1. A method of determining a staged topology for a wireless communication network including a plurality of nodes, said method comprising: executing computer readable program code with a processing device to enable said processing device to perform the steps of: identifying a plurality of topologies comprising different subsets of available communication links among the nodes; establishing the beaming capabilities at each node; selecting a subset of the identified topologies meeting the beaming capabilities of each node; and generating a staged topology for the network, wherein the staged topology comprises a sequence of two or more of the identified topologies included in the subset of the identified topologies, and wherein information is communicatable among the nodes within the network via communication links arranged in accordance with the topologies included in the staged topology, wherein said generating comprises: associating a connection matrix with each identified topology in the subset of topologies; establishing one or more sequences of topologies using the identified topologies in the subset of topologies; multiplying the connection matrices associated with the topologies in each sequence of topologies to obtain a sequenced connection matrix corresponding with each sequence of topologies; multiplying each sequenced connection matrix by a weighting matrix to obtain a total cost matrix corresponding with each sequence of topologies; and selecting one of the sequences of topologies as the staged topology based on the total cost matrices corresponding with each sequence of topologies.