Patent ID: 7764706

Claim:
A method for transmitting information in a network having a plurality of nodes, one of which is a controller node, the method comprising: (a) dividing time into 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 data transmission by one of the nodes; (b) permitting each of the plurality of nodes to reserve one of the plurality of data slots by sending the requests in the contention slots; (c) 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; (d) sending the header from the controller node, the transmission schedule in the header indicating the reservations; and (e) sending the information from the nodes in accordance with the transmission schedule; wherein when the controller node fails, another node becomes the controller node and operates as the controller node using the transmission schedule; and wherein the transmission schedule is used as a list of backup nodes in hierarchical order.