Harris Corporation

David A Clark

John Wesley Nieto

Mark Chamberlain

Joseph B Shaver

William Michael Rudnick

Ngan-Cheung Pun

Ngan-cheung Pun

Charles Joseph Datz

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) may include mobile nodes, each having a wireless transceiver and a controller cooperating with wireless transceiver. The controller may be configured to operate in a geographic area using a time division multiple access (TDMA) protocol and based upon a TDMA epoch including TDMA time slots. The controller may also be configured to dynamically divide into first type mobile nodes and second type mobile nodes based upon a current topologic density in the topologic area relative to a topological density threshold so that each first type mobile node has a periodic TDMA time slot allocated in the TDMA epoch and so that each second type mobile node contends for contention interval TDMA time slots in the TDMA epoch.

Mobile ad hoc network with dynamic TDMA slot assignments and related methods

A mobile ad-hoc network includes a plurality of N mobile nodes and wireless communication links connecting the mobile nodes, which each include a communications device for transmitting and routing data packets wirelessly to other mobile nodes via the wireless communication links in accordance with a time division multiple access (TDMA) data transmission protocol using a TDMA epoch that is divided into a beacon interval, digital voice interval and digital data interval. The mobile nodes monitor channel conditions using the beacon, digital voice and digital data intervals and provide a network conductivity performance as valid receptions occur within mobile nodes. A data rate is calculated and set for other N&#x2212;1 mobile nodes using monitored channel conditions for the beacon, digital voice and digital data intervals.

System and method for setting a data rate in TDMA communications

A system and method for communicating includes a plurality of wireless nodes forming a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) mesh network. Each wireless node includes a transmitter and receiver and is operative for transmitting data packets across the TDMA mesh network from a source node through intermediate nodes to a destination node using a TDMA epoch such that a slot of channel time is allocated in both time and TDMA epoch prior to a wireless node transmitting the data packet.

System and method for communicating in a time division multiple access (TDMA) mesh network having minimized end-to-end latency

A bandwidth efficient and robust timing synchronization approach in an ad-hoc network is provided by a mobile ad-hoc network including at least one group of mobile nodes having at least one timing reference (TR) node. Mobile nodes include a controller and a wireless communications device cooperating therewith to generate and transmit timing synchronization beacons having a respective hop count indicating a number of hops to the at least one timing reference node, receive timing synchronization beacons from neighboring nodes, and synchronize node communication timing with neighboring nodes based upon the number of hops to the at least one timing reference node. The timing reference node may cooperate with the other mobile nodes based upon a timing source priority tree including levels defined by hop counts. The timing reference node is at a starting level of the timing source priority tree. The other nodes are at a higher level of the timing source priority tree than the starting level and correspond to the number of hops to the at least one timing reference node.

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Rochester, NY, United States of America

David A Clark