BEACONING TECHNIQUES IN FREQUENCY HOPPING SPREAD SPECTRUM (FHSS) WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS

• US 20100040042A1
• Filed: 08/15/2008
• Published: 02/18/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 08/15/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Itron Networked Solutions, Inc. (Itron, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Silver Spring Networks, Inc. (Itron, Inc.)
• Inventors: van Greunen, Jana, Hughes, Sterling, San Filippo, William E. III, Vaswani, Raj
• Granted Patent: US 8,467,370 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/350
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/7156 Arrangements for sequence synchronisation

Abstract

Methods include those by which nodes in a Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) wireless network may be flexibly configured for beacon transmission and reception. The method may allow for any node to synchronize to any other node'"'"'s given frequency to receive one or more beacon (broadcast) packets from that node at the designated period. The method may include sending, by a first node, a message to one or more neighbor nodes and responding, by the one or more neighbor nodes, with a message to the first node, the response message including a beacon frequency, a beacon transmit time and information about the current hopping sequence. The first node periodically programs its receiver to the beacon frequency at the beacon transmit time and uses the hopping sequence to receive information including at least one of routing information and timing updates for hopping channel synchronization from the one or more neighbor nodes.

Claims

1. A method of communicating in a network, comprising:

sending, by a first node, a message to one or more neighbor nodes;

responding, by the one or more neighbor nodes, with a message to the first node, the response message comprising a beacon frequency, a beacon transmit time and information about the current hopping sequence; and

periodically programming a receiver, by the first node, to tune to the beacon frequency at the beacon transmit time and using the hopping sequence to receive information comprising at least one of routing information and timing updates for hopping channel synchronization from the one or more neighbor nodes.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first node is a downstream node and the one or more neighbor nodes are upstream nodes.

3. The method of claim 1, comprising configuring the first node to listen to all or less than all of the beacons from each of the neighbor nodes and processing all or less than all of the information received from the neighbor nodes.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the beacon frequency and beacon transmit time are configurable.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein a first scheduled beacon transmit time is randomly selected to start during a beacon transmit period.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the beacon frequency comprises an initial frequency and a sequence of frequencies for subsequent transmissions.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the initial beacon frequency is randomly selected from among frequencies in a hopping sequence.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein a beacon transmit channel number corresponding to a frequency for each subsequent transmission is calculated based on a beacon transmit channel number corresponding to the randomly selected initial beacon frequency.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the network is a frequency-hopping spread spectrum wireless mesh network.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein which neighbor node the first node listens to is based on a priority assigned to a neighbor node by the first node.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein which neighbor node the first node listens to is based on a time period assigned to a neighbor node by the first node.