Patent ID: 7266085

Claim:
A method of operating an ad hoc wireless network, comprising: synchronizing nodes on a wireless channel of the ad hoc wireless network to a common time; dividing a wireless channel into transmission slots; establishing a plurality of signaling phases on the wireless channel at the beginning of a transmission slot, wherein each of the plurality of signaling phases is associated with a signaling process selected from the group consisting of a first to assert signaling process and a last to assert signaling process, and wherein each of the plurality of signaling phases comprises one or more signaling slots; synchronizing transmission of access signals of contending nodes relative to the signaling phases, wherein each of the contending nodes comprises a packet to send and wherein each of the contending nodes contends simultaneously for access to the wireless channel; determining surviving nodes of a signaling phase among the contending nodes by applying the signaling process associated with the signaling phase to the access signals transmitted by the contending nodes; determining ultimate survivors of a channel access attempt among the surviving nodes by identifying the surviving nodes of each of the plurality of signaling phases among the contending nodes; authorizing the ultimate survivors of the access attempt to transmit packets; disseminating node state information among nodes; inferring connectivity links between nodes based on the node state information; assigning route metrics to the connectivity links using the node state information; building routing tables based on the route metrics; and routing packets based on the routing table.