System and method for transmission scheduling using network membership information and neighborhood information

Abstract

Admitting a new node into a network without collisions and providing collision-free transmission of packets into a channel, such that: an upper bound can be enforced for the time elapsed between two consecutive time slots assigned to the same node; no collision-avoidance handshake is required for each packet transmission, and no pre-assignment of transmission times (slots), channels, or codes are required. Time is divided into frames consisting of a known number of time slots, and frames can be further organized into epochs.

1 . A method for admitting a new node into a network without collisions, comprising: 
 specifying a network time when the new node enters the network;    applying a hold-down time from the network time; and    adding the new node to an admitted-node list at the network time plus the hold-down time.    
   
   
       2 . The method of  1 , wherein the hold-down time is set such that all of the nodes within the network have learned about the existence of the new node by the expiration of the hold-down time.  
   
   
       3 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising adding a padding time to the hold-down time such that regardless of the network time when the new node became operational, all the nodes in the network start including the new node for the allocation of time slots reserved for a quasi-static scheduling method at a same schedule starting point.  
   
   
       4 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein the new node notifies the network that it is operational after at least one epoch has passed.  
   
   
       5 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein the time slots allocated for quasi-static scheduling may be used to transmit short control packets that are used primarily to maintain time synchronization in the network.