Method of fragmenting a message in a network

• US 10,098,037 B2
• Filed: 08/21/2017
• Issued: 10/09/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Trane International Inc. (Trane Technologies plc)
• Original Assignee: Trane International Inc. (Trane Technologies plc)
• Inventors: Vanderzee, Joel C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nowlin, Eric
• Application Number:
  US15/682,196
• Publication Number:
  US 20170347291A1
• Time in Patent Office: 414 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/324 in the data link layer [OSI layer 2], e.g. HDLC
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/065 using assembly or disassembly of packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication

Abstract

Embodiments described herein provide a method of fragmenting a large message into, for example, numbered packets for sending the message in a packet based communication system, such as in a ZigBee wireless network. Each packet may have a predetermined size and may include a MAC address, a network header of a variable size, and fragmented message data. The fragmented message data can be configured to be smaller than the available space in the packet so that the packet can be sent, for example, when the size of the header increases.

Claims

1. A node for connecting to a packet-based network and sending a message via the packet-based network to another node, the node being configured to perform the following:

determine an available space in a first packet;

determine a fragmented message size for fragmenting the message, wherein the fragmented message size is at least 4 bytes smaller than the available space and the at least 4 bytes corresponds to additional nodes in the packet-based network;

fragment the message into at least one numbered fragmented message, each of the at least one numbered fragmented message has the fragmented message size;

assemble a first fragmented message of the at least one numbered fragmented message into the first packet; and

send the first packet over the packet-based network.

2. The node of claim 1, wherein the node is further configured to perform the following:

receive the first packet sent over the packet-based network;

perform source routing in the packet-based network with respect to the received packet;

update the network header of the first packet to obtain a later packet; and

send the later packet over the packet-based network.

3. The node of claim 2, wherein the first packet includes a free space, and at least a portion of the free space is occupied in the later packet.

4. The node of claim 1, wherein the packet-based network is a ZigBee network.

5. The node of claim 1, wherein the packet-based network is used in a wireless building control system.

6. The node of claim 1, wherein the message is an application of a wireless building control system.

7. The node of claim 1, wherein the node is further configured to perform the following:

determine a number of nodes over the packet-based network, wherein determining the fragmented message size for fragmenting the message includes determining the fragmented message size so that the fragmented message size is smaller than the available space.

8. The node of claim 1, wherein the first packet includes a MAC header and a network header.

9. The node of claim 8, wherein the network header includes a source route.

10. The node of claim 8, wherein the node is further configured to perform the following:

perform source routing in the packet-based network;

update the network header of the first packet to indicate the source routing; and

send the packet with the updated network header over the packet-based network.

11. The node of claim 8, wherein the packet-based network is a ZigBee network, and the network header of the first packet includes a source route.

12. The node of claim 11, wherein the at least 4 bytes corresponds to the additional nodes of the source route in the packet-based network.

13. A node for sending a message via a packet-based network to another node, the node being configured to perform the following:

determine an available space in a first packet;

determine a fragmented message size for fragmenting the message, wherein the fragmented message size is smaller than the available space;

fragment the message into at least one numbered fragmented message, each of the at least one numbered fragmented message has the fragmented message size;

assemble a first fragmented message of the at least one numbered fragmented message into the first packet;

send the first packet over the packet-based network; and

determine a number of nodes in a route over the packet-based network, wherein determining a fragmented message size for fragmenting the message includes determining the fragmented message size so that the fragmented message size is smaller than the available space by a number of bytes with respect to the number of nodes.

14. A node for sending a message via a packet-based network to another node, the node being configured to perform the following:

determine an available space in a first packet;

determine a fragmented message size for fragmenting the message, wherein the fragmented message size is smaller by a number of bytes than the available space and the number of bytes corresponds to additional nodes in a route of the packet-based network;

fragment the message into at least one numbered fragmented message, each of the at least one numbered fragmented message has the fragmented message size;

assemble a first fragmented message of the at least one numbered fragmented message into the first packet;

send the first packet over the packet-based network;

receive the first packet sent over the packet-based network;

perform source routing in the packet-based network with respect to the received packet;

update the network header of the first packet to obtain a later packet; and

send the later packet over the packet-based network,

wherein the first packet includes a free space, and at least a portion of the free space is occupied in the later packet.