Patent ID: 8755742

Claim:
A method of operation of repeaters within a distributed peer to peer wide area trunked radio network, the wide area network comprising a plurality of network locations, each network location consisting of a plurality of repeaters in which a dynamically selected one of the repeaters out of the plurality acts as a rest channel repeater for announcing new incoming calls to idling subscriber stations at the respective network location, the method comprising: receiving a new group call request at a first repeater at a first network location from a first subscriber station, and the first repeater responsively: causing corresponding new group call notifications to be transmitted to each of the other network locations via one or more first messages transmitted over the wide area network to the dynamically selected one of the repeaters acting as a rest channel repeater at each of the other network locations in the plurality; receiving, from each of the other network locations, and via one or more second messages transmitted over the wide area network, an identity of a traffic channel repeater that will be hosting the new call at the respective other network location; transmitting an over-the-air notification to other subscriber stations at the first network location on a first rest channel identifying one of the first rest channel and another available channel as a channel that is associated with the new group call; the first repeater receiving data associated with the new call from the first subscriber station, and transmitting duplicates of the data to each of the identified traffic channel repeaters at each of the other network locations via the wide area network.