Patent ID: 8214712

Claim:
A communications system, comprising: a first communications device, requesting one or more dedicated service periods, via a request, to transmit a high rate real-time streaming data; a second communications device, receiving the request and scheduling the one or more dedicated service periods and one or more contention based periods for the first communications device; and a third communications device receiving the high rate real-time streaming data and requesting the first communications device to re-transmit a portion of the high rate real-time streaming data in accordance with a first predetermined rule, wherein the request comprises information about the high rate real-time streaming data and information pertinent to a probability of re-transmission; wherein duration of the one or more dedicated service periods is determined in accordance with a second predetermined rule, and wherein the one or more contention based periods are scheduled in accordance with a third predetermined rule to provide the first communications device having higher priority over a plurality of communications devices of the communications system, wherein the first communications device transmits the high rate real-time streaming data using the one or more dedicated service periods, and re-transmits the portion of the high rate real-time streaming data using the one or more contention based periods.