Patent ID: 8503283

Claim:
A method, comprising: reserving a first plurality of Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) subcarriers to a group of wireless receiving devices, for delivering wireless messages comprising real-time traffic streams, with high access categories, the first plurality of OFDMA subcarriers being a portion of a group of OFDMA subcarriers occupying an available spectrum; allocating a second plurality of OFDMA subcarriers for contention based access by wireless receiving devices, for delivering wireless messages with other access categories than said high access categories, the second plurality of OFDMA subcarriers being a remaining portion of the group of OFDMA subcarriers occupying the available spectrum not including the first plurality of OFDMA subcarriers; and exchanging at least one OFDMA symbol including at least one of said reserved subcarriers of the first plurality of OFMDA subcarriers and including said subcarriers of the second plurality of OFMDA subcarriers for contention based access.