Patent ID: 7978670

Claim:
A method to facilitate managing communications with at least one wireless node having outbound payload memory in a severely resource-constrained wireless network, the method comprising: at a coordinator node for the severely resource-constrained wireless network: providing information regarding remaining capacity of the outbound payload memory; automatically using the information regarding the remaining capacity of the outbound payload memory in integral combination with a bandwidth allocation management process to control allocation of at least one wireless communication resource by which the at least one wireless node can transmit items contained in the outbound payload memory; and wherein automatically using the information regarding the remaining capacity of the outbound payload memory in integral combination with a bandwidth allocation management process to control allocation of at least one wireless communication resource by which the at least one wireless node can transmit items contained in the outbound payload memory comprises, at least in part: when the remaining capacity is less than a predetermined minimum threshold, automatically determining at least one measure of link quality for a communication path to the at least one wireless node; when the measure of link quality is less than a minimum level of link quality, allocating substantially only a sufficient quantity of the at least one wireless communication resource to increase the remaining capacity to more than the predetermined minimum threshold.