Patent ID: 8358968

Claim:
In a two-way radio frequency (RF) communications system having at least one repeater, a plurality of channels, and a plurality of subscriber units, the method comprising the steps of, at a first repeater: hosting a first channel that is currently serving as a rest channel, the rest channel being a channel identified in the system, via a signal transmitted by the first repeater on the first channel, as one which idle subscriber units should monitor for transmission of at least one of new call initiations and new rest channel notifications; responsive to determining that one of (i) a subscriber unit has initiated a new call on the first channel that is currently serving as the rest channel, (ii) the first repeater has experienced a failure or has become disabled, and (iii) interference has been detected on the first channel, responsively selecting a second channel, different from the first channel, to serve as the rest channel by: determining whether there is an eligible idle second channel from the plurality of channels to serve as the rest channel; if there is an eligible idle second channel in the system, selecting the eligible second idle channel as the second channel to serve as the rest channel; and if there is no eligible idle second channel from the plurality of channels to serve as the rest channel, selecting a busy channel from the plurality of channels in the system as the second channel to serve as the rest channel.