Patent ID: 7639651

Claim:
A polling based method of scheduling upstream data for frame based communication between a plurality of terminals and a master controller, the method comprising: dividing a communication from each one of said terminals to the master controller into upstream frames; providing a plurality of concentration elements for local scheduling of upstream data and partitioning the plurality of concentration elements and the plurality of terminals over a plurality of cells; distributing said plurality of cells on a multiple hierarchical level star topology, each cell belonging to a hierarchical level N, where N is comprised between a top level, corresponding to a single cell to which the master controller is assigned, and a bottom level; in each cell at level N, selecting one concentration element to be the master element for the cell and selecting the remaining concentration elements and terminals in said cell to be slave elements of the master element for the cell; each master element in a cell at level N being in turn a slave of the master element in one of the cells at level N+1, the master element at the top level being the master controller; defining flow service categories; at each master element at level N, collecting uplink aggregate requests and flows originating from the slave elements thereof and, for each service category, aggregating flows into one aggregated flow generating new uplink requests for each flow, which are input to the master element at level N+1 to which the master element at level N is slave; at each master element, allocating bandwidth to each connected slave according to said new uplink aggregate requests and to the available bandwidth; at each slave element at level N, aggregating flows according to said flows categories and, at each polling period, sending aggregate bandwidth requests to the corresponding master element at level N, said requests comprising, for each category, aggregate queue status of the active connections and aggregate guaranteed rate equal to the sum of the guaranteed rates of the connections that have at least one cell in the corresponding queue in the slave element; and at each master element and at each polling time period, integrating the aggregate guaranteed rate over a time window of length IT, where IT is an integer multiple of the polling time period, so as to dynamically adjust the guaranteed quote for each slave element.