Patent ID: 7161951

Claim:
A method for controlling access to a communication medium of at least one network, the method comprising steps of: maintaining a plurality of event counters, each event counter having a corresponding context and a corresponding state, each context defining a response for the corresponding event counter to at least one predetermined event, and each state representing a combined effect for the corresponding counter in response to at least one occurrence of a predetermined event defined by the corresponding context; and determining whether to access the communication medium based on the state of at least two event counters, wherein the context corresponding to at least one event counter includes one of information relating to a start of a Contention Free Period (CFP) in a Basic Service Set (BSS) of at least one network, information relating to an end of a CFP in the BSS, information relating to an arrival of a predetermined frame type, information relating to a non-arrival of a predetermined frame type by a predetermined time, information relating to an arrival of a frame containing a duration value, an arrival of a frame containing a transmission suppression command, and information relating to an arrival of a beacon frame containing at least one CFP parameter.