Patent ID: 7920538

Claim:
A method of conducting radio frequency (RF) communications comprising the steps of: (a) aggregating a plurality of licensed, differing bandwidth, disjoint RF user channels into an overall RF bandwidth of said disjoint RF user channels, and sub-dividing said overall RF bandwidth into a plurality of RF sub-channels, each having a prescribed bandwidth that is no greater than the bandwidth of each of said licensed, differing bandwidth, disjoint RF user channels; (b) identifying clear RF sub-channels within said overall RF bandwidth as those in which the level of RF energy is below a predetermined threshold; (c) aggregating at least some of said clear sub-channels into a plurality of subsets having an aggregated RF bandwidth such that no two subsets have an identical aggregated RF bandwidth; and (d) controllably hopping among selected ones of said subsets and transmitting a wideband information signal by way of successively hopped ones of said subsets, said wideband information signal having an effective data rate that is greater than the bandwidth of each of said RF user channels comprising said subset.