Patent ID: 9351242
Filing Date: 2016-05-24
CPC Classification: H04W,Y02D

Claim Text:
1. A method of reducing energy consumption of network infrastructure nodes in a wireless network, wherein the wireless network comprises the network infrastructure nodes and mobile terminal nodes comprising a receiver and a transmitter, wherein the network infrastructure nodes are mounted at fixed locations and are powered by an autonomous yet limited power supply and wherein the mobile terminal nodes are mobile with respect to the network infrastructure nodes and are configured to communicate with the network infrastructure nodes, the method comprising, for each of the network infrastructure nodes: a) turning a transmitter and a receiver of the network infrastructure node to a power-off state; b) powering-on the transmitter of the network infrastructure node for a limited transmission time frame; c) during the transmission time frame, transmitting a beacon message comprising an identifier of the network infrastructure node, channel characteristics of the network infrastructure node and a powering-on schedule of the receiver of the network infrastructure node, for allowing mobile terminal nodes in the network to communicate with the network infrastructure node at least during a limited time frame in accordance with the schedule, wherein the power consumption of network infrastructure nodes is significantly reduced at the expense of using more power consumption in mobile terminal nodes by almost continuously maintaining the receiver of the mobile terminal nodes in a power-on state; d) powering-on the receiver of the network infrastructure node and the transmitter of the mobile terminal nodes during a limited reception time frame in accordance with the schedule received by the mobile terminal node, for enabling the receiver of the network infrastructure node to receive messages transmitted by the mobile terminal nodes in the network if required; e) repeating steps a) to d) periodically.