Patent ID: 7881340

Claim:
A method of operating a decentralized ad-hoc wireless network including wireless stations, each of the wireless stations including a wireless transceiver configured to wirelessly communicate with each of the other wireless stations over a common wireless channel, comprising: establishing, through wireless communication between the wireless stations, a common time reference among the wireless stations, which is used by the wireless stations to share access to the common wireless channel, the common time reference having a periodic superframe structure based on a repeating Scheduled Beacon Transmit Time (SBTT) interval, the SBTT interval including a Scheduled Beacon Period near a start time of the SBTT interval during which only one of the wireless stations is scheduled to transmit a Scheduled Beacon Message to all of the other wireless stations, the Scheduled Beacon Message including wireless network information used by the wireless stations for managing the wireless stations in the ad-hoc network and controlling access of the wireless stations to the common wireless channel, a Contended Beacon Period, following the Scheduled Beacon Period, during which each of the wireless stations that failed to receive the Scheduled Beacon Message, if any, transmits a respective Contended Beacon Message in contention with any of the other wireless stations that also failed to receive the Scheduled Beacon Message, and following the Contended Beacon Period, Contention Periods (CPs) during each of which the wireless stations may contend with each other for access to the common wireless channel for communication with each other over the common wireless channel, and Contention Free Periods (CFPs) during each of which only one of the wireless stations is scheduled for access to the common wireless channel for communication with each other over the common wireless channel; granting access, using wireless communication between the wireless stations, to the CPs to at least some of the wireless stations requesting the access to the CPs; and time-scheduling, using wireless communication between the wireless stations, the CFPs to at least some of the wireless stations requesting access to the CFPs.