Patent ID: 6389057
Filing Date: 2002-05-14
Classification: H04B,H04J,H04W,Y02D

Abstract:
A method for establishing a connection between a paging unit and a standby unit in a channel hopping communications system, the method comprising the steps of:activating the standby unit for an activation time period, Twake, out of every standby time period, Tstandby; during each activation time period, causing the standby unit to monitor a selected channel for receipt of a paging message, wherein the selected channel is selected from a plurality of channels, and wherein, for each subsequent activation time period, the selected channel is a subsequent one of the plurality of channels as specified by a hopping sequence; during a first repetition period, repeatedly transmitting a first page train from the paging unit to the standby unit, until a response is received from the standby unit; and if the response is not received from the standby unit during the first repetition period, then during each of one or more subsequent repetition periods, repeatedly transmitting a corresponding one of one or more subsequent page trains from the paging unit to the standby unit until the response is received from the standby unit, wherein: each of the first and subsequent page trains comprises a plurality of paging messages, each paging message being transmitted on a different one of a subset of the plurality of channels; the first page train is transmitted on a subset of channels that are selected from the hopping sequence, wherein the selected channels include a hop frequency associated with an expected wake-frequency and one or more different hop frequencies that are nearest the expected wake-frequency in the hopping sequence, and wherein non-selected channels in the hopping sequence constitute one or more remaining portions of the hopping sequence; and each of the one or more subsequent page trains is transmitted on a respectively different subset of channels that are selected from those channels that are nearest the expected wake-frequency in successively remaining portions of the hopping sequence.