Patent ID: 8363579

Claim:
A method of communication in a wireless personal area network (WPAN) comprising: assigning a contention access period (CAP) within a superframe for communication within said WPAN according to a contention access mechanism, followed by a channel time allocation period (CTAP) within said superframe; allocating within the CTAP at least a shared channel time allocation (SCTA) for sharing by the WPAN and one or more other WPANs to allow said WPAN and said one or more other WPANs to perform communication during the SCTA according to a Carrier Sense Multiple Access With Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol; announcing the shared channel time allocation to the one or more other WPANs to enable at least one WPAN of the one or more other WPANs to use the shared channel time allocation; and during said shared channel time allocation, communicating with a communicated device of said WPAN using a directional network access protocol, which is directed to said communicated device, wherein using the directional network access protocol includes using the CSMA/CA protocol on a direction towards said communicated device.