Patent ID: 7693525

Claim:
A radio channel allocation apparatus of a node in a radio communication system which controls to allocate a radio channel between nodes by a virtual carrier sense, comprising: a node information collecting unit which collects information of a neighboring node to which the node can directly transmit data; a radio channel determining unit that determines a radio channel, which determined radio channel is allocated to a communication link between a node which has transmission inhibition conditions and another node which does not have the transmission inhibition conditions by communications between predetermined nodes, the determined radio channel being a different radio channel from a radio channel between the predetermined nodes, based on node information of the node and the neighboring node; and an analogous link determining unit to determine whether a common communication link exists in a combination of communication links based on predetermined criterion, wherein the radio channel determining unit determines a radio channel to be allocated to the determined communication link, and the analogous link determining unit determines whether a combination of communication links exists that generates an exposed terminal problem, and in a case where nodes k, l, m, and n exist in the radio communication system, the analogous link determining unit determines a combination of communication links, between the nodes k and l, and a communication link between the nodes m and n, as the combination of communication links that generates the exposed terminal problem, in one of the following cases, where the node k cannot sense carriers from the nodes m and n, but the node l can sense a carrier from the node m or n, and where the node m cannot sense carriers from the nodes k and l, but the node n can sense a carrier from the node k or l.