Frequency hopping spread spectrum communication system

1. A method of operating a spread spectrum radio communication system comprising a central node and a plurality of dependent nodes which communicate over a frequency hopping channel, comprising:

the dependent nodes compiling interference information for the channel and, at intervals, transmitting the interference information to the central node;

the central node, based on the interference information received from the dependent nodes, creating a black list of worse-performing frequency bands in the channel and transmitting information indicative of the black-listed frequency bands to the dependent nodes.

2. A method as in claim 1 , wherein, after receipt of said information, each dependent node follows a modified hop sequence with the black-listed frequency bands removed from the hop set.

3. A method as in claim 2 , wherein the creation of the black list includes the calculation of a system-wide measure of the interference experienced in the frequency bands of the channel over a recent interval.

4. A method as in claim 3 , wherein the creation of the black list includes the calculation of a system-wide measure of historic interference experienced in the frequency bands of the channel.

5. A method as in claim 1 , wherein each of the plurality of dependent nodes compiles interference information by:

transmitting packets of information to the central node at a plurality of frequency bands;

determining whether acknowledgment is received from the central node that the respective packets of information were received by the central node; and

maintaining a record of how often the respective dependent node received acknowledgments from the central node at each of the plurality of frequency bands.

6. A method as in claim 1 , wherein the record comprises an interference index calculated according to the formula I Fi =(T i −NS i )/T i , wherein I Fi is the interference index for a frequency band i, T i is the number of packets that the respective dependent node attempted to transmit to the central node, and NS i is the number of occurrences where the respective dependent node did not receive an acknowledgment from the central node.

7. A node for a frequency hopping spread spectrum system, comprising means for compiling interference information indicative of the interference experienced in frequency bands of a frequency hopping channel over an interval, means for transmitting the interference information to another node; and means for receiving information indicative of the blacklisted frequency bands from the another node, wherein the compiling of interference information comprises:

transmitting packets of information to the another node at a plurality of frequency bands;

determining whether an acknowledgment is received from the another node that the respective packets of information were received by the another node; and

maintaining a record of how often acknowledgments were received from the another node at each of the plurality of frequency bands.

8. A node of a frequency hopping spread spectrum system, comprising means for receiving interference information from a plurality of dependent nodes, means for creating a black list of worse-performing frequency bands in the channel based on said received interference information.

9. A node as in claim 8 , further comprising means for transmitting information indicative of the black-listed frequency bands to the dependent nodes at intervals.

10. A node as in claim 8 , wherein the interference information comprises a record of how often acknowledgments were received by each respective dependent node from the node at each of plurality of frequency bands in response to packets transmitted by the respective dependent node.

11. A node as in claim 10 , wherein the record comprises, for each dependent node, an interference index calculated according to the formula I Fi =(T i −NS i )/T i , wherein I Fi is the interference index for a frequency band i, T i is the number of packets that the respective dependent node attempted to transmit to the node, and NS i is the number of occurrences where the respective dependent node did not receive an acknowledgment from the node.

12. A node as in claim 11 , wherein the creation of the black list includes the calculation of a system-wide measure of historic interference experienced in the frequency bands of the channel.

13. A node as in claim 12 , wherein the system-wide measure comprises a probability of error free transmission over a previous interval P t calculated according to P t (Fi)=Σ(I Fi /n), wherein Fi is a particular frequency band i and n is the number of dependent nodes.

14. A method of operating a spread spectrum radio communication system comprising a central node and a dependent node which communicate over a frequency hopping channel, comprising:

the dependent node transmitting packets of information to the central node at a plurality of frequency bands;

the dependent node determining whether acknowledgment is received from the central node that the respective packets of information were received by the central node; and

the dependent node maintaining a record of how often acknowledgments were received from the central node at each of the plurality of frequency bands; and

the central node, based on the interference information received from the dependent node, creating a black list of worse-performing frequency bands in the channel and transmitting information indicative of the black-listed frequency bands to the dependent node.

15. A method as in claim 14 , wherein the record comprises an interference index calculated according to the formula I Fi =(T i −NS i )/T i , wherein I Fi is the interference index for a frequency band i, T i is the number of packets that the node attempted to transmit to the another node, and NS i is the number of occurrences where the node did not receive an acknowledgment from the another node.

16. The method of claim 15 , wherein the system comprises a plurality of dependent nodes.

17. A method as in claim 16 , wherein the creation of the black list includes the calculation of a system-wide measure of the interference experienced in the frequency bands of the channel over a recent interval.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein the system-wide measure comprises a probability of error free transmission over a previous interval P t calculated according to P t (Fi)=Σ(I Fi /n), wherein Fi is a particular frequency band i and n is the number of dependent nodes.

19. A method as in claim 14 , wherein, after receipt of said information, the dependent node follows a modified hop sequence with the black-listed frequency bands removed from the hop set.