Patent ID: 7940688

Claim:
A method of providing collision avoidance and channel capture avoidance in a multi-channel Common Control Channel (CCC) environment, the method comprising: maintaining at a node a timer comprising a Network Allocation Vector (NAV) for each channel which, if set, prevents the node from transmitting on the channel: determining at a node whether a transmission reservation response, comprising a Common Control-Clear To Send (CC-CTS) with reservation duration of non-zero value, is pending and how many CC-CTSs are pending for each channel; determining whether said node is a destination of a pending transmission request comprising a Common Control-Request To Send (CC-RTS); sending, by a node that sent a CC-CTS in response to receiving a CC-RTS, notification that the CC-RTS is cancelled when a channel used by the node is idle for a predetermined period of time; resetting said NAV for a channel when the channel is idle for a predetermined period of time and when there are no pending CC-CTSs; and refraining from resetting said NAV when there are pending CC-CTSs.