METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CONTROLLING ACCESS TO DATA CHANNEL BANDWIDTH AMONG AGENCY ACCESS GROUPS

摘要

A scheduling component associated with a data channel configures initial reserved bandwidth allocations for each agency permitted access to a shared data channel. When sufficient bandwidth is available on the shared data channel to meet all bandwidth requests, the scheduling component schedules access to available random access slots on the shared data channel. When an agency accesses a scheduled random access slot, the agency is able to reserve additional reserved slots on the shared data channel for data transmission on an on-demand basis. The scheduling component enables bandwidth management controls when one or more requests for the additional reserved slots on the shared data channel cannot be fulfilled due to insufficient available additional reserved slots on the shared data channel and controls access to the shared data channel by distributing limited access permissions for future available random access slots to agencies permitted access to the shared data channel.