Patent ID: 7548521

Claim:
A method for dynamically shifting beacons in a distributed wireless network, said method comprising: selecting a slot among free lower slots which are anterior beacon slots, that are not used during a beacon period of a superframe; requesting protection of the selected free lower slot in a beacon group so as to shift a beacon of an external device to the selected free lower slot; and at a device, receiving a response to the protection request and shifting the beacons to the selected free lower slot to broadcast the beacons, wherein the response is made by neighboring devices in the beacon group that receive the protection request, wherein the response is for the protection request for a device having a higher slot index, and wherein at least one of the neighboring devices receives the protection request for the selected free lower slot from the device, and receives another protection request from another device, and the protection request and the another protection request are for the same selected free lower slot.