Shared communications channel with enhanced reservation and collision resolution protocols allows any subset of stations to transmit data after collision occured in contention slot

摘要

A system and method for collision resolution in a communication system having multiple transmission stations communicating on a shared slotted communication channel. The system and method includes a procedure for organizing the stations in a structure wherein each station has a fixed address corresponding to a static location in the structure. The procedure further indicates to the multiple transmission stations a slot type for each communication slot, the slot type selected from a group including contention slot type and reservation slot type, and accepts transmissions of contention slot data packets in contention slots on the communication channel from the stations, the contention slot data packets each optionally containing a reservation quantity for reservation slot data packets to be sent by an originating station upon successful transmission of a contention slot data packet originating at the originating station, the reservation slot data packets transmitted in reservation slots dedicated to the originating station. The procedure detects collisions in the transmissions of packets originating from the transmitting station with packets transmitted from other transmitting stations; and upon detecting a collision in a contention slots, recursively entitles a subset of the locations in the structure to transmit in the subsequent contention slot regardless of whether the station transmitted during the contention slot in which the collision occurred, wherein membership in the subset indicates that a station corresponding to a location in the subset is entitled.PP Further systems and methods are disclosed.