Patent ID: 8902919

Claim:
A method for scheduling the transmission of user devices on a mixed radio frequency over glass (RFoG) and hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) network comprising: determining whether a lost transmission event occurred between a first user device and second user device in the mixed HFC and RFoG network, wherein the transmission of the first user device and the transmission of the second user device overlapped in time; if a lost transmission event occurred, grouping the first user device and second user device into a category, determining whether a threshold of lost transmission events have occurred between the first user device and the second user device and then associating a data element grouping the first user device and second user device into the category; generating a transmission map for devices on the mixed RFoG and HFC network, the transmission map being based on previous grouping of the devices by: selecting a time slot for each of a plurality of devices on the mixed RFoG and HFC network, determining whether the time slot selected for each of the plurality of devices overlap in time, and assigning the time slots to each of the plurality of devices if the time slots do not overlap in time; wherein selecting, determining and assigning comprises an iterative process whereby a particular time slot is selected for a current device and the selected particular time slot is compared to previously assigned time slots, and if the particular time slot does not overlap in time with a previously assigned time slot, the particular time slot is assigned to the current device, if the particular time slot overlaps in time with the previously assigned time slot, determining if the current device and a second device assigned the previously assigned time slot can be scheduled into overlapping time slots, if the current device and the second device can be scheduled into overlapping time slots, assigning the particular time slot to the current device, and if the current device and the second device cannot be scheduled into overlapping time slots, selecting a new time slot and repeating the iterative process; assigning the first user device a slot on the transmission map; determining whether the assignment of the second user device to a slot on the transmission map will overlap in time with the first user device; if the assignment of the second user device to a slot on the transmission map will overlap in time with the first user device, then determining whether the data element is associated with the first user device and the second user device; and if the first user device and the second user device were grouped together by the data element, then assigning the second user device to another time slot.