Patent attributes
A wireless network with tiered centralized control is provided. The wireless network includes a controlling node and a plurality of participant nodes. Each participant node includes an electronically steerable antenna. The plurality of participant nodes report various network information to the controlling node, such as interference and throughput measurements. The controlling node examines the network topology and provides instructions to one or more participant nodes in order to optimize the network. The instructions can include transmit and receive antenna pointing directions, assigned frequency/channel, and the amount of transmit power to use between specific participant nodes. The optimization of the network is performed to deterministically manage the capacity and reliability of the network by managing the multi-hop paths of the network so that no single path becomes congested while other paths within the network remain underutilized and to heal the network by creating new physical layer and logical layer paths around unexpected obstacles, interference, and/or broken nodes.
