Patent ID: 6996071

Claim:
For use with a digital communication system in which a terminal serving a plurality of circuits, from which requests for transmission of one or more digital information packets awaiting transmission over a serialized data path may be supplied, a method of controllably interfacing packets awaiting transmission from ports associated with said plurality of circuits with said serialized data path, said method comprising the steps of: (a) providing a binary decision tree-based transmission assignment network having a root node associated with said serialized data path, a plurality of leaf nodes associated with respective ports of said plurality of circuits and intermediate branch nodes that define a binary decision tree-structure between said root node and said plurality of leaf nodes; (b) storing for each node of said network, other than said leaf nodes, a pointer to whichever of its two adjacent downstream nodes effectively points to a leaf node whose associated circuit currently has highest transmission priority, thereby providing said root node with a pointer to the circuit currently having highest transmission priority; and (c) coupling, to said serialized data path, a packet from the circuit whose leaf node is pointed to by said root node.