Patent ID: 8665898

Claim:
A system for obtaining uplink bandwidth requests from a wireless subscriber station in a wireless communication network, the system comprising: a polling policy module configured to select a communication parameter and to establish a polling protocol between the wireless subscriber station and the system over the wireless communication network based on the communication parameter; a polling module configured to directly poll the subscriber station from a base station in accordance with the polling protocol, to select a polling rate for the subscriber station based on the communication parameter and to poll the subscriber station at the selected polling rate for providing the subscriber station with bandwidth request opportunities; a receiver for receiving bandwidth requests from subscriber stations; a contention resolution module configured to provide a contention resolution mechanism for at least two subscriber stations which attempt to transmit a bandwidth request to the receiver of the base station within an uplink slot allocated to subscriber stations for bandwidth requests; and a channel bandwidth allocation module configured to allocate, in response to a per connection bandwidth request received from the subscriber station received by the receiver, a granted amount of uplink bandwidth for distribution by the subscriber station to one or more connections from a plurality of connections.