procedure is terminated as unsuccessful if there is another possible gateway station which affiliation would be appropriate the procedure returns to the block 63 so that an affiliation request can be sent off to that gateway station in the affiliation check procedure of fig4 each member station stores in an appropriate data structure a number of 34 b 34 recent beacons from its own gateway i e the gateway station with which it is affiliated the data structure includes the signal strength of the various beacons periodically as determined by a timer step 75 a test is performed as indicated at reference character 77 to determine if a predetermined fraction of the beacons are of an amplitude which is above a threshold signal strength value in other words the member determines whether communications with the current gateway are reliable if the fraction criteria is met the affiliation check ends as being successful and if not it ends as being unsuccessful this being the test indicated by reference character 43 in fig2 in the procedure of fig5 which further illustrates the resignation check procedure identified by reference character 49 in fig2 a station presently acting as a gateway broadcasts a resignation request message as indicated at block 81 assuming they receive the request message the linked cluster stations and affiliated member stations execute check procedures as illustrated in fig6 and 7 respectively and send response messages as appropriate after predetermined length of time determined as indicated at.