Patent ID: 7664066

Claim:
A wireless device for use in a wireless communication system comprising a plurality of wireless devices wherein communication between the wireless devices is carried out by sending data, which is received from some other wireless device, from one of said wireless devices to a next wireless device via a communication route determined in advance according to a destination of the data, said wireless device comprising: means to store; a communication route management table in which an identifier of a data destination wireless device is associated with an identifier of the wireless device indicating a next destination of the data, and information indicating an operation ratio of a wireless communication function of said wireless device; means to send a route search packet to the wireless devices that can directly communicate with said wireless device when data is sent to one of the other wireless devices via a new communication route, said route search packet including an identifier of the other wireless device that is a data destination and an identifier of said wireless device that is a search source of the new communication route; means, for use when the route search packet is received and if the identifier of the destination wireless device included in the received route search packet does not match the identifier of said wireless device, to add the identifier of the wireless device and the information indicating an operation ratio of a wireless communication function of said wireless device, to the received route search packet and to send the route search packet to the wireless devices that can directly communicate with said wireless device; means, for use when the route search packet is received and if the identifier of the destination wireless device included in the received route search packet matches the identifier of the wireless device, to calculate a reliability of a communication route via which the route search packet is sent based on the information indicating the operation ratios of the wireless devices added by the wireless devices via which the received route search packet is sent; and means to determine the new communication route for sending the data from the search source wireless device to said wireless device itself-based on the information indicating the communication route reliability calculated for each of the route search packets that are sent with said wireless device as the destination; wherein the information indicating the operation ratio of the wireless communication function of said wireless device is information indicating a ratio of a number of wireless communication function operations, whose operation time elapsed from a start to an end is longer than a time elapsed from a start of a currently-active wireless communication function operation to a current time, to a number of wireless communication function operations that were once started and ended during a period of time from a start of the wireless communication function of said wireless device to the current time.