The IEEE 802.16d mesh MAC protocol has a periodic fixed length frame structure as illustrated in Fig. Since the large radio coverage of the original IEEE 802.16d is due to its physical layer, we consider an arbitrary physical layer with much shorter transmission range while adopting the original IEEE 802.16d mesh MAC protocol for a domestic environment. Thus, despite the fact that IEEE 802.16d is originally proposed for high-speed broadband wireless access in a metropolitan area, we are interested in using IEEE 802.16d mesh MAC protocol in a domestic environment. For QoS in a wireless multi-hop network, IEEE 802.16d (IEEE 802.16-2004) mesh mode operation is a better candidate because it has a demand assignment time division multiple access medium access control (MAC) protocol. However, Wi-Fi has limited capability in providing guaranteed QoS that is necessary for time-sensitive audio–video applications. As a multi-hop network technology, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) has been extensively studied in the literature. Therefore, multi-hop networking becomes necessary. In a domestic wireless environment, severe radio propagation impairment and thick solid walls in typical European houses may result in significant reduction in transmission range. The mechanism to efficiently provide good QoS depends on the selected network technology. In order to support time-sensitive audio–video applications, the wireless network must provide good quality of service (QoS). In a research effort supported by the ASTRALS project under the EU FP6 IST programme, we are interested in supporting audio–video streaming and other leisure multimedia applications through a wireless network in a domestic indoor environment. Simulation results also show that DTSMA outperforms TSMA in terms of average end-to-end packet delay and average delay jitter when the severity of propagation impairment is high. In benchmark against the de facto distributed coordinated scheduling (DCS) in the original IEEE 802.16d mesh MAC protocol under various domestic wireless channel conditions, DTSMA outperforms in terms of packet delivery ratio and average end-to-end packet delay which are important metrics for time-sensitive audio–video applications. The proposed DTSMA has been evaluated through extensive simulations to confirm that it can indeed preserve the capability of providing a minimum throughput guarantee in the absence of the a priori global knowledge. The proposed DTSMA has the following main contributions: (a) A method for each node to determine locally its polynomial coefficients without a priori global knowledge of node number and maximum node degree, and (b) A method to distribute to neighbours the locally determined polynomial coefficients, and to resolve collision between two sets of identical polynomial coefficients from two neighbouring nodes. In view of this problem, this paper proposes a distributed time-spread multiple access (DTSMA) scheme. However, existing TSMA schemes require the number of nodes in the entire network and their global maximum node degree, be known a priori to a central controller. In the literature, time-spread multiple access (TSMA) is a promising technology to provide a minimum throughput guarantee in a multi-hop mesh network with dynamic topology. The mesh network is expected to support time-sensitive audio–video applications with stringent QoS requirement. This paper studies the use of IEEE 802.16d mesh MAC protocol for multi-hop networking in an indoor domestic environment.