Patent ID: 6847627

Claim:
A wireless telephone system, comprising: (a) a base unit coupleable to one or more external telephone lines and having a base transceiver; (b) a plurality of wireless handsets operable in an active mode and an inactive mode, each having a handset transceiver for establishing a time-division multiple access (TDMA) link, when said handset is active, over a shared RF channel with the base unit via the base transceiver, in which each active handset communicates during an time slice of a TDMA scheme that allocates time slices to active handsets, wherein a number of data samples having a sample size are transmitted during each time slice; and (c) means for allowing at least two handsets to alternatingly share a time slice, when one of said two handsets is to establish a new TDMA link and when establishing said new TDMA link would exceed the available channel capacity, by reducing the sample size and thereby increasing the number of data samples transmitted during said shared time slices wherein the TDMA scheme comprises an epoch having a plurality of transmit and receive data row pairs, one such row pair for each handset, each row comprising a field of data and being divided into a specified number of time slices, wherein each field is 2 ms in length.