Patent ID: 7720086

Claim:
A computer-implemented method in an network of interconnected network nodes, the method comprising: dividing a periodic time cycle into two phases, the periodic time cycle being associated with a beacon time of a network protocol, the two phases comprising a connectivity phase and a data throughput improvement phase; configuring each node of the interconnected network nodes to maintain connectivity over a home channel, the home channel being a single channel frequency, and one of multiple available channel frequencies during the connectivity phase, the available channel frequencies being established by the wireless network protocol; configuring at least a subset of the interconnected network nodes to communicate over a particular guest channel of multiple guest channels during the connectivity phase, each guest channel being orthogonal to the home channel, the configuring comprising: determining a node traffic graph to represent data traffic patterns for nodes in the network; converting the node traffic graph into a link graph, the link graph representing communication links between active nodes represented by the traffic graph, each active node being associated with a threshold amount of data traffic; identifying a maximum independent set (MIS) of one or more nodes from the link graph, each of the one or more MIS nodes being a node that is not in primary conflict with another node, a node being in primary conflict with another node when the node and the other node require a same node for data communication; translating the link graph into a channel graph, the channel graph representing the guest channels; and if there are at least two nodes represented in the MIS of nodes, for each node in the MIS of nodes, assigning the node to a respective guest channel of the guest channels represented in the channel graph; maintaining, by each node, connectivity in the network using the home channel during the connectivity phase; and optimizing, by at least a subset of the nodes, data throughput in the network using one or more guest channels of the guest channels during the data throughput improvement phase.