Patent ID: 8289985

Claim:
A method for waveform independent contention access in a hub-spoke network having a hub terminal and a plurality of spoke terminals, wherein communication from the spoke terminals to the hub terminal is via an uplink and communication from the hub terminal to the spoke terminals is via a downlink, the method comprising: repeatedly transmitting a link allocation packet on the uplink from a first spoke terminal when the first spoke terminal has data to transmit and reception of the downlink by the first spoke terminal indicates that the uplink is available, wherein the link allocation packet is encapsulated within an internet protocol packet and comprises a transmit spoke terminal identifier; retransmitting on the downlink at least some of the internet protocol packets received on the uplink by the hub terminal; transmitting at least a portion of the data in one or more internet protocol data packets on the uplink from the first spoke terminal after a link allocation packet is received on the downlink and the transmit spoke terminal identifier of the link allocation packet corresponds to the first spoke terminal; and transmitting a link release packet on the uplink from the first spoke terminal following the one or more data packets, wherein the link release packet is encapsulated within an internet protocol packet.