Patent ID: 8879460

Claim:
A telecommunications system for communicating data to and from a mobile device, the system comprising a plurality of repeater nodes disposed to form a network, each repeater node having a transceiver unit operable to transmit the data with a first transmission power to one or more others of the repeater nodes within one of a plurality of time slots of a time frame, each repeater node being allocated by a control node one of the time slots of the time frame to transmit and to receive the data in downlink communications from the control node to the mobile device and in uplink communications from the mobile device to the control node, wherein each of the repeater nodes is operable to transmit a pilot signal during a same one of the time slots of the time frame on a same frequency channel with a second transmission power, the second power being less than the first transmission power, the pilot signal including an identifier of the repeater node that transmitted the pilot signal, and the mobile device is operable to receive one of the pilot signals transmitted from one of the repeater nodes, to detect the identifier included in the pilot signal received from the one repeater node, and to transmit and to receive the data to and from the repeater node identified by the identifier, wherein the mobile device is operable to select a timeslot in which to transmit and to receive the data based upon the pilot signal received from the one repeater node.