Patent ID: 7355992

Claim:
A method of conducting wireless packetized digital data communications between a data sourcing site and a data reception site, geographically remote with respect to one another, said method comprising: (a) providing a communication path between said data sourcing site and said data reception site, said communication path including at least one relay therebetween, such that said communication path, said sourcing site, and said reception site contain at least three successive transceiver devices, wherein each pair of immediately successive transceiver devices includes a data transmission device and a data reception device; (b) selectively wirelessly transmitting a polling message to said data transmission device from said data reception device; (c) in response to receipt of said polling message, wirelessly transmitting, from said data transmission device to said data reception device, a poll acknowledgement message that is representative of whether said data transmission device has data to send and the quantity of data to be sent; (d) in response to receipt of said poll acknowledgement message indicating that said data transmission device has data to send, wirelessly transmitting, from said data reception device to said data transmission device, a data request message; (e) in response to receipt of said data request message, wirelessly transmitting, from said data transmission device to said data reception device, a data message containing a plurality of data packets; (f) in response to receipt of said data message at said data reception device, storing data contained in data packets of said data message, storing data contained in a respective group of data packets in an associated data buffer of a group storage section of a memory of said data reception device, and storing information representative of any data packets missing from said data message in a resend buffer of said group storage section of said memory of said data reception device; (g) wirelessly transmitting from said data reception device to said data transmission device, a data acknowledgement message that includes said information representative of any data packets missing from said data message, and assembling said data acknowledgement message in accordance with the contents of said resend buffer of said group storage section of said memory of said data reception device; and (h) subsequent to receipt of said data acknowledgement message, wirelessly transmitting, from said data transmission device to said data reception device, at least one further data message containing data packets missing from said data message transmitted in step (e).