System and method to maximize channel utilization in a multi-channel wireless communiction network

• US 20040258040A1
• Filed: 06/07/2004
• Published: 12/23/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/05/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Strong Force IoT Portfolio 2016, LLC (Strong Force Intellectual Capital, LLC)
• Original Assignee: MeshNetworks, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Inventors: Zeng, Surong, Joshi, Avinash, Strutt, Guenael T.
• Granted Patent: US 7,734,809 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/349
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]

Abstract

A system and method for data transmission using a multichannel medium access control (MAC) protocol to send small messages on the reservation channel directly without any RTS/CTS handshake or channel switching delays. The message is assigned a special type so that it can be distinguished from the RTS/CTS message. The message can also include information about congestion, activity, device type, mobility level, and so forth.

Claims

1. A method for communicating between nodes in an ad-hoc multi-hopping peer-to-peer communication network, the method comprising:

tuning one of the nodes acting as a source node and another one of the nodes acting as a destination node to a reservation channel;

transmitting a short message from the source node to the destination node over the reservation channel without performing a request-to-send/clear-to-send handshake between the source and destination nodes.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the short message is a hello message.

4. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the source and destination nodes are mobile nodes.

3. A method as claimed in clam 1, wherein:

the short message includes at least one of the following;

information about congestion in the network around the source and destination nodes, information regarding activity of other nodes in the network, information pertaining to the device type of the source or destination node, and information pertaining to a mobility level of the source or destination node.