Patent ID: 8331396

Claim:
A method of congestion management in a wireless mesh network in which CSMA/CA algorithm is used to access a wireless medium, said network comprising a first station and at least one neighbouring station able to communicate directly with the first station, comprising: broadcasting an announcement message by the first station to the at least one neighbouring station when the first station experiences a congestion in its environment, said announcement message comprising a congestion level parameter, activating by the at least one neighbouring station at reception of the announcement message a congestion state, in which a minimum size of a time window is called a contention window, to access the wireless medium before transmission of a message is strictly greater than the minimum size defined in absence of congestion, said minimum size in the congestion state being defined as a function of the congestion level parameter, wherein the congestion level parameter contains the size of the contention window to be used by the at least one neighbouring station in the congestion state, and wherein the first station keeps track of the number of active neighbouring stations and sets the size of the contention window to approximate a transmission probability of the inverse of the number of active neighbouring stations.