System and method for an ultra wide-band medium access control distributed reservation protocol

A wireless device that reserves a medium in a distributed manner, comprising:

• an antenna for sending and receiving messages over a wireless medium;
• a receiver coupled to the antenna to receive messages transmitted over the wireless medium;
• a transmitter coupled to the antenna to transmit messages over the wireless medium;
• a distributed reservation processing module to perform distributed reservation of the medium;
• a processor to divide time into a sequence of at least one superframe, each said superframe having at least one beacon period that starts at a target Beacon Period Start Time (BPST) and includes at least one beacon slot, said beacon period being followed in the superframe by a data transmission phase, and coupled to:
• the transmitter and the receiver to send and receive, respectively, beacon frames during said beacon period and data during said data transmission phase of the superframe,
• the distributed reservation processing module to
• manage beacon slot occupancy and data transmission phase reservations;
• format a beacon frame for transmission in the at least one beacon slot, such that the beacon frame includes a reservation of the medium by the device for data transmission during the data transmission phase, and
• format a beacon frame for transmission in the at least one beacon slot that responds to reservations received over the medium.

A wireless device for distributed reservation of a medium, comprising:

• an antenna for sending and receiving messages over a wireless medium;
• a receiver coupled to the antenna to receive medium reservation messages transmitted over the wireless medium;
• a transmitter operatively coupled to the antenna to transmit medium reservation messages over the wireless medium;
• a distributed reservation processing module to perform distributed reservation of the medium;
• and
• a processor coupled to the distributed reservation processing module, a distributed reservation protocol (DRP) bitmap, and a memory including a DRP reservation table, said processor using the distributed reservation processing module, the DRP bitmap, and the DRP reservation table to divide time into a sequence of at least one superframe, and transmitting in the superframe at a target beacon transmission time (TBTT) a beacon frame that includes a reservation for a planned transmission by a sender device during the superframe.