Patent ID: 8331248

Claim:
A method for dynamically allocating resources of a contention channel in a wireless network, the method comprising: determining an expected delay for a ranging or bandwidth request transmission over the contention channel, the ranging or bandwidth request transmission made by a specific one of a plurality of users in the wireless network, wherein determining the expected delay comprises: computing a probability of an empty transmission slot in the contention channel; computing a normalized attempt rate, the normalized attempt rate being equivalent to the probability that the specific user made a transmission attempt in a given transmission slot; computing a probability of successful transmission; and computing the expected delay in accordance with the probability of an empty transmission slot, the normalized attempt rate, and the probability of successful transmission; determining a target probability of collision from the expected delay; computing an allocation of resources of the contention channel using the target probability of collision; and allocating resources of the contention channel using the computed allocation of resources.