Patent ID: 7363046

Claim:
A method of operating a radio, the method including: (a) setting a threshold value of signal strength to be an initial threshold value; (b) waiting for the radio to have a message to transmit on a channel; (c) attempting to transmit the message by: (d) measuring the received signal strength on the channel; (e) comparing the received signal strength with the threshold value, and (f) if the received signal strength in the channel is less than the threshold value, transmitting the message and reducing the threshold value to the received signal strength plus a predetermined amount; or (g) if the received signal strength is at least the threshold value, waiting for a period of time and repeating from step (c); and (h) increasing the threshold value if the comparison in step (e) determines that the received signal strength is at least the threshold value for a number n of attempts to transmit the message, where n is a positive integer.