Patent ID: 7920540

Claim:
A method of communicating information over a wireless channel in a communication system including a coordinator and receivers, comprising: controlling channel access by dividing a contention-free period (CFP) into one or more schedules, wherein each schedule includes one or more periodical channel time blocks (CTBs) for wireless communication; reserving a CTB for reliable broadcast or multicast (ReBoM) communication of a data packet over the channel; transmitting the data packet from the coordinator over the channel during the reserved CTB; and receiving one or more scheduled acknowledgments for the data packet from one or more of the receivers, wherein the information comprises uncompressed video information, wherein: the data packet includes a header comprising ReBoM information indicating a multi-CTB ReBoM communication sequence for the data packet or a single-CTB ReBoM communication sequence for the data packet; and receiving acknowledgments further includes: for single-CTB communication, receiving all acknowledgments for the data packet during said reserved CTB; and for multi-CTB communication, receiving each acknowledgment for the data packet during a different reserved CTB.