Patent ID: 8213402

Claim:
A communications system, comprising: a plurality of nodes forming a wireless mesh network; and a plurality of wireless communication links connecting the nodes together; each node comprising a communications device having a physical layer (PHY) and a media access control (MAC) layer in accordance with the Open System Interconnect (OSI) model and operative for transmitting and receiving communications packets wirelessly to and from other nodes via the wireless communications links in an automatic repeat request (ARQ) mode, wherein said physical layer comprises: a channel monitoring circuit configured to monitor channel parameters of the wireless communications link when in an ARQ mode; and a processor configured to receive and process the monitored channel parameters and estimate values for over-the-air (OTA) parameters comprising bandwidth, data rate, transmit power, block size, burst length, waveform, modulation type, the symbol rate, and error correction code scheme for the wireless communications link, wherein said processor is configured to: communicate to the MAC layer the estimated values for the OTA parameters for transmitting packets; establish the wireless communications link with the estimated OTA parameters; and determine which OTA parameters are to be changed to establish a new wireless communications link with new estimated OTA parameters when monitored channel parameters change.