Patent ID: 7215681
Filing Date: 2007-05-08
Classification: H04B,H04L,H04W

Abstract:
1. In a network including multiple nodes communicating on a communications channel using a carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) protocol, each node accessing the channel by occupying at least one time slot in a contention interval, a method of reducing data collision on the channel comprising the steps of: (a) transmitting and receiving, in a node, messages on the communications channel in the network during a first time interval; (b) counting, in the node, at least one of the transmitted and received messages in step (a) during the first time interval; (c) determining, in the node, a channel occupancy during the first time interval after counting in step (b); and (d) adaptively adjusting, in the node, the contention interval based on the channel occupancy determined in step (c); wherein step (d) includes adaptively adjusting the contention interval, designated by S and having a predetermined maximum value of Smax, according to the following expressions: wherein Sup is a first integer value and Sdown is a second integer value.