Patent ID: 8320340

Claim:
A method of controlling medium access by a beaconing device in a wireless network, said method comprising: partitioning, at said beaconing device, medium access time into equal sized slots, wherein a predetermined number of said slots form a superframe; designating, at said beaconing device, one slot, in each superframe, as a beacon medium access slot for said beaconing device; partitioning, at said beaconing device, said beacon medium access slot into a plurality of beacon medium access subslots, selecting some of said beacon medium access subslots as beacon slots, setting other beacon medium access subslots as a contention access period, and positioning two of the beacon slots, separated by the contention access period, at both ends of the beacon medium access slot; and broadcasting, by said beaconing device, during said beacon medium access slot, a beacon frame to other devices in a wireless range of said beaconing device using at least one of said selected beacon slots, wherein, in said broadcasting, said at least one beacon slot for broadcasting said beacon frame is selected randomly, per superframe, from said selected beacon slots.