Patent ID: 7464166

Claim:
A method for contention-based forwarding of information in a multi-hop network having multiple nodes, said method comprising the steps of: at least one of a plurality of transmitting nodes transmitting its data packet signal to multiple relay candidate nodes; receiving, in at least one receiving relay candidate node, a superposition of signals transmitted from multiple transmitting nodes; employing multi-user detection (MUD) to decode multiple data packets from the received superposition of signals; prioritizing among correctly decoded packets to select at least one data packet suitable for forwarding; replying with a packet acknowledgement for each selected packet; prioritizing among relay candidate nodes from which acknowledgements are received to select at least one suitable relay node; transmitting a forwarding order to said at least one selected relay node instructing the selected relay node or nodes to take on responsibility for forwarding the information to a next node in the multi-hop network.