Patent ID: 7937060

Claim:
A device comprising: a processor; a memory; a frame-receiving mechanism configured to receive a temporal sequence of frames, which is transmitted on a randomized schedule and includes a sub-channel and neighborhood network information associated with a first device and a second device; a reservation-receiving mechanism configured to receive two conflicting reservations from the first device and the second device respectively for the sub-channel in a next frame; a priority-determining mechanism configured to determine a priority associated with each of the first and second devices based on values associated with the first and second devices and values associated with devices that the first and second devices are known to communicate with according to the neighborhood network information; a conflict-resolving mechanism configured to determine a winning device to resolve the conflicting reservations between the first and second devices by comparing the priority associated with each of the first and second devices; and a transformation mechanism configured to incrementally transform the randomized schedule into a deterministic schedule, which involves providing feedback to devices that the first and second devices are known to communicate with, wherein the feedback indicates that transmission through the sub-channel for subsequent frames are reserved for the winning device, wherein access delay associated with the sub-channel is bounded during transmission.