Patent ID: 7411919

Claim:
A method for transmitting information in a network having a plurality of nodes which are grouped into clusters, the method comprising: (a) dividing time into superframes, each superframe comprising a predetermined number of frames, each frame comprising (i) a beacon slot for sending a beacon, (ii) a plurality of contention slots for sending requests for data slots, (iii) a header slot for sending a header which comprises a transmission schedule for the frame, (iv) a plurality of information summarization slots for sending summaries of the information, and (v) a plurality of data slots, each for information transmission by one of the nodes; (b) permitting each of the clusters within the network to choose one of the predetermined number of frames; (c) transmitting information within each of the clusters during said one of the predetermined number of frames in each superframe; and (d) transmitting information between at least two of the clusters by way of one or more nodes; wherein step (c) comprises: (i) in each of the frames, permitting each of the plurality of nodes to reserve one of the plurality of data slots by sending the requests in the contention slots; and (ii) maintaining a reservation of each of the plurality of data slots which is reserved by one of the plurality of nodes until said one of the plurality of nodes indicates that it has stopped transmitting; and wherein: each node sends an information summarization packet during a corresponding one of the information summarization slots; and each node indicates that it has stopped transmitting by sending an end-of-transmission bit in its information summarization packet.