Patent ID: 8838761

Claim:
A method for communicating wirelessly from a device with at least one node in a wireless network, said method comprising, at the device: incrementing a counter by one when the device does not receive an acknowledgment to a message sent by the device; resetting the counter to zero when the acknowledgment or an incoming message is received by the device; detecting a problem with communication when the counter is above a predetermined threshold, carrying out a local orphan scan on a current channel by transmission of a beacon or a special message on the current channel to indicate to the network that the device has become orphaned and wishes to rejoin; when the local orphan scan is unsuccessful, carrying out a global orphan scan on all channels by transmission of the beacon or the special message on all the channels; when the global orphan scan is unsuccessful, carrying out an energy detection scan that includes determining a local interference on each available channel and includes determining the most optimal local channel for operation, generating a network environment status message based on the energy detection scan, and broadcasting the network environment status message.