Patent Document ID: 8218970
Application ID: 12385683
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A medium access control method for an optical fiber time-division multiple access (TDMA) network, wherein wherein the network comprises a slot generator coupled to a first end of an optical fiber bus, a plurality of network devices respectively coupled to the optical fiber bus to form a plurality network nodes corresponding thereto, and a slot terminator coupled to a second end of the optical fiber bus, the method comprising the steps of: (a) the slot generator partitioning a slot flow on the optical fiber bus into a plurality of frames and each frame containing a plurality slots; (b) the plurality of network devices at the plurality of network nodes respectively writing messages into empty slots in a frame consecutively and by the n th network node when the frame arrives at the n th network node and a maximum number of messages that are consecutively written out is less than or equal to a predetermined amount based on an amount of traffic of the n th network node; (c) each network device at corresponding network nodes setting a countdown counter to a value of a maximum number of messages which will be consecutively written out before arrival of the frame; when a number of messages in a queue is greater than the predetermined amount, a maximum value of the countdown counter is equal to the predetermined amount, otherwise the maximum value of the countdown counter is equal to the number of messages in the queue; (d) each network device at corresponding network nodes decrementing the countdown counter in correspondence with each of the messages in the queue being sent out; until the countdown counter returns to zero, the n th network node immediately stops sending out the messages in the queue, remaining messages in the queue will start to be sent out when a next frame arrives to initiate another traffic control cycle.