Patent ID: 7940790

Claim:
A method for communicating using a shared communication medium comprising: sending a request from a first node in a plurality of nodes over the shared communication medium, the shared communication medium organized to include a plurality of frames each having a request signal space organized based on code division multiplexing and a scheduled transmission signal space, the request signal space of each frame including a plurality of request intervals each having a plurality of request segments, each of the plurality of request segments having a different location within the request signal space, the scheduled transmission signal space of each frame including a plurality of scheduled transmission segments each having a different location within the scheduled transmission signal space, the request sent in a first frame and occupying two or more request segments, each of the two or more request segments selected from a different one of the plurality of request intervals within the first frame, wherein each of the two or more request segments are randomly selected by the first node by selecting a code word; receiving an assignment for assigning the request to a transmission opportunity in the scheduled transmission signal space of a second frame, the assignment made in response to detecting at least one of the two or more request segments; and from the first node, sending a data transmission using the assigned transmission opportunity in the scheduled transmission signal space of the second frame.