METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR A HYBRID LIMITED CONTENTION AND POLLING PROTOCOL

摘要

Apparatus and method to implement a hybrid contention and polling protocol fora communications or computer network. Various embodiments employ primarystation polls (115, 120) to identify secondary stations in an active state;limited contention polls (126) to identify individual secondary stations in anidle state or identify a subset of secondary stations in an idle state toinitiate limited contention access to the network; limited contention pollsfor collision resolution (603) when a plurality of secondary stations in anidle state have simultaneously contended for network access; general polls(122) to secondary stations in an unresponsive state to initiate contentionaccess to the network; and general polls for collision resolution (411) when aplurality of secondary stations simultaneously contend for network access.Various embodiments may include frequency channel allocation for transmissionand reception of data within the network. The various procedures and apparatusdisclosed may also apply various polling parameters to optimize networkperformance.