Patent ID: 8331346

Claim:
A communication system, comprising: a first device and a second device configured to communicate with each other via a network through a temporal sequence of frames, wherein the first device and the second device share a mutual neighbor in the network; wherein each frame which encapsulates a data packet transmitted from the first device includes multiple sub-channels, which are configured to include network-context information that indicates the first device's view of its network neighbors and comprises a list of devices that the first device communicates with and reservations that the first device is aware of; wherein each sub-channel additionally includes in a time slot header mini context information about one neighbor and one reservation that is extracted from the network-context information; and wherein the network-context information associated with a data packet transmitted by the first device using a first sub-channel during a first frame is included in the first sub-channel; and an arbitration device, which communicates with the first device and the second device, configured to arbitrate potential conflicts between the first and second devices over the use of the first sub-channel by providing feedback information to the first device, wherein the feedback information is determined based on the network-context information in multiple frames which is accumulated by the arbitration device from at least the second device.