Patent ID: 7668152

Claim:
A method of allocating an access resource among two or more subscriber units, the method comprising: waiting, by a base station, for a contiguous new access opportunity time window in an uplink channel; scanning, by said base station, for an access burst message from one or more of said subscriber units during the new access opportunity time window; rejecting, by said base station, two or more colliding access burst messages received from said subscriber units during said new access opportunity time window; acquiring, by said base station, an access burst message from an associated subscriber unit during the new access opportunity time window, said new access opportunity time window having a duration at least equal to a duration of the acquired access burst message added to propagation delay; storing, by said base station, a delay time data value for the associated subscriber unit; and sending, by said base station, the delay time data value to the associated subscriber unit to enable communication time synchronization.