Patent ID: 7639652

Claim:
An inter-channel communications bridge node MANET architecture, comprising: a plurality of nodes forming a first communications channel group (CG); a plurality of nodes forming a second communications channel group (CG); a software program run by a processor, said software program associated with each of said nodes; at least one bridge node selected from said first and second communication channel groups (CGs) nodes by said program, said bridge node forming a bridge for communication between said nodes of said first and second channel groups; said nodes of said first and second channel groups communicating with one another via said bridge node according to said software program, said plurality of first and second channel group nodes form a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET), said nodes from said first CG passing and receiving messages to and from said nodes from said second CG according to Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) via said bridge node, each node having time slots in a time domain for TDMA, said bridge node is selected by said software program from “1 hop” neighboring nodes from said nodes in said first and second channel groups, said nodes in said first and second channel groups transmit messages at a predetermined periodicity according to said software program, said bridge node reserves a time slot in said TDMA for sending and receiving said messages from said first and second CGs, a plurality of Potential Bridge Nodes comprising “1 hop” neighboring nodes to said bridge node, said Potential Bridge Nodes having a plurality of time slots in the time domain for TDMA of said messages, said Potential Bridge time slots having idle slots suitable for transmission of inter-channel messages between said first and second CGs, said software program determines a common set of intersecting idle slots between said Potential Bridge Nodes time slots to reserve for inter-channel communication by said bridge node, said nodes in said first and second channel groups transmit bootstrap messages at a predetermined periodicity according to said software program; and, based upon information from a Traffic Assigned Slots Record of the bridge node and further, based upon information from Bridge Assigned Slots Records of each of the bridge node's one-hop neighboring nodes, said bridge node reserves a traffic slot in the time domain of said TDMA for sending and receiving said messages from said first and second CGs, prior to having a specific point-to-point destination for the messages, by taking ownership of a predetermined time domain traffic slot portion in said TDMA time domain and using a node ID of the bridge node as a bootstrap message destination node ID without specifying a point-to-point link in the bootstrap message, wherein a provisional parameter indicates a percent usage of said reserved traffic slot allocated by said bridge node for bi-directional communications to and from said bridge node.