Patent ID: 7468972

Claim:
A method for transmitting packets over a shared communication channel that is partitioned into a plurality of transmission slots, the method comprising: determining a plurality of available transmission slots in a frame in a channel based on unused time slots in a previous frame; transmitting one of the packets over one of the plurality of available transmission slots of the channel using a contention protocol; reserving an available transmission slot based on a previously successful transmission of said one packet on the same transmission slot; maintaining the reserved transmission slot until expiration of a predetermined timeout period; and relinquishing said reserved transmission slot based on the expiration of said predetermined timeout period; wherein the communication channel is provided by a plurality of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) frames used in a satellite communication system; and wherein the contention protocol in the transmitting step is persistent Aloha; and the method further comprising: designating one time slot per every sixth TDMA frame for contention transmission.