US Patent 7822059 Managing contention-free time allocations in a network

A method and corresponding system for communicating between stations in a network are presented. The method includes providing repeated beacon transmissions from a coordinator station for coordinating transmissions among a plurality of the stations; transmitting from a first station to a second station during a time slot assigned to the first station by at least one of the beacon transmissions; and transmitting from the first station information that grants permission to the second station to transmit during at least a portion of a time slot assigned to the first station.