Patent ID: 7839793

Claim:
A method for estimating packet collisions within a wireless network, comprising: for each transmit packet an Access Point (AP) of the network records statistics about transmission of information; based on this statistical information the AP computes: total number of slot times generated during the transmission, n; total number of deferrals, m; and total number of unsuccessful transmissions, Q; and using sequences (m,n,Q) of statistics for each access category (AC), the AP computes a probability of collision for unsuccessful packets, p, for each access category; and wherein p is selected to maximize: P ⁡ [ Observation | p ] = ∏ k = 1 f ⁢ ⁢ [ ∑ d = 1 Q k ⁢ ⁢ ( Q k d ) ⁢ p d ⁡ ( 1 - p ) Q k - d + n k ⁢ ( - n k ⁢ ⁢ log ⁡ ( 1 - p ) ) m k + d ( m k + d ) ! ] for each access category, and where f is the number of intervals over which the statistics are recorded for such access category.