Patent ID: 9578635
Date: 2017-02-21
CPC Classifications: H04B,H04J,H04L,H04W,Y02D

Claim:
1. A method performed by an enhanced node B (eNodeB) comprising: transmitting a polling message from the eNodeB to a plurality of machine-type communications (MTC) devices; receiving one or more polling responses from the MTC devices, the polling responses including an indication as to whether an associated beacon-transmitting MTC device is willing to serve as a cluster head for a cluster of MTC devices, and one or more of a signal-to-noise ratio of one or more beacons received by an associated beacon-receiving MTC device from one or more other MTC devices from among the beacon-transmitting devices willing to serve as cluster heads, a number of MTC devices previously supported, and a collision probability; selecting one or more of the beacon-transmitting MTC devices to serve as the cluster head based on the polling responses; and transmitting cluster head information to the MTC devices to indicate which of the MTC devices are selected to serve as the cluster head.