Patent ID: 8300618

Claim:
In a multi-hop Time division multiple access (TDMA) network comprising a source node seeking to transmit a first communication stream having one or more quality of service (QoS) requirements to a destination node, a method for allowing the source node to preempt a lower priority communication stream, the method comprising: preparing to start the first communication stream at the source node; determining, at the source node, whether one or more free time slots are available to support the QoS requirements of the first communication stream; and when the source node determines that the free time slots are not available to support the QoS requirements of the first communication stream and when the source node is not serving as an intermediate node for a communication stream: identifying a lowest priority stream supported at a neighbor node by evaluating a Neighbor Table containing one or more supported stream identifiers (IDs) and their respective stream priority values supported streams and their priorities, wherein the lowest priority stream has a lower priority than the first communication stream, and transmitting a PREEMPT message to the neighbor node to release one or more TDMA slots being used for the lowest priority stream for use in communicating the first communication stream; when the source node determines that the free time slots are not available to support the QoS requirements of the first communication stream and when the source node is serving as an intermediate node for a communication stream: identifying a lowest priority stream supported at the source node by evaluating a Slot Allocation Table (SAT) of the source node, wherein the lowest priority stream has a lower priority than the first communication stream, and transmitting one or more Scout Error messages including a stream identification (ID) which uniquely identifies the communication stream to one or more nodes along a path of the identified lowest priority stream to free one or more TDMA slots used by the lowest priority stream for use in communicating the first communication stream.