Patent ID: 8134958

Claim:
A method for operation of a node operating in a wireless network comprising the steps of: in a synchronized manner with all other nodes in said wireless network, periodically alternating between a reference phase and an operational phase; during the reference phase, once communication with the wireless network is established by the initial phase, transmitting at maximum power while performing a rate adaptation and variable estimation to infer said wireless network's interference characteristics at both sender and receiver; interference at the sender being estimated using an average transmission time ETT and interference at the receiver being estimated using a utility of medium reservation RTSUtil, with a determination of ETT being related to ETT*phi2+TT*(1−phi2), with TT being a current transmission time and phi2 being a configurable constant; RTSUtil being set to 1 if pRTS<(pTotal+α) otherwise RTSUtil being set to 0, with pRTS being packet loss rate with medium reservation, pTotal being total packet loss rate, with or without medium reservation, and α being a configurable constant; and during the operational phase, transmitting at a power level that is optimal for transmission based on information obtained from the reference phase.