Patent ID: 8005091

Claim:
A method of operating a first device for generating and utilizing a connection identifier for a peer-to-peer communication connection between the first device and a second device in a wireless communications network, comprising: partitioning a traffic management channel slot into a first and a second subsets of transmission resource units, the traffic management channel slot including a plurality of OFDM symbols and each of the OFDM symbols including a plurality of tones, each of the transmission resource units including one of the plurality of tones in one of the plurality of OFDM symbols, the first subset of transmission resource units associated with orthogonal connection identifiers and the second subset of transmission units associated with non-orthogonal connection identifiers; selecting a first transmission resource unit from one of either the first and second subsets of transmission resource units as a function of a first connection identifier; transmitting a transmission request signal to the second device using the first transmission resource unit; and transmitting traffic data to the second device in a traffic channel slot corresponding to the traffic management channel slot.