DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION IN AD HOC WIRELESS PICONETS

One of a number, n, of slave devices is selected for express or implicit polling by a master device in a communication system that transmits during individual ones of a number of sequentially occurring time slots. This is done by assigning a corresponding priority level to each slave device, wherein at least two slave devices are assigned different corresponding priority levels. A corresponding count parameter and a corresponding initial count value are assigned to each of the slave devices. For each of the slave devices, the corresponding count parameter is initialized to the corresponding initial count value. For each successive time slot, each of the count parameters is adjusted (e.g., by decrementing). A highest priority slave device whose corresponding count parameter has reached or passed a predetermined value is selected for polling.