Patent ID: 7808907

Claim:
A method of communicating in a mesh network having a root node and a plurality of child nodes associated with the root node, comprising: scheduling a selected amount of traffic in the mesh network using a linear program that minimizes a time for the selected amount of traffic to reach its intended destination subject to a plurality of constraints that ensure that the selected amount of traffic will reach its intended destination within the minimized time, wherein the plurality of constraints comprises a constraint requiring that all transmissions from at least one of the plurality of child nodes to the root node will reach the root node within the minimized time, wherein the constraint requires that all uplink traffic via the at least one child node must be transmitted to the at least one child node from an originating child node of the at least one child node before the (K+1−h)th frame, where K is the total number of frames in the minimized time and h is the number of hops between the at least one child node and the root node; and transmitting the selected amount of traffic.