Patent ID: 6937610

Claim:
In a network system with a plurality of stations, the plurality of stations having a medium access control layer above a physical layer, a method of providing multiple priority classes with a medium-access-control-layer protocol connecting the stations to a transmission medium, the method comprising the following steps: selecting on a first station a signal frequency for a desired priority class from N-number of priority classes to be used for contending stations, wherein the N-number of priority classes are created by partitioning a set of signal frequencies available for the physical layer into M-number of partitions, wherein each partition includes a contiguous range of signal frequencies from the set of signal frequencies and each frequency in the contiguous range of signal frequencies represents a priority class; broadcasting the selected signal frequency for the desired priority class in an intent-to-transmit-signal with a medium-access-control-layer protocol from the first station to other stations on the network during a medium access control protocol open-contention-interval; receiving on the first station with the medium access control protocol a combined-contention-signal including a plurality of priority class intent-to-transmit-signals, wherein the combined contention signal is a superposition of a plurality of priority class intent-to-transmit-signals from others stations in the network system; decoding a plurality of priority class intent-to-transmit-signal frequencies from the combined-contention-signal; determining whether the first station has selected the highest signal frequency for the desired priority class from the plurality of priority class signal frequencies in the combined-contention-signal, and if so, transmitting data from the first station to the transmission medium as data for the desired priority class.