Patent ID: 7808966

Claim:
A method, comprising: (a) receiving beacon messages across a wireless transmission medium from two or more devices configured for communicating wirelessly using repeating patterns of superframes in a wireless communications network, each of the superframes including at least one beacon period during which each of the two or more devices is configured to transmit a beacon message in an assigned beacon slot including identifications of all devices belonging to the network announced to the network by a device sending the beacon transmission, said beacons maintaining coordination between the devices in the network by enabling each device in the network to respectively reserve at least one beacon slot in the at least one beacon period; (b) joining the wireless communications network; (c) obtaining one of the plurality of beacon slots as an assigned beacon slot; (d) transmitting two copies of a beacon message, one during the assigned beacon slot and the other during a signaling slot of the at least one beacon period.