Flex slotted Aloha transmission system and method

Abstract

A flexible slotted Aloha communication protocol for a burst-type communication network divides a communication channel into a series of time cycles, with each time cycle further divided into contiguous time slices of identical duration. All data transmissions in the network begin at the start of a time slice and continue for an integer number of time slices, with the identity of the transmitting terminal, the length of the transmission and error correction, being included within the first time slice of each data transmission. Communication terminals in the network transmit reservation requests to a network hub which receives the reservation requests and reserves reserved time slots each having a number of time slices which matches the length of the data transmission to be transmitted in the reserved time slot. The reserved time slot may include time slices in more than one time cycle. The communication protocol dynamically adjusts reservation parameters to match traffic load conditions on the channel and may reassign communication terminals from one channel to another in order to dynamically balance the load on the channels.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.