COLLISION HANDLING AND SYNCHRONIZATION OF NODES IN A CSMA/CA NETWORK

摘要

A system and method of retaining synchronization in a shared medium communications network. Synchronization is maintained between colliding transmitters and receivers by providing a Collision Based Inter Frame Space (CBIFS) which is a time period at least as long as the longest frame and that starts from a point in time common to all nodes such as after the backoff period (beginning of the PHY header). After a collision is detected in either a transmitting or receiving node, the node waits the remaining time in the CBIFS period. For transmitters the node waits the remaining time period from the end of the frame transmission until the CBIFS period terminates. For receivers, the node waits from the end of the preamble until the CBIFS period terminates.