Patent ID: 7983271

Claim:
A method for a distributed medium access protocol that schedules transmission of different types of packets on a channel based on a service quality specification for each type of packet, comprising: determining in a first wireless station a first urgency class of data having a lower quality of service priority; assigning a first class-differentiated urgency arbitration time to the data having the lower quality of service priority; determining in a second wireless station a second urgency class of data having a higher quality of service priority; assigning a second class-differentiated urgency arbitration time shorter than the first class-differentiated urgency arbitration time, to the data having the higher quality of service priority; and transmitting from the second wireless station pending packets in the second urgency class before transmitting from the first wireless station pending packets in the first urgency class, wherein each of the first urgency class and the second urgency class comprises an urgency arbitration time, an initial backoff counter, a persistence factor and an age limit.