Patent ID: 8218523

Claim:
A method for communicating in a network including a master node (master) and a set of slave nodes (slaves), wherein the communicating uses orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and time division multiple access (TDMA) symbols on sub-carriers, comprising: broadcasting during a first downlink transmission, from the master to the set of slaves using downlinks and all of the sub-carriers, a broadcast polling packet including data packets for each slave and sub-carrier assignments for the slaves; transmitting simultaneously, from each slave to the master using uplinks and the assigned sub-carriers, a first response packet after receiving the broadcast polling packet; and broadcasting, from the master to the set of slave using the downlinks and all of the sub-carriers, a group acknowledgement packet, wherein the broadcast polling packet, the response packet, and the group acknowledgement packet comprise one superframe in one communication cycle, and wherein the broadcasting on the downlinks and the transmitting on the uplinks are disjoint in time.