Patent ID: 7092693

Claim:
A system for providing local area wireless communications, comprising: a content server having power-line communication (PLC) network connectivity; a device communications module; a PLC interface associated with said device communications module; said PLC interface configured for communicating data content over said PLC network with said content server; an ultra-wide band (UWB) wireless communication interface associated with said device communications module; said UWB wireless communication interface configured for communicating data content between said PLC interface and a remote device having UWB wireless connectivity; wherein said content server is configured to operate in a bus master mode when a bus master is not available on said PLC network; and means for allocating bandwidth to devices communicating over said PLC network when said content server operates in said bus master mode; wherein said content server operating in a bus master mode comprises a computer processor and programming executable on said computer processor for carrying out the operations of, dividing the available bandwidth of the physical power-line communication network into assignable units, categorizing content streams that are to be communicated over the physical power-line communication network into priority groups, assigning units of bandwidth to said priority groups in response to the bandwidth requirements of said content streams and the transmission priority of said priority group, and assigning specific units of bandwidth to specific content streams within each of said priority groups in response to an equitable sharing of bandwidth on said physical power-line communications network.