Patent ID: 8089970

Claim:
A method for associating a user in a multi-hop wireless network comprising one or more relay access points and one or more gateway access points, wherein to transmit in the multi-hop wireless network, an associated entity contends for one or more of a number of wireless resources and transmission opportunities for sending packets to other entities in the wireless network, the method comprising: within a control entity device associated with the network, identifying a plurality of communication groups in the multi-hop network, each communication group corresponding to a set of wireless terminals, access points, relay access points, and their associated wireless transmissions, which contend for the same wireless resource; within the control entity, evaluating the effect of associating the user with each communication group, taking into account changes in traffic into and out of relay access points based on the association, including changes in mapping of data packets by relay access points and gateway access points to transmission packets and transmission opportunities that are associated with traffic into and out of relay access points, and changes in channel and time overheads of contention-based access to the wireless resources by members of the communication group; and associating the user with one of the communication groups according to an admission protocol based on the evaluations.