Patent ID: 8243600

Claim:
A method for allocating resources in a wireless network, comprising: establishing one or more relay links between at least one base station and one or more relay stations; establishing one or more single-hop access links between one or more endpoints and the base station; establishing one or more multi-hop access links between one or more multi-hop endpoints and the relay stations; iteratively repeating the following steps until a first, second and third number of slots are provisioned: allocating the first number of slots to the relay links; dividing the first number of slots among the relay links; determining a representative relay data rate indicative of a data rate provided by one of the relay links for a respective one of the multi-hop access links, the representative relay data rate based on the number of slots divided to the respective relay link and the number of multi-hop access links established with the respective relay station; allocating the second number of slots to the multi-hop access links; dividing the second number of slots among the multi-hop access links ensuring that each multi-hop access link comprises an approximately equal multi-hop data rate; determining the effective multi-hop data rate based on the minimum of the representative relay link data rate and the multi-hop data rate; allocating the third number of slots to the single-hop access links; dividing the third number of slots among the single-hop access links ensuring that each single-hop access link comprises an approximately equal single-hop data rate; determining a minimum data rate based on the minimum of the single-hop data rate and the effective multi-hop data rate; and upon determining that the minimum data rate has reached its maximum value, provisioning the first number of slots to the relay links, the second number of slots to the multi-hop access links, and the third number of slots to the single-hop access links.