Scheduling and protection of quiet periods in a quiet zone for incumbent signal detection

A system for detecting an incumbent signal of a wireless communications medium, the system including a plurality of wireless networks, each of the plurality of wireless networks containing at least a master device and a client device, the system comprising:

• a master device of one of the plurality of wireless networks configured to transmit a beacon, the beacon containing a first quiet period (QP) schedule and a reservation of a time slot for a client device of the one of the plurality of wireless networks, the client device of the one of the plurality of wireless networks being configured to transmit a request-to-quiet (RTQ) message during the time slot, wherein the RTQ message includes a second QP schedule, and wherein master and client devices of each of the plurality of wireless networks within a quiet zone are configured to keep quiet during quiet periods according to information in the first and second QP schedule;
• wherein the incumbent signal is transmitted by a primary user device;
• and
• wherein the master and client devices are secondary user devices.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon computer executable code, that when executed, causing a processor to perform a process of scheduling and protecting quiet periods (QP) in a quiet zone in order to detect an incumbent signal in a wireless communications system that includes a plurality of wireless networks, each of the plurality of wireless networks containing at least a master device and a client device, the process comprising:

• transmitting a beacon by a master device of one of the plurality of wireless networks, wherein the beacon contains a first QP schedule and a reservation of a time slot for a client device of the one of the plurality of wireless networks;
• transmitting a request-to-quiet (RTQ) message by the client device of the one of the plurality of wireless networks during the time slot, wherein the RTQ message comprises a second QP schedule;
• and
• keeping quiet by master and client devices of each of the plurality of wireless networks within the quiet zone during quiet periods according to information in the first and second QP schedule;
• wherein the incumbent signal is transmitted by a primary user device;
• and
• wherein the master and client devices are secondary user devices.