Patent ID: 7751426
Filing Date: 2010-07-06
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method for establishing communication between a first device and a second device participating in a reservation based communication protocol over a wireless communication network, comprising: acquiring a first reservation comprising a plurality of reserved slots within a superframe, wherein at least some of the reserved slots are reservation blocks, and wherein the reservation blocks are contiguous reserved slots; and sharing the first reservation between the first device and the second device using a network interface of the first device and a network interface of the second device comprising: establishing a default allocation of the reservation blocks between the first device and the second device, wherein a portion of the reservation blocks are respectively allocated to each of the devices; and transmitting information from each of the devices during at least a portion of the reservation blocks; and acquiring a second reservation comprising a plurality of reserved slots within a superframe, wherein at least some of the reserved slots are reservation blocks, and wherein the reservation blocks are contiguous reserved slots; and sharing the second reservation between the first device and the second device using the network interface of the first device and the network interface of the second device comprising: transmitting a zone activity frame from the first device to the second device to modify the default allocation of the reservation blocks between the first device and the second device, wherein the zone activity frame comprises a first bit mask indicating which zone reservation blocks the first device requests for transmitting data to the second device during a plurality of zones of the superframe, wherein a zone reservation block comprises a plurality of contiguous reserved slots within a zone, and the second reservation comprises a plurality of zones; and transmitting a zone activity response frame from the second device to the first device, wherein the zone activity response frame comprises a second bit mask indicating which zone reservation blocks the second device requests for transmitting data to the first device during the plurality of zones of the superframe.