Method and apparatus for reservation-based wireless-ATM local area network

A method for implementing a reservation-based wireless asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) local area network (LAN), said method comprising the steps of:

• a) providing a system architecture of mobile nodes (MNs), each MN for communicating with other MNs of the system architecture;
• b) supporting a plurality of services, each service having respective quality-of-service (QoS) requirements;
• and
• c) implementing a medium access control (MAC) layer using a reservation-based communications protocol, wherein the protocol (i) divides all MAC-based communications between a control channel and a data channel, wherein the control channel and the data channel together comprise a control-data superframe (CDS) and (ii) utilizes the control channel for allocating a bandwidth of the data channel to each service, the control channel having a control frame during which an allocation of data payload slots of the data channel is determined according to (a) a long-term strategy corresponding to a time of service required to complete a service over multiple CDS frames and (b) a short-term strategy within a CDS frame corresponding to instantaneous data payload slot requirements for a particular service, thereby achieving respective QoS requirements of each service.