Method and apparatus for dynamic voice reservation within wireless networks

摘要

A multi-hop wireless Ad-Hoc network according to the present invention employs a voice reservation protocol. The protocol supports voice and data communication and incorporates retransmission and acknowledgement mechanisms. A TDMA frame architecture is dynamically selected depending on voice mode operation (e.g., simplex/duplex) and associated retransmission/acknowledgement mechanisms. A source node transmits a reservation packet that embeds TDMA frame architecture and other information. The packet is transmitted to a destination node and is further piggybacked on existing neighbor discovery packets to reduce overhead. Each intermediate network node along the propagation path determines the manner in which to accomplish slot reservation based on the embedded information in the reservation packet. The protocol may use separate dedicated channels or a single channel for voice and data, and supports voice/data load balancing over different channels. In addition, the protocol may utilize speech silence and increased communication reliability to enhance performance.