Patent ID: 8675678

Claim:
A method of adaptively avoiding collisions in an ad hoc wireless network, comprising: synchronizing periodic epochs of time and a state of a schedule with other nodes of the network, wherein the schedule includes alternating contention periods and contention free periods within the epochs, and wherein each contention free period is allocated to one of the nodes; initiating a transmission during a contention free period allocated to the node and completing the transmission during an immediately-subsequent contention period; measuring busy times of contention periods and aggregating the measured busy times over durations of corresponding epochs; maintaining an aggregate channel congestion factor, over the duration of the corresponding epochs, as a function of an elapsed time of the epoch and a corresponding aggregate of the measured busy times of contention periods within the epoch; precluding broadcasting of a packet from the node during a contention period when the channel congestion factor is above a configurable congestion factor threshold; maintaining a count of a number of times a unicast packet is re-transmitted from the node; and precluding re-transmission of the unicast packet from the node during a contention period when the count reaches a first count threshold.