Patent ID: 9392613
Filing Date: 2016-07-12
CPC Classification: H04B,H04W,Y02D

Claim Text:
1. A method of determining a communications schedule for routing data between a plurality of relay nodes forming a wireless relay network, the communications schedule being arranged to interconnect the plurality of relay nodes by an ordered sequence of communications links, the communications links being established over a wireless resource comprising a plurality of resource blocks, the method comprising steps: (a) generating a plurality of candidate connectivity patterns for said ordered sequence of communications links; (b) for each candidate connectivity pattern, generating a plurality of candidate resource allocations for providing said ordered sequence of communications links in accordance with that candidate connectivity pattern, each of the candidate resource allocations in said plurality of candidate resource allocations providing a candidate option for providing one or more of the communications links of said ordered sequence using at least one resource block of said wireless resource; (c) for each candidate connectivity pattern, calculating a level of a performance characteristic for a selected combination of the candidate resource allocations associated with that candidate connectivity pattern, said selected combination of the candidate resource allocations specifying a relative usage of each candidate resource allocation in the selected combination with respect to other candidate resource allocations in the selected combination in order to provide said ordered sequence of communications links; (d) based on a desired level of said performance characteristic, selecting as said communications schedule one of said candidate connectivity patterns and its associated selected combination of the candidate resource allocations whose calculated level of said performance characteristic meets said desired level; and (e) in response to a trigger condition, repeating said steps (c) and (d) in order to re-select one of said candidate connectivity patterns and its associated selected combination of the candidate resource allocations to be used as the communications schedule wherein: