Patent ID: 8134942

Claim:
A communication process operating on a synchronized network of low-power sensors, comprising: operating a first set of low-power sensors in a low-power sleep mode, each sensor having a network address; generating a gateway beacon using a gateway device, the gateway beacon being transmitted in a first time slice of a network time frame; periodically opening a short listen window in each of the sensors in the first set of low-power sensors, each respective listen window opening a short time period before the gateway beacon is expected and set to close a short period of time after the gateway beacon was expected; extracting, at each sensor in the first set of sensors, network address information from the gateway beacon; determining, at each respective sensor in the first set of sensors, if the network address information includes that respective sensor's network address; returning to sleep mode each sensor in the first set of sensors not having its respective network address included in the network address information; and executing an action for each sensor in the first set of sensors having its respective network address included in the network address information.