Patent ID: 7596152
Filing Date: 2009-09-29
Classification: H04L,H04W,Y02D

Abstract:
1. An apparatus, comprising: a transceiver capable of dynamic cluster-based sleep/wake scheduling using hierarchical routing, cluster formation, and sleep-wake synchronization; wherein said hierarchical muting comprises a sink node capable of sending periodic route updates, which propagate through a network to regular nodes; wherein said cluster formation comprises a set of nodes that deliver data to said sink node through the same cluster head with a routing protocol which allows each node to select a cluster that provides the optimal path of data delivery to said sink node according to a routing metric; wherein said clusters formed by routing are utilized to coordinate sleep/wake schedules and a node knows the identity of said cluster to which it belongs; wherein a field that specifies the cluster head through which the route update flows is added to the route update generated by the routing protocol and when a route update is received by the cluster head, said cluster head records said cluster head's address in this field before forwarding route updates to said cluster head's neighbors; and wherein when a route update is received by a regular node that identifies the best route to said sink node using a distance-vector protocol, the node records the cluster head's address with each cluster being uniquely identified by the cluster head's address along with the next hop and metric associated with the best route.