U.S. Philips Corporation

Nicos Achilleoudis

Petrus A Van Grinsven

Sabine V Giorgi

Carel J Van Driel

Guillene E Teboul

In a transmission system for transmitting synchronous data portions and asynchronous data portions, a transmission frame includes regularly spaced synchronous data portions interleaved with asynchronous data portions. To insure that the packing density of asynchronous data portions is optimal, the position of the synchronous data portions is allowed to deviate from its nominal value to increase the packing rate of the asynchronous data portions.

Transmission system for synchronous and asynchronous data portions

The invention relates to a method of controlling the operation of a network in which stations share a communication channel. The upstream link of this channel is divided into time slots (4), consisting of a data slot (6) and m control minislots (51a, . . . , 51i, . . . , 51m). This method, comprising a reservation step provided for the transmission, within the minislots, of data packet transmission requests to a head-end station and a transmission step provided for the transmission of these data packets when corresponding acknowledgement signals have been returned to the concerned stations by the head-end station, also comprises an additional congestion resolution step, provided for improving the performance of transmission by an analysis of the occurrence of collisions between transmission requests within the minislots and a subsequent modification of the timing signals of the channel. This modification consists of an allocation of a part of the channel dedicated to the data slots to additional transmission requests, for example of at least an idle data slot (6).

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Paris, France

Nicos Achilleoudis