Patent ID: 7133432

Claim:
A collision mitigation method used in a communication system, the method comprising the steps of: in a first transmission pass, estimating a signal from a first source device that has been received over a first channel, wherein the step of estimating includes determining predetermined information sent from the first source device and wherein the first transmission pass is one of multiple transmission passes associated with a multiple transmission pass channel selection process that uses the predetermined information for selecting a channel over which the first source device sends at least a portion of the predetermined information during each of the multiple transmission passes; determining, based on the channel selection process, a set of channels that the signal from the first source device will be received over in at least one subsequent transmission pass of the multiple transmission passes; and based on the steps of estimating and determining, removing the estimated signal received from the first source device from a composite signal received in the at least one subsequent transmission pass, the composite signal comprising signals transmitted from a plurality of source devices over a common second channel that is included in the determined set of channels.