METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR A HYBRID LIMITED CONTENTION AND POLLING PROTOCOL

摘要

Apparatus and method to implement a hybrid contention and polling protocol for a communications or computer network. Various embodiments employ primary station polls (115, 120) to identify secondary stations in an active state; limited contention polls (126) to identify individual secondary stations in an idle state or identify a subset of secondary stations in an idle state to initiate limited contention access to the network; limited contention polls for collision resolution (603) when a plurality of secondary stations in an idle state have simultaneously contended for network access; general polls (122) to secondary stations in an unresponsive state to initiate contention access to the network; and general polls for collision resolution (411) when a plurality of secondary stations simultaneously contend for network access. Various embodiments may include frequency channel allocation for transmission and reception of data within the network. The various procedures and apparatus disclosed may also apply various polling parameters to optimize network performance.