Patent ID: 7529222

Claim:
A method for medium access control in a distributed communication network, comprising: associating a persistence parameter with a potential link between a transmitting node and a receiving node in the network; determining based on said persistence parameter whether the transmitting node participates in contention for a transmission slot; if said transmitting node participates in said contention for said transmission slot, computing adaptive transmission parameters for said transmitting node as a function of an invalidity condition and an infeasibility condition; and transmitting from said transmitting node in the transmission slot using the computed adaptive transmission parameters if said invalidity condition and said infeasibility condition are met, wherein at least one of i) if the invalidity condition is not met the persistence parameter being updated using a first parameter being a function of the existence of an invalid link and corresponds to r=r−β 1 r α and ii) if the infeasibility condition is not met the persistence parameter being updated using a second parameter weighting the penalty due to an infeasible link and corresponds to r=r−β 2 r α−1 , with r being the persistence parameter, β 1 being the first parameter, β 2 being the second parameter, α being a parameter greater than 0.