Patent ID: 7120190
Filing Date: 2006-10-10
Classification: H04B,H04W,Y02D

Abstract:
1. A method for reducing power consumption of a radio receiver in a frequency hopping communications system that operates according to a hop sequence comprised of a set of channels corresponding to discrete radio frequencies to which the radio receiver is sequentially tuned, the method comprising the steps of: (a) entering a sleep mode, during which at least some receiver digital circuits are clocked with a low-frequency clock source; (b) awakening from the sleep mode, such that said at least some receiver digital circuits are clocked with a high-frequency clock source; (c) determining an expected channel in the hop sequence upon which communications are expected to be received; (d) deriving a target channel in the hop sequence based upon the expected channel according to a channel mapping, wherein the channel mapping defines a correspondence between the expected channel and the target channel; (e) tuning the radio receiver to the target channel; (f) determining whether a communications signal is detected on the target channel; (g) repeating steps (c), (d), (e) and (f) for another expected channel in the hop sequence if the communications signal is not detected.