Patent ID: 8254345

Claim:
A beacon scheduling method in a multi-hop ad-hoc network, comprising: (a) transmitting an advertisement message to initial nodes (INs); (b) receiving respective joining messages from each of the INs; and (c) assigning non-colliding beacon slots based on the respective joining messages, wherein the advertisement message is transmitted from one of a base station (BS) and a cluster head (CH) to each of the INs, wherein, before said operation (c), an IN which is assigned one of the beacon slots becomes one of a gateway (GW), a cluster head (CH), and an ordinary node (ON), wherein, when the CH assigns a frame of a beacon transmission period (BTP) to the GW as a first beacon slot, the GW uses a same frame of a beacon relay period (BRP) as the frame of the BTP, as a second beacon slot.