Patent ID: 8705388

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a transceiver configured to be in data communication with an associated mesh network; and channel assignment logic in data communication with the transceiver, the channel assignment logic is operable to assign backhaul channels to each access point of the associated mesh network; wherein the channel assignment logic is configured to acquire collision domain data for each access point of the associated mesh network wherein a collision domain is defined as a node's (k+1) hop neighborhood, where k is a ratio between a carrier sense range and a communication range; wherein the channel assignment logic is configured to assign a backhaul channel to each access point of the associated mesh network in order to minimize a maximum number of access points sharing the channel within a collision domain; wherein the channel assignment logic determines the carrier sense range for each selected access point in accordance with a transmit power of the selected access point, a path loss through the selected access point, and a sensitivity of a receiver of the selected access point at a lowest selected data rate; and wherein the channel assignment logic determines the communication range for each selected access point in accordance with a transmit power of the selected access point, a path loss through the selected access point, and a sensitivity of the receiver of the selected access point operated at a predetermined desired data rate.