Patent ID: 8098603

Claim:
A method for bandwidth adaptation in a wireless network, comprising: receiving a request from a source to transmit multimedia data from a source node to a destination node in a packet switched wireless network implementing a collision avoidance protocol allocating wireless transmission times on a wireless channel; selecting a transmission path for transmission of packets from said source node to said destination node through an intermediate node; periodically collecting real-time network transmission statistics at the intermediate node, including a network idle time indicator, wherein the network idle time indicator indicates an amount of time when there are no packetized transmissions over said wireless channel detected by the intermediate node and when the intermediate node is not in a wireless transmission backoff stage, wherein timing of the wireless transmission backoff stage is determined by the collision avoidance protocol; sending the network idle time indicator from the intermediate node to the source node; and adapting an output bit rate of said source to available bandwidth on said wireless network based on said network idle time indicator and wireless network transmission timing determined by the collision avoidance protocol.