Patent ID: 7948939
Filing Date: 2011-05-24
Classification: H04W

Abstract:
1. A wireless communication system, comprising: a plurality of communication stations configured to perform networking operation in an autonomous, distributed manner, each of the plurality of communication stations configured to gather information indicative of available communication slots with respect thereto, the available communication slots being portions of an ad-hoc managed bandwidth including communication slots available to others of the plurality of communication stations, the information indicative of available communication slots identifying a current reservation state of the available communication slots based upon a predetermined hierarchy, each station of the plurality of communication stations configured to inform others of the plurality of communication stations of current reservation states of available communication slots in accordance with the predetermined hierarchy as the information indicative of available communication, the plurality of communication stations configured to rank reservation states with the predetermined hierarchy which includes at least a reserved slot and a transmit beacon slot, each station of the plurality of communication stations configured to determine unusable slots based on the current reservations states of available communication slots of others of the plurality of communication stations and inform the others of the plurality of communication stations of the determined unusable slots, and each station of the plurality of communication stations is configured to transmit a beacon to the others of the plurality of communication stations, the beacon including a status for every communication slot in each frame, the status indicating first reservation slots identifying slots reserved for a station transmitting the beacon and second reservation slots identifying slots reserved by neighboring stations other than the station transmitting the beacon.