Patent ID: 7457295

Claim:
A method of conducting communications between respective transceivers of a communication network using a selected portion of a prescribed communication bandwidth containing a plurality of sub-bandwidth communication channels, said method comprising the steps of: (a) monitoring said prescribed communication bandwidth for the presence of communication activity on said sub-bandwidth communication channels, and identifying those ones of said sub-bandwidth communication channels which are absent communication activity as clear channels available for use by said respective transceivers; and (b) causing said respective transceivers to conduct communications therebetween using selected ones of said clear channels identified in step (a) and processing identifications of clear channels within a modulated filter bank containing an inverse fast Fourier transform operator and a polyphase filter, and deriving therefrom a plurality of carrier frequencies respectively corresponding to said selected ones of said clear channels; wherein said communication network contains a master site transceiver and a plurality of remote site transceivers, and wherein communications within said network are between said master site transceiver and said remote site transceivers; and wherein step (a) comprises the steps of: (a1) causing said master site transceiver to transmit a prescribed message that is detectable by each of said remote site transceivers and, in response to said prescribed message, causing each remote site transceiver to monitor said prescribed communication bandwidth for effective communication activity on said sub-bandwidth communication channels, and to identify which of said sub-bandwidth communication channels appear to said each remote site transceiver to be absent effective communication activity and thereby constitute clear channels available for use, (a2) causing each remote site transceiver to transmit to said master site transceiver a message identifying clear channels identified thereby in step (a1), and (a3) causing said master site transceiver to broadcast to each of said remote site transceivers a communication control message containing an aggregate identification of clear channels based upon clear channel identifying messages transmitted by said remote site transceivers to said master site transceiver in step (a2).