section (101) inquires of a channel registration section (102) about a radio channel used for reception by a radio station corresponding to the destination address in input transmission data, and a radio channel used for packet transmission is selected. The packet is then transmitted from a transmission/reception section (103) via the selected radio channel. When a packet is to be received, the radio channel in the transmission/reception section (103) is switched to the self-station radio channel stored in a self-station channel storage section (104).