CONTENTION RESOLUTION ELEMENT FOR A DEVICE FOR TRANSMITTING A PLURALITY OF PACKET-ORIENTED SIGNALS

摘要

For contention resolution an allocation vector is passed through a cascade of comparator elements in a contention resolution element. Every comparator unit evaluates a contention request vector supplied to it and allocates only the first possible bit of the allocation vector. A minimum fairness balance is established by following a quota rule. The parallel or semi-parallel processing of the allocation vector in the cascade allows for an extremely high processing speed.