A scalable medium access control (“MAC”) module is provided that avoids conflict resource reservation so that network performance does not degrade as the number of hops or nodes in a wireless network increases. The MAC also provides different access schemes for traffic with different quality of service (“QoS”) requirements such that QoS is guaranteed and network resources are efficiently utilized. Furthermore, the resource allocation scheme determines the routing path as resources is allocated for data traffice, thereby achieving more robust layer-2 routing at the MAC layer. Finally, the scalable MAC is compliant with both WiMedia MAC and IEEE 802.15.3 MAC.