Patent ID: 8605651

Claim:
A method of operating a communication system, comprising the steps of: a) providing at least one communication node of the communication system with a connectivity graph of at least part of the communication system, wherein the connectivity graph is constructed using a plurality of messages broadcasted by a plurality of issuing nodes in the communication system, each message comprising, for each issuing node, a unique identifier of the issuing node and a list of unique identifiers of each neighbor node of the issuing node, b) analyzing said connectivity graph at said at least one communication node, c) selecting a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol at said at least one communication node from a set of at least two MAC protocols based on said analyzed connectivity graph, and d) operating said communication system with the selected MAC protocol; wherein said connectivity graph comprises information for each neighbor node of the communication node, comprising a unique identifier of the communication node's neighbor node and a list of unique identifiers of each neighbor node of the neighbor node; and wherein said step of analyzing said connectivity graph comprises comparing each list of unique identifiers with (i) the unique identifier or identifiers of the communication node's neighbor node or neighbor nodes and (ii) a unique identifier of the communication node, and to qualify the connectivity graph as not fully connected in case at least one list of unique identifiers contains at least one unique identifier different from (i) the unique identifier or unique identifiers of the communication node's neighbor node or neighbor nodes and (ii) the unique identifier of the communication node.