Patent ID: 7426190

Claim:
A method for initializing a wireless network, comprising: discovering at least one node of the wireless network that is within hearing range of a base station of the wireless network; authenticating the at least one discovered node; assigning a node identifier to the at least one discovered node; and selecting a network frequency, at least one backup frequency, and a locally unique network identifier; wherein the step of assigning the node identifier to the at least one discovered node further includes: broadcasting a first cycle start message to the at least one node, the first cycle start message including a cycle number, a message type, and a total number of time slots in a cycle, the message type including one of broadcast and unicast; performing a RF wakeup by the at least one node to receive the broadcasted first cycle start message and sleeping until an allocated time slot; sending a node identifier message to the at least one node during the allocated time slot, the node identifier message include a device identifier; performing a RF wakeup by the at least one node during the allocated time slot to receive the node identifier message and sending an acknowledgement to the base station if the device identifier of the node identifier message matches a device identifier of the at least one node; sending a subsequent cycle start message to the at least one node, which includes a list of nodes that failed to acknowledge the node identifier message, sending the node identifier message to the at least one node during the allocated time slot if the at least one node failed to acknowledge the node identifier message, and performing a RF wakeup by the at least one node if the at least one node is included in the list; and repeating the above step for a predefined number of cycles.