METHOD FOR SCHEDULING TRANSMISSIONS IN WIRELESS NETWORKS
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Accused Products
Abstract
Arrangements described herein provide a distributed means of scheduling communications directed towards a sink node from other nodes in a multi-hop wireless network. By listening for other messages assigning schedules to other nodes, each node is able to create its own local record of scheduled transmissions in its area. This allows each node to determine a preliminary schedule. Having said this, the parent node of the node will have additional information regarding the scheduled local transmissions. Accordingly, the node sends the preliminary schedule to its parent node for confirmation that it provides no collisions/conflicts with other scheduled transmissions. As the parent node is involved in the scheduling of each child node, it is better able to determine whether the child nodes are proposing schedules that may conflict with each other.
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Citations
41 Claims
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1-21. -21. (canceled)
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22. A method for determining a transmission schedule for one or more transmissions from a first child node to a first parent node in a multi-hop wireless network, wherein each node is a child node to a corresponding parent node, each child node being configured to send messages directed to a sink node via its corresponding parent node and wherein the method comprises the first parent node:
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listening for signals indicating scheduled timeslots for transmission between nodes in the network and, if a signal is detected, updating a record of scheduled transmissions; receiving from the first child node a preliminary schedule specifying a timeslot for transmission of each of the one or more messages to the first parent node; determining, based on the record of scheduled transmissions, whether the preliminary schedule includes any scheduled transmissions that would conflict with any scheduled transmissions in the record of scheduled transmissions or whether the length of the preliminary schedule can be reduced without conflicting with any other scheduled transmissions in the record of scheduled transmissions; responsive to a determination that there would be a conflict or that the length of the preliminary schedule can be reduced without conflict; determining an updated schedule for the first child node by determining a set of scheduled timeslots that minimises the number of scheduled timeslots without conflicting with any of the scheduled transmissions in the record of scheduled transmissions; and sending the updated schedule to the first child node to assign the updated schedule to the first child node. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 41)
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28. A method for determining a transmission schedule for a first node in a multi-hop wireless network, wherein each node is a child node to a corresponding parent node, each child node being configured to send messages directed to a sink node via its corresponding parent node, and wherein the method comprises the first node:
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listening for signals indicating scheduling timeslots for transmission between nodes in the network and, if a signal is detected, updating a record of scheduled transmissions; determining whether to schedule a transmission for each of one or more messages to the corresponding parent node of the first node; in response to a determination to schedule, determining a preliminary schedule specifying a timeslot for transmission of each of the one or more messages to the corresponding parent node, the preliminary schedule being based on the record of scheduled transmissions; sending the preliminary schedule to the corresponding parent node for approval; and setting an assigned schedule based on a response from the corresponding parent node. - View Dependent Claims (29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40)
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Specification