Patent ID: 8054784

Claim:
A method of a gateway selecting transmission channels of a cluster of a wireless mesh network, the cluster comprising the gateway and a plurality of downstream access nodes, the method comprising: the gateway cycling through a plurality of available transmission channels; the gateway evaluating each of the available transmission channels; the gateway selecting a cluster transmission channel based on the channel evaluation; the gateway communicating a schedule of the cycling through the plurality of available transmission channels to the plurality of downstream access nodes of the cluster, wherein the schedule includes a channel sequence of cycling along with timing and duration of each of the available transmission channels; each of the plurality of downstream access nodes cycling through the channel sequence of the plurality of available transmission channels according to the schedule received from the gateway, and measuring a channel quality at each of the available transmission channels; each of the downstream nodes comparing the measured channel quality at each of the available transmission channels, and selecting one of the available transmission channels based on the measure channel quality at each of the available transmission channels.