Patent ID: 8514821

Claim:
A central controller to coordinate operations of a wireless network, the central controller comprising: a transceiver to transmit locations of allocated channel time allocations (CTAs) for peer-to-peer communications between pairs of communication stations of the wireless network; and a CTA schedule randomizer to randomize locations of the individual CTAs allocated to the pairs of stations within superframes to mitigate co-channel interference with neighboring wireless networks; wherein the transceiver is further configured to provide the locations of randomly allocated CTAs within a beacon period for receipt by the communication stations, wherein the beacon period is an initial time period of a superframe that identifies the locations of the CTAs within a subsequent one or more superframes; wherein the CTA schedule randomizer is further configured to generate a randomization seed, wherein a starting CTA corresponds to a pseudorandom number calculated based on a value of the randomization seed and a number of CTAs to be allocated in a next superframe, wherein the CTAs are assigned in a predetermined order within the next superframe beginning with the starting CTA; wherein the CTA schedule randomizer is configured to: calculate the starting CTA for the next superframe using the value of the randomization seed value and the number of CTAs using a modulo operation; and wherein the transceiver is configured to provide an indication of the starting CTA to the communication stations in a beacon period, wherein the communication stations are configured to determine the locations of the CTAs within the next superframe based at least on the indication of the starting CTA provided by the central controller.